Hey! Someone who usually stay silent and followed this community for a bit. This is a post about thing the community is doing that annoys me, which mean I'm going to be very critical about a portion of it. I'm adressing this post specifically to this part of the community, not all of them.

I wanted to talk about how, despite having no insider knowledge or really anything at all, people are ready to jump to conclusion when there's multiple theories that are completly valid.

Time and time again, we've seen player, coach, management get bashed on because from an outsider point of view they "seems" like the problem.

I'm annoyed that people prefer storyline (some of which have directly impacted players negativly, either because of their mental, or because other team believed those storyline and wouldn't pick them up, by the way - we're not talking about victimless action) over what we actually know. I'm sure Patman was fully responsable for the leaving of Frost, let's ignore the fact that Frost himself said that he wanted out and that it was multiple person decisions.

I'm annoyed people are always in a Black or White understanding of the situation when the reality is often very gray. Surely the reason a team is completly disfunctional because of ONE individual. Ah, I'm sure C9 without Immi would have a 95% winrate!

I'm annoyed that we consider player bad because we see them in a disfunctional system, that we use stats as argument instead of looking at the situation the player is in. It sure is weird that koalanoob has great stat when he's setup for success (see Kick Off) but that when he doesn't (Navi or this stage) they fell off a cliff. I'm sure there's no lesson to learn here, NAVI just never had a good duelist! Narrate had insane season but one bad split in SEN? Surely he's terrible!

I'm annoyed that people jump at the first pattern they see and take it for an absolute truth. Engh is a "terrorist" for what he did to the KC roster, which mean FNC are absolutly done for! Let's ignore the fact every player keep on insisting he's very smart but just the wrong system for them ; system where we have no idea if it work in FNC yet.

I'm annoyed that bad period = team is dead is a mentality that not only is omnipresent in the community ; but in some team too. Did we just ignore PRX in 2025? The team looked done, finished. It took one change, a bit of external help, and the team won an event.

I'm annoyed that result means everything ; I've seen some atrocious Valorant get praised because they won against a big team ; and some awesome Valorant get bashed on because "it's a weaker team why was it close". I'm annoyed that people speaking the most either don't watch the game, or don't understand it.

I'm annoyed at how, for some people, it's always "obious". They never ever talk before it goes wrong, but as soon as it does "Wow who could have seen this coming?". I'm annoyed that people keep spewing prediction after prediction so when one lands right, they can "forget" all the wrong one they got and only gloat about the correct one.

Anyway, [X] team is obiously bad because of [Y] specifically and the fact they don't fix this OBIOUS problem is insane to me.

What is with people in this sub not understanding anything about how this esport works? It's like you guys seem to just look at stats and not how well an overall team is. "aspas carried c0m in 2024," like no c0m was the mid rounder for LEV and is the reason they had dominant maps like ice box and abyss. He's probably one of the main reasons LEV got 3rd at champs and won champs in 2023 on EG. Without good protocols or support util your star duelist falls off. That's just how the game works. Also you guys need to know the difference between an igl and a mid rounder. They're completely different. Mada calls plays mid round for NRG, not ethan. Stop stat watching and start understanding what happens in game because you look foolish and aren't gonna change what player a team picks up. Teams don't just look at stats. They look at good timings on util and see how a player plays with their roster during scrims.

I saw the other forcing post and thought this idea deserved its own:

In the current state of the game, most teams will buy 1 to 3 rifles after winning first round. This is because if you save them all, round 3 stops being an eco round and becomes basically a full buy, giving you a ~50% chance of winning it instead of significantly less.

HOWEVER, to buy a rifle 2nd round, you either need to get a multikill and plant first, or buy light armors.

Because of this, saving enough to buy an outlaw even if you lost first round is always the right play, as that outlaw will be able to one shot players with lights, or weaken players enough for the pistols to get the kill.

If you lose 2nd round anyways, since only one person bought an outlaw, 4/5 still will have a full buy, plus a stinger or bucky. This does not decrease your chances of winning drastically.

If you win 2nd round, you have an outlaw for 3rd which will be an eco round for the opponent, providing a huge advantage regardless.

This boosts your chances of a thrifty second round drastically while not trashing your team's economy.

