LMFAOOO

that guy is not good enough for a Korean team lol

think about it. would you replace free1ng/mako/stax/munchkin/francis with him?

no way u put ur best player on igl duty

some JP guys tried to teamflash me or bodyblock me lmfao, they died doing that shit too

opened up FNC Haven and saw the first 2-ish paragraphs were dedicated to describing the Map's aesthetics and origins and checked out. Who tf cares about Haven's real-world location lol

opened up 100T Icebox and saw a lack of easily comprehensible diagrams or defaults.

Pictures paint a thousand words. Just use Valoplant to depict your ideas and everyone will get it without you writing 100 pages.

Cut out the useless fluff and your report is like 3 pages long

JP tier 2 has been a higher level than their tier 1 for the past 2 years I think. It just looks bad because their tier 1 teams are incompetent as fuck and incapable of properly staffing good players, plus they're slow to scout their promising players and assemble a team capable of reaching the peaks shown by their individuals.

I actually wasn't too disappointed with SyouTa's Chamber today, at least. Seemed like he was put in a pretty difficult spot on Fracture tbh, and it's a sample size of 1. His Cypher has been looking very decent though. He can't take Dep's spot as Duelist, and SugarZ3ro is serviceable on Smokes, so it makes sense they'd put him on Sentinel.

If by some miracle Laz unretires, then a JP godsquad of Meiy duelist, SyouTa flex, Dep Initiator, Laz Sentinel, and SugarZ3ro Smokes with someone like bullco (JDT coach) and a competent assistant coach could be pretty good, assuming one of them can pick up IGLing.

fighting games are a pretty big pillar of esports tho. this is like saying Korea isn't good at esports back in like 2001 because they were only good at StarCraft...or something

4 years bro. that's all i'm going to say. 4 years with the highest level of interest in Asia.

real. SyouTa was at the top of Tier 2 for two fucking years playing two different roles and only now does ZETA think of getting him LOL and to make things even crazier he's now fragging on ANOTHER role

It's not shallow, i never said it was shallow, it's that ZETA's management is so fucking slow at scouting good players and they're so unwilling to let go of bad ones I feel. Same applies to their coaching staff. Honestly their current roster isn't even that bad. It's mostly a coaching + management diff imo

they have had the game for 4 years and a larger playerbase/sponsorship interest than regions like Korea for the entirety of that time. "give them time" is insane bro it's been 4 whole years even China has had better performances than JP and they got the game like 2 years late

shit, would be better than whatever these frauds have. Lowkey even Mini would have a hard time fixing their problems holy shit

1. Their coaching staff is actually ASS lmfao, these guys at ZETA management have to actively be looking for shit coaches. How is Carlao still on the staffing roster LOL GE got a better coach than ZETA in the offseason, that's crazy.

2. Their player selection is too delayed. They had Laz & Dep for the longest time, and SyouTa was rotting in Tier 2 for ages, but they refused to drop the bag for JP T2's strongest player bar Meiy and kept TENNN & crow, even shifting crow to the assistant coach role as if he did anything LMAO I wonder if they've looked into RIDDLE's players considering the run they had in Ascension. They're literally from ZETA Academy.

3. The players themselves have like 0 passion it feels like. They have legit no reactions to losing from what I've seen. Laz was the only guy in the Japanese scene who actually seemed to care about winning. These guys look so dispassionate. They're disjointed as well, there are some times when it looks like one of them wanted to flood and the other just waited, or the trade was so slow because the other guy wouldn't proactively look for it. Like what are you doing, why are you so passive? Didn't these guys want to play like PRX? The Japanese scene was suffering from passive baity playstyles since the game released and nothing has changed.

what run at 2023 Champs LMFAO they won LCQ off of Laz being an insane Chamber

it's actually impossible LMFAO the only good players from that region are Dep SyouTa and Meiy

MaKo
Karon

he said "both 1 team regions" as if he was alluding to APAC/KR because PRX and DRX would no longer be from separate regions since they're both in Pacific, is how I interpreted it.

