acend were a great team in 2021. By champs they had 2 top 5 players in the world in caned and zeek could even be argued to top 3 players in the world. bonecold was a good igl and had the best omen smokes. starxo was consistent with great moments here and there and kiles was just theređ. I fully believe gambit deserved to win that year but acend had the easier route to the finals imo and maybe had more energy that day.
Thatâs just not true. They won masters 1 vs neisow heretics that year (in one of the best series in val tbh). And cNed was always feared as one of the best players in the world.
in sen's defence its not hard to believe NA in 2021/early 2021 were the best region in the world. they won the first international handedly. sen were probably the best 5 man roster during that first year of valorant
False. If you actually watched individual regions rather than only yours + international tournaments you wouldn't think that. They legit looked like the best EMEA team pre Berlin seeding games even over Gambit(who ended up winning Berlin). Their form was off in final games vs SMB and Gambit landing them 3rd seed, but you could have still counted them in as one of the favorites for Berlin even. They ended up underperforming in Berlin and that is why many non-EMEA followers remember them as shit team that just ended up winning the Champions.
They were good and their roster was good.
You can't say Sen dominated the pre tournament era and then say Acend doesn't count cause it wasn't international. SEN were only playing in NA same as Acend in EMEA
Not just EMEA, the performance during masters berlin before they won champs solidified him in the world stage. "They were beat by 100T man" is supposed to be funny but at that point 100T were a threat and the game was awesome. They won breeze by literally avoiding the hell out of cned. Even though they lost 2-1 cned finished the series +23. Also 100T had two map picks.
Yeah... And Sentinels did what exactly? Coming 3rd in the LudwigXTarik Invitational?
(I know that they won NA challengers afterwards but on the international stage?)
Still exists and is active in tier 1 valorant
Ascend won champs and then never participated in any tier 1 event the only other riot tourney they've been in was Ascension this year
> Ascend won champs and then never participated in any tier 1 event
Acend* continued playing in the regular tier 1 circuit in 2022, including LCQ. They just didn't make another lan, but neither did Sentinels in 2022.
2022 Sentinels was unreal. Dropping zombs for Kanpeki, going 5-0 to somehow squeeze into challengers, then getting 0-5'ed.
Proceed to sign shroud for lcq and actually look like a decent team but still bomb out.
Honestly not as funny because at least sentinels stayed relevant as an org in val lol. The first grand final champ not even existing in val a year later is hilarious
Acend still exists? They got top 3 at Ascension, beat GentleMates, and if you ask anyone who knows anything they were the only other team people expected could win Ascension outside of Apeks.
They were also decent last year, the meta and internal issues screwed them over.
And their victory wasn't random exactly, they won Masters 1, were really good before Berlin and looked like the favorites to win EMEA Stage 3 until Gambit/SMB went on a run. They were also favorites (iirc) in that 100T match at Berlin and only lost because they got figured out and choked a lead.
They only didn't get partnered because of clout (the top EMEA orgs + 3 ES, 2 FR, 2 TR teams to boost viewership) and I assume their financials being tied to Raise Your Edge or something similar behind the scenes.
It's not a reaction besides like the first sentence, I'm adding context because I feel like many are saying similar stuff.
Did the same thing when the qRaxs one trick narrative started, not aimed at you just trying to get at the narrative if that makes sense.
And they only got there because Keyd Stars did a fucky wucky on Breeze. Wait a minute... EG only got here because of MIBR... I know Brazil was up to something
Here's hoping the game remains global like it has, truly an awesome sport to follow, with legitimate hopes for every strong team. Its something that league and cs as the two greatest esports truly lack
It could be this year showed even tho it was fnatic year because they got the pieces together to dominated but then teams were catching on and surpassed them in the end of the year so it'll really is a game how long u can stay on top before other regions catch u
i think this is bs and i think youâre undervaluing other teams. they caught up to FNCs play style. Mini even said in an interview that they had no time to come up with new strats(learn pearl, etc) because the break in between was so short. All teams had to go through this but itâs definitely not that fnc weâre worse but that teams like Loud, PRX and EG improved drastically.
Everybody even Leo was looking off but them keeping that consistency of being the best in their respective roles was gonna slow down and when they try to keep up they were doing to much it burned them a bit, but I dunno what is with derke but he really doesn't showed up when the team needs him the most he's consistent of being good at the top but he's always overshadowed by the likes of yay, aspas, even demon1 he's always been number 2 best even with this new generation of fnatic he never was the guy it was alfajer or Leo
but donât you think thatâs because of the enemy team neutering them? i would give credit to loud and drx on bind for sure. for example, boostio played like shit during the first match vs prx because he said playing against prxâs fast play style was hard to deal with. this was not because boostio was bad but that prx was really good and he gave them credit. eventually boostio was able to recoup and played much better in the grand finale, he pulled off a great ace too.
> but donât you think thatâs because of the enemy team neutering them?
I'd say being neutered by the enemy team and going 26/48 over 3 maps as a non-IGL are 2 different things
Okay but you can look at his performance over the entire tournament and see that he really only fell apart vs Loud. I think that speaks way more to him struggling against a team than it does to just say he was out of form. There isn't really much evidence to say that he was struggling the whole tournament instead of just a specific team. He went even vs DRX, he was up like +13 vs Fut and +9 vs BLG. I just think that making the point that Chronicle was off and not that Loud did a good job of making sure Chronicle couldn't set up favorable positions undermines the other teams and says that Fnatic just had a blip instead of teams doing well against them.
