Ping nerf felt harsh, but it's understandable to combat the spam meta which has been consistently present in Valorant.

That's a fine trade-off because Neon's value should be in her attack. Her 1 stun is still good given the wind-up is still 0.8s and it lasts for 3.5s. This will hopefully enable more people to play other agents asides duelists and duelist-vibe sentinel/controller/initiator agents or promote people to play agents that synergise with Neon well.

They're all hyperfixated on the nerfs when they forget the key buff to her energy is what made her more useable on a macro sense. She has more energy at more points in the round for rotations, entries, etc.

For Chamber, if you're talking all-time it's definitely yay. If it's this year, probably xccurate. The other players who played Chamber this year (Foxy9 and autumn) felt a slight bit weaker compared to xccurate.

• The crouch accuracy is a tough one, but for someone to be moving full-speed and hit you 100% was pretty broken. Now it will make players have to shoot at the end of the slide rather than mid-slide when enemies will still have to track.
• 1 slide instead of 2 is understandable given that people doing the slide-tech to style on people was infuriating to track and made her like a Jett on steroids. She still can get her slide back after 2 kills and she gets a free slide during her ult so there is opportunity for the slide-tech.
• 8 points for her ult which is an aimbot beam which she can slide with and still get a refresh for is fair. It's a very strong ult in the hands of a capable player.
• The timer is another fair one because the ult feels almost endless especially if it's a player tearing through the team and getting refreshes after every kill.
• She still has a very fast energy regain which is better than Neon pre-buff.

Honestly, she's fine. This all might mean that Jett and Raze are now gonna be the 2 main duelists picked in pro-play, but this will balance out the overachievement of ranked players abusing Neon with less skill needed than Jett or other duelists/agents. Personally she is still better than pre-buff Neon given that she still slowed down when strafing side to side and her energy recharge was a lot slower.

• The crouch accuracy is a tough one, but for someone to be moving full-speed and hit you 100% was pretty broken. Now it will make players have to shoot at the end of the slide rather than mid-slide when enemies will still have to track.
• 1 slide instead of 2 is understandable given that people doing the slide-tech to style on people was infuriating to track and made her like a Jett on steroids. She still can get her slide back after 2 kills and she gets a free slide during her ult so there is opportunity for the slide-tech.
• 8 points for her ult which is an aimbot beam which she can slide with and still get a refresh for is fair. It's a very strong ult in the hands of a capable player.
• The timer is another fair one because the ult feels almost endless especially if it's a player tearing through the team and getting refreshes after every kill.
• She still has a very fast energy regain which is better than Neon pre-buff.

Honestly, she's fine. This all might mean that Jett and Raze are now gonna be the 2 main duelists picked in pro-play, but this will balance out the overachievement of ranked players abusing Neon with less skill needed than Jett or other duelists/agents. Personally she is still better than pre-buff Neon given that she still slowed down when strafing side to side and her energy recharge was a lot slower.

I'd say let people pick what they wanna pick. However, as a sage player:

• You got to be ready to heal a teammate and communicate when you do and don't have your heal.
• Your wall is a great piece of util, but it does not last forever so don't insta put it up at the beginning of a round unless you have a play to go along with it.
• If you're feeling adventurous, learn some basic Grim walls that can catch an opponent off guard.
• Lastly, don't res your duo/trio just because they're someone you know. Res when you know it's feasible to do so in order to get the numbers advantage or equalled and ensure you pick someone who has an ult or plenty of util to play out the round.

And just to round off my rant on comp or any game mode in which people play Sage, Killjoy, etc. Stop autopiloting. There are lots of ways to use your set-up both to kill and for info. If you're playing Haven as Killjoy and you see the opponents have gone towards garage and middle the last few rounds, stop putting a kill set-up on A. You may think you're doing something right preventing a potential A push, but you're better off delaying another rush through garage.

Apologies for that last rant, I just needed to get this out to all the Sage and Killjoy instalocks.

Essentially PRX underperformed in terms of kills to their rounds won and vice versa for Wolves.

Same can be said about a dozen players across all regions. The younger players can grind ranked like it's nothing. Thai ranked demons are also some of the craziest. Snappy and Primmie getting 1100-1200 RR

Another Turkish hot prospect. Guessing by the 2005 in his tag, he's 18/19 so definitely one to watch if he can perform in Turkish pro scene. Most of these players hitting Ranked #1 or that 800-1000+ RR are people who are trying to get scouted/play in Tier 2 or Premier.

