Xccurate igling tho. I personally think he’d replace saya because saya’s been playing exactly two agents.

I think we're gonna see some role shenanigans from DRX

He hit aimlabs after last game and shakes off rust. Drops 40 no cap

idk rossy is much more consistent than carpe imo.

Thing is icy is on duelist. Imo since duelists are almost always on the front lines and constantly fighting, they have higher chances to ace. Controllers or sentinels normally get kills, but they pretty much never first contact, meaning they have lower opportunities to kill everyone since their team probably has already gotten one by the time they take contact.

Arguably speaking, it should’ve been better. Yuran and hironronn are much better shooters than crow and tenn. The blunder, however, was signing hironronn. Hironronn is great, but his roles overlapped with Laz’s roles. Legit one of Zeta’s problems last year was roles and they just walked straight into it… again. (I actually somewhat predicted they would switch Laz’s and Hironronn’s roles last match because they needed to rebuild hironronn’s confidence by putting him on a comfort role… not that it really did much)

Tldr; team should be better but isn’t due to role issues, just like 2023 Zeta

Laz doesn't play kj anymore, hiroronn plays comfort role on kj, Dep plays neon. 2-1 for Zeta (please wake up, yall have so much coaching staff and yall are still not winning)

Glow becomes head coach, while termi takes an assistant coach position. Additionally, they lean heavily into aggressive comp ideas, showcasing their firepower. The reason they replaced stax with flashback was to increase their firepower, so they should use it as such. However, the main issue with DRX right now (besides coaching staff and igl diff) is their role issues. I could explain it, but if you look at what each person has played the most, generally speaking there is like 2 others on the team that play that role. However, Beyn is proving that he's an extremely good flex, so it should work out. But flashback's role is taken up by foxy9, so now he's taking mako's role and mako is now perma viper, which is not great in the current meta. Therefore, I would like roles to look something like:

Beyn - flex
Foxy9 - sentinel
Buzz - main duelist
Mako - main range smokes
Flashback - initiator

Alternatively, we could see Flashback flex while Beyn is main initiator, but Beyn plays most roles extremely well. Furthermore, we could switch Mako's and Flashback's roles because Mako's igling now so Mako could easily learn initiator (he even has experience in a similar role). Another switch that could work is Beyn igls instead of Mako. (as the rumors said when stax got benched) Additionally, I would like to see DRX play significantly less viper and run more double initiator/double duelist because they have shooters. Instead of the passiveness that viper encourages, I'd like to see them play more aggressively. It feels like they forgot that they have players with crazy high ceilings. This hypothetical switch to more aggression would benefit them in going on a run. They have enough firepower to absolutely decimate many teams that are probably making Champs (such as G2, Talon, Chinese teams except FPX) If they get a good enough bracket and remember they have shooters, they can run over teams until finals and then fluke a victory in the finals.

Anyway, how'd I do for massive amounts of theory crafting + cope?

edit: added "in the finals"

Leo's not playing because he's sick

mibr: frod

“That’s just me though”

Not really tbh, they lost their best player due to age restrictions so they can replace one of the meh ones with juicy later

Saadhak is the best duelist in the world wym

yeah I'll probably do that when I'm not drowning in schoolwork. Kariyu made it seem hella fun

Did it finally come out?? I am so behind. Although, it probably seems more fun due to the novelty factor tbh.

edit: it has not been released for global audiences yet sadge

He's been this core's raid boss for like 2 years now.

tbh bleed needs a cracked duelist player. Swap Deryeon and Vera (partnership team)

think less

W00t being up there is lowkey kinda crazy. He legit started playing in franchise like 3 months ago

no

astra is also free stinger during pistol ;P

Now THAT'S cooking

Obviously, they might just put hiro on initiator to replace Leo perfectly. However, my overcooked brain says that there will be multiple swaps because hiro seems to perform better on sentinel. (and he's also played senti for the last like 2-3 months)

Let me cook:
hiro - senti (what he's been playing)
alfa - main duelist (they've been experimenting with alfa duelist anyways)
derke - flash initiator/secondary duelist (would be a simple shift from entry to first contact)
boaster - smokes
chronicle - other initiator/flex