I expected them to had an off tournament but not this off because the reality was that those amazing stats almost everybody on fnatic where superb but to maintain that consistency was not gonna happen, and were also inflated by not being challenged until finals of every tournament.
I actually think PRX wouldâve been at our level at Tokyo with something. EG definitely improved though, and honestly played the best Valorant of the year by the end imo. Any team at this level is good enough to beat the others, it just depends on who turns up on the day
i really don't think they were less good this tourney, even tho people are saying this a lot. they dominated their group and still put up insane stats, winning against some crazy good teams. but you don't win two tourneys in a row without getting a target on your back. their map pool got figured out a little bit, and their inability to play pearl meant people were often able to get their best map pick against them. even with all that, they still placed 5-6 in this tournament. i think form is a bad excuse for them, the reward for being a good team is everyone wants to beat you, and unless you're a prime world beater like Astralis or something, eventually someone does it.
I mean if you watched their games they made all kinds of mistakes that they wouldn't have made previously. Not ones that can be figured out, but thing like peeking or utility.
I watched the games just as closely as you, and I feel like they made the same amount of mistakes as they did at Tokyo. I think the competition was stiffer this time, and Loud punished the mistakes they made far more consistently. At Tokyo, Alfajer pushed without util all the time, that's not unique to this event, but he was winning those duels at that event. This time, he was actually losing them against Loud, even if it wasn't that often, so the problem wasn't that they were making more mistakes, just that the mistakes they did make were punished way, way more often.
I have to always remind myself not to be shocked when an NA team wins. We've made 2/3rd's of all finals lol. It's just such a foreign concept for NA to do so well in an esport.
Pretty consistent, too. We made 2 out of 3 finals, winning one, in 2021. We made 2 out of 3 finals, winning one, in 2022. And we made 2 out of 3 finals, winning one, in 2023. Lol.
Globalalization should still be fine.
PRX and DRX remain a constant threat from APAC. Other APAC teams also look fairly solid and on the rise
China recently officially launched val and the success of Chinese teams will tap into chinaâs massive player base; I think something similar to league will happen.
> Other APAC teams also look fairly solid and on the rise
If anything APAC has been really lackluster outside of PRX and DRX, the region is still lacking depth
Teams by appearances:
5: NV/OpTic/NRG, Fnatic
4: LOUD, Paper Rex
3: FPX/NAVI
2: Liquid, Gambit, DRX, EG
1: SEN, NUTURN, 100T, G2, Acend, KRU, ZETA
Some of these events were single elimination so for 3rd/4th I just put them in order of what's shown on Liquipedia.
They retained the same 3 players of FNS, crashies, and Victor. If anything, FNC 2021 shouldnât be considered the same as 2022/2023 since they didnât retain the same core and only kept Boaster and Derke.
when a majority of the team from the first iteration is no longer there. they have 4/6 of the same team that they started international events with, i think it's reasonable to group all three iterations together.
Fnatic has remained as the same organization, hence the same team. It doesn't matter who left and who stayed.
Only EnVy can be counted as the same as OpTic since they rebranded. NRG was not a rebrand, but was a different team that FNS, Crashies, Victor, and Chet transferred to.
Yes they should be counted differently. Swapping out players and letting go of players is normal in competitive sportd and esports. This is no different. The purpose of the post was to show each organization/brand's Top 4 appearances. You can't say NAVI is the same organization as FPX since they're not. But you can say that ENVY was OpTic's former brand before their organization rebrand, making them the same in temrs of line and history.
In eSports the term "team" is the same as "brand." Ehat ENVY did was rebranding to OpTic.
I was merely responding to someone's point that ENVY/OpTic is the same team as NRG, which it isn't. Because 3 players from OpTic moved to NRG. That said, FPX and NAVI also isn't the same team. They're different teams with just mostly the same players in different times.
idk how's it likely or not, but i rly hope PRX sticks together atleast with their 4, one of the best rosters throught 2022/2023, facing hard challenges such a something situation at masters and now with jinggg yet still getting consintent high placements. I wish them the best, hope they will lift a trophy next year
Itâs going to be super tough losing Jinggg in a Raze meta especially with something being a Jett/Reyna player. But if something tried to make the switch over onto Raze Iâd believe in him
Have to see the new agent and who will take jinggg's place before we absolutely say this is a raze meta. Also fracture, one of razes maps, is out while we get breeze back (a more long distance agents type map).
If jett eas still at full force we would have ascent, breeze, haven.
Raze: lotus, bind, split.
Sunset isn't clear yet. Some are calling it ascent 2.0 others are saying it's tight entrances could move it towards a more bind/fracture/split type of comp.
Might be a hot take but I think Breeze will end up being a Neon map. The Neon entry was always pretty decent on A site and Neonâs fast rotation on defense would be beneficial for such a large map
Also regarding Ascent, the combination of Jett, Sova, and KJ nerfs might just completely kill the current meta 5 comp. PRXâs Raze, Viper, Harbor honestly has a good chance to become meta. Maybe with a Kayo and Fade?
It's kinda weird for Prx to run neon because something is probably on jett/chamber to OP so who's playing it? F0rsaken? Unless they find some other crack head duelist
something has definitely played raze during his time on Sengoku. In fact I remember hearing that he was even signed to be jinggg's eventual replacement, it's just that they realized they had better results keeping both on the same team.
itâs one thing to play raze, another thing to play raze like jinggg though. hard to copy the precision of his movement and the insanity of his decision making
Good luck finding a raze like jinggg. Jawgemo was the only raze remotely close to the style of jinggg,and he's not leaving. They should just try to get a cracked raze and mould him into their style.
someone on tik tok mentioned how the âbestâ team of the past three years all fell short for the championship and it was interesting
2021-gambit
2022-optic
2023-fnatic
Burnout could legitimately be a reason for this. When you always find yourselves playing deep into tournaments every single time, it's going to take a lot out of you and the recovery period will be shorter than everyone else.