I won't drop my actual username, but it basically follows the format of: "My Name#NA1". I tried what you did by manually adding the space first time round and it still didn't work. I tried adding the space after copy-pasting it now and still nothing

Alright, don't assume about my username. It uses all normal characters and numbers. I even copied my username on Valorant Tracker to the flashback website and it still didn't come up.

It's not working for my username. Might be because I have a space in the username

Edit: Used my old username that I first used with Valorant and got Mindfreak. https://imgur.com/a/N8NzqC2

I tried doing it with my username and it doesn't recognise it. My username has a space in it which might be the issue.

Update: So I tried using my old username - the one that I made when I first got Valorant and that worked for me. I got Mindfreak. https://imgur.com/a/N8NzqC2

Yeah, I would say M8 minimum performance is gonna be around the bottom. They have good aimers, but it's a matter of strategy and IGLing. RobbieBk did decently in Tier 2 and the key benefit he has for M8 is he plays Sova well enough. If his IGLing is sustainable in Tier 1 alongside some coaching from Goked, they should be winning.

Oh, the face of DFM will always be Meiy. Though I think Akame will be a close second if this off-season performance translates into the main season. Honestly, just be hyped for all of them - even Art. The Odin is cringe, but he is a smart player to use it whilst it's strong especially in conjunction with Sova.

I believe Minny is on sentinel (PROFEK is on BBL). It was his role on GoNext. I'm not sure what you mean by "their floor" unless you mean their lowest performance. Their worst is obviously getting rolled because they let maps slip away just like the 2024 season. The expectation after the 2024 season is basically anyone can scalp a surprise win off of anyone. We saw it with BBL, M8, KC, GX.

Now, the reason I am high on LEV is that they are a strong team even if they lose Aspas and Mazino. There will always be what-if's on Demon1 since he showed only 50% of his performance on NRG and he can do the same on LEV. Natank is an interesting player and with the Sage and Phoenix buffs, he can be an interesting flex player. Natank was pretty much the best player on M8s and only Kadavra really surprised me on that team asides Natank. Definitely gotta see what they have cooked at RIOT One.

EDG is still gonna be far and away the best Chinese team. FPX kinda floundered at Champs despite having incredible firepower and nearly beating Heretics. I would still put them in contention as second-best with TE very close behind if not overtaking. BLG is kind of a firm 4th place team, but I think my mind could be changed if Wolves live up to the hype. Honestly, it's a similar situation to EMEA where any of the lower teams can scalp a win and perhaps sneak an appearance at Masters/Champs.

Kinda wild that FNC is no longer considered Top 3 in EMEA, but I can see concerns as to why. Boaster not fragging enough, Leo is still inactive on recovery from Long COVID, Kaajak didn't perform to his best at RBHG. If Leo does come back, I think FNC is Top 3. And as for an EMEA underdog, I think M8s can be good if RobbieBk and Click can perform to a high quality. Likewise, GX have potential to be top tier if tomaszy and runner can peform consistently.

In Americas, SEN definitely feel overrated at least with their current role issues. I think they need to swap N4RRATE and JohnQT's roles if they want to see the best results. Americas' underdog will be MIBR or 2Game. MIBR have injected a lot of firepower and Aspas wanted to play with Nzr so there must be some insane chemistry there. 2Game have been written off just because they're the newly ascended team, but I think what they can bring is a lot of aggression and confidence. Having said this, Spike was key in this plan. Hopefully gobera will be fine. If not 2Game, KRU always have a chance at making Champs. It's just their destiny. Also, LEV should be in the Top 3 contention.

APAC underdogs will be either DFM or RRQ. Kush on RRQ looks insane. High potential player especially if Jemkin and Monyet are also playing great. Xffero is their current weak point, but I think he is sure to improve as the season goes on. DFM are amazing if their off-season is anything to go off of. My one concern is gyen is young and thus doesn't have that experience that SSeeS has. SSeeS has both amazing aim and a sixth sense to win certain rounds. People write him off for the previous season but he was arguably second best behind Meiy.

In China, it's probably either Wolves or XLG that are gonna have that underdog run. Of course, BLG is close fourth to the Top 3, but Wolves have a fair bit of firepower and XLG look promising for an ascension team. Hopefully it won't be another DRG-style hit 1 tournament and fizzle out.

