A real sigma male would not judge a region off a OT. Really good game though, enjoyed that one A LOT!

NAVI 2-1 NRG

FUT 2-1 EG
sad for Demon1 that he wont go to Tokyo but they still go to Champs, so atleast he will see one tournament(assuming there wont be visa issues for travelling inside the US lmao).

Woohoojin, TMV, Sovereign, and the guys who upload pro vods on YT(playbook gold mine :D

Soulcas?

nAts
FNS
Suygetsu
Derke

Today yes, but the Val esport scene is still very young compared to the CS scene, CS has been existing for over 20 years now. I hope to see some smaller teams making big runs to tourneys(and they already happened, ZETA, KRU, X10, Guard f.e.)

Maybe because theyve beaten the other teams? Have some respect towards the T2 scene, these guys, along with Apeks and Monte have grinded their ass off and they got rewarded by playing in playoffs. No fluke, no cheat, no luck, no bad teams, no chokes, just big-ass mentality, a LOT of grinding and good strats. GL lost to a roster with one of the best players ever, 2 3-time major winners, an 1-time major winning IGL and an rising star, who also has been in a semifinal of a Major before AND the best coach that CSGO ever had. Its like Southampton losing in the CL final to Real Madrid. Its what everyone expected to happen, the young team crumbling under the pressure and the old guard with their experience and with the crowd behind them proving that they can win the major again under a new banner.

There isnt really a big gap anymore in CS. Something that hopefully will happen aswell for Valorant. I wanna see teams like MOUZ or Apeks challenge for Champs aswell, it would be sooo freakin cool.

o7 ATN

TS and GE both need to win to go to playoffs
RRQ needs 1 map against PRX to safely qualify OR need to play PRX somewhat close(cannot lose by more than 13 rounds)
Gen.G needs RRQ to lose 2-0 and needs PRX to win smth like 13-6 and 13-5 on both maps

TS or GE: very likely
RRQ: likely
GEN: unlikely, but not impossible(their loss to DRX broke them, hoped for them to go to Tokyo and maybe do a surprise run :(

Absolutely, i do think though that Ozil made some mistakes aswell. Sure, most of it comes down to a part of the german fandom being racist dicks, but i think the Erdogan picture didnt really helped his case. Germans dont really like Erdogan, as hes surpressing some basic human rights(you maybe heard of Yücel, a journalist who got put in jail for apparently spreading terrorist propaganda) in Turkey. This really destroyed some of reputation Ozil had in the german fandom and the timing was also pretty bad, right before the 2018 WC. He was stated as one of the reasons for the 2018 groups exit(which wasnt accurate because Germany played an very unacctractive style of football and their exit was very deserved)

Blud won Katowice.

The casters are fine

?

Yes, i think so. He won a WC for Germany, played for Schalke and Werder in the Bundesliga before going to Real and played in their academies. I count him as a german player in my eyes.

Does he? Hes the sentinel player for TL, so Cypher/KJ/Viper. He does play Cypher and Viper on a very high level. He also played KJ some time ago. Everything filled. He can play everything the team needs. Sure, KJ is meta, but KJ aint Chamber levels in terms of being OP. You can still find success with playing Cypher on other maps than Split and Fracture. Im a diehard KJ Main, and somehow, despite how good my agent is and how good just OTPing KJ would be to me, i find the opportunity to playing that rather old option of a sentinel rather exciting. Killing ppl with a toaster setup on Ascent is nice, but wallbanging their Reyna with a trap feels satisfying aswell. Nats is fine.

I would maybe replace Click with Bucher and play with alo as the main duelist, he looked pretty good on the duelist in the past. But thats the only thing i would really change(maybe add Gob b as a coach)

But they all chose to represent Germany. They couldve chosen any other nationality and they went for German. Footballers like Gundogan, Ozil or Podolski also werent born in Germany or had parents who lived in Germany themselves for their entire life, yet they chose to play for Germany. Ozil and Gundogan couldve easily played for Turkey aswell, same with Podolski and Poland. In my eyes, this discussion is pointless, everybody chooses their own nationality themselves. You dont need to be born somewhere to be part of a nation. If they wanna be German, so be it.

I dont see whats wrong with playing other agents outside of the meta. Teams have their own ideas what to do with each of their picks. That 5th agent pick on Bind was always contested, so i dont see a big surprise with them experimenting with Cypher.

I think its fair that China got 3 slots.

