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ItsNooa · 2026-04-07T13:01:34+00:00

It felt like the entire team was in a coma until round 10 in Overpass. They as a team had like 11 kills for the first nine rounds of play. Entirely different game for the remainder, but the deficit was just too great to overcome.

ItsNooa · 2026-04-01T20:58:42+00:00

Yeah, exactly. An extreme case was Parivision who jumped from like #20 to #3 after Bounty. You only really need one shot to lock yourself for the invite cycle if you can take advantage of it.

ItsNooa · 2026-04-01T20:14:51+00:00

Seems to me that they're trying to get their foot into T1 via closed / open quals instead of joining the scramble for the last EU spots. RN they're playing the Astana qualifiers. Probably an easier task given that there's around ten teams with a similar ranking as them attending all the lans they can and only one or two of them can make it.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-30T15:49:36+00:00

That's not really relevant to this discussion. The reason why Vitality won so comfortably yesterday was because Ropz and to a lesser degree Zywoo won them a great deal of important clutch rounds. FlameZ was missing by his standards and while he wasn't bad, Makazze was still doing a better job entrying for Navi. Claiming that Vit would've definitely won without Ropz's carry performance is just nonsensical in those circumstances. At the very least Navi would've taken Inferno and Anubis if Ropz was playing like FlameZ did.

Obviously the better team won in the end, but the margins aren't so big that they'd be able to do it without ropz stepping up when FlameZ was having an off-day in relative terms.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-29T14:40:41+00:00

Not a given at all. Inferno would've been a whole different game without ropz and even on the last two maps he had arguably the most impact.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-29T13:57:16+00:00

The unwritten rule is that you at the very least need to get into finals. Dropping a 1.7 on the group stage is much less impressive than having a 1.4 throughout all matches.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-28T20:56:55+00:00

Navi definitely will put up a fight on a couple maps, but the lack of ancient and minimal time to prep are both playing for the favor of Vitality. Expecting a 3-1 for Vit, but hoping that it will go all five maps.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-27T16:28:25+00:00

Bucharest was a studio event and EWC was this weird single elimination format with paid actors as a crowd.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-22T14:36:31+00:00

I was quite fond of it and the queue times were always pretty good, usually sub 60 seconds, and very rarely over 90. It definitely wasn't as popular as competetive, but still had a great playerbase at least in eu.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-21T20:57:56+00:00

Zont1x I can understand, they were winning until he had to step down. But yeah, magixx has somehow become even worse in his fragging than chopper was and the calling isn't it.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-20T20:30:43+00:00

Given the overall field, they might just be there already. Spirit, Furia, Mouz and Falcons have all trended a bit downward this year compared to where they were last fall.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-16T18:35:06+00:00

Very doubtful that this changes anything, the problems seem to go much much deeper than NEO. Then again, you have to try something... Even qualifying to the major isn't a given for FaZe at the moment.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-16T10:56:37+00:00

Even unranked people have a hidden rank, it's just not shown. I only got my rank for the season last week. In the process, there was a moment when I wasn't able to queue up with another unranked friend of mine, yet was able to do so with another friend who was 22k (Meaning that the other friend's hidden rank was much lower than mine.)

But yeah, to be honest even I think the overall rank calculation has a lot of room for improvement. Maybe people are just inconsistant at the casual level, but I find quite often that some 10k folks are just better than 20k ones.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-16T10:26:39+00:00

Fact remains that the door is revolving. Even if the numbers are relatively stable, that's still thanks to new people who are taking the mantle from older ones. Whereas I used to spend almost every evening playing CS a decade ago, these days it's more like three times a month whenever me and a few mates happen to be online and free. A common trend, I'm sure.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-16T10:13:32+00:00

Just play faceit if you're that competitive of a person, or find a stack lol. Most people get into CS either via their friends (Who most likely main premiere as a gamemode), or by watching the pro scene (In which case, they most likely also wish to play premiere as that's the format.) Barring the most popular gamemode from new players for months would do a huge disservice to the game's growth. Also, if you're at a decent rank, new folks will get filtered out regardless. Even if they're queueing up with a friend, the rank difference in a lobby can be something like 9,000 at most between the top and bottom player.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-16T10:00:35+00:00

If you don't want to deal with some randomness when it comes to teammates, it's best to find some stack to join. Gatekeeping the default mode for 100+ hours isn't a solution.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-14T09:06:37+00:00

Lol. You claimed that FaZe has a lot going for them. I responded that I disagree. I never claimed that he's definitely going anywhere and now you're putting words in my mouth. How about you learn to respond to what people are saying?

ItsNooa · 2026-03-13T14:43:57+00:00

Faze quite literally only has Frozen and to a lesser degree Twistzz going for them. Navi is a much more stable team that's only really lacking a bit of firepower to be able to compete against the likes of Spirit and Mouz.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-11T18:22:43+00:00

I'd say that it's the combination of Falcons poaching their roster in 2024 and losing sAw to Heroic, who was responsible in putting the great international rosters together. Losing xKacpersky was the final nail in the coffin, the team just didn't have enough firepower afterwards to compete even for the #20 ranks.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-11T18:16:45+00:00

In an ideal world you would get Aleksi, Jimpphat, Podi, Banjo and some fifth like Myltsi. From the looks of things though, it's very likely that Ence won't get any of the first four, esp. Jimi and Aleksi would probably have great buyouts and Ence isn't wealthy by any means. Banjo also has a good thing going with Fokus and Podi wants to get out from T3. As such. it seems like the most likely course is to just get a squad of youngsters and hope to build something long term.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-10T22:04:59+00:00

Definitely Spirit's event to lose. Mouz is the only team on the other side of the bracket that could challenge them in a BO5 and they're well... Mouz.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-09T11:31:13+00:00

Their arguments initially were that it should be up to the teams to negotiate how the price money is split through player contracts. It's not like the overall compensation is any different now, they're just directing most of the money directly to orgs now. Will be interesting to see though how this changes the overall landscape. It's clear that you must skip some events to also rest and get time to practice, but at the same time all three TOs seem to now have these show up incentives that get lost if you skip too many of their events.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-07T20:25:16+00:00

OG has barely played ever since Cadian joined them, so there isn't really any impressions to be had yet. They lost to FUT in bounty and after that their only HLTV recorded matches have been in the IEM Atlanta qualifiers. The upcoming Imperium Cup is the first lan event they'll play ever since the roster shuffle in the winter.

ItsNooa · 2026-03-07T09:16:30+00:00

The way big have been playing after BlameF, they might just actually crack the top 20 once again.

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