DFM's whole team is essentially upgraded to better support Meiy. Akame is the one to look out for. Gyen is supposed to be a super-sharp ranked player (similar situation to Karon). Art is the Odin overlord - genuinely makes the most out of that gun. Jinboong has some decent clutch factor as well.

What do you mean by what do I expect? They're still in transition of putting more Sova into their comps and stabilising their map pool depth. If you want my expectation, I think they'll still be vulnerable to NA teams and FNATIC who are heavy strategy teams. But you have to look at the bright side that they are willing to make changes like Jinggg playing more sentinel roles, integrating Sova.

These guys may not be perfect on these roles even if they were to dedicate their training to refining the agent. However, they should learn after some time the fundamentals and timings needed to make the role more effective. Thinking Man's Valorant put it best when he said "some pros just click with an agent". This came from his video about Rankers, but it applies to pretty much every team. It's why JessieVash is a wizard on Sova, but ass on every other agent he plays by comparison.

Nahsie - this is a caster's nightmare to say because if you say that "s" sound like a "z", well, if you took history you should know.

PRX were favourites to win Shanghai after beating GENG in Stage 1. They had the pick on who they play and lost to that. They then lost lower bracket to a frankly weak 100T team because they made so many basic errors. PRX look a lot cleaner now and if they continue to work on their Sova plays, they will definitely be back stronger compared to last year. But they are not guaranteed any trophies unless they can sort out their Sova and their issue of getting thriftied/ecoed.

That is true that they have multiple players overlapping roles. I still think this is a bit better than last year since they didn't have anyone playing Sova reliably and F0rsaken was playing nearly the whole agent roster. They rotate who plays Sova depending on which duelist is playing that map (e.g.: Jett on Pearl, Neon on Sunset).

I think D4v41 is gonna be their primary KAYO player since he played the agent on Abyss and Ascent.

The rotation of sentinel role is based on which duelist is best for the map - Jett/Something on Pearl, Raze/Jinggg on Bind, F0rsaken/Neon on Sunset. Jinggg will probably be their main sentinel player hopefully since he succeeded in the role during off-season and he only flexes to Raze for Bind and Phoenix on Pearl.

D4v41 and Mindfreak interchanging between Omen and Viper is definitely weird since I would expect D4v41 plays Viper and has more of a lurker role or vice versa. Though I think it's down to their personal playbook and how the player moves around the map.

I think they sorted out their duelist situation. Something is strictly Jett on maps that favour the agent. F0rsaken plays Neon. Jinggg plays Raze. They should and hopefully will not break this strict rule on the movement agents. Obviously Jinggg plays Phoenix and F0rsaken can play Yoru.

PRX as a whole are still inexperienced to using Sova. I'd say that they need to work on how to use his ult since if feels they randomly hit it like a panic button without getting a sense of the opponents position. They almost use it preemptively. d4v41 and f0rsaken also play Sova on various maps and their util is okay. However, the big issue is the ult. F0rsaken goes flying whenever he pops it and it feels like he doesn't catch opponents often.

Whilst their Ascent improved a lot, they need to address their Haven since this double duelist with no flash is not working out for them. I would like to see: F0rsaken (Neon), Mindfreak (Omen), Jinggg (Cypher/Killjoy), Something (Breach), D4v41 (Sova). Something has previously played breach on Fracture and 1 time on Abyss. He must like the agent and be comfortable using him so I think this idea is stronger than swapping Something and f0rsaken's roles with a Jett on Haven over Neon. I understand that Something is supposed to be their Sova, but this comp would enable some stability as this map is gonna be a hard counterpick if it is not their permaban.

Aproto is great, but he unfortunately has some health issues holding him back from committing to pro play for a bit. Thief definitely looked good with how he clutched and bailed YFP during so many rounds on Ascent against Rankers. Net can be good, but he is also heavily inconsistent and can put up some of the worst numbers. Same goes for Apoth. Aleksandr is a great aimer, but he is lacking a lot of that game sense which more successful sentinels with less aim possess.

As for moose, I heavily favoured him in 2022/23. He seemed promising and he has great impact during rounds even if his numbers aren't the most stacked. I feel like C9 under the surface is looking to be more of a clout team. They will probably pursue trophies, but I can't see it being all too successful since OXY has a tendency to overheat especially if his team cannot support him well enough in a round.