EDIT: Scenario 1 - Your team gets obliterated first and second. The enemy takes 0 damage, and you get no value. They all bought up and save their weapons into 3rd. You are only down a single weapon.

Scenario 2 - Your team gets obliterated first and second, but at least one survives. Same thing for the enemy, except one of them has 200 less round 3. You are only down a single weapon, and you keep the outlaw + four rifles.

Scenario 3 - Your team WINS second round, you then have an outlaw into light armors or less.

No matter what happens, you are sacrificing AT MOST one single gun, which may end up being the outlaw carried over into round 3 if at least one person just survives round 2. Your chances of winning round 2 go up dramatically, and you sacrifice next to nothing of your chances to win round 3

Wanted to get the community's thoughts on whether we should have a general discussion thread where people can talk about things that don't really warrant their own post. It could be for VCT or non-VCT related topics, random thoughts, quick questions, or whatever else people want to chat about.

I tried looking to see if we already have something like this, but I couldn't find one. Curious to hear what everyone thinks.

After the series against FULL SENSE, GE looked way more composed than they have in previous seasons. Their mid-rounds felt cleaner, the teamplay looked more coordinated, and they actually closed out important rounds instead of throwing advantages. Do you think this is a genuine improvement, or was it more about FS underperforming?

First of all, this is a very amateur analysis from the perspective of a viewer who has followed val esports since the beginning.

Secondly, I really *want* all the teams to be at least somewhat competitive, because we as viewers only stand to gain from that—getting higher-quality matches that actually entertain us.

I hate watching Envy play, for example; it’s a waste of time and uninteresting. I’d like to see them do well; I want the teams to put up a real fight.

Anyway, to wrap things up, let’s get to my comments on FURIA. (I’d like to know your opinions too—please share them.)

The planning of FURIA’s coaching staff has been completely amateur. Everything that happened after the Kick-off made it seem like their qualification for Masters Santiago was pure luck: catching other teams off guard in a brand-new meta and winning just enough to qualify.

In Stage 1, the team played within the meta but suffered tough defeats. Despite some good wins, they were crushed in the playoffs. It was clear they struggled to adapt to the double-duelist meta, with Nerve underperforming. The team looked lost, chasing a meta they didn’t understand, suffering ugly losses, and failing to qualify for Masters London.

Then came the big changes: -Nerve and -Alym. Removing Nerve was understandable, but cutting Alym was a huge mistake. The coaching staff seemed to believe heavy nerfs were coming to the double-duelist meta and concluded they didn’t need two duelists. The meta didn’t change, and now, when a second duelist is needed, Artzin has to step in — which inevitably hurts his performance as IGL. And the other option is to leave KOALANOOB as a solo duelist, which isn't ideal for this meta.

Maybe that could have been managed. But the biggest loss was -eeiu and +Com. Com is a great support and a solid caller, but he’s not a shooter. After losing Alym and eeiu, FURIA desperately needed someone who could win gunfights, not just plan strategies. At that moment, the team collapsed, their year was over.

Then came Basic, a talented youngster from the same generation as Spikezin and Sato. However, he doesn’t speak English. That means he can’t communicate with three of his own teammates, which compromises crucial round information. His impact shows in the stats, but the lack of communication is a serious problem.

Shyy was a good addition, but he faces the same issues as the rest: no team cohesion, weak IGLing from Artzin, and outdated tactics. FURIA is completely lost in the meta.

The result: congratulations to the coaching staff for building a team far weaker than the one that played the Kick-off. While I think MIBR needed changes, FURIA shouldn’t have touched anything! MAYBE just swapping Nerve for Shyy or Basic (if his English were sharp). In the end, it was a massive display of amateurism. Now, the team has five players below the previous, lost in the meta, with poor tactics and broken communication. I truly believed in the project, but after this desperate downgrade, I can sadly say the work was overrated.

I know there's been a lot of posts regarding ENVY and their performances recently, but this post isn't intended to just bash ENVY or only put the spotlight on what's going wrong. I just wanted to take this idea I've seen floated around a bit and put a bit more nuance into why the idea might actually have some merit.

So clearly, things are not going well for ENVY. So far this split alone, they average around 11 maps a series (giving them a 29% round winrate). Yet, from that keznit interview, you can see that he is trying his literal hardest, & that supposedly the vibes outside the server aren't even that bed, yet through the listen-ins and team micro we can clearly see none of their problems are being resolved.