If he genuinely meant franchising and KR/SEA as subregions, then by that point T1 was still good enough for KR to be considered a 2 team region, given that they were 3rd in the league after DRX. Don't forget that all 3 KR teams were in the top 4 of the league in 2023. It was PRX, DRX, T1, GEN.G/ZETA (depending on if you count Champs attendees - regardless there were 2 KR teams in the top 3 of Pacific.) And sure you can argue that T1 wasn't as good as PRX or DRX, but they were going toe-to-toe with NRG at Tokyo and fared decently against other similarly seeded teams across the whole year (minus LOCK//IN, but GEN.G did well enough against LOUD to cover for that)

And because that's such a stupidly obvious and apparent piece of information I simply assumed he was giving the lesser of two stupid statements

if DK win Ascension...

yeah, literally because korea only had 1 slot....

Korea wasn't a one-team region from the get-go, they just had one slot.
DRX and Nuturn both placed 3rd at LANs.

DRX
NS
T1
GENG
PRX
RRQ
GE (with Patrick)
TLN
BME
ZETA
TS
DFM

they have the young goat

yeah, munchkin solo lurked through A short with a ghost and caught Jemkin on the rotate with an outlaw, then he killed Kushy with it and isolated Estrella with his molly. won them the game with that play ngl, geng's econ was insanely strong - they only had to eco once after that

4th KR team only lost to KR team 1-2

yeah, but getting a kill is always good. honestly Kushy did amazingly well, there's no fault with him for RRQ's loss imo

was also the reason geng won Lotus vs G2

estrella was NOT the problem lol

it looked so over yoman had like 2kills almost by the end of the 2nd half

it's karma for estrella random fadeaway hs spray on t3xture 2 rounds prior

kushy is nuts tho. if he keeps this up then he'll prove me wrong and be rookie of the year material
i'm so inclined to think he is, but he's only played 2 officials so far. i dont want to be hasty

he heard me talking shit

xffero is too underrated ngl thought i was going fucking crazy seeing people not talk about him

also get rid of fl1pz = win, that guy was such a bum bro

knew it was cooked when i saw Foxy9 play. that brother is not even half of Meteor :(

Exa was front page in NA like every act
Korean American ranked demon

Meteor/t3xture and Tekken were the biggest duos of 2024

yeah but you get my point

dude fr

but what if its the same case with all the other SEA countries?

then the answer is pretty simple, they would have proved themselves and would have been picked up. think about it, assuming all regions have equally large amount of talent, then why do koreans make up the most number of players in tier 1? because they're better lol be it on the server mechanics or gamesense wise, or through work ethic and mindset

there may have been talented people that now wont have a chance to flourish because its simply not economically viable?

yeah... like persia, or free1ng way back in 2021. they made their way. no other answer to it. free1ng moved to china to prove himself. i say the same shit about korean tier 2 back in 2022 and i get laughed at because nobody believed in korean tier 2, they just said that korean tier 2 is just ass and korea is a drx one team region. face it. if they are committed and driven enough, they will persevere. korean talent did it. if SEA talent is so good, they will persevere as well.

the teams do manage their players very poorly in franchising in the SEA region, like the RRQ shenanigans with their 2023 roster, but riot chose to put those teams in franchising. was there no good alternatives or is that the best orgs that the region has to offer?

clearly it's because they are the best orgs the region has to offer. what other org in valorant SEA is good enough to replace any in tier 1, financials, history, and management wise? don't forget that riot carefully vets these orgs into tier 1, and the only org so far that has been controversial was BLEED, which wasn't vetted by Riot but let in through Ascension.

Nah, if anything, Alecks' timeouts and pauses have led to pretty good PRX adaptations. Get this guy some help, don't kick him off.

