he is slept on for sure, hes played so many agents, switches roles from lurk to entry from map to map seamlessly, has IGL'd for the team before, etc.

Not sure, but the location kinda screams "we want an audience"
I would expect at least a fraction of the capacity of the venue to be used for live audience

you can trust Josh, he has brought up many teams from the T2 scene into a higher level, even competing in some of them himself. With players from his rosters early on in the scene now being signed to T1 orgs. What Firell said is also true, players will develop over time, for instance with s0m on the IGL role.

yup, IGL change can be rlly harsh so we can't expect them to come out swinging off the bat, it will be a team that improves over time. The roster itself has insane firepower and from what I remember Wedid said s0m's IGLing is really good. Obviously s0m's perfomance will drop a bit as he picks up the role but over time we will see them just keep getting better.

when envy looked stronger ppl did call him that, but since envy has been slightly more quiet, he has been as well
I do think he is one of the best sovas of the region no doubt tho

thats actually pretty cool

Why are people writing books in this thread

SS have a scary roster, I hope they keep playing together cuz they definitely have the potential :)

I would love to see the run u are predicting for xset
COPIUM

I think ur missing out on the xset stock, and abx is probably better than what they showed.
Lots of teams got some time to figure out their issues and iron out things now, second opens should be interesting.
Gen.G have a great chance of making it all the way through, would be fun to get a gmd vlog in berlin lmao

I agree

I would say they are like T1.5 (basically a really dominant T2 team that needs some wins to establish themselves as T1)

They are in a position similar to the one XSET, IMT, LG were in for a while leading up to and during VCT stage 1

why wouldn't they... as a viewer you are underestimating an opponent, that is the first step a team can make that can lead to an upset.

nah ur fine, I also just got to know them as they entered val!

Spikey I think you dont understand that DZ only has a R6 team, its a relatively new org, similar to XSET, but they are providing their players with what they need to improve so he will be fine there

Virtuoso is good so I wouldn't be surprised if they pull it off, but at the same time NRG should still be winning this series

I would love to see DZ or BBG do well

Huynh will probably join ghost fully at this point but yeah, the market has enough F/A players for assembling a new team and I wonder if thwifo will look to make a new team (since he was the one that built the team that became xset)
other honorable mentions that I can think of:

• Boostio (dude was playing out of his mind vs C9 yesterday)
• Critical? (BBG has been playing with Trill instead of him)
• Flyuh (last time I saw him he was playing w/ Akella and then Teal Seam)
• Playboi Joe (I think someone also mentioned him in a reply)
• Virtyy (his stats some games are just absurd + he hasn't had an opportunity since Serenity for a long time)
• Supamen (if his trial with Rise doesn't result in a signing)
• Psalm
• d1msumboi (didn't get signed only cuz of visa issues)

I know some are a stretch for this list lmao, but I think even a some players that are not signed would leave their T2 squads to join a much more promising option if a couple ex-T1 players were building a team (because its far more likely for the team to get signed, the player can learn from those guys, and the ceiling of the team is prob much higher.)

unfort timing but it happens

The fact that their players can match Faze mechanically makes it harder for them to just smeag past this game unlike most open bracket games

shotup tweeted that they went to overtime on 2nd map LMAO

Seems like they lost more than won opening duels + idk how C9W's haven looks like, sad that we didn't get to see this match :(

The demons MonkaW

I'm saying this as a guy that followed them from really early on in the scene (back in pretty boyz w players like brando and andersin on the team, etc.)

I have no doubt thwifo will find a home though, hes a top tier sentinel / viper, he's a grinder, has IGL experience, has T1 experience, and was key to building this roster up. Teams will see value in him but he will have to wait a little since vct just started

Pretty much because a big part of the fanbase of this team started with people that followed thwifo as he transitioned into valorant
They don't care about the team anymore now that he's not in it so they must hate

C9W vs LG rd of 64 is happening in about 30 mins but I think there's no stream
Soniqs vs RNG rd of 32
Faze vs DZ rd of 32
T1 vs Ghost rd of 32
TSM vs Noble rd of 32
GenG vs Knights rd of 32
BBG vs Rise rd of 32

All round of 32 games are tomorrow, idk which ones are streamed (and I wrote the matchups that will happen if there's 0 upsets)

many round of 16 games will be bangers, but that happens in 2 days (July 3rd)

Great midround calls from ez5 in their better maps, and they even got to take EG to OT in their own map. The agressive playstyle they can bring to the table with gov and the breach pick allows them to catch EG off guard 3rd map. This wasn't even a game that EG lost due to fragging, ez5 made really good calls to win rounds and were disciplined enough to take the win

ez5 about to disband another team LOL
jokes aside that team has some good players within the T2 scene, but I still didn't expect such a dominant map 1

PogO didn't ask + ratio + he doesn't need to pick up anything

mad cuz their got signed? every time you see a team or a player get signed the community should be happy for them (its pretty much being given a job), they are given an opportunity not every team will get.
Also, making a good roster doesn't work by just slamming names together, there's many more things to it. (and I'm not talking only about roles)

lmao good point, and yeah idk why they'd drop aleks of all their players. Hope it works out for them tho

u cant even type the org name on the title of the post and want to complain
also, there's not that many F/A teams at their level. They have a lot of potential and I think they can build off of this starting lineup pretty well.

tbh think of the energy boost you can get from resigning ur teammate, underrated roster change fr

hes a nerd sentinel player, has a bunch of setups, but hasnt played at a pro level consistently with a roster. it makes sense if his stats are not that good because he hasn't consistently practiced under a team

seems like eeiu, but still, wedid just came from a team that had no true IGL either so they are prob not too worried about that if all the players can make a call when needed

I think so yes

He may be coach for the team!

