1. I did allude to "a few permanent exceptions" and "one of the reasons I'm a fan of LOUD, and particularly Saadhak"
2. In what world...?

Zellsis is a bit too good at his job

Anytime

Zipline core hehe

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure they have a completely different roster now

Fingers crossed for a banger few weeks

FUT is super underestimated. They're so good they deliberately play the game on hard mode by locking troll comps (copium)

W

You're basing this off of last year, aren't you

Thank you. Also gl to SEN in Split 2

Sentinels is a FANTASTIC team. They play really cohesively and they obviously have a lot of chemistry. Me personally, I'm not the biggest fan of them for two main reasons:

1. They're super overhyped/way too popular. Doesn't matter if they're world champions or bottom of the group. Sometimes it doesn't even matter if they're playing or not. You take one look at the crowd and you see a sea of red, with only a few scattered dots of other colours. Or you look to see what people are saying about the game in YouTube or Twitch chats and half of everyone is glazing TenZ for literally no reason. Or you ignore all that and queue ranked and there's a 50% chance you load in and see a SEN classic sitting in spawn. I'm by character someone who roots for the underdog or the unpopular team (with a few permanent exceptions), so I'd already not be a massive fan of Sentinels to begin with, but then you add that on and it's just too much. Guess I'm just a bit tired of seeing the red, white and black.

2. The main reason I love VALORANT is the utility, the teamplay, the coordination, and the combinations of skill sets of agents to pull off incredible plays. The biggest reason by far that I'm so into the pro scene is because all these teams have gotten as close as currently possible to mastering these kinds of things, and can innovate some amazing stuff (one of the reasons I'm a fan of LOUD, and particularly Saadhak), and it's honestly sick to see it all pulled off. Don't get me wrong, Sentinels has amazing utility this year, and some of the stuff they've innovated is really, really cool. But the thing about them is they're absolutely cracked aimers, all five of them. So even when they get absolutely diffed by the utility, and the gameplan, and all of that... they'll just hit a few shots and steal the entire round, and they'll do this super consistently, too. I guess it's personal preference but I just don't enjoy VALORANT whatsoever when it's just a contest of who can shoot the other guy first, and that's how quite a lot of SEN's rounds end up playing out.

Is this the kind of thing you mean when you say "I get their fans are huge problem"?

Canada do be carrying North America in terms of happiness/quality of life

I went from Run 3 to Prodigy Math Game to Minecraft to FIFA Mobile to Geometry Dash to Brawlhalla to VALORANT.

Maybe not yet. But he's young (just turned 20), he's super talented, and he has a heck of a lot of potential. I have a lot of faith in him, especially in his clutch factor, which I think was demonstrated amazingly across the three games he played in Shanghai.
(Also he plays Harbor at a pro level so I may be slightly biased)

Half this list is pure copium and the other half is just hate

This is very true. If G2 can learn to convert their bonuses, that's a win condition. From there, even if they only win 40% of their gun rounds on average they'll still win more games than they'll lose

That could be it, yea. Small sample size is another theory that comes to mind.

What makes a player world class to me isn't how successful they are, it's how successful they're capable of being. And for both nAts and BerLIN, I believe they're super capable of playing really good VALORANT at the highest level of play.

Makes less sense

Makes sense

That's a crazy take

It's really good, but that doesn't discredit mine tbf

Is that just Psion's roster?

So is Kirya 1st or 6th

Gotcha

That's not a flaw, that's a redeeming quality

Name a flaw with it

I genuinely see no flaws with this team comp, this is great Psion

Here's the roster I came up with for this:

NA: N4RRATE (Initiator + Flex)
SA: Saadhak (Flex)
EU: nAts (Viper + Sentinel)
PAC: f0rsakeN (Duelist + Flex)
CN: BerLIN (Controller)

Some team comp examples:

Ascent:
Jett (N4RRATE)
Sova (Saadhak)
KAY/O (f0rsakeN)
Omen (BerLIN)
Cypher (nAts)

Bind:
Raze (f0rsakeN)
Gekko (Saadhak)
Fade (N4RRATE)
Brimstone (BerLIN)
Viper (nAts)

Icebox:
Jett (N4RRATE)
Gekko (Saadhak)
KAY/O (f0rsakeN)
Viper (BerLIN)
Killjoy (nAts)

Haven (kinda spitballing with this one bc idk what would be meta here):
Jett (f0rsakeN)
Breach (Saadhak)
Gekko (N4RRATE)
Omen (BerLIN)
Killjoy (nAts)

Lotus:
Raze (f0rsakeN)
Fade (N4RRATE)
Omen (BerLIN)
Viper (nAts)
Killjoy (Saadhak, but he'd probably lock Deadlock instead lmao)

Sunset:
Raze (f0rsakeN)
Breach (Saadhak)
Gekko (N4RRATE)
Omen (BerLIN)
Cypher (nAts)

Stopped following a little while ago. I do know the current world champion is yüz, a greatsword main from Brazil. A bunch of older names are also still really good I think (e.g. Sandstorm, Godly, acno?, java, Snowy, megD, luna)

I think it's kinda unlucky they had to face a team that hard counters their playstyle in the group stages, twice. Might sound crazy but I think they would've gone far if they were in Group A instead of B, for example

Brawlhalla
(Note: this is an all-time stat, currently best itw is SA)

Nope. Multitude of reasons, but I'll just say I haven't been here long enough to know

Why are you Swiss now

I have good news

Define "make VLR great"... what change(s) would that entail?

He's probably doing better than you both in school AND at VALORANT right now. So I wouldn't be so quick to make a remark

Melodic House. Good luck

If FPX autumn is all we have to go off of then Oceania is by far the best region in tier 1 VALORANT

This is valid

carpe catching strays

I really really really really really really really really really really really hope Buzz is duelist. Foxy9 has been doing WAY better on sentinel than on duelist/Viper.

They did sorta the same thing as Paper ReX

Went 7-1 on KJ against Boostio on Jett
https://www.vlr.gg/29445/evil-geniuses-vs-team-basilisk-nerd-street-gamers-summer-championship-july-qualifier-ro16/?game=46793&tab=performance

Who would play second initiator?

😭

I feel like you'd have a very interesting take on a fruit tierlist, Psion. Dunno why, just get the feeling

He also plays Sova. Could be useful if you're thinking of running no duelist, like maybe on Icebox

I mean yeah they had C0M on the other team