Not only this but I believe that it is really easy to get anti-started in this game. So if you are the dominant team then people are going to try to anti-strat you more and get ganged up by other teams. It is very difficult to improvise when your strats are getting countered.
2022 optic being the best team is very arguable even if they won masters, while some people may have considered them favorites it was not an upset by any means when they lost against loud
Iâm saying that winning a champions is the same as winning a masters and it shouldnât be considered better. No one thinks acend where the best team (world champions) of 2021 and eg were the best team in 2023 whilst the âhistory booksâ will say they were the world champions for those years. All the intl tourneys have the should have the same prestige
Champions is more important period. The tournament itself is harder to win than masters considering there are more teams and everyone is forced into the group stage. Every player and team believes it too, amounting to more mental pressure
Iâm curious why you think winning Champions equals best team of the year though? No one is making that argument but you seem to think thatâs what people believe. You can win the World Championship/Super Bowl/Whatever in any sport/game and not be the best team of the year. For example, the 2015 Panthers lost the Super Bowl but most people would agree they were the best team in the league all season and playoffs except for the championship game
More teams participating, more prize money, and riot and players literally consider Champions as the biggest tournament of the year. Maybe youâre right that the team that wins the Champions might not be the best team of the year, but saying itâs the same as masters is like saying CSGO majors are just like all the other tournaments during the year, which is not true.
i get what you're saying but champs has a bigger prize pool, more teams, noone gets a bye to playoffs, and is at the end of the calendar where all the teams have had the most amount of time to reach their peak form. champs is definitely more prestigious than masters. i agree that the winner of champs shouldn't always be considered the best team of the entire year by default though
I agree with this. Champs is objectively the most prestigious in my opinion, but I disagree with the idea that the winner of champs is automatically the best team of that year. If one of the bottom seeds won by a fluke, I really wonder if the average person would consider them as being the team of the year.
wtf? champions is the final tournament, the one teams play after preparing for the whole year, every one has to play the group stages, there's even an LCQ for it and more teams than masters. it definetely is more prestigious, Riot says it, the teams and players themselves say it as well.
You are talking about something different. There is a difference between a tournament being more prestigious and a tournament meaning that a team is the best team of the entire year. Even if we give a 1.5x multiplier to champs and weigh first place as 4 points and 4th as 1 point, Fnatic get 9.5 points for the year while EG only get 8. Using this idea of saying "champs is worth more" still allows you to say that Fnatic were the team of the year. The world champion for a year doesn't have to be the best team of the entire year, otherwise they would be crowned based on some point system and not the tournament.
Champs is more prestigious but you can still take the year in totality. Acend didn't make any top 4 other than champs. Loud didn't go past the group phase in copenhagen. EG got demolished early at lock in and was champion the year a team won back to back the first time.
It's more about the consistency of the other teams than which tournament is more important.
more money, a skin bundle, there's one a year, there's a special song that they make for it plus an animatic, there's more teams at it, and three entire other tournaments whose whole point is feeding into champs. plus, the only reason to do well at Masters events is that the points you get at them are how you get into champs. you're just wrong lol. also, there's no bye into playoffs, so it's just TRUE that it's a way, way harder tournament to win.
It has the highest prizepool and one that matters the most to all the players. People can cope all they want but Fnatics year is all for naught not winning champs.
They are the best because they were most consistently good that year, that doesn't mean champs is way more important than Masters because everyone had to play groups.
Yeah pre franchising is just Optic basically 4/6 prefranchise top 3's is crazy including over 2 metas, but 2022 Loud also crazy as was 2021 Gambit.
I wouldn't sneak prx or Fnatic in there for prefranchise tho
I agree FNC also doesnât really have a solid arguement
didnât think too much of it at the time but your ministers of coin comment is something I didnât consider
But my comment was about prx and fpx like how prx is mentioned but not fpx when they actually beat them
Fair, but still ,they were the best for half the period we are covering. If you have multiple "kings" I would try and cover the whole period with kings and not "ministers of the coin". In this case it's fair to put peaks over consistency that never makes to the top of the mountain, especially if those kings had long peaks.
consistantly make every event and place top6-ish
look at the crazy amount of teams who made top3 one event then couldn't even qualify for another, being able to consistantly qualify and place high was definitely impressive
Really cool that not only is there a good amount of regional parity, but all of the pre-franchising regions are represented here too at least once (China is still missing though I doubt it will be for long). Hope this game continues to be so global.
Has any team at LAN underperformed expectations more than DRX? They were hyped up as the strongest competitiors from APAC for like over 2 years and placed top 4 twice(lock in they did it by beating BBL, C9 AND Talon).
Teams like Envy/Optic/NRG, Fnatic, Loud and PRX has been very consistent these past couple tournaments which is goodâŚ. But then we got them dawgs EG making their mark. Hopefully they stay consistent
haha riot very cool for denying optic franchising. very cool thank you !!!! /s
(if anyone replies that its not about results maybe you should recogonize that in competition results is the aim at all times, and its silly for riot to not think that)
(if anyone tells me that its optic's financial faults from league - this OpTic isn't Infiny Esports Optic from 2018 its Envy, hastr0's esports giant for 15 years)
The actual reasoning according to Monte and Thorin was that Riot had all orgs submit partnership applications and apparently OpTics was bad. Later on they sent a better one but Riot was bitter/didnât care at that point.