It's definitely a big HR-style kind of statement to save face from C9. Rossy seems to have accepted this decision, but I feel that it's rather harsh given this was his plan. Go back to NA and IGL. There's now basically no team that would need him at this point unless EG suddenly feel Nature isn't gonna be their IGL for the season. This is a random detail I wanna bring up, but it felt like every time I watched Rossy play, there was some kind of tech pause. It's a funny coincidence and probably nothing behind it, but it just seemed so odd that every time he'd play, there is some kind of tech pause.

In C9's tweet, they said that it was just that the team did not mesh well with Rossy's IGLing and they wanna play how they wanna play. It's clear that C9 Valorant is on the line of: "Win or lose, we just wanna play our way." Even though with Rossy, the burden of carrying was taken off of OXY. But I guess that could have been part of the problem since OXY's numbers looked kinda weak in some games and maps despite him being C9's superstar. You can't have your superstar dropping negatives on a regular.

Even though nothing of this situation will change, I agree that the current roster would work best with OXY, Rossy, Mitch, V1c and Moose. And even then, you could always replace Moose with someone else who can play the sentinel role better.

1. Just like you said, scheduling is very hard. Not only that, the cost to get these sorts of names featuring on stage that's not their main eSport or perhaps just a social event is probably on the high side and seen as superfluous in most respects. In simple terms, organisers just see this as expensive for little gain since a lot of the audiences are already overlapping in these games.

2. Agree that Riot need to preserve their tier 2. There are still legit orgs in the Tier 2 ecosystem so don't worry too much about it fully dying. I believe there is a plan for more teams to have Academy Rosters like T1 Academy, etc. But the prize pool needs to incentivise these orgs to really push their teams to the best of their capacity so we don't lose talent.

3. I am not too sure where KPOP girls/stans are in Valorant's community, but I agree that making uncomfortable comments to any member of the community whether they're pro, a streamer or a casual is wrong and should stop. The only bit of devil's advocate I will say is if JohnQT hasn't openly said he's not happy with how he is viewed, don't worry so much about it. These pro players are adults with platforms that can say for the most part what they feel.

4. I'm gonna be completely honest with you. If you have a problem with trans people being conveniently good at Valorant when there are plenty of other trans/nonbinary players who get beat by all cis-women teams, it is in some sense transphobia or bigotry. Now that isn't to say I'm here to shut you down and invalidate your feelings about women being recognised in pro Valorant. I also wanna see a cis-woman reach Tier 1 and I think there are some good aimers who could eventually reach that. But the state of GC is still not competitive enough to get there and Florescent is an anomaly player because she has extremely good mechanics and proven competitive experience now. She may not inspire you and that's fine. But she inspires other trans players. Not everything is supposed to appeal to everyone. I don't think you should be labelled as transphobic unless you're actively calling her "just a guy pretending to be a girl" which I have seen plenty of people do mindlessly.

They're both too young to play for Tier 1, but if they're serious about going pro, they should join an academy roster. Main caveat is that they probably can't play this pugster/ranked playstyle as much as they want. Also nightz1 will definitely have to play other smoke agents asides Clove.

"Can we talk about the geopolitical and economic state of the world right now" type question

As much of an antagonist Kreese is, his backstory is hard. And Johnny's story has always been amazing. Tory is definitely my favourite female character since she feels the most indepth especially in the recent season.

Miguel is goated. Hawk is a solid character

Don't watch the S6E10 💀

Some games will just not be your games. You will do everything right: be ready to trade your teammates, use your util to make it easier for your team to kill, but you will somehow die first or die to weird shots. Don't let these games get to you. Keep building the healthy habits and make sure that there is nothing to blame but yourself and the things you do blame yourself are actual learning experiences rather than repeated low-level errors.

Also, definitely don't take this game so seriously. I won't say it's just a game, but it's not your whole life. Give your mind some rest when it is not a Valorant day. Keep your mind as stress-free as you can and you will find that you will aim smoother and play more fluidly.

edit: Another thing is if you queue with other people in a stack, it's people who you not only get along with but have similar goals and a growing mindset. You will be surprised by how passive people get and then autopilot a round. If your opponent is doing something and you are not trying to actively counter it, you should not be surprised if you lose more rounds because of it

Not the blatant upvote farming 😭

He was chilling. I remember in Sliggy's stream that he commented on how Jinggg was having sips of his drink midround and that he can't do that on Raze lmao. I think his sentinel plays are definitely getting better as well as the sova plays.