Avova

OVAT Leosen, OVAT DisIsJohn, NAVI suygetsu

No need for a rework, they might give him some slight buffs to really compete with KJ, but nothing crazy

I may have exaggerated my hate on Icebox, i just dont have many good experiences with the map and i find it boring to watch and play(5 stack go A/B, sometimes one lurk, very predictable, Harbor might open up things more but we wont know as it gets rotated). A is hard to hold if you lose the first kill and the team are on different pages. Pearl is much better and more enjoyable to play, mid is a more vital part of the map and A is in general solid. Tbf though, im mostly playing KJ/Astra so holding A with these two is pretty straightforward. And yeah, Breeze is very easy to take as you only need front side. But if you have decent util, you can retake decently.

Pearl B is probably one of the worse designed bombsides . The only way you can reliably retake that site is with a KJ+Astra ult combo, which you max have 2 times per half(in pro play atleast, in Ranked the attackers plant completely wrong and the defense just sticks and wins xD). The rest of Pearl is fine ,its just that the B site has sooo many problems.

Breeze and Icebox are worse though, Icebox surely, Breeze im not completely sure but A on Breeze is hard to defend if you dont know what youre doing. Mid of Icebox is a deathtrap and can be rarely used for any execs or splits. Fracture is fine, half of the ranked community is too scared though to contest spaces, something Fracture(if you arent playing retake) punishes you for.

,,Women are not as willing to succeed at videogames or any sports are men. They simply dont like playing the game".

What the fuck?????? If that were the case we wouldnt even have a GC circuit. People like juliano, klaudia, Mimi and Petra have played FPS for 10+ years, grinded thousands of hours into the games and you are standing here saying,,they dont like the game". Dude, some of our best players in this scene are women. People like Mary, Mimi, Sonder, Mel, Bob, Flor etc.. could all get a T1 spot without needing to do some big convincing talk, in some way, im almost certain that Flor will get on that stage some day because shes just frying.

,,It has nothing to do with discrimination", yet you clearly discriminate women by saying they cannot grind their way to the top. THEY ABSOLUTELY CAN. You put them at a lower standard just because theyre of another gender. Get some help

Esports is the great equalizer, you dont need a given talent to grind to the top. You need to have a big love for the game and motivation to grind, learn and improve. Mary and Flor grinded their way up the ladder, and i dont mean like they were immortal right from the start, Flor was Iron-Bronze at the start of the game and now shes playing with pro players regularly and has an incredibly high MMR.

And the scene keeps on increasing, we got massive investments from orgs for GC. XSET, Excel, KC, Fokus, Attax, MAD Lions and others have got GC rosters this year. The level gets higher and higher. Until someday you wont be able to see a big difference between a game of FNC vs NAVI and a game between G2 Gozen and NAVI Celestials. Women until today didnt really had a stage and the support they needed to build up a scene, today though that scene is established.

Good logic except the fact that FNATIC have beaten SEN at Lockin sooo your whole logic chain falls apart at the first hurdle. But hey, i accept your take, if they improve in the coming weeks, they could qualify.

You havent done anything, my friend, that guy is just a complete melon xD. Thats the worst cheating accusation ive ever seen in my life, he thinks hes cheating because of a spraytransfer that, although not quite easy, even Gold/Platin--players are able to do. Just make the mag smaller by 26 bullets, so no one can spraytransfer 5Head

This game. End of discussion.

Nope, i knew that before, but i thought it would fit nicely into this thread

4. Going B on Pearl has a 90%+ winrate. Why go through the struggles of hitting an A site with a narrow chokepoint and a hard time to hold, when you just can go B, where defenders have a nightmare holding the site. Plant B, spam from long, my VALORANT advice for today for you(Plat 1 player btw)

Jett- Derke
Raze- Jinggg/nukkye
Neon- Victor
Yoru- fOrsaken
Phoenix- ScreaM/Sick
Reyna- No comment
Sova- Leo/Crashies
Fade- Shao
KAYO- Zyppan
Skye- Cloud
Breach- stax
Gekko(early)- Cloud
KJ- Suygetsu
Cypher- nats
Chamber- yay
Sage- Mazino
Astra/Omen- MaKo
Brim- Boaster
Viper- nAts
Harbor(early)- Tuyz

Should be a LOUD v NRG final, for the 8th time. Crazy how many times these two scrambled against eachother but NRG never faced FNC and LOUD never played NAVI/FPX. Id say 3-1 NRG

You all do know that this is ONLY THE 3RD GAME THEY PLAYED OVERALL? AND 2 WERE AGAINST WORLD CLASS TEAMS?????? Guys be a bit more patient with them, its the first game of the split. Sry for the rant, but please give em time. Envy also didnt qualify with their core 4 for a tourney for 2 splits, so be patient.

