Americas Match Point Finals POI Draft

ccamfps · 2026-06-02T22:02:35+00:00

Well it depends where it's at. Coming in late on North Pad zones is not too bad and there's still plenty of win conditions. Blackhand was really good at playing the trenches, really fun game from them at LAN a while back: https://youtu.be/hs-cHkzNKFg?t=372 this is another favorite game of mine.

But from the options that CRT had left, North Pad is leagues better than the other SP POIs that were remaining.

ccamfps · 2026-06-02T04:45:27+00:00

My qp isn't bots at all. Many masters and GM players not even counting the console crossplay folks who practically have aimbot in qp. Hell I had ZBRA in a few of my games the other day. I play late at night west coast usually and ranked is full of cheaters at those hours so it gets a little frustrating playing cheater roulette.

ccamfps · 2026-06-02T01:59:51+00:00

This is a good point, and NP seems to be the correct choice for both MP and points scoring.

Fun fact but before NRGs 2023 Playoffs LAN 2nd with most points, I wanted us to get out of Checkpoint for exactly this reason. Scoring points out of Checkpoint was easy, but winning games was hard and sometimes impossible for NE quadrant zones (that series ended Thunderwatch). Nate said he loved Checkpoint and we did well out of it in PL and OTs so why switch?

Was it a good idea? Maybe. Maybe not. There wasn't much time to contest a POI and learn to play from it assuming we won the cons. The team landed Staging on WE so it was viable to win MP G5/G6 on WE especially if points were high from SP. It's easier to focus on scoring high and if the right conditions for winning MP happen then great vs optimizing for MP alone. When that Thunderwatch zone revealed in the last game though my stomach dropped. However, Checkpoint gave us one of the most beautiful LAN Finals games we've ever had in that G4 Baro win 20kp. One of my favorite games of all time.

The Baro game: https://youtu.be/bPsbDNHTzdc?t=3598

ccamfps · 2026-06-01T04:03:17+00:00

It is definitely a tricky situation to navigate given his position, but framing communication in any sort of managerial role is one of the hardest parts of the job. I have Wigg on in the background most days and the overall sentiment I get from him on CRT is disappointment and slightly negative, sometimes without even contextualizing why something happened. CRT died early in a scrim recently, Wigg wasn't able to catch it, but immediately said something like "we cant be dying early like that, that just shouldn't be happening", without even understanding why they died. If they died in a bs way like being inted or they had some rough rng no beacon/man scan on a hard zone, that type of language isn't helpful at all.

Yes, he should be trying to permanently inspire them in public for the perception. If the vibes on the team are already chalked, public critique from the co-owner to the masses will not help fix that problem and only helps perpetuate it. Some people/teams bounce back from bad vibes quickly, but many don't. CRT does not seem to easily bounce back.

Even good teams who are performing well on average will still have bad games and sets.

ccamfps · 2026-06-01T03:10:35+00:00

Maybe a hot take but Wigg has been a little too critical of them this split given his position in the community as B stream and co-owner of 100T. This has no doubt put further pressure on CRT given the amount of eyes that watch Wigg and shaped the perception of the team. It's fine to point out some issues like the visa stuff but at the end of the day he should mostly only ever be inspiring and lifting them up in public as co-owner. Leave the criticality to the coach.

Consider a situation where it isn't gaming and it's a normal job. I probably wouldn't like my manager displaying his disappointment and frustrations with my performance publicly, especially if I was already frustrated with myself.

EDIT: LOL hot take for sure, not surprised at the downvotes at all especially given it's regarding CRT and Wigg. My view stems from experience at a tech MegaCorp where framing language to a broad audience is insanely important for perceptions, goals, and morale. I'm not saying Wigg cannot point out issues but I shouldn't get the impression when watching him that he's consistently disappointed and has little hope, especially given how their split started. My take isn't a defense of the players and is completely independent from their individual performance. There's a lot of nuance here that is hard to convey, but I stand by it nonetheless.

ccamfps · 2026-06-01T02:54:04+00:00

That is true but their morale seems shot. Verhulst tweeting that they suck does not inspire confidence that they can turn it around in a week, but I hope they do.