I would put Icebox, Breeze, Haven, Ascent on top (with no particular order).

Bottom two (no particular order once again):
Split is too claustrophobic and people end up just rushing sites.
Bind doesn't have an actual mid and it makes the map really one dimensional, the only thing that helps hide that issue is the tp's.

But there are some problems to each map, for instance:

• Ascent has way too many wallbang spots
• Icebox has too many angles on A, making it hard to hold, and kitchen feels like its isolated and far too close to defender spawn to me. Also B site is always the same meta of planting default and playing postplant.
• Breeze A site has a combination of the issues that the icebox bombsites have (postplants only + too many angles), and people still don't know how to defend making it super easy to lurk.
• I'd say Haven is the best map, but it also has the postplant only meta on both B and C sites that just makes it annoying.

Probably one of the best sets we will see in the whole tourney, we'll see if Soniqs can keep their streak after their convincing win against RNG

I was also thinking of maybe changing other stuff as a second option:

• slightly longer smokes (3.25s -> 5s)
• slightly shorter dash (idk the length atm :v)
• remove passive (drift)

Then, during the ult you would kinda trade off some stats:

• smokes go back to 3.25s
• Drift passive is active with the ult popped

Edit: Now that I think of it, probably remove right click anyway lmao

Just remove right click and she loses a lot of potential to make these dash in ur face right click half the team type of plays, removes the potential of plays that feel like shouldn't happen. It also removes the rng aspect of the knives and forces that "in your face" style to require much more skill (imagine close range left clicking if you are used to right click) or to just be a playstyle that is avoided by the jett.

For instance, the 3k Shazam had on split vs Fnatic (Iceland Finals) would've been impossible without the right click in such a small time window. Shazam would need to be more patient after the 1st reset in that situation (since he can't just dash in and right click the other 2 players), therefore the nerf would be good at slowing down these types of plays that can turn into a snowball that no other ult is capable of doing.
In other words, the "snowball" that I'm talking about is the multikill potential that the right click knives have compared to left click. I know left click knives can still multifrag and carry a round, but not in the fashion of the right click. For a left click multlikill to happen you need to be more precise and you tend to do it from farther away. (Overall requires more skill and less hiding in a corner to shotgun knife your opponent lmao)

Thats just the nature of competition. Get in their head and its easier to win + it gives your team confidence.

Also, I don't think they are overrated. They have a great IGL and coach and were able to play some insane series vs NU and TL before this with a sub (I think people are forgetting the fact that jammyz is a sub just because of how well he has been)

Fnatic had prep advantage because up to this point they had only played Icebox and Haven while V1 has permabanned Bind and played all the other maps in the tourney. (This also kinda explains why the Icebox game was much closer than Ascent)

It was hard to believe in V1 winning this series because of that, specially knowing FNC is a prep heavy type of team.

I think its both raze being valued a lot + astra viper meta is not well developed in a fast paced region. Duelists in brazil can just run in and take fights, while in iceland they never will against NA, EU and KR (they place more util in chokes that stops fast pushes and also leaves duelists too far away from the rest of their team if they get through)

Bold pred, but I like it

Josh has been part of many tier 2 rosters that end up having players leave to join bigger teams / orgs. If I remember correctly he recently swapped to a coaching role so I hope he is able to bring in some fresh ideas to the roster. NRG has a lot of individual potential atm so I hope they are able to get their teamplay up with this change

yeah I was just throwing names at that point lol, cant think of many ppl to replace him. Also, I wouldn't like to see jcStani cuz the more I think of it, the more it looks like a 1 for 1 which I dont think is what they need. (Kinda reminds me of GenG swapping P1 for Koosta which gave them short lived sucess, but they hven't really left the spot they were in before imo)

I would guess its a similar reason to the one 100T gave when signing Ethan, maybe there's some player that contacted them and they just couldn't turn the offer down? Idk

In my eyes the only reason I would see Wedid get benched is if they have someone lined up. XSET took a while to sign PrettyBoyz initially, and all roster changes (2) were relatively quick with new player announcements. One problem they've had is switching IGL constantly so I would expect whoever joins the team will be capable of filling that gap, along with keeping the flexibility (to some extent) that Wedid brought to their team comps.

Because of this I would love to see Tarik join, maybe he can bring that experience + IGL for the team which is what they recently struggled with. (They perform well all the way up to the big tourney, where they had 2 early exits in each masters). Other names I can think of are jcStani or even Shinobi but I don't think they would provide as much as Tarik would. (A bit of a stretch but would be really cool to see that happen imo)