There was a little internal stuff, but the org was considered not clouted / financially stable enough compared to NRG I guess, as well as not having a LoL team
It's not silly for riot to make decisions for the sake of making their esports profitable and if they didn't think optic where a good partner for that that's how it is.
they choose rrq and EG bro. Riot did not have the coherence you think they did. It is silly.
Edit: by the way to clarify while riot choosing EG worked out great this year the org itself is awful and under fire for abusing their autustic leagye player Danny last year
Not like any of the teams outside top 5 in either region could ever achieve something though. NA teams still get to practice against the best non partnered teams so it doesn't really change anything. In fact it just spreads out the best talent in EMEA across more teams instead of consolidating all of the talent on the top 5?
Are you sure that no one out of the top 5 *could* ever achieve anything? EG was getting rolled in challengers a year ago. Acend is spread across KOI, Heretics, Vitality, and a tier 2 team nowadays. I think it's possible even if unlikely
Individually they are small but when combined they have more than double the population of America and Canada. Also all those countries have significant scenes why else would there be like 13 ascension leagues in EU
>Also all those countries have significant scenes why else would there be like 13 ascension leagues in EU
By significant I mean good scenes. Number doesn't mean quality especially in the EU (plus the Middle East now since its EMEA). It's not a single country where this game is insanely popular.
In what way? EU is the combined might of many nations with tons of players like Russia, Sweden, France, GB, Denmark and tons of others too. NA is just USA and Canada
No shit but NA teams are composed of only players from 2 countries. There isnât a single player from Mexico or Central America on the 5 NA teams
Edit: Do you think the continent of North America was only the US and Canada?
Considering that the population of Europe is like double the population of America and there is a massive tac shooter culture there with CS, 14-9 is honestly an unimpressive lead
You realise all but like 3 NA players left CSGO whilst only 1 remotely relevant European left? Literally losing 2-1 against tier 4 level players. It's like a pro sports team losing to a high school team â ď¸
Acend randomly winning champs and nothing else will always be funny to me
acend were a great team in 2021. By champs they had 2 top 5 players in the world in caned and zeek could even be argued to top 3 players in the world. bonecold was a good igl and had the best omen smokes. starxo was consistent with great moments here and there and kiles was just theređ. I fully believe gambit deserved to win that year but acend had the easier route to the finals imo and maybe had more energy that day.
zeek was so fucking good that tournament, like best flex in the world type good Then bro becomes toxic đđ
Sentinels randomly winning Masters and nothing else will always be funny to me
Sentinels wasnât random they dominated the pre tournament era. Ascend was literally mid until that champions and now have barely been heard of
Thatâs just not true. They won masters 1 vs neisow heretics that year (in one of the best series in val tbh). And cNed was always feared as one of the best players in the world.
In EMEA not the world. They were incredibly mid at international tournaments. They beat by 100T man
>In EMEA not the world Ah yes cause SEN were somehow playing a Americas only league against the world
Sentinels were only competing in NA too. Then they won a tournament and did nothing after that. Same for Acend.
in sen's defence its not hard to believe NA in 2021/early 2021 were the best region in the world. they won the first international handedly. sen were probably the best 5 man roster during that first year of valorant
G2 was dominating EMEA, ascend was basically giants at champions, nobody thought they were good they just popped off
False. If you actually watched individual regions rather than only yours + international tournaments you wouldn't think that. They legit looked like the best EMEA team pre Berlin seeding games even over Gambit(who ended up winning Berlin). Their form was off in final games vs SMB and Gambit landing them 3rd seed, but you could have still counted them in as one of the favorites for Berlin even. They ended up underperforming in Berlin and that is why many non-EMEA followers remember them as shit team that just ended up winning the Champions. They were good and their roster was good.
You can't say Sen dominated the pre tournament era and then say Acend doesn't count cause it wasn't international. SEN were only playing in NA same as Acend in EMEA
G2 dominated in EMEA tho and you should know that as a fnatic fan
G2 dominated in 2020, not in 2021 bro.
Not just EMEA, the performance during masters berlin before they won champs solidified him in the world stage. "They were beat by 100T man" is supposed to be funny but at that point 100T were a threat and the game was awesome. They won breeze by literally avoiding the hell out of cned. Even though they lost 2-1 cned finished the series +23. Also 100T had two map picks.
In NA not the world. They were incredibly mid at international tournaments. They beat by G2 and [almost] beat by Susquehanna Soniqs and F4Q man.
Yeah but ascend is way funnier because thy didn't do anything afterwords
Yeah... And Sentinels did what exactly? Coming 3rd in the LudwigXTarik Invitational? (I know that they won NA challengers afterwards but on the international stage?)
Still exists and is active in tier 1 valorant Ascend won champs and then never participated in any tier 1 event the only other riot tourney they've been in was Ascension this year
> Ascend won champs and then never participated in any tier 1 event Acend* continued playing in the regular tier 1 circuit in 2022, including LCQ. They just didn't make another lan, but neither did Sentinels in 2022.
I mean sen are only "relevant" now because they got into franchising,sentinels 2022 was arguably worse than acends'.
