It's mainly because he's seen as a weird player. Not bad or anything but just weird with how he makes his decisions. Most of the legitimate discussions around him revolve around his calling and reads, which is very deserved due to how well he can problem solve in-game whenever their actual curated gameplans aren't dogshit. His mechanical insanity is par for the course for a lot of fans & non-vct cn fans alike due to how long he's been in the spotlight by now & how some of his rare dumbass decisions tend to outweigh his good qualities in a lot of people's eyes (especially haters)

I get why that is since he performed pretty average domestically but what makes him such a pivotal piece is the fact that he is a very fundamentally sound player. He has good awareness and is very intelligent on the macro side of things. It's crazy how unfortunate some of his deaths were when he had a good position

On the watch-back of the game most of the kills Jieni7 was getting were outright game-winning. Most of the time whenever he died on defense it was due to a misstep in a peek or being caught while trying to reposition before a site hit. I know it's pretty bold to say he'd be top 30 but if he just becomes a bit more consistent his statline would increase to a point where there would be some conversations about him. And that itself makes him scary as far as performance goes imo

Against FUT he actually played high% most of the time and only made hero plays whenever EDG absolutely needed it. Even domestically he was a little average, if not above-average as far as EDG 5th players go (a bit better than how he did last year). Now he seems way more comfortable in his skin on the international stage compared to champs. He got the time he needed to properly melt into his roles without schizophrenic agent changes and he looks like a monstrous system player. Not a hard carry as far as x-factor goes, but his impact is essential to how EDG plays now.

The crazy thing is that he still made a sizable amount of simple but important mistakes on Pearl even with the amount of clutch anchoring and round-winning duels he was doing. If he straightens out some of his more gooberish moments and defines his round-by-round consistency he has an argument to be a shoe-in as a top 30 player itw.

AG's main problem is not having a consistent mechanically above average 5th player. Their main attack-side playstyle revolves around setting up F4ngeer to heavy frag on op with an entry fragger that can rip heads off to crack the site open for him during postplants and midround calls. On defense side they're more reliant on their site anchors to hold by themselves against whole execs while they rotate so they can get a more potent flood or retake with their entry duelist hard wkeying to clear the path. After Au1 left they haven't had anyone who can consistently fill that need on viper/sentinel and duelist no matter how they switch the roles around due to both Youze and Bai not necessarily being consistent in that metric (or consistently bad in Youze's case). Unless that's fixed I wouldn't necessarily like their odds of taking games against top 6-caliber opponents.

People saying they didn't look like it was affecting them when they drew XLG
How about bringing up how they were JUMPING UP and IMITATING NOMAN'S 3K???
they sure had a lot of energy in the game when they were winning!

LEV, FUT, and Vitality are all still in so anything could happen. The only guaranteed outcomes as far as region wars go is that China is guaranteed to out-place at least one region minimum

if a fanbase on a completely different platform is enough to ruin your viewing experience of a team then you're mentally delayed and lack a developing frontal lobe. it's a bunch of bot accounts and teenagers on twitter spamming ai images WHO THE FUCK CARES??

it'd be disappointing if FUT did all that bming just to bomb out. they need a run that matches their energy and meet EDG again. I'm sorry but G2 NEED to lose

in 2025 out of BLG, TE, DRG, XLG, WOL, and EDG, three of them experienced debilitating issues at some point in the season during their international appearances. EDG was a hot mess behind the scenes, XLG had to play with a language barrier & a last minute replacement in Toronto and still almost made playoffs in champs with Noman, DRG's only international appearance involved visa issues and yet another language barrier with their 5th. Only Wolves, TE and BLG could be said to have had "normal" experiences and out of the three Wolves actually amounted to something and BLG & TE shit the bed.

XLG lifting a trophy before G2 would be unfathomably funny
no one should ever take them seriously again if that happens

it's fun when it's at his expense

"vibes merchant" undersells his emotional impact & oversells his in-game impact. Zellsis wishes he was putting up NoMan's numbers on duelist while actively emoting

they won pearl due to his clutches, even if he was doing some weird shit that costed them some in return. but all that proves is that he WILL be the difference maker, since EDG's scoreline on Fracture was largely due to his late round impact and multi-frags. his site anchoring was insane against FUT

no
yes, no but they did make fun of their reactions in the press conference

they realized their biggest issue was confidence and once they grew self aware in that aspect they started gradually improving on-stage. great to see

HE'S THE BESTTTTTTTT
AND CUUUUUUTE

his fatherly maternal instinct rubs off onto all viewers, making us feel a deep love and respect towards him due to his kind nature

well that was more G2 getting blindsided by EDG's fracture. FUT 100% knew what they were gonna get going in and invited all the flak with the bm. I don't have a problem with shooting bodies n shi but doing this invites this type of attention so they gotta own it

i KNEW this reminded me of a game. How could I forget Monyet's fun in the sun at Madrid LOOOOL

now can't even muster up a smirk while fist bumping LMFAOOOOO WELCOME TO PLAYOFFS MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRS

Autumn effect

He normally plays more reserved. This is completely unlike him before. I'm all for him becoming this confident though he deserves to showcase his mechanics

