Liquid were never supposed to be here yet beat everyone in groups

G2 didn’t struggle, they 2-0d them?

FNC had two subs

And the best team from EU isn’t even at the tournament (FPX)

There’s no “falling off” it’s just insanely unlucky with the timing.

No I really haven’t. I’ve always felt casters are decent in keeping neutrality… Can you give me a specific example clipped? Probably not…

So you want casters to say the same thing in the same voice for every play? This is getting ridiculous…. There’s no important distinction here whatsoever

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Perhaps they also had the same thing happen to them by Liquid the other day too on Split, I still think fracture is a very strange choice. Breeze, icebox, ascent? All maps that optic don’t look great on atm.

Their comp displayed a complete lack of adjustment to the new meta though

Ah yes, “frags mean everything” line. There’s no other reason for FNATIC to be playing badly, they have LAN experience, brilliant strategy and usually dominate. If it was once you may be right, but this is evident at this point. If you think otherwise, you clearly haven’t watched many regular FNC games lol.

I don’t remember blaming them? I don’t expect them to play any better - they’re tier two players, it would be ridiculous to. Stop straw manning me. They are playing horribly as a team, that’s my whole point… the cohesion is not there because they have two new players , let alone ones that aren’t used to playing at this level especially on LAN

I would really like to see OpTiC beat XERXIA as they seriously improved their Ascent today and made nowhere near the amount of mistakes. That said it would be nice to see XERSIA through. I think it could really go either way, though if OpTic wins it will really bring back a lot of the NA hopium…
It is annoying for XERXIA though as rematching is always harder and they really are good

Even then they weren’t nowhere near on EU’s level. Of course they aren’t bad teams but apart from Chamber, NA really hasn’t developed much.

How could they not be destroyed? What other teams do you know who have actually managed this, with two tier 2 subs with minimal practice time?

Yeah, didn’t they let games in Champions happen remotely regardless of covid? If Derke is well enough to play then I don’t get what the difference is.

They aren’t bad teams ofc but given any other situation they would not win. It’s literally like playing semi professionals or a start up team that has just a lot of brain power - not that bad when you’re a tier one team.

Not gonna lie I don’t think you know what you’re talking about lol. If you actually watch the game you can tell their cohesion is shit as they are losing easy af anti-eco rounds. Everyone knows Japan is a very weak region.

They were so good before the tournament, they have LAN experience. They are renowned for their international performance and you can’t really get “upset” or “fluked” on twice in a row. Anyone who has watched multiple of their games before and has the slightest bit of common sense can tell it’s because of them having subs, to practice with in 9 days who have no real tier 1 experience (they’re not necessarily bad players even).

but not in pro play… I’m talking about comps necessarily I’m mainly talking the meta play style

It’s not just that they didn’t have Derke but more the fact they had such a short space of time to prepare and practice. FNC have played with each other since SUMN FC, so for like 2 years… It’s so hard to replicate the team synergy and timings with not one but two standins in less than a month.

He’s been away from pro play for so long.. there have literally been two new metas since he played (which was back during the Phoenix on haven and NA best region days). Watch any 2020, early 2021 Sentinels game and it’s so clear that it’s gonna take a lot for him to get back into it.

Yeah but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid lol

After watching EMEA games and going to watch the NA ones during quals it’s so obvious which region is more advanced. NA is stuck with single role players whilst the rest of the world experiments. The only new, viable thing to come out of NA recently was the raze haven comp and we all saw how well that went… The amount of mistakes and lack of coordination optic and the rest of the teams have (apart from maybe the guard) is just shocking..

They probably meant in terms of the amount of people who play the game from those regions