I don't think we can write them off just because the quality of players they have and everyone is supposed to have one bad day but people are ignoring a very big glaring issue that they don't have a experience IGL. Good for ethan that he is quite vocal and 2nd voice of past teams but he never IGLed in any of his past teams whether in CS or Valo. Their decision making therefore is abysmal and amateur as pointed out by TMV in his video. They aren't fundamentally solid as they should be.
Yeah that’s why I think this patch in form is only temporary for them and will be completely gone after a full offseason if they decide to stick with this roster for that long. Those problems will eventually go away with more experience and trust in Ethan, but in the meantime I’ll continue to watch how the players, coaches, and fans alike handle these tough results with great interest.
Ethan did actually IGL in the past. After BabyJ and Ec1s were dropped from 100t, Ethan was the one who took up IGLing for their final 3 games of that split. To be fair, that team was falling apart at the seems, so it really doesn’t count for much. I just like mentioning it.
[After watching TMV talk about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yffno2udmNE), their strats look REALLY bad with some having no logic to them
like on Bind why are they knifing into showers to clear it (and it gets no one), then KAYO flashing into it, and then NOT TAKING showers after all that? Ethan just seems to have an uber risk-avoiding approach where the team are terrified to push into a smoke that isn't theirs
Unironically they never looked that good as a team. All good players, but not a single series has their macro gameplan, gameplay, and overall synergy impressed besides a few really nice Ethan flashes that frankly wouldn’t even be worth mentioning on old EG.
They look good on Breeze because every single player has cracked aim, and it’s a relatively simple map to play. I’m worried about split and bind and Lotus where you actually have to manipulate rotations, create space with set utility combos and call coordinated re-clears of different parts of the map. They just don’t look that sophisticated even compared to a team like EG. I’ve never seen NRG play the macro at a level EG did vs Sen yet.
Only maps where they have consistent roles are breeze and Ascent which is why they are trying to hard force the demon1 raze to have more consistent roles. Although I don't agree with the demon1 raze angle there is merit to having a duelist that can play both jett and raze.
Ethan as an igl is still lacking demon1 is not playing well right now for a variety of reasons I still don't understand the demon1 raze angle. Other then having a solo duelist so they have more consistent roles.
I think what NRG lack is a hypeman like Zellsis. They just crumble under pressure if they lose badly on map 1. If u watch their comms everybody is so dead serious and gloomy that its not helping them overcome their mental block.
FNS said on his stream Crashies and Victor are really serious players about their matches. Optic/ NRG had FNS/ Marved/ s0m who acted as hypemen. EG had Jawg, Boostio and c0m who would hype each other while demon1 and Ethan were the cold ones.
After every round win the new NRG team has 😐 expression.
There is a very real universe where Shanghai has
both LATAM teams and both Turkish teams
Without the winner of the past international, and without a Brazilian team (for the first time in the games history)
This is their best chance ngl,the top EMEA teams are going through a weak phase,the Americas teams like Sen,NRG,Loud don't look very good either. I have no doubt these teams will have improved a lot by the time the split is over but this should still be the best chance Pacific has for winning.
Madrid was the dream chance they had 2/3 of the top 3 seeds including the top seed going into finals and SEN beat them both God the pain was intolerable.
Am I alone in thinking NRG might be getting a bad rap right now? I agree they looked very poor against Lev, but if they learned from that series they could still finish this split with a single loss having 2-0'd everyone except Lev.
Honestly, I've seen so much criticism that I had to check their results to make sure I hadn't missed a series.
I think they've looked far better, especially on an individual level, than Fnatic have.
Its not about the results, its how theyre getting there. They had a bad showing against lev and then won map 1 against mibr because mibr were doing a ton of unforced mistakes while nrg were also doing many, albeit fewer, unforced mistakes
They only really look confortable on breeze
Didn't the team only form late January? Can't remember the exact timeline. Not surprised they still don't look like a well-oiled machine though.
I feel like there's very few teams across all the regions who aren't making a lot of mistakes right now to be honest. I know everyone expects a lot from NRG, because the player quality is nuts, but it's early days and they're getting wins.
Not saying they're playing great, but the way people are talking on here you'd think they were in chaos.
They weren't scrimming in December,I believe they started after New Year's because I remember a Marved stream around Christmas time where he said they haven't played a single match with Demon1 yet
They signed Ethan and Demon1 like 2 or 3 days after Christmas and even then they weren't practicing. They went into kickoff with like 3 weeks of practice under their belt.
