The off season 1 match vs Trust in Plug doesn't sway me at all really. Off season events are great fun and good for trying things out but from everything i've seen the correlation is very weak between dominating the off-season and actually winning. Sen did it last year I suppose but there aren't many examples. The literal #1 team in the world EDG have been getting spanked this off-ssn. If they bombed out of a double elimination off-season tournament or went 0-2 in a round robin maybe a little but it really was just 1 random bo3 and not even on LAN while putting cryo on cypher

For EMEA without FUT I would probably edge FNC into my top 3. I think they're on the decline (or maybe everyone else is on the up + learned how to beat them) but they are still a great team with cracked players who know how to stay calm and win

TS imo stylistically match up very well with the hyper-aggressive APAC style. Even though they don't really have any star players they slow the game down and punish the aggression from most other APAC teams and play fundamentally sound valorant. A bit like DRX only with less firepower but a bit more creativity and spark on attack.

I think FPX had one of the harshest years last year basically always matching up with teams like GenG, Heretics, Sen (not just at champs but masters as well) so probably Wolves won't overtake them. If anything I can see FPX maybe making a deep run at one of the masters events and Wolves may qualify for 1 of them

Your replies in this thread are very positive and encouraging it's refreshing to see people with this kind of energy online

Americas:100t, Kru
100T: Looked very up and down last season but in the ups they were looking like a genuine world class top team. Addition of Zander I imagine will help a lot with some mid-round calls and generally lift the burden on Boostio to hard IGL everything. Bit of weird drama with salaries and the off season loss but based on what I saw from them in real matches last year they will be going to at least 1 international this year or better

Kru: Not really a keznit fan tbh but they dominated a good portion of the regular season domestically in Americas. Now that he doesn't have a brazilian to hate maybe he will be a little happier and bring the team vibes up idk but overall solid players and the addition of Mazino from Lev should be fire since he really was not the problem on Lev

--

EMEA:
KC - I struggled to pick a dark horse from EMEA really - my only real "dark horse" would have been FUT but you listed them already. KC seem like a really cool roster with one of the best IGLs ever relocating from Americas to EMEA just for this team. Couple it with ol' reliable Suygetsu the cracked aimer and some other cool prospects and they could fry. Though their off season performances thus far have been very lackluster so I'm really not sure but they should be fun to watch at least
--

APAC: TS, DFM
TS: Big underdog pick here but they were a top 3 regular season APAC team and have consistently been one of APAC's better teams. They lost to Talon in the single-elim portion of the playoffs right after they got Primmie. I think they're due for making an international they are genuinely a very good underdog team who always perform well in APAC - they even beat GenG and PRX last year domestically

DFM: Very cool new roster with a lot more firepower building around Meiy. Saw a glimpse of them recently in this off season event where they got some great results over PRX, EDG, Trace and RRQ (Lost rematch to PRX grand final) 10/10 would recommend
--

CN:
Wolves - Looked good in the off season events and picked up some promising players - including now Juicy? which is a little weird but whatever works

Yup losing to one of the best teams in the world (no not the best relax) in a bo1 off season event with a new roster is pretty embarrassing time to rebuild

sym was always a temporary pickup bro never even removed TSM from his profile while at the event. maybe if it went well they would have kept him but clearly it didn't and likely there could have been other issues we didnt see like comms and general team chemistry etc

personally i would have preferred someone like icy given that he actually improved a lot last year and it was his debut rookie year and he really didn't do as badly as some ppl think + tier 1 experience he is surely a player trending up with the right system

tho tbh at this point potter has earned the trust/confidence of anyone who is interested in EG's roster so if she does decide to sign flor or icy or sym or whoever i'm pretty sure she thought it through a lot. people are over-glazing flor for owning GC the logical next step would be for her to try challengers or something rather than skipping over tier 2 and jumping right into tier 1 but if potter backs it honestly i'd wager it'll work well given her history of scouting and developing talent

I do think leaf is a great player but to put him on a goat list seems a stretch too far (for now) to me. During 2022 he achieved nothing relevant internationally, 2023 the first year of franchising the same. A great player domestically in Americas but he has only just started qualifying for internationals. Personally I love the roster and I think they can make a very deep tournament run but with current achievements I don't see it for leaf

Scream fell off hard and frankly in present day he's only spoken about because he is/was popular. 2021 he was great but never even made a final and this was his peak. 2022 worse results and then fell down to average duelist level individual stats only slightly above jampii, 2023 worse still.

