I think they peaked regionally personally, and that's where they were playing at their peak in the finals of either final

relative to their 2024 performance yeah they played better, but like...
their 2024 was just bombing out of shanghai and not making it to madrid so i didn't want to compare them to that team

I don't remember the sen game (i 100% watched it live), so i dont want to comment on it but i 100% believe that they were playing pretty well in the first 2 maps

good thing there are people who did and commented on it that weren't you! public forum for a reason <3

kajaak is not the concern for me on this team skill wise, I hope he doesn't get the qck effect mentally and boom out

I want to see a fnatic that has new ideas, plans, and comps for the new 2025 meta, whatever it may be, and see them FUCKING INNOVATE

Would you consider fnatic playing at an exceptional level at champs?
I personally wouldn't for what they've shown before, and have proven they can do, as the only teams they beat were:
BLG (bad)
KRU (good but the worst team to come from Americas)
G2 (good team, well played but it was an icy diff)
then they lost to SEN in a match where Tenz was clearly off compared to his usual self, and they lost Lotus badly

I think the last time we saw Fnatic play like their 2023 selves for an entire series on an international level against real competition was either the G2 series, or against FUT back in 2023 champs, unironically. We haven't seen them play like their dominant selves on an international stage against a competitive team for so long, even in Champs.

legends say he is still reading

100% they had no other choice, and this was an inevitable outcome for them to deal with, but it still doesn't change the fact that the team needed to adapt to it and they just didn't

faker doesnt stream on twitch?

i wouldn't be surprised, if I was a pro player who won 2 trophies in a row and a random coach came in to try to replace my coach that I just won with for so long, of course I wouldn't trust him and go with what I know because it worked. Not saying it's correct, but it is the reaction that a normal human would have

should make a channel for analyzing valorant

i am a pretty good thinker, and a man, so maybe i would call it

thinking mans valorant

yu
not me yu

waiting for the dort to come by because he saw fns buzzword and say sum shit like b0tster is a bum keke fns clears

saw people call boaster overrated (likely bait, it worked), here's my take on it and comparing FNS vs Boaster and why people shittalk boaster a lot more

One of the major differences between them and why people favor fns vs boaster as an igl is just due to who is around them. Obviously fnatic had the crazy 2023 run, but during that time fnatic had 4/6 best players in the world on one team with boaster, so people will think that he had all the tools to win it all, and was able to do the expected outcome with the player quality on that team.

Obviously boaster and mini were an insane duo together, but the more I look back at fnatic 2024 and see that they had similar results to their 2022 season, with essentailly the same players -leo at champs (hiro is obviously still a good player, but not leo caliber), the more i start to have doubts in his igling specifically. Once mini left the team, we could immediately see how in kickoff their strats were stale and that got heavily exploited, leading to the best team of 2023 with their full roster and no excuses to just miss the first tournament of the year.

Even after that, they did play really well in EMEA regionally, and were able to win both emea splits, which obviously is a testament to how they bounced back, but if we are being real, that really doesn't matter at all once it comes time to play on the international stage, which they bombed out of, even losing to EMEA cohorts. This team again, had no excuses to be playing this badly, and the only difference between 2023 and 2024 at this point was mini leaving, which I think again solidifies either:
A. Boaster's igling was very good, but Mini was what made it god tier and kept the team winning
B. Elmapuddy is just a bad coach, and is the reason why they were not doing well, and Boaster's igling just slipped because of it

I think that these two points both lead to the conclusion that: 2024 Boaster's calling was just simply not good compared to where he is supposed to be in terms of IGLs all time, and it leads people to start noticing that Fnatic was heavily stacked in 2023, and people start thinking that Boaster is overrated.