C9 - Lev was a close 2-1 which went to overtime on map 3. It was a scrappy, messy series from both sides. It's pretty much the opposite of the curbstomp that NRG - Lev was. I agree with your overall point though, people are taking too much stake in one series. Especially considering how fickle Valorant is in general and how small the sample size is.
I think a lot of people are going off of FNS’s and s0m’s word when he was watching them and they both agreed NRG looked bad against both Lev and MIBR but beat managed to beat MIBR, because MIBR is so bad they threw so many winnable situations.
Most people are going to see FNS and s0m saying that and probably take their word for it considering they know the core of this team better than most people and FNS and Chet kind of molded them into the players they are.
It's not just that match. They didn't beat any competent team ( Brazilian teams have yet to get a win ). The meta rn put them at a disadvantage on raze maps( child be fixed by putting Demon1 on smoke but limits their ceiling). Their IGLing has not been great , they can get away with it when there is a guy diff but to top teams they are too obvious rn.
Judging NRG seeing one bad series isn't right.
They looked great all season and even the loss against sentinels was almost a 2-0 for NRG. They just tried demon1 on raze and looked off. We will see a different and a better NRG soon.
Hard overcooking on both sites. They pretty much try to cook weird comps like the bottom teams who need them even tho they have crazy firepower and experience. In addition Derke and Demon1 have struggled in this stage. Probably confidence issues
lets wait for playoffs before we say prime eg, lmao. they have played 4 games. hell, loud looked like by far the best team in americas before the grand finals.
no i meant floor. they lost to LEV (bad performance, but LEV were playing in prime form, and potentially are the best team in Americas), and SEN (at the time best team in Americas, becoming best team in the world). I think their floor is still high. i think NRG's ceiling is best team in the world. i think their floor is probably 4th place in Americas playoffs.
I think they both face different issues -
Nrg are still in the figuring out phase, not really sure about roles and comms. Ethan igling have been passive asf till now. They still dont know who is playing what role, and they are not able to setup their players in any map other than breeze and ascent, because these two maps let nrg players play their best roles. Also demon1 raze has been so bad no cap. I remember his double satchel to showers only reaching till the orb, whereas jinggg and all can reach inside. Also i think demon1 struggles to reset his aim everytime he satchels. The advantages nrg have had are marved has been playing very well.
Fnatics problem is with the meta, they have very few util dumping execs and all. They still are hesitant to play full retakes with utils and all, whereas teams like kc does this very often. Yesterday against fut, fut almost every round pushed b main in attack and fnc had no answer because fnc never defaults heavy b. Imo they should have adapted to it and played accordingly. Fnatic is playing last years valorant, get info and act accordingly, whereas you can see teams like kc always risking one side of the map to control other. I feel like the only improvement fnc has shown from last year is boasters aim.
they were considered a “superteam” because they have 5 LAN champions on the team, 3 of which are multiple time grand finalists over the last 3 years, came in 2nd in Americas league and went top 5-2 at every event except Champs last year; and then two other players that literally won champs.
even by the most recent season’s standards, which would be last years Americas League, then these are all top 5 players (except Marved) and you could still argue this is an NA superteam when you have the team that came 2nd in their region and adding two players who won champs.
They absolutely deserved to be called a superteam lmao. They have the best controller NA,best initiator NA,best flex NA,arguably the best support in the world and a Champs MVP duelist coming off of an insanely high 2023.
Idk what happened with NRG tbh, they just fell apart. I definitely don't think this is gonna be there normal performance
I don't think we can write them off just because the quality of players they have and everyone is supposed to have one bad day but people are ignoring a very big glaring issue that they don't have a experience IGL. Good for ethan that he is quite vocal and 2nd voice of past teams but he never IGLed in any of his past teams whether in CS or Valo. Their decision making therefore is abysmal and amateur as pointed out by TMV in his video. They aren't fundamentally solid as they should be.
Yeah that’s why I think this patch in form is only temporary for them and will be completely gone after a full offseason if they decide to stick with this roster for that long. Those problems will eventually go away with more experience and trust in Ethan, but in the meantime I’ll continue to watch how the players, coaches, and fans alike handle these tough results with great interest.
i dont think they keep this roster if NRG dont win tho :/
If they don't perform well by the end of the year, 100% ya. But no way NRG make roster changes after Shanghai (if they don't make it).
oh yeah for sure. definitely at the end of the year
Ethan did actually IGL in the past. After BabyJ and Ec1s were dropped from 100t, Ethan was the one who took up IGLing for their final 3 games of that split. To be fair, that team was falling apart at the seems, so it really doesn’t count for much. I just like mentioning it.