Needless to say it's your list not mine and for leaf I do kinda get it since he has been doing consistently quite well for a long time but for scream idk man he just has always seemed overhyped to me. Nothing post-2021 is particularly impressive about him no disrespect and in 2021 he never made a final either

(Almost) anything pasta-related is generally very easy and more importantly cheap and you can pretty much just throw whatever meat + veg in there. You can buy relatively cheap pasta sauces pre-made (pesto or tomato-base) or you can make your own. It requires a few ingredients but all are fairly cheap and it isn't very difficult (tomatoes, puree, olive oil, garlic, onions). The pasta itself is a few mins just needs some salt very simple

As a bonus if you make your own tomato sauce for pasta you can use it for homemade pizza which is actually surprisingly easy

Somewhat similar but noodles for a stir fry with any leftovers you may have pretty fire

If you like oven-roasted potatoes (you're british so I assume you must) they're actually very easy to make

If money is tight then buying whole chickens is much cheaper than pre-cut chicken breast and google can tell you how to cook + carve it. A little intimidating but more delicious + cheaper and will probably help your confidence in the kitchen

Experiment with eggs. Cheap and very nutritious. Good breakfast option with bread/meat or cereal or whatever else

Sorry none of these are hard recipes or anything but the good people on google search probably would write it out far better than I can on vlr. Personally I just have a bunch of meat things and carb things I can cook and I'll just add A to B at random but the more you try the more you'll hone in on what you want to make and maybe even enjoy making

Sacy up to S imo. Won on 2 different teams in 2 different languages, completely different meta etc. Only guy to win a champs and a masters and was very pivotal on both teams. As good as Loud were they never won any international after they split the roster but Sacy went on to win again without them. Very smart player and from every credible source I've heard is vocal with mid-round calls which doesn't really reflect much in stats but certainly does with results

Suygetsu over ange1. My goat IGL and truly iconic but suy was FPX's best player consistently throughout Copenhagen, before and after really. Shao got deserved shine as the clutch king but Suy is him and always was for that team

Jaw up he was legit insane at champs and throughout that year for EG, should be same tier as c0m for sure. Demon1 gets all the credit for being a frag demon on that EG team but jaw was right up there with him

Not sure what scream is doing here tbh, same for leaf who is a great player but what did he ever win? Or even make a final outside of domestic league. Future contender for the list 100% but at present i dont think so

My understanding is that GC is for all "marginalised genders" not just anyone who falls under women. So trans dudes I believe can also compete as can non binary. Probably just anyone who isn't a cis dude I would assume. It just so happens that cis women make up the vast majority of GC because trans people are like 1% of the population or less idk but cis women are obviously around half

Anyone know where (former) DRX Beyn is gonna end up? I haven't heard or seen anything. DRX moved on without him, foxy9 is on GenG and they no longer have a roster slot available. He was definitely one of DRX's better players after they picked him up and that's even with him being a rookie. But now he seems to be going nowhere?

more or Less

Have we ever seen him IGL before? I'm seeing that he is gonna be the IGL of this new superteam version of Vit. Personally I would take Cender 5th and have him IGL he actually did well with them last season. Particularly as they now have insane firepower and Cender would just have to figure out how to play flex/flash initiator for a well balanced team with insane individual talent and experienced leadership

More importantly this team is without question insanely stacked even by superteam standards but if Sayf isnt up to the IGL task at top tier 1 level then they'll crumble regardless so I feel like I should ask