I personally (just at an IGLing level, not firepower level), would put him at 3rd all time, with Saadhak and FNS being above him (whatever order). I also think that in 2025 he could end up potentially slipping to being the 6th best caller in the world, potentially even worse if boostio comes back to form (FNS, johnqt, munchkin, sadhaak, boaster, nobody, boostio, valyn)

I also think that the reason FNS doesn't get flack isn't because of his personality, it's because people understand what player quality he has had to work with. In 2024, he came in with a team that was basically dead, needing to win a crazy streak to put them into playoffs, and completely rebuild it with crashies (not even in t1 anymore), and victor duelist (there are probably well over 20 straight duelists in americas better than victor)(he should swap to a flex role). It's obvious that they would fail, and even when they did, one of the brightest things on the team was how fucking insanely well they were able to set up rounds and execute on them. Even on optic, when they won their trophy and were the best team of 2022, crashies wasn't 2023 split 1 crashies, and victor was basically a miniboo. They had yay to carry them entirely and marved who stepped up in rekjavic but wasn't himself at champs. They won most of their games basically just outcalling the opponent into yay, and allowing him to take over with their calls. They didn't have the 'Oh yeah [insert any 2023 fnatic player here] is in a 1v3, they're likely gonna win it' factor for anyone but marved and yay.

We also joke about "Boaster and time", but it's a real thing, where Boaster will spend so much time trying to set up a round, that they will run out of time and have to speedrun an execute or just lose because of it, whereas the term "Masterclass round" literally comes from FNS's haven, and very rarely do we ever see an Attack round where FNS will get out called. I would also like to point out that on the NRG team in 2024 that collapsed, their attack side was incredibly good, and one of the best attack sides in Americas, even with how dysfunctional that team should have been, showing people that, yes, fns is not washed, but their defense sides were just shit which comes down to prep more than igling.

Obviously take this all with a grain of salt, as we are (hopefully) about to see both of these 2 very incredible igls play in 2025 with teams that should enable them to win a lot, so we should (hopefully) be able to see these two clash it out on even footing. (be real 2023 tokyo was such a firepower gap, fns called well on fracture and his team just fell over) Should be able to watch some masterclass valorant from both of these teams, as well as all of the crazy good igls from 2024 as well. If the teams that these insane 2022/3 igls are on are able to help them out, we might be in for some of the greatest valorant of all time this year, god willing

cloudberry banger name

never mind bro already has gotten glazed

number 1 cned fan is chill

oh i understand now, misread it thinking he joined jdg and got very confused
yeah i mean he looks young but surely if it becomes a real concern the LPL just asks for his birth certificate and checks it
not sure how that works in China but i feel like it shouldn't be a real concern bc it can be easily sorted

wait wasn't sheer a player already? i swear to god he was on some chinese team that did somewhat decently because I swear i've seen that name watching the LPL

also is this just a joke controversy or are people legit thinking jdg would take a player that's not of the correct age yet, because that's easily proven with birth documents

is anyone surprised

i dont like tmv because i think he is extremely biased in his analysis, which is good for people who like the same teams that he does but

I would much rather see an unbiased pov, which is why i watch sean gares/sliggy for streams of matches, and people like platoon and aizen(?) for indepth vod reviews of one specific match or moment

Sideshow also has some good insight into vod reviews that isn't very biased

Talon's problem is not with player quality, they just make the most braindead pushes/calls and their macro is dogshit

If they want to make it to internationals they need to focus on that because player quality has been shown by everyone

EWWWWWWWWWWWW

faker salary is higher than entire geng lol + valorant roster combined and they had the money to resign all 5 members of their league team that JUST won worlds (they had the money to offer to zeus his agent just said fuck you)

all of the money

i guarantee you they offered the most ridiculous number

fart baiting at 3 am - 6 am is crazy

sen is def not playing their best

n4rrate wasn't able to play like himself today, you'll know when they start to fire on all cylinders

this is why when tenz's pc crashed on bind in that one round in a 4v5 pistol they weren't allowed to remake, this has been a consistent rule for a while now