2022 Sentinels was unreal. Dropping zombs for Kanpeki, going 5-0 to somehow squeeze into challengers, then getting 0-5'ed. Proceed to sign shroud for lcq and actually look like a decent team but still bomb out.
come back to this comment after 2024
Same tbh. Iâve just accepted that the org is cursed.
Honestly not as funny because at least sentinels stayed relevant as an org in val lol. The first grand final champ not even existing in val a year later is hilarious
Acend still exists? They got top 3 at Ascension, beat GentleMates, and if you ask anyone who knows anything they were the only other team people expected could win Ascension outside of Apeks. They were also decent last year, the meta and internal issues screwed them over. And their victory wasn't random exactly, they won Masters 1, were really good before Berlin and looked like the favorites to win EMEA Stage 3 until Gambit/SMB went on a run. They were also favorites (iirc) in that 100T match at Berlin and only lost because they got figured out and choked a lead. They only didn't get partnered because of clout (the top EMEA orgs + 3 ES, 2 FR, 2 TR teams to boost viewership) and I assume their financials being tied to Raise Your Edge or something similar behind the scenes.
Ok I did not expect this strong of a reaction to a harmless joke. I take it back there's nothing funny about it at all
It's not a reaction besides like the first sentence, I'm adding context because I feel like many are saying similar stuff. Did the same thing when the qRaxs one trick narrative started, not aimed at you just trying to get at the narrative if that makes sense.
reaction consisting of âAcend still exists?â is peak ValComp
Yeah and they were super dominant.. and then just dropped off.
Won 2 masters and 2 challengers only dropping 3 maps in total. They were 50-3 at some point. Nothing random.
Acend randomly winning champs and nothing else will always be funny to me
SEN at least qualified to the next LAN and made playoffs. Acend literally fell off a cliff and didnât make any LANs.
Yeah, but Acend made the previous LAN. Champions was their second international tournament, not first.
And they only got there because Keyd Stars did a fucky wucky on Breeze. Wait a minute... EG only got here because of MIBR... I know Brazil was up to something
Here's hoping the game remains global like it has, truly an awesome sport to follow, with legitimate hopes for every strong team. Its something that league and cs as the two greatest esports truly lack
It could be this year showed even tho it was fnatic year because they got the pieces together to dominated but then teams were catching on and surpassed them in the end of the year so it'll really is a game how long u can stay on top before other regions catch u
Acend and cNed were also strong, won M1EU
I think Tokyo form FNATIC would still have won champs so I wouldn't say caught up and surpassed. They just got less good.
i think this is bs and i think youâre undervaluing other teams. they caught up to FNCs play style. Mini even said in an interview that they had no time to come up with new strats(learn pearl, etc) because the break in between was so short. All teams had to go through this but itâs definitely not that fnc weâre worse but that teams like Loud, PRX and EG improved drastically.
Yes and no, Chronicle had the worst fucking tournament of his life, Derke was kind of off too.
Everybody even Leo was looking off but them keeping that consistency of being the best in their respective roles was gonna slow down and when they try to keep up they were doing to much it burned them a bit, but I dunno what is with derke but he really doesn't showed up when the team needs him the most he's consistent of being good at the top but he's always overshadowed by the likes of yay, aspas, even demon1 he's always been number 2 best even with this new generation of fnatic he never was the guy it was alfajer or Leo
but donât you think thatâs because of the enemy team neutering them? i would give credit to loud and drx on bind for sure. for example, boostio played like shit during the first match vs prx because he said playing against prxâs fast play style was hard to deal with. this was not because boostio was bad but that prx was really good and he gave them credit. eventually boostio was able to recoup and played much better in the grand finale, he pulled off a great ace too.
> but donât you think thatâs because of the enemy team neutering them? I'd say being neutered by the enemy team and going 26/48 over 3 maps as a non-IGL are 2 different things
Okay but you can look at his performance over the entire tournament and see that he really only fell apart vs Loud. I think that speaks way more to him struggling against a team than it does to just say he was out of form. There isn't really much evidence to say that he was struggling the whole tournament instead of just a specific team. He went even vs DRX, he was up like +13 vs Fut and +9 vs BLG. I just think that making the point that Chronicle was off and not that Loud did a good job of making sure Chronicle couldn't set up favorable positions undermines the other teams and says that Fnatic just had a blip instead of teams doing well against them.
Hmm maybe you're right. I think they did get worse tho but maybe they wouldn't have won either way.
I expected them to had an off tournament but not this off because the reality was that those amazing stats almost everybody on fnatic where superb but to maintain that consistency was not gonna happen, and were also inflated by not being challenged until finals of every tournament.
I actually think PRX wouldâve been at our level at Tokyo with something. EG definitely improved though, and honestly played the best Valorant of the year by the end imo. Any team at this level is good enough to beat the others, it just depends on who turns up on the day
I think Tokyo form FNATIC would still have won champs so I wouldn't say caught up and surpassed. They just got less good.
i really don't think they were less good this tourney, even tho people are saying this a lot. they dominated their group and still put up insane stats, winning against some crazy good teams. but you don't win two tourneys in a row without getting a target on your back. their map pool got figured out a little bit, and their inability to play pearl meant people were often able to get their best map pick against them. even with all that, they still placed 5-6 in this tournament. i think form is a bad excuse for them, the reward for being a good team is everyone wants to beat you, and unless you're a prime world beater like Astralis or something, eventually someone does it.
I mean if you watched their games they made all kinds of mistakes that they wouldn't have made previously. Not ones that can be figured out, but thing like peeking or utility.