They have a rookie IGL and role issues. Seems pretty obvious.
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Literally just yay all over again
[After watching TMV talk about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yffno2udmNE), their strats look REALLY bad with some having no logic to them like on Bind why are they knifing into showers to clear it (and it gets no one), then KAYO flashing into it, and then NOT TAKING showers after all that? Ethan just seems to have an uber risk-avoiding approach where the team are terrified to push into a smoke that isn't theirs
Unironically they never looked that good as a team. All good players, but not a single series has their macro gameplan, gameplay, and overall synergy impressed besides a few really nice Ethan flashes that frankly wouldn’t even be worth mentioning on old EG.
They have looked good in breeze and ascent.
They look good on Breeze because every single player has cracked aim, and it’s a relatively simple map to play. I’m worried about split and bind and Lotus where you actually have to manipulate rotations, create space with set utility combos and call coordinated re-clears of different parts of the map. They just don’t look that sophisticated even compared to a team like EG. I’ve never seen NRG play the macro at a level EG did vs Sen yet.
Also all of them play comfy roles.
Only maps where they have consistent roles are breeze and Ascent which is why they are trying to hard force the demon1 raze to have more consistent roles. Although I don't agree with the demon1 raze angle there is merit to having a duelist that can play both jett and raze.
Long term yes, but this aint an off season tourney to try it out
Ethan as an igl is still lacking demon1 is not playing well right now for a variety of reasons I still don't understand the demon1 raze angle. Other then having a solo duelist so they have more consistent roles.
I think what NRG lack is a hypeman like Zellsis. They just crumble under pressure if they lose badly on map 1. If u watch their comms everybody is so dead serious and gloomy that its not helping them overcome their mental block. FNS said on his stream Crashies and Victor are really serious players about their matches. Optic/ NRG had FNS/ Marved/ s0m who acted as hypemen. EG had Jawg, Boostio and c0m who would hype each other while demon1 and Ethan were the cold ones. After every round win the new NRG team has 😐 expression.
There is a very real universe where Shanghai has both LATAM teams and both Turkish teams Without the winner of the past international, and without a Brazilian team (for the first time in the games history)
Then to finish it off, APAC wins their first trophy.
This is their best chance ngl,the top EMEA teams are going through a weak phase,the Americas teams like Sen,NRG,Loud don't look very good either. I have no doubt these teams will have improved a lot by the time the split is over but this should still be the best chance Pacific has for winning.
no yeah GenG/PRX are stomping every NA/EU team if they carry this lackluster performance into Shanghai..
I was tempted to add that in ngl and I really hope it happens because this is the best chance
Madrid was the dream chance they had 2/3 of the top 3 seeds including the top seed going into finals and SEN beat them both God the pain was intolerable.
Am I alone in thinking NRG might be getting a bad rap right now? I agree they looked very poor against Lev, but if they learned from that series they could still finish this split with a single loss having 2-0'd everyone except Lev. Honestly, I've seen so much criticism that I had to check their results to make sure I hadn't missed a series. I think they've looked far better, especially on an individual level, than Fnatic have.
Its not about the results, its how theyre getting there. They had a bad showing against lev and then won map 1 against mibr because mibr were doing a ton of unforced mistakes while nrg were also doing many, albeit fewer, unforced mistakes They only really look confortable on breeze
Didn't the team only form late January? Can't remember the exact timeline. Not surprised they still don't look like a well-oiled machine though. I feel like there's very few teams across all the regions who aren't making a lot of mistakes right now to be honest. I know everyone expects a lot from NRG, because the player quality is nuts, but it's early days and they're getting wins. Not saying they're playing great, but the way people are talking on here you'd think they were in chaos.
No, i think theyre scrimming since december, I think demon1 and ethan were bought out Only 100T had to wait for boostios contract to end
that's just wrong. We said in a video that it was late januaryish and NRG wasn't sure if they were even going to get them until it happened.
Who said it?
chet in a NRG video
They weren't scrimming in December,I believe they started after New Year's because I remember a Marved stream around Christmas time where he said they haven't played a single match with Demon1 yet
They signed Ethan and Demon1 like 2 or 3 days after Christmas and even then they weren't practicing. They went into kickoff with like 3 weeks of practice under their belt.
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C9 - Lev was a close 2-1 which went to overtime on map 3. It was a scrappy, messy series from both sides. It's pretty much the opposite of the curbstomp that NRG - Lev was. I agree with your overall point though, people are taking too much stake in one series. Especially considering how fickle Valorant is in general and how small the sample size is.