him and aspas mom together are very football (soccer and nfl) fan core

lfg thats my W ceo

https://x.com/robmooreEsports/status/1866434328533909681

geng ceo replied i love drama
https://x.com/arnoldwh/status/1866436140234133570

"the ball does not lie" - rob moore circa 2024

He's been playing like this every tournament except against nrg

fr bro thats crazy i too think that that would be a crazy thing to happen and the teams in your finals would be a crazy matchup

nvm bro added the pickems link the joke isnt funny anymore

Good enough for me, will learn an unbiased opinion on mibr and loud

too many ranked demons coming into pro play that do pretty well to ignore it atp

he was but then sean gares left so the team went to shit

my goat

's toes

no you weirdo

instead here's highlights of xset beating optic in 2022:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyfdLhHBls0

either started watching in 2025 or baiting surely

Good job mr baiter finally doing some good in the world

i am a retard

Lets fucking goooo

dodged soop time zone fuckery by staying in europe for a week after most colleges end but also i have finals so i will be studying while watching sentinels

zellsis n4rrate(s and) zekken bang johnqt

this shit so hard man 2022 100t was peak bring back stellar derrek will bang asuna

dgzin erasure is crazy

pancada and dgzin were insane at the same time, and both were thrown into shit situations and had to deal with random bullshit, took time off, and are now coming back, but we don't care about dgzin because reasons?

2022 dgzin awp made his enemies fear his site, that furia team was pretty freaking good (dont talk about drx)

nzr ???

so what you're saying is you don't think they will top 4 at an international event, because that's what the worst loud roster did...

LOUD got rid of their 2 best players: arguably the best IGL all time, and one of if not the best sentinels of 2023, if you thought they were going to be as good as any of the LOUD rosters before them then that's an insane bar to set

I would be happy with seeing this LOUD roster compete against good teams, and hopefully next year or at the end of this year once v1nny gets the hang of igling and pancada is back to form, and with a t2 brazilian duelist prospect they can start trying to reach for the title of the best in the world again

sen didnt upgrade, even tho sacys firepower might be lesser than n4rrate, and bang is a sidegrade from tenz, i think sacys presence was felt as a veteran which the 2024 sen team needed

i hope theyre able to sort the roles out as well, and have the comms be as fluid as they were last year with a bunch of younger kids on the roster

also, meteor is obviously the best senti in APAC, probably top 2 in the world with benjy, but yoman >> lakia IMO, and if foxy9 finds his footing we can see what happens
I dont trust fox9 after 2 years of failing though, but hopefully he proves me wrong

i think specifically the geng vs sen matchup all time does favor sen for now, as sen won the finals of madrid and the match to kick out geng in champs, but geng obviously had a better year

if we get a lot more of these teams in 2025 we might find our newgen optic loudge

wait this is fire why hasn't this been promoted more

-> loud with a new roster
-> seeing mibr for the first time
-> kru after making changes that should make them better?
-> 2g proving they can hang in tier 1
-> furia is there

100 t fan

this actually makes the most sense, given 2 assumptions:
the rosters for the teams who made champs will be making minimal changes at most, as they want to keep the winning formula that they had
the rosters for the teams who did not make champs will be making some changes at least to try to get their org in a space to make a run for international events

This way, the teams who did good can have their (supposed) similar rosters being rewarded for doing well, and the orgs who didn't make it all have an even footing as they all should have rebuilt their team in the offseason to make an international event

This also has the side effect of making orgs want to go to champs even more, and actually invest in their teams cough 2024 eg 2023-4 mibr cough

potter and "0 people" on her team almost beat the best version of Loud last year that got top 4 in masters

Now she gets yay and icy, 2 cracked players who can play very well within a system, and keeps derrek

Loud lost less and saadhak

Be so fr

Ranking is whatever, I'm mostly annoyed with how the bracket was even set up, as 5th isnt playing 12th etc

he said its best tournament therefore its a horrible tournament (champs 22/24 best tournament ever)

I agree with the ranking, i think its the most fair way to do it if they are gonna rank the teams, i just think the way the bracket is set up is horrible