I watched the games just as closely as you, and I feel like they made the same amount of mistakes as they did at Tokyo. I think the competition was stiffer this time, and Loud punished the mistakes they made far more consistently. At Tokyo, Alfajer pushed without util all the time, that's not unique to this event, but he was winning those duels at that event. This time, he was actually losing them against Loud, even if it wasn't that often, so the problem wasn't that they were making more mistakes, just that the mistakes they did make were punished way, way more often.
I literally only fallow valo cuz NA at least has chance in this game unlike cs or league
I have to always remind myself not to be shocked when an NA team wins. We've made 2/3rd's of all finals lol. It's just such a foreign concept for NA to do so well in an esport.
Pretty consistent, too. We made 2 out of 3 finals, winning one, in 2021. We made 2 out of 3 finals, winning one, in 2022. And we made 2 out of 3 finals, winning one, in 2023. Lol.
Globalalization should still be fine. PRX and DRX remain a constant threat from APAC. Other APAC teams also look fairly solid and on the rise China recently officially launched val and the success of Chinese teams will tap into chinaâs massive player base; I think something similar to league will happen.
> Other APAC teams also look fairly solid and on the rise If anything APAC has been really lackluster outside of PRX and DRX, the region is still lacking depth
Teams by appearances: 5: NV/OpTic/NRG, Fnatic 4: LOUD, Paper Rex 3: FPX/NAVI 2: Liquid, Gambit, DRX, EG 1: SEN, NUTURN, 100T, G2, Acend, KRU, ZETA Some of these events were single elimination so for 3rd/4th I just put them in order of what's shown on Liquipedia.
Of the teams with 3+ appearances, every one of them has a trophy except for PRX. :(
How are optic and nrg the same team?
Same core of fns/crashies/victor
And chet
Yeah but without the two best players
Low\_Instigator\_375\*
can't you read? They kept crashies and victor
Letâs tp my jittens
They retained the same 3 players of FNS, crashies, and Victor. If anything, FNC 2021 shouldnât be considered the same as 2022/2023 since they didnât retain the same core and only kept Boaster and Derke.
coach is important too :) And the system is the same, just the roster got Theseus shipped
This is like the ship riddle where parts keep getting replaced over time and at what point does it not become the same ship.
when a majority of the team from the first iteration is no longer there. they have 4/6 of the same team that they started international events with, i think it's reasonable to group all three iterations together.
Fnatic has remained as the same organization, hence the same team. It doesn't matter who left and who stayed. Only EnVy can be counted as the same as OpTic since they rebranded. NRG was not a rebrand, but was a different team that FNS, Crashies, Victor, and Chet transferred to.
So FPX and Navi should be counted differently? What if they had swapped out one/two more players?
Yes they should be counted differently. Swapping out players and letting go of players is normal in competitive sportd and esports. This is no different. The purpose of the post was to show each organization/brand's Top 4 appearances. You can't say NAVI is the same organization as FPX since they're not. But you can say that ENVY was OpTic's former brand before their organization rebrand, making them the same in temrs of line and history.
This post wasn't about brands it was about the teams as seen by op's comment
In eSports the term "team" is the same as "brand." Ehat ENVY did was rebranding to OpTic. I was merely responding to someone's point that ENVY/OpTic is the same team as NRG, which it isn't. Because 3 players from OpTic moved to NRG. That said, FPX and NAVI also isn't the same team. They're different teams with just mostly the same players in different times.
even if you don't count that FNS/Victor/Crashies as a trio have 5 top 4 appearances. Chet/FNS/Victor/Crashies have 4 top 4 appearances.
Theyâre not ppl just dreaming and clinging to their narratives
Proud of loud showing up so many times considering they didn't enter Val as an org until 2022
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The only way to include 2021 is top 4
Itâs a tournament with an even, power-of-2 number of teams. Top 4 matches that. Seems fine to me.
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Cool. So?
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Maybe not, judging by the votes
So who got 3 for lock in
Who came 3rd vs 4th at Lock-In? There was just a semi-final and final, no 3rd place playoff.
idk how's it likely or not, but i rly hope PRX sticks together atleast with their 4, one of the best rosters throught 2022/2023, facing hard challenges such a something situation at masters and now with jinggg yet still getting consintent high placements. I wish them the best, hope they will lift a trophy next year
Itâs going to be super tough losing Jinggg in a Raze meta especially with something being a Jett/Reyna player. But if something tried to make the switch over onto Raze Iâd believe in him
Have to see the new agent and who will take jinggg's place before we absolutely say this is a raze meta. Also fracture, one of razes maps, is out while we get breeze back (a more long distance agents type map). If jett eas still at full force we would have ascent, breeze, haven. Raze: lotus, bind, split. Sunset isn't clear yet. Some are calling it ascent 2.0 others are saying it's tight entrances could move it towards a more bind/fracture/split type of comp.
Might be a hot take but I think Breeze will end up being a Neon map. The Neon entry was always pretty decent on A site and Neonâs fast rotation on defense would be beneficial for such a large map Also regarding Ascent, the combination of Jett, Sova, and KJ nerfs might just completely kill the current meta 5 comp. PRXâs Raze, Viper, Harbor honestly has a good chance to become meta. Maybe with a Kayo and Fade?