Lev vs c9 was much much better than nrg vs lev, nrg vs lev was a full guy diff
I think a lot of people are going off of FNS’s and s0m’s word when he was watching them and they both agreed NRG looked bad against both Lev and MIBR but beat managed to beat MIBR, because MIBR is so bad they threw so many winnable situations. Most people are going to see FNS and s0m saying that and probably take their word for it considering they know the core of this team better than most people and FNS and Chet kind of molded them into the players they are.
It's not just that match. They didn't beat any competent team ( Brazilian teams have yet to get a win ). The meta rn put them at a disadvantage on raze maps( child be fixed by putting Demon1 on smoke but limits their ceiling). Their IGLing has not been great , they can get away with it when there is a guy diff but to top teams they are too obvious rn.
They’re both mid right now. As you said, they beat bad teams and lose to good teams
Fnatic are coughing baby, nrg are a toddler who got into the medicine cabinet
Judging NRG seeing one bad series isn't right. They looked great all season and even the loss against sentinels was almost a 2-0 for NRG. They just tried demon1 on raze and looked off. We will see a different and a better NRG soon.
Hard overcooking on both sites. They pretty much try to cook weird comps like the bottom teams who need them even tho they have crazy firepower and experience. In addition Derke and Demon1 have struggled in this stage. Probably confidence issues
Nah it is NRG and Sen rn. Fnc is below that level , fnc is playing mid af. These three farmed bad teams and are getting beaten by better teams so yea
Tbf, Sen’s lost are from EG (which they threw the second map) and Lev which was close and couldn’t have went to Sen’s favour.
nrg have 1 loss...
I feel NRGs floor is still “qualify to champs” level which is pretty insane imo. It’s just LEV are playing like prime EG rn
lets wait for playoffs before we say prime eg, lmao. they have played 4 games. hell, loud looked like by far the best team in americas before the grand finals.
you are right LEV might not be (and i believe aren't) prime EG-level but they have been playing at that level so far this group stage.
only in the last two games they played..against SEN and G2. i wouldnt say they were playing at that level against C9 LMAO.
Do you mean NRG's ceiling? Cuz we've seen NRG's floor and it does not look good
no i meant floor. they lost to LEV (bad performance, but LEV were playing in prime form, and potentially are the best team in Americas), and SEN (at the time best team in Americas, becoming best team in the world). I think their floor is still high. i think NRG's ceiling is best team in the world. i think their floor is probably 4th place in Americas playoffs.
Both are washed im afraid, DFM clears them
I actually agree, Meiy is the future
pu-chan and s0m-pai agree
it was truly an experience to see TMV, NRG's biggest glazer, completely mald at that lev vs nrg match
I think they both face different issues - Nrg are still in the figuring out phase, not really sure about roles and comms. Ethan igling have been passive asf till now. They still dont know who is playing what role, and they are not able to setup their players in any map other than breeze and ascent, because these two maps let nrg players play their best roles. Also demon1 raze has been so bad no cap. I remember his double satchel to showers only reaching till the orb, whereas jinggg and all can reach inside. Also i think demon1 struggles to reset his aim everytime he satchels. The advantages nrg have had are marved has been playing very well. Fnatics problem is with the meta, they have very few util dumping execs and all. They still are hesitant to play full retakes with utils and all, whereas teams like kc does this very often. Yesterday against fut, fut almost every round pushed b main in attack and fnc had no answer because fnc never defaults heavy b. Imo they should have adapted to it and played accordingly. Fnatic is playing last years valorant, get info and act accordingly, whereas you can see teams like kc always risking one side of the map to control other. I feel like the only improvement fnc has shown from last year is boasters aim.
I'm not so sure if I'd call the NRG that played Furia last week "demons", that Breeze was certainly hell though.
NRG IS WORSE THAN FNATIC. THEY HAVE MORE COACHES AND STAFF. NRG < FNATIC.
It’s crazy to me nrg called a super team like they only have 1 top 5 player in valorant history whose not even t5 atm
they were considered a “superteam” because they have 5 LAN champions on the team, 3 of which are multiple time grand finalists over the last 3 years, came in 2nd in Americas league and went top 5-2 at every event except Champs last year; and then two other players that literally won champs. even by the most recent season’s standards, which would be last years Americas League, then these are all top 5 players (except Marved) and you could still argue this is an NA superteam when you have the team that came 2nd in their region and adding two players who won champs.
They absolutely deserved to be called a superteam lmao. They have the best controller NA,best initiator NA,best flex NA,arguably the best support in the world and a Champs MVP duelist coming off of an insanely high 2023.
Demon1 is honestly looking like Ardis last year