Does anyone have any educated opinions or info about his IGL experience? He does strike me as an intelligent player but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be a good IGL

twitch.tv to react to KC owning without him with this wild superteam they got rn

(honestly i do think he is okay being a content creator/streamer though ngl)

Aim: Less
IQ: ANGELLL
Util: s1mon
Clutch: Mako
Leadership: Needless to say my GOAT ANGEL. Probably could put him for aim too

What I don't get is why everyone is so set on knowing he is the reason why they arent a top tier team. They literally performed well last season as a team. Look for other talent to recruit and even suggest jessie should leave is fine and reasonable. But why do people hate him and only him? What about the other guys or the coaches. Why does nobody appreciate that TS actually played really well overall last season and think they deserve to be fighting for a masters trophy when the management/ownership clearly is not investing to match that intent. For a low investment team representing purely PH and no imports or mixed-APAC talent they're doing amazingly imo

I do agree invy and jremy are doing great and you could absolutely argue that with a different IGL/coach they could be even better. That's entirely fair even if i don't quite agree but why is jessie the 1 guy singled out as a terrible problem

I can say with full confidence he performed better than benkai last season yes. He also had a much better team which he was more comfortable and familiar with so I got no shade to throw on benkai but I don't understand why we're accusing jessie of being bad for not winning a trophy when TS actually are performing well

They played great in the regular season finishing 3rd above GenG and got fucked by bad playoff format being single elimination for the first 1 set of matches, similar to NAVI. Could they have done better and won those single elim matches? Sure absolutely but I haven't seen a single mention of it anywhere in this thread so that can't be what you're referring to

what's the relevance of the 36 if he's still performing at a high level? unless you want a full rebuild with new young players in all roles which is quite a risk especially without an experienced player like jessie to help guide them

TS are not a top tier team. Okay great but have they ever really tried to be? Did they try to build a superteam and recruit top talent? Not really no they just stayed in their lane, developed their guys and played. Despite that they actually placed consistently well domestically. When exactly did they try to build a top team that could compete for a trophy?

I don't get the hate they were literally a top 3 APAC team in the regular season last year despite never really trying to build a stacked roster at all. If anything they are OVERperforming and yet people unhappy. It's not 1 player's fault if the org doesnt wanna invest in top talent to compete for a trophy

What's the reasoning behind the uncle vash hate? He generally performs quite well/adequately in terms of individual stats and i believe he is going to be their IGL next season too. Experienced, positive vibes/impact on the team and making calls. TS have been one of the better APAC teams both franchise years I genuinely don't see the problem here. Are they GenG level? no of course not but that's not on 1 player least of all someone who performs quite well. Even with aspas over jessie they don't reach GenG level is there something behind the scenes I'm not aware of?

flyuh out, he's in emea now

i would say skuba, brawk, okeanos, for sure.

nismo underperformed in ascension but overall he's a very solid pick similar to bcj and net but i would be inclined to select 2 of the tsm dawgs since they really stepped up towards the important end of the season

skuba brawk okeanos sym seven would be my 5 from that list

It's definitely a very harsh system with very little room for error or an adjustment period (particularly for newer players). But in fairness both net and bcj had good opportunity to perform and didn't. They weren't dropped from g2/eg at random and both teams performed considerably better after making the changes. I do feel bad for bcj more because he was a huge part of why XSET were so good pre-franchising and then EG went from bottom tier to champs after replacing him for demon1. It's really tough and it was awesome to see him go after it again for m80.

But... both teams genuinely did improve considerably after making the changes. Even with icy gone now they still were one of the best americas teams and even looked solid internationally. Not winning of course but they got 3rd in shanghai and made it out of groups at champs.

bcj was on the starting roster for about 2 months on EG during the season and probably a fair bit longer pre-season as well. They had many scrims, lock in and also the start of the regional circuit to see if he could perform to the level they needed in that role and he couldn't. It's not a lot of time but it is a reasonable chance for a non-new player.

