Between this and mako igling thank fuck the team has turned their brains back on. They’ve needed a performance coach for centuries with the way that they start to tilt and just throw round after round quite often. And I’d argue the results so far are proving worth it
Interesting collaboration between the two orgs. Most interesting part is that if I’m not mistaken, Ong will play against KRX in the first round of play-ins if KRX lose to T1 and go into play-ins as 6th seed 🤔
After the results today, we are now looking at a group omega where if KRX beat varrel tomorrow, we will have a 4-way tie at 2-2 between varrel, dfm, T1 and KRX. This means that if KRX beat varrel tomorrow to create this tie and then beat T1 in the final week, based on my understanding of tiebreaker rules for the group stage, KRX still end up coming in 2nd place and get to skip the play-ins. Interestingly PRX seem to not be guaranteed to skip the playoffs-ins but i can’t work out how they would end up in the play-ins 🤔 either way, KRX vs varrel is a very important match tomorrow for the entire group
DRX always perform stupidly well in one half of the stage only to typically crumble as soon as we are in the other half. Typically this means placing 1/2 in the group then dropping out quickly in playoffs….but this time KRX have had a rough group stage….but with the prep time to fix their comp issues, going up against a varrel who have had their momentum cut in their first match of the week..:maybe they can just about skip the early matches in play-ins giving them the perfect opportunity to run for champs once again 🙏😭 (also mods we lowk NEED a post flair for copium)
I imagine that this is not the way WE were expecting this group to be shaping up….things should get even more fun on Sunday where we COULD see KRX and PRX both running stupid amounts of duelists 😭
I honestly think that this comp would work incredibly well for this team IF they switched two agents. Hyunmin should be on jett, his phoenix was good previously, but he is such a great dive duelist and since Flicker needs to be on perma waylay from what I remember of his stats, jett is the best option here. That should in theory help with the comp getting stalled out by sentinel util since that way they are playing two agents who can go over trips, walls, etc. and then to accommodate for the lack of flashes created by removing phoenix, Beyn should be on Skye. I feel like the impact of the recon dart is somewhat diminished when playing with Jett waylay AND neon, Beyn is good with Skye, you still get info from the dog, flash and ult and so it makes sense in my mind. For the fun of it you could also put Free1ng on raze. OR you could simply be normal and run waylay, jett with Free1ng on senti…. But when is termi ever normal
Honestly, I’m quite happy for this. If my memory is correct, he’s been playing duelist in tier 2 and was playing well. The team needs a 2nd duelist, and as much as I like Yong, I’d rather see Free1ng on senti and flicker back on the team to replace Yong.
I’m scared. I’m afraid. This is the first split in a good century we haven’t had a different starting 5 to the previous split….even when the champs core seemed certain to stay together flashback left….what generational tragedy and disaster is about to befall this roster, or me.
I know a couple people and we have all been experiencing an issue where if our team of 6 pokemon gets eliminated, attempting to rejoin the battle will actuallly kick us out of the raid and perhaps prevent us from trying it again or rejoining the battle, even though it consumes our raid passes. Anyone else experiencing this right now?
With T1 benching stax, and buzz’s contract ending this year, termi could pull off a +- masterclass and do not only + stax + buzz, but could also simultaneously do - Beyn AND - Yong to fit buzz and stax back into the roster. Not sure about you guys but personally I’d consider this the peak of termi’s career (as a side note, I genuinely would like to see this because Beyn has looked rough this year and his igling evidently isn’t working as well as mako’s igling last year, and so stax is a perfect substitution for Beyn and DRX just look better with double duelist and if they need Free1ng to play senti since Yong seems to struggle on traditional sentinels, I wouldn’t be upset to see Yong get replaced with buzz, who can also play chamber well like Yong…also I’d kill for the mako, buzz and stax reunion AND hyunmin + buzz double duelist would be cinema)
Breach AND Gekko in the grand 2026 (and post nerf neon? Idk what patch challengers Korea is on)
Termi as a coach is clearly incredible and the consistency he can achieve across rosters is also very impressive, possibly one of the most consistent coaches in the esport behind alecks of course,but…..something needs to change about his use of timeouts. Thinking all the way back to champions 2025 playoffs upper round 1. DRX vs FNC map 1 haven, we are up 10 rounds iirc, 10-0 or 10-1 before going 10-2 at the half. DRX lose that map 11-13 and if I remember, one of the rounds where termi hits the timeout button is practically the end of the map. And by that point the team had been getting thrashed for an entire half, out of ideas and mentally crushed. Then again today in the evil tournament that shall not be named, they are up 8-1 against NS in map 2… NS win 3 in a row to close the half 8-4 and then they lose, pistol, eco and the anti-bonus leaving the game 8-7. Your team has now lost 6 rounds in a row and if I’m not mistaken they lose the next round and THEN termi calls a timeout, the team mental has to be down the fucking drain. And surprise surprise they lose 13-9 basically unable to get a foot in the door and stop the NS comeback. I seriously hope that the team realises this and can get this fixed because something isn’t working and at this rate they have 0 chance of attending champs. (Which they haven’t ever missed before)…this also leads me on to talking about the team’s roles but this post is too long and so I’ll make that it’s own separate post.
This is the lotus comp that KRX just ran against rrq (and lost 13-8). While I do like Free1ng on senti again, in a world where raze + jett might be the most viable double duelist comp it is so classically termi to take Yong off chamber on lotus (despite his repeated great performance) and simultaneously take Free1ng off raze (despite the potential shown) just to then run hyunmin on raze (despite how good his Jett is) 😭 this also reminds me of the other questionable comp choices against full sense which I will make a post about
For the past 5 years of competitive valorant, two teams (if I’m not mistaken) have attended every single champions. Those two are DRX (now KRX and formerly VS) as well as Fnatic. Looking at the vct pacific champs points currently, unless they pull out something miraculous for stage 2 (please give me KRX k1ng, if there is ever one roster move to make it’s that one) it is looking extremely dire for DRX, to the point that I can see them missing out on this year’s champions, which then further raises concerns for their chances of making it through next year’s Korea open qualifiers. (in theory if T1 don’t make it to masters and then both global and full sense have absolutely atrocious performances in London then DRX shouldn’t be too far behind and might be able to catch up with champs points through stage 2 groups)
Back in 2025 DRX swept kickoff 4-0 for their first trophy win, beating eventual masters winners T1 twice in both the upper and grand finals. Fast forward to stage 1, flashback takes a break and things go completely off the rails, coming in 4th after losing 2-0 to PRX, flashback returns, DRX top their stage 2 group and then despite being eliminated in playoffs, return to their full kickoff roster, flashback and hyunmin play incredibly well in champs and they come 3rd. 2026 comes around, Flashback officially retires from competitive valorant and drx have now placed 5/6th in kickoff losing to prx and then place 5/6th in stage 1, losing yet again to prx for the 3rd time in a row this year... It looks extremely dire for the team right now standing 7th overall in champs points I wouldn't be surprised if they miss out on champs for the first time ever this year... and so it begs the question, which other teams have been this heavily impacted by the loss of a single player?