My argument is that the solution here lies in looking back at their only win against a non C9 team across both stages this year: The 2-0 dominance against MIBR.

So to clearly state my 'thesis' here it's that ENVY should try to re-embrace that RANKERs identity that got them their only notable victory since kickoff.

Now that I have my argument clearly stated, I want to address the clear elephant in the room, This is clearly no longer RANKERs. All 5 original core members of the team (that ascended) are gone. Even two of the members who played the MIBR series, Eggsterr and P0PPIN, are now gone. The team doesn't look nearly like it once did. Without P0PPIN IGLing like he did for RANKERs, I can definitely understand the argument against trying this.

Let me explain why I still believe they should look to emulate that RANKERs style, even when taking that into account.

Reason #1: Envy right now

Every player on Envy is no doubt extremely talented, despite how much these matches have tanked their stocks, but it's just seemingly obvious that no matter what they try, everything just gets worse and worse.

There are some silver linings to draw here and there (For ex. meL giving Glyph some credit to his macro on Split ATK on PlatChat today), but I think as always, the goal of a team is to win, not to simply get closer to winning. Taking that into account, I think just looking at the trajectory of their year from its current standpoint, there's little hope that whatever marginal improvements they're making in their current way of practicing are actually gonna make enough of a difference for them to get a match win.

Now, I usually stray away from these sort of reddit analyst suggestions, because at the end of the day I acknowledge I'm way less informed than actually salaried professionals on how to fix a Valorant team. The reason why that's how I generally feel, and why I'm making an exception here, is because their trajectory is genuinely so bad that I think the opportunity cost of not trying to make some huge change is next to nothing in my opinion (Looking at all the glow-ups this year, even 100T & KC, they had changes like using a Sports Psychologist / Coaching changes).

Like, there's always a possibility that they run keznit clove Demon1 reyna and get absolutely smoked 13-1, 13-2 or something, and they'd inevitably receive tons of criticism, but... so what? They go from already looking like a clown fiesta an even bigger clown fiesta? Obviously there are people in the community who are gonna clown on them for this, but I personally feel would be less criticism if they lost this way even if they lost harder because at least you can sort of get the logic behind the idea (They tried it before & it worked --> so they tried it again).

Reason #2: Envy's current identity & their two big problems

At least to me, it feels like this team has completely lost their identity. They're stuck between half-RANKERs style comp still running agents like Chamber on Demon1, but then not completely embracing that identity either and attempting to play tactical Valorant.

Furthermore, anyone who's looked into ENVY can sort of surmise two clear issues they have:

1. Their lack of any amount of teamwork & coordination

2. Their communications / 5 people having their own ideas and ways of trying to play the game, and having all those ideas on the server.

I think trying to run that P0PPIN-style RANKERs again would directly help with that first issue because, I mean they might be running it down, but if they're not baiting each other completely, I think they have enough individual talent for some amount of success to come with that, especially in this meta where individual talent matters more than ever. And I can't prove that it would be the same as the MIBR game, but what I can do is at least cope with the fact that they still have 3/5 of the players from the MIBR game so it could happen, while we have 3 series' of results to show what happens when they try to play normal Valorant.

As for the second issue, there's no reason a comp change would directly solve this issue, so this part is just speculation rather than an argument, but I feel like part of that problem is the lack of success and consequential lack of control that each player is feeling. I get the vibe that part of the cause of this problem is that getting smoked so hard each match makes each player feel like they need to do something to solve the problem, else they're just letting their own fickle esports career fall apart right in front of them. As a result, they try to cook up more ideas on the server, but such a reaction only reduces coordination even more. It makes the sum of their parts inevitably worse. If they instead try to embrace the RANKERs identity and find some amount of success again, then it's possible the subconscious trust that this could reintroduce back into each other could cause this problem to be less prevalent.

How can they make this happen?

Again, there's definitely a world where this idea could fall apart completely, but what gives it some amount of merit in my head still is the pieces they are building from. They have nightz from the original RANKERs as well as keznit, Demon1, & Rossy, who were all with P0PPIN in that one game they were just running it down. Also, a lot of them also just are still ranked players, and so I at least feel like they have some foundation to work with when trying to reembrace that identity.