It's a very harsh system but within that system I don't think they were massively screwed by huge unfairness, just a tight margin with little room for error or learning. They were given good opportunity and were underperforming. It's not like the door is closed on either of them anyway, people know their names and respect that their experience could be a good addition and I imagine they will both be competing in NA challengers next season

yep, and many of these kills the opponent is stunned, flashed, behind a smoke, scanned by sova/fade/cypher or something similar. if i spend 40% of each round using support utility for my duelist then of course they will have better k/d. does that mean he is having more game impact? maybe, maybe not. if i don't use my flashes for him then he has worse k/d while mine will get better because i take more fights myself

damage is a great indicator of value but it's too limiting to be considered as the only thing

yeah that makes a lot of sense and im not saying people should ignore k/d or ACS but it bothers me when that's the only thing they consider. as you say it's important to be a complete player which means more than just getting high frags - not to mention it would be 10x harder for the aspas, texture, zekken of vct to get those frags without the supportive util and the calls

this may well be a high number but as an example if oxy has 25 kills and 10 of those are on blinded or stunned opponents from xeppa's util that is equally important impact from xeppa that wont net him any k/d, oxy just claimed free kills. xeppa himself needs to be able to shoot of course and i agree that having better mechanics opens more doors for you in terms of possibilities but nobody will credit xeppa for giving oxy literal free kills and they will 100% credit oxy for getting blind/stun kills. Oxy is fantastic dont get me wrong but using only k/d as a metric for player skill is so biased in favour of certain roles and basically gives everyon a free license to dump on players who enable those guys to get the kills in the first place

Not sure who said the quote in your title but I think it's to do with demon1 having far fewer average first engagements than aspas - even when both being jett/entry players - specifically the demon1 from EG. I assume the person also assumed demon1 was coming in to replace aspas as primary duelist and not to replace mazino as you've said. I guess we'll have to see who they get as their 5th guy if aspas really does leave or even what happens if he stays. not sure what the lev roster will be

On NRG they tried to make demon1 play hard entry and it failed miserably. On EG it was actually jaw and boostio who helped out a bunch taking first engagements and helping create space (demon1 did it too of course)

Aspas style is much more aggressive compared to demon1 so I assume that's what whoever said your thread title is referring to. But this is only relevant if aspas leaves which would mean he isnt just coming in to replace mazino

Someone made a great video about all of this on this very topic of demon1 on EG vs NRG and compared him with LOUD aspas but i cant remember the video rn

then everyone would just play duelist because that's the easiest way to get ACS and have a good game. supportive util is necessary in all/most capacities (smokes, flash, recon, senti, heal, walls, etc)

If I skye flash for my raze to get a kill on a guy who is full blind he gets (almost) all the ACS for a literal free kill. does that mean he was better than me in that play? then i should pick jett instead and we both just rush the guy no flash and take the fight for ACS

the fact someone immediately tried to downvote this is hilarious to me

maybe in pro-play things are different but as far as ranked goes far more people are held back by things that fall into "game sense" (util usage, timings, awareness, etc) compared to simple aim diff - at least after you get out of silver/gold level. getting to gold maybe more mechs. so im not sure this is really true it's a lot more than just learning lineups

if you think this is incorrect look at almost any coaching vod (many quality valorant coaches) for players above gold/plat they aren't talking much about aim trainers

maybe once you reach semi-pro level and want to become a top tier pro the balance changes again back into aim being harder i can't say since im clearly not a pro player but i think everyone just hyper focuses on aim both when watching pro and also when playing themselves because it's simply the easiest thing to see and attach emotion to

i died -> aim diff

much easier than asking yourself why you were standing there in the first place or why you didnt ask for teammate flash/smoke to help or anything at all

doesn't he? i've barely seen any sen fans talk poorly of him while sacy you could see hate everywhere

I'm sure most people realise there are a lot of other ways to impact the game other than just being the topfrag on the server but why is it that everyone is so quick to attack players who aren't high fraggers? Sure if someone is consistently like double negative that is probably too far over the line fair enough but most guys arent

Particularly players who play flash initiator or flex roles as the most notable and easy examples. IGLs seem to get a free pass most of the time except maybe boaster? which is funny because he's one of the most winning players in valorant but yeah fair enough his recent stats have been too low to be made up for with great IGLing (compared to other winning teams - they still are a great team)

basically everyone who has ever been asked has said xeppa is a fantastic teammate and yet half the fans just think he's terrible. i guess they forgot C9 were actually one of the best americas teams both franchise years domestically and looked very promising too

Sacy, lakia, foxy9, mindfreak, c0m, and so many others. Zellsis seems to get a free pass because of his great comms and vibes (valid) but why does nobody else?

