He also played skye early on in the season. Tbh jett and gekko is all the really need so it’s allg

In foxy9’s defense, he was forced to switch roles a ridiculous amount of times in the past year. He went from duelist -> initiator -> sentinel (which he spent a lot of time on and got very comfortable with) -> initiator

Compared to other regions internationally, amer lacks that (consistent) x factor tbh.

For example, in the top 10 of players at champs, the only amer player is keznit at 5th (which is a testament to how team diffed this guy constantly is tbh) Pacific has 3 players (primmie, meteor, texture), EMEA has 4 (trexx, derke, chronicle, riens), and even China has 2 (Chichoo and smoggy)

At shanghai, there is also only 1 amer player in the top 10 (aspas at 6), while every other region has a pretty even spread of players.

The only time amer showed up was during madrid with a ridiculous 6 players in top 10.

I mean, I don't think izu has even gotten a chance to play in full korean ever, so maybe he'll quadruple his kills

For some reason, I feel like xcurrate is staying (since he's learning korean and all)

Roles could look like:
Izu/Akame - duelist
Rb - flex
Stax - initiator
Izu/Akame - controller
xcurrate - sentinel

If we're going off champs stats, the only countries that could field teams are: (I think? I could be wrong)
China
Korea
Turkey
USA

The best rated players for each team would be (assuming we don't give a shit about roles):

China:
CHICHOO (1.18)
Smoggy (1.14)
Kai (1.10)
KK (1.10)
Luoking (1.04)
Avg rating: 1.112

Korea:
Meteor (1.17)
texture (1.14)
Flashback (1.04)
mako (1.02)
Buzz (1.01)
Avg rating: 1.076

Turkey:
Riens (1.15)
Alfajer (1.09)
yetujey (1.07)
cNed (0.99)
woot (0.99)
Avg rating: 1.058

America:
zekken (1.12)
valyn (0.99)
Zellsis (0.98)
com (0.98)
leaf (0.97)
Avg rating: 1.008

Tldr; China > Korea > Turkey > USA

note: after I finish homework, I'll go make a spreadsheet or something and try calculating the best valorant country of 2024 using total stats across the year (may use acs as a marker because china moment)

ig problem is what do they play on lotus and sunset, since d1 does not have a good omen

Assuming import restrictions still exist:
Americas:

• Duelist: aspas
• Initiator: saadhak (igl)
• Flex: zekken
• Smokes: som
• Sentinel: Shyy

APAC:

• Duelist: Meiy/primmie
• Initiator: invy
• Flex: forsaken
• Smokes: Mako (igl, btw I would’ve preferred to put Karon, but Meteor is legit the only good senti in apac)
• Sentinel: Meteor

EMEA:

• Duelist: Alfajer
• Initiator: riens
• Flex: Sayf
• Smokes: grubinho
• Sentinel: nats (igl)

isn't reduxx still too young?

KK acing but still losing the game was cinema.

you can full kit and buy shorty on pistol (w strat)

I think Boaster is retiring anyway. He mentioned last year that he was retiring soon, so I'm guessing he'll retire, and they'll bring back Leo and put chronicle igl/smokes

Never interacted with geospliced directly but I liked his predictions for vct china last year. (Especially since I wasn’t a china viewer myself)

If dsg lose ascension, +juicy +vera +grumble.

I mean, both of them are proper duelists. Something can raze, and jinggg can jett, so they could just kick one and keep the other. However, I would prefer this roster to stay together. I agree, they should probably do what trace do. It would also solve the massive overheating problem as sentinel would force them to cool down

Even if they have a good reason, they still face backlash. I remember hearing about how an idol with a torn acl got an exemption and people got giga pissed for some reason.

Pressure got to them I guess.

vlr trolling

Thing is that I'm all for innocent until proven guilty. That's actually why I dislike these allegations between there is no proof of guilt AND (to me) feels like there is a lack of proper justice if the allegations ARE true. All these allegations do is hamper his career while letting him run around free from consequence (assuming they are true). At most, this will result in the alleged perpetrator losing their career. Otherwise, this is but a simple speed bump. imo, the only reason one would ever release these allegations on only social media and not take legal action is if the allegations are not true or exaggerated.