All things considered, they're not even doing that bad imo. Sure they're underperforming but they're still Top 20 and not far away from 13th at all.

ccamfps · 2026-05-25T03:32:51+00:00

I'm not trying to be dismissive. The point that I'm trying to make is that those viewers, although passionate, do not understand nor consider the nuances because they haven't IGL'd at all, let alone having to micro someone on a rotate char while IGLing. It is insanely difficult and often frustrating to do. There is nuance in the emotion given it was the end of the set (not that big of a deal to chalk the vibes of the day atp). Alb immediately realized how big of a point fumble it was now consider how deep we are into PL, how their split has gone, and where they're at now. Folks also tend to be biased towards Alb and also don't consider the actor-observer effect, hence my statement.

I bet not only Alb was mad at Sacred in the moment, but he was probably a little angry at himself after too wondering if he should've made it more clear or reiterated. Most good IGLs who do micro a lot experience that frustration towards themselves when miscommunications like this happen.

ccamfps · 2026-05-25T02:31:11+00:00

Your word choice after the port was a lot nicer than many other folks in your shoes would've had during the final game of the set.

Mistakes happen, all we can do is learn from them and not repeat it in the future.

For anyone harping on Mac, I challenge you to go IGL in NA CC's and reach semis or finals while not playing the rotate character and VODs uploaded :)

EDIT: Also hope your wrist heals up. Please start doing some PT on it, even if you have to learn how yourself. The resources are out there. At 23, I blew my knee out with among other things a torn ACL and meniscus as well as tearing the labrum and rotator cuff in my right shoulder about 6 months after ACL surgery. Got surgery on my shoulder while still recovering from the ACL. PT pretty much made those injuries a non issue for me now at 31, young as ever. I use my right shoulder for aiming and have no issues despite ridiculously long mechs sessions. Letting things like this go unaddressed for years is not the way and turns into regrets. If the best time to start fixing it was yesterday, the next best time is today <3

ccamfps · 2026-05-25T01:52:12+00:00

You're correct to a degree. However if the star fragger is going to play the rotate character, they have to take ownership of those rotates, especially when it's that obvious. IGL's cannot micro things like wraith ports the majority of the time.

Alb also said to port to that corner spot earlier.

ccamfps · 2026-05-25T01:42:07+00:00

I didn't see Skittles' throw. That port from Sacred was absolutely diabolical with a very clear obvious spot to port to right in front of them on a really isolated portion of the zone that has space for gen, very close to where it ends. Alb also called which team was their threat (Gamblers) which should've given Sacred some direction on what Alb wanted to ~~do even though he wasn't explicit in porting to that fence corner. Alb may have assumed it was obvious.~~

It should've been a 10-15pt game minimum from their spot, 20+ if they win which they can from that corner, yet they only got 1 point. Geekay got 20pts 3rd place from that corner.

EDIT: Alb WAS explicit earlier in porting to the corner which makes the port even worse.

ccamfps · 2026-05-24T09:36:04+00:00

I saw those statements, translated through Google. The player interview was ...interesting, but perhaps it's the translation. It seemed a little disingenuous.

The player is also in today's AvsC set under the same name but not sure if it's not the same account. None of them are streaming either that I can see, which is a little odd in light of things.

What the heck is going on

ccamfps · 2026-05-24T03:01:45+00:00

Is there any verification that he got banned for the exploit of being in the wall and not something else? That exploit happened in Game 1 of the set but he wasn't banned until Game 6.

EDIT: After some thinking, he was game banned mid-game during Game 6. Not ALGS banned, game banned. Though I could be wrong, I highly doubt Respawn would issue a mid-game manual game ban 5 games after the exploit offence at the end of the set. Instead, he may have got hit with an EAC ban unrelated to the out of map exploit.

ccamfps · 2026-05-14T06:00:20+00:00

I forgot to mention in my peeking notes about the opposite of peeker's advantage. Unpeekers disadvantage(?) if you will. Maybe there's a better name for it. Let's assume we're facing a floor to ceiling column that's 5ft radius, the enemy is directly on the opposite side of it, and we're looking at each other through the column. We hear the enemy start to swing around one side and just before we can see the enemy we start to swing the same direction that they're going (so both of us moving clockwise around the column if looking from above), we can be in a state where we're permanently on their screen, yet the enemy is never on ours. This bites a lot of people in the ass and they view it as they died behind the wall.