Nobody cares that demon1 is a notoriously quiet bad communicator but everyone cares when c0m has a negative k/d. They both won champs but one of them had a pretty great 2nd season after EG and the other didn't - which was that again? Right it was the vibes/comms guy not the MVP. no hate on demon1 or anything just serves as a useful example. Sacy won madrid and champs, lakia won APAC's first international but we're all so certain they were the problems?

DRX looked great towards the end of last season with beyn + foxy + flashback all in the roster and now they drop half the guys including the promising newer guys - particularly beyn imo who was just incredible and foxy also great adaptable guy who brings great energy

Suddenly dropping them along with buzz seems saddening also for drx fans who were fans of the original roster too.

I think it has much less to do with freeing and hyunmin being perceived as bad and more to do with drx letting go of their promising newer players so easily. How can you believe in the system when every few months people just get thrown out even if they perform well? With so much turnover and lack of consistency it seems hard to believe in DRX as a fan rn

I say this as someone who supported drx all last year after they put foxy9 in the lineup and even more after I saw beyn. they became 2 of my favourite players and suddenly they're gone despite performing well and adapting nicely

Is there a way to pin this for just myself I like to try to keep up and check on roster moves and you're doing a great job of being active and updating stuff

also anyone know of anything about beyn? one of my favourite players last season and honestly insane. maybe gen g? idk what the rumours are

GE were not good but this is really just a scrim not that deep.

Going into 2023 lock in, Lev were said to be stomping everyone in scrims and they didnt even make the playoffs
Optic as I recall were notoriously "bad" in scrims
Also recently didnt some heretics guys say SPG destroyed them in scrims? not that spg are bad but heretics were literally the #2 best team in the world and even EDG didnt "destroy" them

If more of these leaks got out I wouldnt be surprised at all of more tier 2 teams had scrim wins over tier 1 teams

Scrims are practice and experimentation, sometimes you win sometimes you don't either way not that deep really. Not sure what spin's purpose was in leaking this scrim but whatever opinions people have about GE's players last year will only reflect even more on him

alright I had to make an account upon seeing so much stupidity from PRX fans. you guys make me want to stop enjoying PRX games sometimes. He does not "underperform" even if you're short-sighted enough to only think kills = game impact he does just fine most games. Look at their recent loss to DRX and by only looking at kill numbers identify which one is the "underperforming" mindfreak lol

his ACS is generally lower because he plays smokes and lurks on such a hyper aggressive team that very often feasts (kills everyone very quickly) or famines (all die, mindfreak the lurk in 1v3). He plays his role and is also one of the most clutch players in VCT. He executes what needs to get done in his role very well. If you speed up your lurk you get caught, if you don't you run crazy risk of being too slow given how fast PRX play and how much they contest space/take aggressive gunfights. He has a damn hard job and still generally performs very well particularly when the team needs him most. Coldest clutcher on PRX no question

I'm sure you guys are the same ones who only have duelists on your "top 5 players" lists and quite frankly I feel like he only gets this much hate because he isn't one of the more likeable outspoken guys on the roster compared to someone like jingg. I invite you to consider that there are other ways to impact the game other than just getting frags (which he still does reasonably well btw) particularly when your team consists of batshit crazy explosive/fast players

His k/d for this season hovers around 1.00 (+/- tiny bit depending on agent) which isnt even an underperformance at all when you consider his teammates so I genuinely have no idea how people consider him the weak link either even if you're a k/d merchant