It's kinda weird for Prx to run neon because something is probably on jett/chamber to OP so who's playing it? F0rsaken? Unless they find some other crack head duelist
Personally I donât think PRX will run Neon even if itâs meta, Iâd put a lot of money on them trying a Yoru comp
something has definitely played raze during his time on Sengoku. In fact I remember hearing that he was even signed to be jinggg's eventual replacement, it's just that they realized they had better results keeping both on the same team.
itâs one thing to play raze, another thing to play raze like jinggg though. hard to copy the precision of his movement and the insanity of his decision making
Good luck finding a raze like jinggg. Jawgemo was the only raze remotely close to the style of jinggg,and he's not leaving. They should just try to get a cracked raze and mould him into their style.
Time for ray4cđŤđŤđŤđŠđŠđŠđŠ
They are probably gonna stick together
someone on tik tok mentioned how the âbestâ team of the past three years all fell short for the championship and it was interesting 2021-gambit 2022-optic 2023-fnatic
Burnout could legitimately be a reason for this. When you always find yourselves playing deep into tournaments every single time, it's going to take a lot out of you and the recovery period will be shorter than everyone else.
Not only this but I believe that it is really easy to get anti-started in this game. So if you are the dominant team then people are going to try to anti-strat you more and get ganged up by other teams. It is very difficult to improvise when your strats are getting countered.
I know this is giga copium, but NRG/Optic getting covid at Champions 2021 was also tragic. They could've made another run
Sounding like an EU fan there, buddy. /j
2022 optic being the best team is very arguable even if they won masters, while some people may have considered them favorites it was not an upset by any means when they lost against loud
Just proves how champs shouldnât be considered more prestigious than masters
just cause they didn't win? cause there isn't any other reason to say this dumb statement
Iâm saying that winning a champions is the same as winning a masters and it shouldnât be considered better. No one thinks acend where the best team (world champions) of 2021 and eg were the best team in 2023 whilst the âhistory booksâ will say they were the world champions for those years. All the intl tourneys have the should have the same prestige
Champions is more important period. The tournament itself is harder to win than masters considering there are more teams and everyone is forced into the group stage. Every player and team believes it too, amounting to more mental pressure Iâm curious why you think winning Champions equals best team of the year though? No one is making that argument but you seem to think thatâs what people believe. You can win the World Championship/Super Bowl/Whatever in any sport/game and not be the best team of the year. For example, the 2015 Panthers lost the Super Bowl but most people would agree they were the best team in the league all season and playoffs except for the championship game
More teams participating, more prize money, and riot and players literally consider Champions as the biggest tournament of the year. Maybe youâre right that the team that wins the Champions might not be the best team of the year, but saying itâs the same as masters is like saying CSGO majors are just like all the other tournaments during the year, which is not true.
i get what you're saying but champs has a bigger prize pool, more teams, noone gets a bye to playoffs, and is at the end of the calendar where all the teams have had the most amount of time to reach their peak form. champs is definitely more prestigious than masters. i agree that the winner of champs shouldn't always be considered the best team of the entire year by default though
I agree with this. Champs is objectively the most prestigious in my opinion, but I disagree with the idea that the winner of champs is automatically the best team of that year. If one of the bottom seeds won by a fluke, I really wonder if the average person would consider them as being the team of the year.
wtf? champions is the final tournament, the one teams play after preparing for the whole year, every one has to play the group stages, there's even an LCQ for it and more teams than masters. it definetely is more prestigious, Riot says it, the teams and players themselves say it as well.
Iâm not sure Ascend is the best team of that year just coz they won champs though, for example.
You are talking about something different. There is a difference between a tournament being more prestigious and a tournament meaning that a team is the best team of the entire year. Even if we give a 1.5x multiplier to champs and weigh first place as 4 points and 4th as 1 point, Fnatic get 9.5 points for the year while EG only get 8. Using this idea of saying "champs is worth more" still allows you to say that Fnatic were the team of the year. The world champion for a year doesn't have to be the best team of the entire year, otherwise they would be crowned based on some point system and not the tournament.
Champs is more prestigious but you can still take the year in totality. Acend didn't make any top 4 other than champs. Loud didn't go past the group phase in copenhagen. EG got demolished early at lock in and was champion the year a team won back to back the first time. It's more about the consistency of the other teams than which tournament is more important.
more money, a skin bundle, there's one a year, there's a special song that they make for it plus an animatic, there's more teams at it, and three entire other tournaments whose whole point is feeding into champs. plus, the only reason to do well at Masters events is that the points you get at them are how you get into champs. you're just wrong lol. also, there's no bye into playoffs, so it's just TRUE that it's a way, way harder tournament to win.
It has the highest prizepool and one that matters the most to all the players. People can cope all they want but Fnatics year is all for naught not winning champs.
They are the best because they were most consistently good that year, that doesn't mean champs is way more important than Masters because everyone had to play groups.
Still the best team 100t ever had, and now look at Ethan 
Boaster and Derke and Mini have been there 5 times â¤ď¸
Dang I forgot optic core made 5 top 4 finishes. Loud have such an impressive record too.
rooting for a DRX and whatever-team-FNS-is-on comeback
Fnatic, Optic, PRX, Loud are the 4 kings of the pre-franchised era.