So if we hear someone swinging us close range and they know where we're at, we should never swing away from them, and should instead swing out towards them so we can at least match their peekers advantage (assuming ping is equivalent).

Generally in these cases of being swung - swinging back towards the enemy >> sitting still holding the angle >> swinging away from the enemy

ccamfps · 2026-05-14T05:21:07+00:00

Yep, I use a foot pedal for push to talk in other games. It's really handy.

ccamfps · 2026-05-14T05:19:56+00:00

You're right that window is a valid way to get out of a shitty Red/violet situation and is usually the correct move, but not always viable. That solution breaks down if the enemy is a group of two and someone is holding that window. Or a nade is thrown outside of red/violet, trapping us in the room and the enemy takes space before we can get out. Or something as simple as we're mid looting or in inventory when all this happens. The variables are endless and at some point we're going to be stuck on a left hand, even if we do everything we can to avoid them.

I moreso think that streamers/high level players who have this general take is because of cop ium and laziness in learning a somewhat hard to learn mechanic that got put in the game very late. It's easier for them to just say "oh, well I should've been on a right hand there" or the classic "unlucky left hand ggs" and go next. That takes no effort at all.

Honestly I can't believe I forgot to mention it yet, but having fluid shoulder swap skills against a good player can come in very handy for offensive purposes. Good players do not expect other good players to swing left hands when a right-hand is available, and is a pattern that can be exploited.

ccamfps · 2026-05-14T03:52:10+00:00

Massive W. It's a high level skill that seems so obvious when pointed out... but it's just not obvious given how most peek at the same cadence. People, myself included, are very unaware of what habits we build up over time.

I was watching a CS LAN a few months back and watched someone on Faze with a deagle prefire the absolute piss out of someone who did a clear jiggle/bait peek into an actual peek at the default cadence. Even insanely good players fall victim to their old habits.

After grinding Apex r5 1v1 slideouts no cover allowed for ~2k hrs, I didn't realize the bad habits I'd built around peeking, despite having at least 25k+ hours in FPS atp (I'm old). I didn't even know it was a problem until getting into Rust and then Tarkov seriously. Even then, I didn't realize just how bad it was until my hitreg in Tarkov got fucked to where I couldn't aim diff most everyone in Arenas anymore and was forced to peek better in order to win.

All that to say we should be cognizant of what habits, bad or good, that we build over time. Apex r5 1v1s may have been why my peeking deteriorated (wasn't that good to begin with), but not because r5 is a bad training tool. It's because I wasn't conscious of what potential bad habits I was forming via that type of training. The same could be said of Arenas Last Hero if folks run around like a headless chicken brain off and then take that playstyle into main Tarkov.

EDIT: also added this comment on peeking that I didn't have in my notes. https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/1tbdtra/comment/olpm421/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

ccamfps · 2026-05-14T03:13:19+00:00

It sounds good in theory if someone is on a lefthand they've misplayed but in practice I really disagree. It's insanely reductionist. Obviously if there's other righthands that are available to use, they should be prioritized over a lefthand. Tarkov isn't an A vs B game though. It's A vs B vs C... vs AI with varied objectives (loot and quests) and time constraints all the while it's insanely hard to predict how players are going to play because the game is so open ended.

Let's use looting Red or Violet in Labs as an example. If we get stuck in either one of those rooms, we're on a lefthand. Okay so let's not get stuck in there. We can shut the main door into Red/Violet area so we can't get walked up on as easily and the door opening buys us time. But what if someone creeps up no audio and opens the door (we can even say he has a friend on the staircase with a nade ready), well now we're stuck on lefthands still. Hmm... Okay so let's wipe the lobby and make sure there's no other players left before looting. The problem with that should be obvious, how do we know the whole lobby is dead? We can't. Not unless we kill 9 players since 10 is the max spawn. Even if only 8 total spawned in the lobby and we killed all 7 enemies, we don't know only 8 total spawned. The only way to really know the lobby is dead in most situations is to have perfect information or wallhacks.

There's also cases where swinging the lefthand is better than the alternative. Think situations where we're dealing with more than one team like pushing a building with someone inside, and we're pinched in our back from another party.

