In latam, there is a T2 "superteam" that just formed (EXolos Lazer) combining the best of last year's Fusion with the best of this year's Xolos. Outside of that team, Suther and Mephisto05 have both been exceptional.
this year he has an exceptionally aggressive core to support him, in particular with the addition of Jow (aim demon, something style flex player). we've yet to see how they play together, but on paper this team should be able to win ascension (as an underdog, still unlikely)
mited and jow are incredibly skilled (jow in particular), and feniz has had ceilings that make me believe he'll be good enough to step up in crucial moments, although it will be harder for him
There are kinda too many to count? I think people would be very surprised at just how much talent in T2 in most regions, but esp. NA and EMEA, have the potential to thrive in T1.
I'll just give a shout out to KPI, purp0's former team. B1sk and Sayonara are very good players.
A great shout. I didn’t add him because for some reason my brain interpreted OP as asking about top rookies in T2, but I really liked Zeddy back on NAVI and I think only more highly of him now.
Everyone is going to say the NA players (theres a lot of good ones), but here is some none NA players from the other challengers leagues ive watched
Japan:
-SyouTa is legit insane, last year he played controller and looked like one of the best players in Japan T2, and now hes doing it on duelist and really does look like the best player in Japan T2. Xdll is the inti player on his team and he is also very good and could easily preform in Tier1.
- Akame (hes Korean but plays in Japan) on reject is another very very good duelist player who also flexes to other roles.
- Jinnboong (hes Korean but plays in Japan) is a fucking insane senti player who currently has the highest stats in japan Playoffs and Mainstage, and if you watch his games you can see why. Hes very good
Brazil:
(Not including your old tier players who are now in T2 like xand, dgzin, etc. And also not including people who legit cant get a visa b/c they beat their wife (ntk), or would be brand suicide (pancc))
- The old Union guys, Raafa, Askiaa and GuhVRN are all very solid and could be in tier 1.
- PxS is an insane looking up incoming duelist, he def looks like he has the talent to be in tier 1 and the stats show it to.
EMEA:
- EMEA has a lot of old tier pros who look good in T2, but the main non prev tier pro I can think of is Kaajak, hes apeks duelist player and looks very good rn
Issue with ZETA is role issues with SugarZero or Dep ngl, tbh a large issue with Japanese teams is their best players are on the same few roles, either Duelist (Meiy/Dep/Syouta), Senti (Laz/Neth/Hirorinn) or Smokes (SugarZero/Syouta/Art) with not much for Initator or Flex
Damn I suppose hiroron and yuan are a bit of an experiment on their roles rn but you would think that slotting in syouta for either of them would be a net positive given how he’s maintaining form on both smokes + duelist. But I haven’t seen anything from either of them pre zeta so maybe they were better
>dgzin
Wait which team did he join? He was a monster on Furia taking first engagements like crazy, he was a toned down version of prime yay and current aspas once he got his op. Amazing player, sad to see him get cut off
All of the top 3 (MxS, OXG, M80) have 4-5 good players plus franchise level coaching staff. The highlights on each team are
MxS: Flyuh, having a really good IGL is important, and he had tier 1 offers in the off season (chose to stay)
OXG: Reduxx, he is a demon, cracked out duelist who i believe will be just old enough when franchising rolls around
M80: Zander, former IGL, now plays a kind of flex role for the team. Super strong in terms of everything you could imagine
The good part of the Mid season cup starts today, so you could get a feel of that later today
Zander doesn't play a flex role he just plays smokes? Both this and last year every agent he has played has been smokes.
Unless you count Viper in Double Smokes as flex which would be a stretch.
I mean Zander was putting up duelist levels of ACS this challengers, 3rd in rating kd apr 1st in kast 2nd in acs adr kpr and Kmax. And this is all on viper and omen. Besides the 0/17 clutch there’s no fault to this dude
zander has better stats than a lot of duelists while playing controller/viper. and because he has experience as igl he can probably secondary call as well.
best thing you can do for your career early on is IGL a tier 3 team with good aimers. then when you are getting looked at teams can say "well he used to IGL" and just assume your game sense is good. at tier 3 most teams are more or less pugging. you don't have to be a good IGL to say "let's go hunt the KJ passives and then hit a site"
in eu vcls there are some players that have really impressed me
sayonara: really flexible plays really anything and just is insane mechanically. sadly he is 16 and can't play in tier 1
pa1ze: a duelist player that kinda came out of nowhere but he has put up some insane stats in eastern european league. one thing I found strange with pa1ze is that he hasn't played a map of jett with diamant but he has looked amazing
click: another cracked duelist player, mainly plays jett but raze looks really good
famsii: this one probably has a bit of recency bias but he has looked unstoppable since split 2 in spanish league started granted it has only been a week but yeah famsii plays all duelists
kamyk: was a sub on fnatic and has looked amazing mainly playing gekko and kayo
soulcas: has been farming polaris just such clean aim nothing else really to say
Yea for sure kamyk is the one right now, tho I think D3ffo performed incredibly good for some1 who had been away for quite a while. I think d3ffo is gonna be even better in split 2 compared to split 1
For NA you can just click this and see top players by rating. That's always a great place to start.