Natank has been playing with pretty much all the LEV boys according to Tracker.

Xffero's thrifty round and Jemkin's 4k on the round they invested 3 ults were big. Also, full-buying on round 23 and then having to do no-armour rifle buys without omen flash definitely screwed them over.

No team so far has reached Astralis levels of dominance in tournament results. However, there are brief instances of teams using Astralis style strats like multiple nades to flush out a player. Can't pinpoint 1 team that does it the most, but teams oriented around util-usage are more likely to have this sort of vibe. If anything, this is the one form of evolution that Valorant teams haven't adopted in full effect.

They don't know how to chill out and play simple punishing valorant against ecos. They always try to full send it.

I was trying to curse-speech GenG, but Sliggy was too strong. PRX just need to learn to peek or hold angles together. Be ready to trade. They give so many 1s. Yoman got a sick 4k just getting peeked 1 by 1 from PRX

Can't lie. PRX don't know how to play against ecos (i.e.: chill out with the crazy plays and keep it simple). A lot of their round wins were crazy plays from f0rsaken or something shifting the tides a lot. Jinggg on Split felt kinda useless. Foxy9 had his killtrips in place with no contest whilst Jinggg should be using the nade lineup to disrespect the trips. Overall PRX seem to play more for clips and flashiness rather than to win sensibly. This series was close, but G2 would hardpunish this into a comfortable 2-0.

ABSOLUTE CINEMA

• RRQ looked decent with Kush in their roster. Probably gonna need to level up the strategy to beat the strongest teams.
• DFM is a huge question-mark since they lost against RRQ and ZETA but could beat Talon. Meiy is still amazing, but he cannot solo-carry to anything significant.
• TE: I wouldn't pay too much mind to the coach screaming since he later apologised to his players. Whether they registered that sort of remedial action is behind the scenes, but it's clear the coach has high expectations of them and knows that they could do something shocking. Players in general need to adopt a more professional mindset rather than blocking out everything that discomforts them.
• BLG: They did well in off-season to win a tourney, but I think that BLG's main competition to test them is TE, FPX and EDG. It's difficult to say how good BLG is considering they looked weaker at this champs compared to last year.
• DRX: To beat GENG is a good sign, but they cannot beat Talon for some reason. Could be that they counter DRX's play style or the young players lack the confidence to beat an aggro style that Talon uses.
• PRX: The big mystery of what they are doing - we will have to see at this invitational, but rumour is they should be using more stable roles rather than having odd agent pools. Having said that, Phoenix and Sage just got buffed so that could incentivise Jinggg to go back to these niche agent picks.
• GENG: Really solid, but they need to fine tune some of their stuff on Ascent. Foxy9 is definitely gonna need some time to adapt to the GENG playbook especially since he is a bit below Meteor's mechanical capabilities. Foxy9 is still promising since he is on his comfort pick of sentinel.
• EDG: Nothing much to say other than they should be good, but maybe not nearly as dialled in given 2 of their key players have not played for a while and Haodong is no longer on the team.

Future of Valorant (2-3 years) but NA. EMEA got Sayonara, but he looks like a monster with his current tracker stats.

Yeah, it's looking like PatrickWho has a high ceiling potential, but he might be overextending on rounds where he should be regrouping with the team. UdoTan has some great timings, but he needs to probably communicate to the team what he can notice. The sentinel role is essentially made to inform whether they should rotate or not. Whilst Papi is underperforming, I think the whole team is a bit disjointed and needs time to cooperate on timings and strategy.

zeek just joined a roster with starxo.

NAOS lost Sunset, but I think GE just prepped better for that map. On another note, JA looking like John Wick on the Iso and Jett. Fried this series even if it is just an Off-Season. He would be a sick option for Tier 1, but I don't think TS will make changes anytime soon. Honestly, you could have the NAOS roster in TS and swap Mojer for Jremy or Invy, then put JA as primary duelist. It seems like a random decision given either player is filling in for secondary duelist/flex, but damn. I'm actually enjoying some Filipino Valorant when I'm watching JA and Xavi8k fry.

Damn. Good he's focusing on studies at least. And I feel rich could have played flash initiator with cauanzin calling (cauanzin is secondary caller in Loud currently). Nevertheless o7 for Rich. Shortlived but did well especially on XIT.

This is my headcanon of that argument.