Edit: Additionally, these allegations absolutely wreck the alleged perpetrator if they are false, which adds on to the last sentence I said above. Absolutely no reason to post "x abused/hurt me" unless you're bringing awareness to the situation AFTER the law has been involved.

To me, if the allegations are serious enough to warrant career ending actions, they are probably serious enough to get the alleged perpetrator arrested. Honestly, if there is no legal action involved between the alleged victim and the alleged perpetrator, I start to doubt the validity or at least the extent of the claims. Like, if any of the things the victim says is true, the accused should not be allowed to walk around and potentially harm other people. imo, if the claims have substance, lawyer up instead of tweeting about it.

Once wedid beats cancer, I think he's going to be heavily sought after.

We just let them bet against themselves (We’ll also tell everyone except alfa about this because it’s funny) Easy stonks

Billibilli beat fnc. This is to increase chinese viewship. While losing fnc fans is tough, they’ll just move on to TH so it’s allg. PRX will make a lower bracket run because they have pretty much all of the SEA viewship and no one cares if FUT loses (they’ll just go root for TH as 2/5 is turkish anyway)

Mostly because humans, by human nature, want to blame something in any situation. People refuse to hear “it’s no one’s fault” or “it’s everyone’s fault.” They just want to hear “___ is at fault,” so they can have someone to scapegoat their anger on.

The problem with sentinel is that you’re also lurking, so you don’t have the full picture of what is happening with the test of the team.

In his defense, he’s at least cooking over there.

Karon sticking the spike against loud on the final round of icebox because somebody planted the spike wrong.

I think the problem with talon is that a lot of their vods is pure junk in terms of strats. (Frost openly admitted to saving strats in multiple games) While it may be easy to sort out the good from the bad, frost and talon have enough time to cook up something new and anti strat while their opponents could end up watching a vod from a month to possibly predict what their plans are.

I started watching valorant early 2023, so I started watching them post benkai. The main reason I supported them was due to their innovative comps and team fight orientated play style. It hurts seeing them fall off so hard, but I’m holding on hope…

I'd argue that Talon is just replicating PRX's raze-yoru comp but with governor's best agent.

I think there's a low chance of a 2-0 but a 2-1 is definitely in the cards. PRX lose ascent, win lotus, and decider is a coin flip

PRX has a 33% win rate on bind if we count shanghai compared to G2's 64%. You're cooked

The main problem is that their bind and ascent have abysmally low win rates being 33% and 17% respectively. (if we include shanghai) Assuming that their haven is so bad that they need to constantly ban it (my cope is that they just don't scrim haven because they only had one coach at the time, so they'll stop perma banning), they have 3 bad maps out of the 7 total. Moreover, if they have cooked on haven, they would only whip it out in a must win situations.

Now the reason G2 would ban icebox is G2 has a 33% win rate on icebox (only split 2) while PRX have a 60% win rate on it. The round win rates for G2 on icebox look bad as PRX have a good atk win rate and G2 has a terrible def win rate. While they have practiced icebox for much longer, they would be allowing their second worst map into the pool. While PRX has a strong abyss, G2 also has a decent abyss, and they would not struggle as much as they would on icebox. Even if they don't win, they wouldn't get stomped like they would on icebox imo

PRX will never ever pick ascent. I kid you not; they have a 17% winrate on it post monyet. The only problem is that PRX's perma ban is haven. It will probably be:

PRX ban haven
G2 ban sunset
PRX pick Lotus
G2 pick ascent
PRX ban bind
G2 ban Icebox
Decider abyss

PRX and G2 continue perma banning. PRX has a strong sunset, so G2 kills 2 birds with one stone with that pick. PRX's ban is significantly less useful, but idk if they'll cook something, so they'll keep that perma ban. PRX pick lotus because that is their next best map. Additionally, it is G2's next weakest map (although it is still very very strong) G2 pick ascent because PRX has shown that their ascent is garbage while G2 has a very strong ascent. PRX bans bind because that is their next weakest map. G2 ban icebox because that is their next weakest map. Both teams have very novel abyss with seemingly strong ideas, so they'll be fine leaving it as a decider.