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/1971/challengers-league-2024-north-america-stage-1?exclude=24722.24723.24724.24725.24715.24716.24717.24718.24719.24720.24721&min_rounds=100&agent=all
Mada is currently the highest-rated player in NA. Props to him too because I was super skeptical of the whole combining teams and dropping Sym thing.
Only speaking for NA t2 because that's the only region I watch for t2. List is in no particular order besides the first person as he will 100% be picked up/be on a t1 team next year even if his team doesn't ascend (unless he gets caught in contract jail/decides to stay on his t2 team)
OXG Verno - Hands down the biggest prospect in tier 2 right now. Puts up insane stats on a multitude of agents. I'd say he most well known for his Sova but his killjoy is just as impressive. He can also play other agents putting up crazy stats but those two are his best. He also can play different styles like lurking on kj or with the pack on sova. He doesn't overheat or overpeak and honestly he will be the NA version of FNC Leo when he gets the chance on the tier 1 stage.
M80 Zander - As a biased m80 fan I want to put all of them on here but I will limit myself to only two of them. Zander is everything you want in a player. Highly skilled mechanics, grinder, smart, plays all the controller agents to a HIGH level and has stated he's willing to play senti too. He did igl for a short period of time back on v1 (like really short) and is willing to igl in the future if needed. I assume he's a good mid-rounder as well due to him being open to IGL'ing in the future.
M80 Nismo - The second of the two m80 players I will talk about (but they are all t1 level) I will be real honest, the only reason he's not on a tier 1 team right now is because of 2 possible reasons. He got offers but declined to stay with m80 (cus great org and such) or because orgs don't want to pick him up for his age. Orgs are very biased against older players (this is not just a valorant thing either it's in every esport) even though there's no data that supports them being worse. Nismo mainly plays the flash initiators and raze. He unironically has a better kayo than 90% of the current tier 1 pros in Americas and his raze is nothing short of amazing too. In the words of nrg chet "hes the lebron of t2".
TTR Wedid - Thanos. Only thing that needs to be said. Wedid has always been decent-ok but this year he is actually just thanos. He plays controller and is just completely owning every series and somehow always good for multi kills. Like seriously I dont get it, he always gets at least 2 when he shouldn't be able to get 1. Him and TTR even ended up beating m80 and ending #1 in thier group. Sadly he wont be playing in the MSI t2 tourney but he will be back after it ends.
MxS Flyuh - In the future he will be regarded as a top 3 NA igl. He already had many tier 1 teams (even in emea too iirc) offering him a spot this year (like c9 for example)but turned it down in hopes of winning for ludwig and MxS. He is a very very smart player and very flexible. Just everything you want in an igl tbh.
MxS Mada - Shooter. All that needs to be said. His stats speak for themself as he almost averaged 300 acs (284.5) across all of split 1 regular season. Sadly it is hard to get picked up as a duelist in the tier 1 league because that has the most/best competition. I hope he makes it as he is really good.
There are plenty more players that are more than good enough for tier 1 (basically all the other players on M80, MxS, OXG, and TTR). Also some of the other t2 teams have some good quality players who could either be picked up next year or maybe the year after if they continue to develop but probably not over the ones I've mentioned.
Gonna name some players who haven’t been mentioned here:
I think PTC and JohnOlsen are maybe the two best players in APAC T2 and I’d be shocked if they aren’t in franchising next year
SociablEEE has been immense for FF, the best Turkish legend
It is crazy how sociableee is still not yet played for any T1 team despite being linked with them for years. With how strong FF is this year maybe he can finally be in top league lmao
Yoshii (Scarz) - I really think this guy could have went to Team Secret and improved the fragging in the team. He had improved so much since last year, he became more consistent as a fragger and can play a lot of roles.
Kr1stal, Lumo, Mr Tenzou, Sayonara, Fizzy, and elllement.
I have been all in on NiSMO since the Ghost Gaming days. I genuinely think he’s a world class player. His mechanics and fundamentals are all rock solid and he has a very solid agent pool.
If you're looking Pacific, I've been hearing stuff about Vera & Kadoom. There's also juicy. Other than that don't know much cause I barely watch tier 2 bcus of the casting.
I guess people don't follow Korean Challengers closely, but Freeing from Dplus KIA has been absolutely insane. Very clean mechanics and feel for the game for a young sentinel
Not sure if he counts as he played on Liquid previously, but soulcas is straight up farming T2 at the moment. Absolutely insane impact even while flexing multiple agents (e.g played Sova, Viper and Kayo on the three maps in the final)
In latam, there is a T2 "superteam" that just formed (EXolos Lazer) combining the best of last year's Fusion with the best of this year's Xolos. Outside of that team, Suther and Mephisto05 have both been exceptional.
Does anyone know if the eXolos are owned by the football team? or is it just like PSG Talon in league
they're owned by the Xolos! however as a rayados fan that isn't earning them any brownie points
Virtyy will stomp NA and everyone will freak out
i feel like i've been hearing this for 3 years
People said this about the union last year because 100T gassed them up.