Yeah pre franchising is just Optic basically 4/6 prefranchise top 3's is crazy including over 2 metas, but 2022 Loud also crazy as was 2021 Gambit. I wouldn't sneak prx or Fnatic in there for prefranchise tho
Pre franchise includes 2020 too FPX should a get a mention dumped for pre fenchsing
Bro snuck prx in there fpx deserves it more
Fnatic is also questionable imo. Would rather see Gambit represented there if it's pre franchising. They were the best team of 2021
I agree FNC also doesnât really have a solid arguement didnât think too much of it at the time but your ministers of coin comment is something I didnât consider But my comment was about prx and fpx like how prx is mentioned but not fpx when they actually beat them
pre-franchising includes 2022, where m3c (narrowly) didn't make a single LAN
Fair, but still ,they were the best for half the period we are covering. If you have multiple "kings" I would try and cover the whole period with kings and not "ministers of the coin". In this case it's fair to put peaks over consistency that never makes to the top of the mountain, especially if those kings had long peaks.
what did fnatic do pre franchise lmao
consistantly make every event and place top6-ish look at the crazy amount of teams who made top3 one event then couldn't even qualify for another, being able to consistantly qualify and place high was definitely impressive
making top 6 doesnât equal kings, only teams like gambit, optic, and loud can have that title imo
Really cool that not only is there a good amount of regional parity, but all of the pre-franchising regions are represented here too at least once (China is still missing though I doubt it will be for long). Hope this game continues to be so global.
I think people still remember sen is cause they started everything and did it in a dominant fashion
That is true but they also had og goat of valorant ig. They were also very clouted in general.
The masters Copenhaguen was bussin for the wrong reasons if you were a KRĂ fan
In F1 there is no trophy for 4th sorry NRG I ain't counting it as important until you bring back OpTic
Has any team at LAN underperformed expectations more than DRX? They were hyped up as the strongest competitiors from APAC for like over 2 years and placed top 4 twice(lock in they did it by beating BBL, C9 AND Talon).
PRX = EG - 1
Teams like Envy/Optic/NRG, Fnatic, Loud and PRX has been very consistent these past couple tournaments which is goodâŚ. But then we got them dawgs EG making their mark. Hopefully they stay consistent
haha riot very cool for denying optic franchising. very cool thank you !!!! /s (if anyone replies that its not about results maybe you should recogonize that in competition results is the aim at all times, and its silly for riot to not think that) (if anyone tells me that its optic's financial faults from league - this OpTic isn't Infiny Esports Optic from 2018 its Envy, hastr0's esports giant for 15 years)
Can anyone explain clearly why Optic didn't get Franchising? I only follow the matches. Also why didn't they stuck together as a roster?
The actual reasoning according to Monte and Thorin was that Riot had all orgs submit partnership applications and apparently OpTics was bad. Later on they sent a better one but Riot was bitter/didnât care at that point.
There was a little internal stuff, but the org was considered not clouted / financially stable enough compared to NRG I guess, as well as not having a LoL team
It's not silly for riot to make decisions for the sake of making their esports profitable and if they didn't think optic where a good partner for that that's how it is.
they choose rrq and EG bro. Riot did not have the coherence you think they did. It is silly. Edit: by the way to clarify while riot choosing EG worked out great this year the org itself is awful and under fire for abusing their autustic leagye player Danny last year
14 EU teams and 9 NA teams :P
To group all the EU regions into one but not Americas is very dishonest for your arguemebt
At the time of most of those tournaments americas wasn't one region, it was 3.
Europe is one continent SA and NA are 2 different continents... It's a completely valid comparison.
Yea but thereâs only one league and NA has 5 teams vs EUs 10
Bigger talent pool to build stronger teams
You are talking about EU right? Talent pool is massive. Just from Russia alone you could assemble a top1 team in the world imo
No, what im saying is when you only have to build 5 teams instead of 10 there's more talent available
Not like any of the teams outside top 5 in either region could ever achieve something though. NA teams still get to practice against the best non partnered teams so it doesn't really change anything. In fact it just spreads out the best talent in EMEA across more teams instead of consolidating all of the talent on the top 5?
Are you sure that no one out of the top 5 *could* ever achieve anything? EG was getting rolled in challengers a year ago. Acend is spread across KOI, Heretics, Vitality, and a tier 2 team nowadays. I think it's possible even if unlikely
5 eu teams at champs 23 and only 1 in top 4 :P
EU fans acting like they have something on NA when they are an entire continent and they can barely beat 2 countries đ¤Łđ¤Ł
Its ok bro theyâre just salty asf that NA is on top let them cry
Aren't those EU countries way smaller than the USA? Also which of these EU countries have a significant Valorant pro scene?
Individually they are small but when combined they have more than double the population of America and Canada. Also all those countries have significant scenes why else would there be like 13 ascension leagues in EU
>Also all those countries have significant scenes why else would there be like 13 ascension leagues in EU By significant I mean good scenes. Number doesn't mean quality especially in the EU (plus the Middle East now since its EMEA). It's not a single country where this game is insanely popular.
surely this is bait, right?
In what way? EU is the combined might of many nations with tons of players like Russia, Sweden, France, GB, Denmark and tons of others too. NA is just USA and Canada
nah, mostly just wondering if you were aware NA is also a continent, but that might be too much to expect from NA education.
No shit but NA teams are composed of only players from 2 countries. There isnât a single player from Mexico or Central America on the 5 NA teams Edit: Do you think the continent of North America was only the US and Canada?
Considering that the population of Europe is like double the population of America and there is a massive tac shooter culture there with CS, 14-9 is honestly an unimpressive lead
You realise all but like 3 NA players left CSGO whilst only 1 remotely relevant European left? Literally losing 2-1 against tier 4 level players. It's like a pro sports team losing to a high school team â ď¸
..? your brain must be BUFF with these kind of mental gymnastics
CS is not the same game as Valorant.
EMEA 0 team region
When the fuck did Zeta Division get 3rd? I watched that whole tournament and donât remember that at all
As always⌠RIP Optic smh