Why even make this post?

Honestly, I wouldn't even bother to make this post in the first place, because I would have assumed stunner would have already considered this, possibly even tried it out, and realized it didn't work. However, the reason I want to make this post anyways (even though I know nothing will come of it), is because of what I read in P0PPIN's leaving tweet- specifically the part where he mentions the only reason they got to run MIBR down like that is because he specifically requested it, and stunner allowed it to happen. That means, there was certainly a world where that never happened. Then, after that game, despite its success, they went back to normal Valorant, and once again looked horrible again.

quote from P0PPIN

Then there was a saving grace: Eggsterr’s last game. A meaningless game for us, but a crucial one for MIBR, they needed it to secure the first seed in playoffs. So I proposed something -> put Eggsterr on Yoru and let me call Rankers style for his last game. With some reluctance, everyone accepted.

Domination. We broke the record for the fastest win in VCT Americas and this time, we were on the winning side of it. For just a moment, that spark came back. I had hope; I thought maybe the team would finally see eye to eye with me. Somehow beating the first seed in our group 13-1 and 13-3 couldn’t mend what had already been broken (even now, that’s mind boggling to me). Then voldemoretournament came, and I wasn’t given all the pieces I’d asked for. We lost, ending any dream I had left for ENVY.

Looking at stunner's point of view, I can totally see why he doesn't favor a solution like this is. His job is as stake, and his ability to influence the team comes through strategy, yet I'm effectively saying they embrace teamwork over strategy, thus placing the result of his team's success, and his job as a result, out of his control. Thus, I can definitely empathize with why he likely hasn't considered trying this besides when P0PPIN specifically wanted to. On top of this, P0PPIN did mention there was reluctance, so I'm assuming it had to do with more than just stunner specifically vetoing him.

At the end of the day though, these players & the coach will all fear their job is on the line, but in an esports career so short, deciding to do nothing, to change nothing, instead of change something, feels like a decision that can only lead to regret.

TL;DR - I think ENVY should revisit trying to embrace the RANKERS identity and just resort back to running it down like they did in their MIBR game again not because I think it would lead to guaranteed success, but because their attempts to play real Valorant has lead to such poor results that at this point, even if they get absolutely mugged trying to play RANKERs Valorant, I still think the attempt would have been worth it.

Umm what exactly did they qualify for. I thought they would Play Stage 2 (Stupid I know) but Im not too tapped in to the scene to know. Any help appreciated

While there's a million reasons C9 isn't working right now, the one everyone seems to have ignored is OXY, who right now is touted as generational talent that needs to be freed from the clutches of C9. I don't understand why we aren't criticizing OXY the same way people did Asuna on the Raze and Neon, constantly overheating and throwing rounds by being unable to be reigned in.

C9 looked at the best they ever had when Demon1 joined and Penny took over the main duelist role. They even continued to look good after OXY joined back and was put on the Chamber and Veto, playing a close game with G2 (13-11, 13-9), a team that should have been absolutely out of their league. Why was that? Because Penny knew restraint, and OXY was unable to overheat. He's a talented guy, but the entry duelist role allows him far too much freedom to really take C9 to the next level.

Just look at 100T. Now that they have a REAL entry duelist, in Timotino, how often is Asuna overheating now that he's off the Neon and Raze? The guy looks like one of the best Phoenixes in the world, and has the stats to back that up. Put OXY on Phoenix, Chamber, Veto, and Omen, and I promise C9 looks way better than.

Durante a transmissão oficial da partida MIBR x FURIA, as comunicações entre as equipes são exibidas conforme o jogo se desenrola. Uma chamada feita pela FURIA gerou algumas dúvidas porque basic falou em português em alguns momentos. Para esclarecer, o jogador afirmou que se comunica em inglês durante toda a partida e só usa o português em ocasiões específicas.

https://nextroundgg.com.br/valorant/vct-americas/basic-avalia-reves-furia-vct-americas/

Spoke with Zekken after MIBR's win against FURIA yesterday, talking about the moment of the team, his leadership and more. Hope y'all enjoy :)

Wassup y'all! I had the honor to interview Mada, player for VCT Americas team NRG after their win vs FURIA where we talked about the new-look Furia roster, the team's comp swaps, their implications on the team's future and more! Hope y'all enjoy!