You change your comp on haven just to do the exact same bullshit your team did on the old one, and visibly haven't improved your Pearl macro. It also doesn't even look like you took care into drilling your team for the exact team you PICKED IN THE DRAW. What do you even do?

linux for work laptop. windows for pc
windows was making my laptop fight for its life. I installed manjaro after watching a yt vidoeo, then switched to fedora after a driver update would make me have to manually reinstall a couple after they corrupted because I was an idiot and didn't read the forum updates. was considering installing debian but decided against it since it literally doesn't matter & fedora is just plug & install. it's very good if you just care about school work

windows is essential for playing the games that I do and cuz I just genp adobe on my more powerful desktop for classes there's not much reason for me to switch to open source alternatives anyways

marking

EDG with the yoru nerfs are currently the biggest showcase of placebo ever because if EDG just played yoru-less double duelist after Bangkok they wouldn't have been nearly as bad. Then autumn came in and did the exact same mistake and ppl wonder why EDG did so horrible lol. At least Hibari and Autumn aren't nearly as dysfunctional of a combo compared to Muggle and Aqua together because they're actually letting the players do their thing now & prepping around it

i don't know what came over me

If you want to find players of that game maybe you should find it yourself. Google it, simple. Edit this and fuck off. NOW.

POWERSCALING VCT IS THE REASON THIS HEART STILL BEATS

surely

chainscaling in vct is the reason this heart still beats

problem is that his "disappears outside China" narrative is largely still intact from his past appearances so he'll have to shed that off with future global events. he is a very good teammate though

he passes the eye test. if he does it during playoffs then he's in top 5 conversation with heavy favorability

Always hoped they'd win but now the belief is starting to form. They're finally shaping up as the team they were supposed to be at Toronto

then they're not cursed. their core roster are just not capable of amounting to anything more significant than regional trophies. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's pride that's warranted from being the best team in a specific split, it's just not anything that actually matters when it comes to being seen as the best in the world. And that's okay!

cursed?

that + ppl switch up like crazy on this site. the amount of APAC flairs suddenly turning heel and trying to claim XLG's win shows how shameless ppl on this site are

can't forget how quickly people devolved into saying EDG winning champs was a fluke after they lost ONE series in kickoff

It was a long time coming but they finally got a good win. They're becoming the team everyone recognized they were MEANT to be when they obliterated VCT CN to qualify to Toronto.

it might've taken 2 internationals (don't count toronto) but you finally play up to your domestic level and get a good win not named SEN. Looooong time coming

the paranoid schizophrenia he developed as a defense mechanism against NathanD acted up due to him seeing Autumn, Kr1stal, and Udotan on the opposing team. He currently thinks he's playing in the regular season, however every time he mentions "qualifying to masters" his teammates ignore it because he's dropping 20 and they desperately need playoffs to keep their jobs.

it might've taken 2 and another 0-2 but they FINALLY got a map. it's ONLY up from here!

this core of players are incapable of separating their confidence from their results. they perpetually believe that they're the underdogs and should overcompensate for perceived mistakes. due to how they approach their mentality, this results in them being scared little puppies waiting to get slaughtered by any player with a semblance of disrespect or willingness to not play into their gameplans. once anything goes wrong they crumble like a house of cards

when ppl say that XLG don't perform like they do regionally it's not cope or delusion. they are legit just dogshit internationally and play below their previous level in almost every way. it's an embarrassment but it doesn't reflect on the whole region. AG and WOL used their international opportunities much better to a point where it's embarrassing for XLG for them to have had genuinely zero impact outside of losing

they're finally shooting their guns the way they do in China instead of running into Keiko's crosshair

Happywei and NoMan gaslight him into believing that Kr1stal and Autumn are playing with three other CN players, transforming him into his regional merchant self. This sets off a domino effect of him constantly believing that his opponents are chinese due to him farming them, which in-turn makes his mechanics better and starting a positive feedback loop. This culminates into them facing against NRG again in the grand finals and NoMan reminding him of Keiko dropping 30 in the swiss stage. Rarga then experiences true ego death and sees every part of himself in Keiko, believing that since Keiko is no different than Rarga, that essentially makes him a VCT CN player. Rarga goes +50 to win the grand finals and becomes the best Russian to touch the game.

happywei woke up properly against DRG... hopefully it translates to everyone else and they can all start shooting against foreign teams...

genuinely believe that he might need a break from competing to collect himself. he's been grinding with the team as their superstar to internationals just to get cucked out of their fifth player and forced to play with comms issues the first time, didn't perform up to par the second, got blown out and did dogshit the third, and is in danger of repeating the disappointment again the fourth despite once again dominating domestically.

It's obvious why he thinks this way, especially considering he's not a self-centered player who relies on ego. However, it's ridiculous that the team as a whole aren't in a mental headspace to win as a core despite constantly getting chances that the other top CN teams would 100% not let go to waste as easily. He definitely knows this, which also clearly is having a negative effect on his mentality. Just a sloppy and unfortunate situation all around, but it's still completely on him and the rest of the team to overcome their own issues.

it'd be troll for BLG to let Zayce go even if there aren't any proven CN igls on the market by the time he's of-age. if he's not on the roster WITH kassielsy it's a huge missed opportunity