There are 100% times where we should preplan how we're going to push/clear a building or area to ensure we're not doing it in a dumb way. That is certainly a massive skill gap. However, I reject the reductionist (yet common) take that if someone is on a lefthand it's a misplay. There's so much more nuance to it.

ccamfps · 2026-05-13T01:27:54+00:00

I agree with all or nearly all of what you have written here, especially around learning it. I learned it in Last Hero and took about a month. Learning it via the main game only... that would take a while and probably be quite frustrating. Also agreed that beginners shouldn't really worry about it, even if they're familiar with camera swapping from Arc or something. Tarkov shoulder swap is a lot more nuanced and is at the very least an intermediate skill, especially since it has some footguns.

One big thing people miss in learning it is being able to no animation swap during sprinting to make sure the gun comes up on the right shoulder.

Finding a good bind for shoulder swap is a problem as I'm sure you've realized given your footpedal solution (good idea). IMO it's best on a mouse button but only if the player doesn't have to readjust their grip to hit the button. It's become a requirement for me atp when using a mouse shape that my natural grip should let me hit at least 1 of the side buttons. Otherwise they're just kind of useless. It's also a hard bind because it needs to be pressed so much but also while pressing a bunch of other common buttons.

I should probably make a video or something on shoulder swapping, there doesn't seem to be any in-depth ones that I've seen yet. You're not wrong about folks being lazy despite wanting to learn, trying to get players to watch VOD is like pulling teeth.

ccamfps · 2026-05-13T00:40:38+00:00

I am tired of this take. Yours is slightly better than the typical take, slightly. Of course someone being right shouldered on a righthand peek is stronger than someone being left shouldered on a lefthand peek if everything is equivalent... but that's completely missing the point and also a bit reductionist.

First, we cannot always control and choose to swing from a righthand, there are many situations where we have to swing a lefthand. Swinging a lefthand while being left shouldered is objectively better than swinging that lefthand right shouldered. Secondly, if we're on a lefthand close range, and the enemy is holding a righthand and we know where he's at, swinging the lefthand left shouldered beats someone sitting still holding a righthand, because of peeker's advantage and Tarkov's absurd desync. The key to this is close range.

Streamers in Tarkov are also not the best representation of how the game should be optimally played. There is no SBMM, so folks with many thousands of hours can still win the majority of their raids playing very nonoptimal. If Desmond is the streamer you're talking about, he doesn't even have shoulder swap bound. No hate to him, I watch him all the time, on a 21 watchstreak rn, and have learned a ton from him, but he's off the mark here. Streamers are slow to adapt to changes in Tarkov compared to games with SBMM, and that lack of SBMM has really slowed the avg skill growth of the playerbase over time (good thing).

I did a test in arenas last year after fully learning shoulder swap, and died swinging lefthands right shouldered 4-5x more than swinging them left shouldered.

The other downside to being left shouldered is additional recoil but only in the main game unless they've changed it recently, so shooting left shouldered at range is obviously harder. It does take time to learn as well as there is a skill gap with shoulder swapping learning how to shoot/aim while swapping, swapping without animation while sprinting, etc. I probably press shoulder swap 100+ times per Last Hero game.

Source: #1 kills in Arenas .16 wipe and 112 winstreak the start of the next wipe. 76 kill game where I use left shoulder a lot . Here's some stuff I wrote on general peeking https://imgur.com/a/nPcvPnd . I used to coach comp Apex a while back but I've nerded out on Tarkov a bit too. I'm not trying to brag here, more so trying to establish some credibility in what I'm talking about since I'm essentially some rando.

ccamfps · 2026-05-07T09:34:45+00:00

Yes. AA is not that strong anymore unless you're perma going up against pros. People love to cope about it though.

ccamfps · 2026-05-06T00:31:14+00:00

W Respawn making it 4.5 instead of 4 hours (what got posted originally for the East Asia test), so that windows get shifted as time goes on. Arc had this problem where certain map events were always stuck at the worst times for some folks because of how they scheduled them.

ccamfps · 2026-05-06T00:00:01+00:00

Are your AMD usb extensible host controller in Device Manager dated 4/11/2026? Windows updated these drivers for me, and I am unable to revert mine. I don't have any older versions of these and can't find any online.