I saw nats run chamber on split once and I was sold on the idea. Also, you asked for unhinged comps xD

As a professional kitchen burner, here’s a DRX split comp:

Buzz raze
Beyn yoru
Flashback clove
Mako viper
Foxy9 chamber

Overcooked PRX split comp would look something like that except:
Jingg raze
Something jett
Mindfreak omen
Forsaken clove
Davai skye

Are we watching the same player? Sure he was meh for the first like 3 games, but now he’s lowkey one of the better players on the roster (not that that really means anything tbh)

Tbf roles made no sense with yay. Idk what they were cooking pre season with that roster but it was not good…

imo it’s not that Jing isn’t flexible, it’s that alecks doesn’t want to risk anything. Jing probably can play other agents other than raze (and if he can’t, they can teach him). Like, you have arguably the best raze in the world. Why would you not put him on raze? It’s kind of the opposite of yay’s situation. Everyone was flaming Bleed’s coaching staff for trying to make him more flexible instead of putting him on chamber/jett every map.

Tbf a huge portion of Russia is Asian

Politics ✨

No rating so sort by acs or smthing

tbf ethan is a lot more flexible than ardiss and that gives nrg a lot more room in terms of comps.

Tbf for yay, the problem is that his team has 3 sentinel players so 2 of them are gonna get the short end of the stick

Edit: 3 including yay. Deryeon, Retla, yay are the 3

Tbh I dislike the icy signing as much as the next guy (there’s so many fa duelists with experience), but BeyN had t1 experience (as a stand-in) and overall more competitive experience. Icy’s last competitive match was in, frankly, lower stakes games.

My brain says lev, my heart says 100t

edit: oops though you meant americas in general, 100t for na

Xcurrate knows that two trips aren’t enough to stop the giga chad 4 man flank

I trolled (I still put t1 winning in my pickems lmao)

None of those are imports. Imports (in T1) are out-of-region players, so an import would have to be someone from amer/emea/china.

I don't see the vision with t1 beating geng (if we're going for "safest")

Geng has had much closer maps and performed better than t1 + t1 is going through igl change so

While Zest and Riza do have a slight role issue, they both played some flash initiator before, so they can learn much easier imo.

I'm kinda a fake Viet fan (I don't know how good YesIcan's English is :(((((( ) Although, I definitely think that is a good option. (NOOO MY VIET SUPER TEAM)

hmmm, true, obv I don't know how deep the internal issues go, but it might be easier to work around them than finding a different fa igl initiator.

Yay might be kept, but he'd most likely get switched to sentinel permanently (since he's shown he can't perform on duelist or initiator/flex) meaning Retla would be kicked (and that sucks)

Edit: I forgot about Riza. That might actually be the way they'll go

Honestly same lmao, I had to check the team page to realize he was still on the team xD

dsg and bleed could trade a player (probably juicy) for split 2. imo, yay and deryeon out, bring back crazyguy igl and juicy duelist. Deryeon caught in bad role issue (sentinel/secondary duelist but retla is sentinel and not double duelist meta) and yay has been underperforming.

Alternative: Retla and deryeon out, yay on sentinel and crazyguy back in for igl + initiator, juicy duelist. Personally, I dislike this because Retla has been performing really well, but tbh this is really the only option to keep yay on the team.

Edit: Another option is Riza instead of crazyguy. It is probably the better option too ngl

Tbh aspas ascent fries harder than his icebox no? Edit: I trolled I didn’t watch his last few icebox games (who likes watching icebox) pls disregard this ignorant comment!

Literally never put this guy on raze ever again 😭

egoist retired because he wanted to go focus on studies tho.

Why do they keep trying to force monyet raze :(((

At most jet lag lasts one week. Kickoff ended, at latest, March 3rd. Assuming they got on a flight 4 days after, they still had enough time to beat out the jet lag.

Act just restarted remember? Radiant lb is reset so obv there are imm/radiant players in acendant rn

Yeah, monyet played 6/8 maps on raze and its obvious that his raze doesn't fit in with the team. Realistically, they should just make him secondary controller and then put davai on sentinel or put monyet on sentinel and keep davai on secondary controller. Tbh, I didn't expect them to sign monyet to put him on duelist. Like, there were definitely better duelists if they needed one...