Sure these are all valid points, but also a large reason SEA tier 2 talent isn't moving up is because SEA as a region isn't properly managing their players. PapiChulo locked in contract hell, RRQ player controversy, TS and JessieVash's nepotism. Most of your woes are self inflicted, because despite Korea's lack of resources besides preexisting infra and more Riot support, their players have consistently proved themselves. SEA hasn't.

And Korean tournaments do not compare in any way shape or form to BLEED's, or GalaxyRacer, or whatever SEA tournaments were being run.

The reason half the players are Korean is literally because orgs think that those players are clearly good. It's why RRQ picked up Estrella, why Fr0sT picked up ban and Governor, why T1 went for an all-Korean roster, why GE picked up UdoTan, why DFM got Jinboong and Akame, etc. The players are good, so they got picked up.

Speaking of unnoticed, KR tier 2 talent has been unnoticed hella as well. You know free1ng? Did you know he's actually been playing professionally since launch? He played against the first iteration of VS. Same goes for Persia.

How did free1ng get his chance? He kept playing, and eventually proved his worth on Dplus. How did Persia get his chance? Winning Ascension.

When it comes down to it, the KR players proved themselves and orgs wanted to pick them up. Despite all the shit they went through, like F/A teams, low pay, low viewership, Persia even moved to India. They did what it took, there is nothing stopping SEA talent from doing the same.

KR tier 2 has had criminally low viewership and org numbers FOREVER. Why do you think people kept saying they needed to merge with Japan? Why do you think KR talent moved to Japan, like Meteor?

i mean you cant blame me for finding that hyperbole possibly offensive...

SEA had 2 free slots to all tournaments in 2022.
SEA had on paper the richest org in non CN Asia (BLEED)
SEA had more slots than KR in Franchising (TS/PRX/TLN/RRQ+BLD)
Despite that, almost every KR team finished in top 4 and have, on average, consistently better results than SEA teams at all events. Even though Valorant had a fumbled launch and almost 0 interest in KR since the start.

The only difference is that KR VCL had a bit more prizepool money.
The KR tier 2 scene suffered from low viewership and org investment for almost 3 years.
The 2nd best KR team of 2021 did not qualify to any internationals because of a single elim bracket. Don't forget that one of the 3 KR teams to qualify to an international pre-franchising was F4Q, a team of fucking streamers. There was only 1 big org in Korea until 2022 and that org is actually small in comparison to the heavyweights in Franchising right now.

I cannot believe any excuses for "SEA would be the best region if blablabla" as if Korea did not go through similar shit years earlier.

The fact of the matter is simply that KR tier 2 talent has always been ridiculously underrated and that SEA has been given plenty of chances to prove they are the best region in the game, and since 2022 the only team that has been internationally proven is PRX. Korea has sent Nuturn, DRX/VS, and now GEN.G. Shit, you can even say T1 is more proven than any SEA team not named PRX after they won an offseason event and at least consistently qualified to internationals.

Last Ascension proved a lot. SPG 13-0ed Full Sense, heavy favourites. DSG, the other heavy favourites, lost in lowers. SPG ran the bracket through Premier and the only team to give them a run for their money out of all of Asian tier 2 was a home crowd BOOM.Nongshim Redforce in Korea were the only other team to challenge them.

it's always the coaching staff bro there was 0 adaptation after a timeout

T1 played the exact same comp did they not

they won't dominate yet but so far KR has been the best region in Pacific, especially considering they're the only region that won a trophy.

one map bruh

You literally just said he's bad because he wasn't fragging, not because DRX weren't winning everything in the offseason despite replacing 3 players on their team.

He said he played bad. Not that he wasn't playing as well as he used to. And free1ng was frying in Challengers before Ascension as well, so there's more evidence that he's good than not.

blindly trusting analysts is crazy

the only people whose word i'll take on things i don't know about are those who actually have competitive experience like Sliggy, and even then I'm not going to base my opinions off of just one person who probably doesn't even know the region.

Have you ever considered just watching them play?

And who cares if they didn't win anything it's the offseason what? free1ng didn't play bad and that's a new DRX roster. Use your brain lol