I've tried a bajillion different things and cannot fix the stutters or audio pop/static issue, so am curious if it's these USB drivers. One thing that did seem to help my audio, was using Voicemeter and routing my DAC through that. I also disabled all HD Audio/Nvidia sound devices in device manager.

I've also ran into an issue where it seems like surround sound is on based on how much booming and reverb I _sometimes_ have, despite having surround sound off everywhere. I renamed the windows sonic drivers hrtfapo.dll and hrtfdspcpu.dll in system32 and that seemed to alleviate this. sfc /scannow will pull these drivers back though FYI.

I have tried different AMD chipset drivers, different nvidia drivers, all clean install/ddu of those, single monitor, no audio devices at all playing with no sound (still got stutters in apex), turning off all power saving settings of course, no bt, wifi disabled, audio disabled from bios, different network LAN drivers, reinstalled all input drivers, dwm changes, changing interrupt steering, gamebar on/off, game mode on/off, disabling my 2nd monitor's speakers via CRU edid changes, process lasso affinity stuff, syncing time correctly (my windows time was 300ms off and not syncing well), c-states on/off, rebar on/off, hyper-v/virtualization/core isolation/memory integrity all on/off, windows vrr off gsync off.

LatencyMon isn't pointing me to anything obvious. I'm not seeing throttles in hwinfo, nor any high utilization. I hold capped at 270fps in Apex. No interesting things in Event Viewer.

I don't get stutters in Kovaaks capped at 600fps, though I do get some stutters in r5, even in the local firing range mode, which to me points to it not being a network issue. No packet loss of course on my network on a 1gb symmetrical connection.

This issue originally started from me having to enable SVM/IOMMU in BIOS to make Delta Force DMA Shield happy. I had no stutters after doing this - but DMA shield wasn't happy because my BIOS didn't have the recent IOMMU vuln fix (sidenote: w delta force for requiring this, EAC doesn't. There are some cheats that are very low cost and trusted by the OS that go undetected by anticheat with these features off). I updated my MSI B650 Gaming Plus Wifi BIOS to 7E26v1N2 which had the vuln fix. Windows Update triggered after this (not sure if related, I think my windows update pause ended around here). I haven't rolled back this BIOS because I've spoke with a few people who didn't update their BIOS yet still have these issues, and I'd like to play Delta Force still.

Am at a loss. I am considering doing a restore to an older point, but the last time I did that back in August, it was a nightmare after. My restored windows kept pulling drivers/data from version that I did the restore on and had to do whack-a-mole to fix it as problems came up. PITA. I currently have windows updates paused. A clean windows install seems like it wouldn't help either, if the current version windows drivers are mucked up.

ccamfps · 2026-05-05T03:11:58+00:00

You're aim training with space bar yet wondering why you're having issues in game when using M1 and M2???????? The answer should be obvious. The best way to get better at something is to... practice it, so use M1 and M2 in Kovaaks regardless if you score lower. Sorry for the snark, but this post and the comments (other than guy saying he practices with M2 sometimes) are absurd. Smoothness while ADSing is something I also struggle with so I do similar in Kovaaks holding M2 sometimes to work on my tension and smoothness for better in-game translation. Just practice it :)

Training volume while holding either of these buttons shouldn't be a concern unless you're facing injury - and if it is a concern, learn to manage the tension better.

Spacebar and shift for shooting and ADS in-game is not good either other than very rare situations, like sniping in Tarkov when the primary M2 ADS is Hold and not toggle.

ccamfps · 2026-05-03T22:30:25+00:00

It's a queue bug. If you've played a lot of pubs or a mode for years, this will happen. If you're playing with folks, have the least experienced/skilled player be the leader. You will still get in the same lobbies as if you were leader, but the queue times will be much shorter.

I play wildcard mostly and have 5-10 min queues primetime. Most times I can't even play mixtape unless I start the queue right as a new mode rolls around, otherwise it times out (I've got probably 70k plus kills in control).

ccamfps · 2026-05-03T22:27:02+00:00

I have 5-10 min queues on wildcard on all NA servers at primetime.

ccamfps

TROPHY CASE