S: Boaster, ANGE1
A: Redgar, BONECOLD, Kolda
B: Rhyme, MrFalin, Boo
C: SouhcNi, Scream

Valorant will be fine, CS 2 will be fine. As always. Dont panic guys, both will survive. Its nice to see Valve updating their current game, looks really good from someone who only watches the pro circuit in CS and hasnt touched CS:GO at all. I dont think though that the 2nd Major of this year(because usually there are 2 majors per year) will be played on CS 2. Too short time to figure it all out, stick to the old formula, it works.

TEEEEMUU PUKKI TEEEMMUUU PUKKI

Same, when i think about a kill that i got(maybe bc it was a nice shot that i was proud of) ill tend to get nervous and question myself, which harms my perfomance a lot. Doing it subconsciously helped a lot. A couple of weeks ago i was really struggling with myself, but after ive done a consistent routine, im doing far better than before.

Giants will make Tokyo as 3rd
FUT will be finishing Top 6
KOI will beat either FNC or NAVI in one of their matches but will lose against BBL and FUT due to some inconsistencies regarding their perfomance
KC wont win a game(sry KC, i like Scream and Nivera and theyre not bad but they might be the one team who will fall apart first)

Hot takes, i might be wrong, i might be right, we shall see

This can go sooo many ways, i dont like it to be honest, from the outside this doesnt make sense, they looked very good against LOUD, they almost won on one map against them and won 7 rounds in a row on their mappick. Probably some behind the scene stuff that i dont know about. Congrats to Goddead and Sylvan though!

GGs. That Bo5 was crazy! FNC going up 2-0 only for LOUD to reverse sweep Lotus and Split to go to Icebox, where LOUD lead 11-3 only for FNATIC instead winning 9 in a row to go to OT and winning the game. This game had sooo many twists and turns, both deserved the trophy imo.

NA isnt bad, NRG looks very good(as expected when they have the Optic core + ardiis), EG look very drilled on some maps, their potential is really high, 100T looked a bit shaky, but nothing that cant be fixed and Sentinels has high potential aswell. Im only worried about C9, it seems like they had some trouble behind the scenes(thats why yay´s gone). Well see in Tokyo how the regions compare. Thats the true test, Lockin is important, but Masters is even more.

What do you expect, NAVI never saw KRU on Lotus, so how are you going to know how theyre playing the map?

• Duno
• Meddo
• Dapr
• Tex
• Magnum
• Alorante

1. Glitchpop
2. Prime
3. Reaver

Honourable mentions: Sakura(thanks to Laz), Forsaken, Gaia, Neptune

Talon:
How well did the integration of garnetS and Jitboys into the squad go?
What are your goals for the first Pacific split?
What is your favorite to win Lockin?

DRX
What role will Foxy play in the team? Do you have plans for letting him play in the pacific league or is this still too far ahead to talk about?

The old Xerxia core always had a sweet spot in my heart, they always had that potential to beat the best of the best( they 2-0ed Optic at Rejkjavik, nearly won against FPX in Copenhagen and Liquid at Rejkjavik, won 2-1 against Envy/Optic at Champs 21 with an insane comeback). This is exciting for the future of this team, if they keep improving and cooking up strats in the lab ala PRX last year, they can do some serious damage. I hope so atleast!

Oh man, i hoped so much after Fracture that Talon might win this, not today sadly. But they played SERIOUSLY crazy, but in a good way, im excited. GO TALON GO!

1. yay didnt play in Masters 1(was still on Andbox in early 2021, for your full picture)
2. I didnt say that canadian players are the best players in the world and won every final on their own, you only win as a team. OG said canadian players were ,,dogshit" and i countered THAT argument.
   Not everything is hot and cold or black and white only :)
   An persons origin doesnt tell you anything abt how good a person is in a videogame. Its like telling someone a fruit has good taste because it survived a throw out of the window.

FNS won a masters and was in 2 more grand finals, TenZ won Masters 1 while destroying everybody on the server and youre out here saying canadian players are dogshit? The facts do tell a different picture!