Alternatively, PRX could pick icebox instead to exploit G2's weakest map, but PRX's icebox is not as strong as their lotus. It comes down to whether or not alecks will gamble or how scrims go.

Makes sense. G2 look incredible, and their playstyle counters PRX's well. Additionally, PRX look out of form and are playing less disciplined than they should -- even for PRX.

Probably for the same reason that teams like sen and fnc get hate: some fans are truly out there. Bad apples spoil the batch, and we often associate teams with their fans. Since there are... interesting... PRX fans, PRX inadvertently gets hate.

Probably botted no?

Wasn’t he on pace to break the kill record on a map? Sad to see him go tbh

Carpal tunnel is a thing. Health should be prioritized above all else imo, and if one gets carpal tunnel, they wouldn’t be able to play the game anymore (at least to a greater extent)

Beyn looked bad at the end of the split tbh. I think he’s just not used to initiator.

I think there's only like 3 teams total running this comp in t1 val, wdym everyone else

Good news is that you aren’t learning anything on the first day. Bad news is you would make a bad first impression if you are overly sleep deprived. (as much as people like to say that doesn’t matter, it really does, considering how subjective a lot of grading is) I’d recommend sleeping now if you want to catch the games tbh

I think it might be because demon1’s roles aligned with what he was looking for. Chet most likely wanted an initiator igl (because in theory it is the best role for it) and a cracked duelist. However, the main issue with the roster was that there was no senti/viper player. Demon1 flexing into smokes would fix that. On maps like split, bind, and other raze maps, viper tends to be meta as well. Thus, you can run D1 range smokes, Marved viper, and victor raze. (Which is what they were doing at the start of the season) On Jett maps like ascent, viper tends to be less meta, so Marved just plays range smokes while victor plays senti and D1 plays Jett. Unfortunately, theory does not always equal success in practice, which we found out very quickly.

The storyline of friends turned enemies, facing off in the gauntlet of death.

I’m not telling them to support the team because they’re going to win anything; I’m telling them to support the team because they have good vibes. If they wanted to support a team that could win, I would’ve recommended favorites like lev lmao (not saying lev have bad vibes. It’s just that prx does a lot more content from what I’ve seen)

I mean, som stocks were arguably just as high if not even higher than Marved’s. Som was considered by many to be the best NA controller of 2023. While Marved did look good and revitalized a broken sen roster, som seemed significantly better imo

Edit: just to put into perspective how good som was, he was the highest rated controller of: Americas League 2023, Master Tokyo, and Champions LA*. The only event he was not the highest rated controller was LOCK//IN where he was rated 3rd best controller. (In his defense, he was transitioning from an entirely different role) He was 4th overall during the regular season as well. Marved is good, but dropping som has gotta be extremely troll.

*Unless you count jawg/demon1 as controller players, then som was rated 3rd.

https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/520826b4

Paper Rex is funny and has great personalities. They also play a unique style of valorant compared to everyone else, so they definitely are a top pick. There is also Team Heretics, which play with GENG on streams often and are also entertaining imo. Tbh, most of APAC is fun to watch because they are so unserious half the time xD

jawgemo ace is probably the best ace the game has ever seen

GEN 2-0 SEN (I think you're right, sen are out of form as it seems, so it would not color me shocked)
TH 2-0 FPX (I think 2-1 for TH here because I am mega copiumed on FPX. Also, FPX looked great at masters)
FNC 2-0 BLG
DRX 2-0 KRU
LEV 2-0 TLN (2-1 LEV, on primmie copium)
VIT 2-0 TE
G2 2-0 PRX (2-1 either way. alecks actually has assistants now so I actually have faith in the team to succeed for once. But G2 is in great form)
FUT 2-0 EDG