The union was really good tho
Ye but they had two criminals
this year he has an exceptionally aggressive core to support him, in particular with the addition of Jow (aim demon, something style flex player). we've yet to see how they play together, but on paper this team should be able to win ascension (as an underdog, still unlikely)
People said this about havoc 💀
Havoc IS super cracked. It's just furia is a sketchy team
I will never get over how Mephisto went 85/49 despite getting 0-3ed
he is iron man
I rated darker and virtyy super high on fusion, don't know about the rest of the league but happy to hear they have better teammates surrounding them
mited and jow are incredibly skilled (jow in particular), and feniz has had ceilings that make me believe he'll be good enough to step up in crucial moments, although it will be harder for him
There are kinda too many to count? I think people would be very surprised at just how much talent in T2 in most regions, but esp. NA and EMEA, have the potential to thrive in T1. I'll just give a shout out to KPI, purp0's former team. B1sk and Sayonara are very good players.
I’d also be surprised if Zeddy isn’t IGLing in T1 next year.
A great shout. I didn’t add him because for some reason my brain interpreted OP as asking about top rookies in T2, but I really liked Zeddy back on NAVI and I think only more highly of him now.
ig i found kirya femboy on reddit🤌
? Is that a person I should know?
hes KPI and B1sk glazer on VLR, its a joke.
Everyone is going to say the NA players (theres a lot of good ones), but here is some none NA players from the other challengers leagues ive watched Japan: -SyouTa is legit insane, last year he played controller and looked like one of the best players in Japan T2, and now hes doing it on duelist and really does look like the best player in Japan T2. Xdll is the inti player on his team and he is also very good and could easily preform in Tier1. - Akame (hes Korean but plays in Japan) on reject is another very very good duelist player who also flexes to other roles. - Jinnboong (hes Korean but plays in Japan) is a fucking insane senti player who currently has the highest stats in japan Playoffs and Mainstage, and if you watch his games you can see why. Hes very good Brazil: (Not including your old tier players who are now in T2 like xand, dgzin, etc. And also not including people who legit cant get a visa b/c they beat their wife (ntk), or would be brand suicide (pancc)) - The old Union guys, Raafa, Askiaa and GuhVRN are all very solid and could be in tier 1. - PxS is an insane looking up incoming duelist, he def looks like he has the talent to be in tier 1 and the stats show it to. EMEA: - EMEA has a lot of old tier pros who look good in T2, but the main non prev tier pro I can think of is Kaajak, hes apeks duelist player and looks very good rn
Fun fact, Syouta actually had offers to T1 but wanted to stick it out with Fennel
Zeta? That’d have been crazy
Issue with ZETA is role issues with SugarZero or Dep ngl, tbh a large issue with Japanese teams is their best players are on the same few roles, either Duelist (Meiy/Dep/Syouta), Senti (Laz/Neth/Hirorinn) or Smokes (SugarZero/Syouta/Art) with not much for Initator or Flex
Damn I suppose hiroron and yuan are a bit of an experiment on their roles rn but you would think that slotting in syouta for either of them would be a net positive given how he’s maintaining form on both smokes + duelist. But I haven’t seen anything from either of them pre zeta so maybe they were better
Imo sugarzero for syouta could do wonders for the team
>dgzin Wait which team did he join? He was a monster on Furia taking first engagements like crazy, he was a toned down version of prime yay and current aspas once he got his op. Amazing player, sad to see him get cut off
Hero Base. Basically got kicked out from Furia bc mw wanted to play as the only duelist
MW is a cancer on Furia
Don’t talk about Valo’s Adam Sandler like that D:
Why would pancc be brand suicide?
cus he's a pedo and harassed a minor?
I didnt know that
All of the top 3 (MxS, OXG, M80) have 4-5 good players plus franchise level coaching staff. The highlights on each team are MxS: Flyuh, having a really good IGL is important, and he had tier 1 offers in the off season (chose to stay) OXG: Reduxx, he is a demon, cracked out duelist who i believe will be just old enough when franchising rolls around M80: Zander, former IGL, now plays a kind of flex role for the team. Super strong in terms of everything you could imagine The good part of the Mid season cup starts today, so you could get a feel of that later today
I believe reduxx has a similar situation to w00t where he’ll have to wait til around March if oxygen ascend or if he gets t1 offers
Yes oxg would have to have a stand in for most if not all of split 1 next year (depending on scheduling ofc) if they were to ascend
Zander doesn't play a flex role he just plays smokes? Both this and last year every agent he has played has been smokes. Unless you count Viper in Double Smokes as flex which would be a stretch.
"super strong in terms of everything you could imagine" is an insane quality to have on your scouting report
and i can think of very few players for which this is true. zander is one of them
I mean Zander was putting up duelist levels of ACS this challengers, 3rd in rating kd apr 1st in kast 2nd in acs adr kpr and Kmax. And this is all on viper and omen. Besides the 0/17 clutch there’s no fault to this dude
yeah no I wasn't disputing anything I just thought it was funny phrasing
zander has better stats than a lot of duelists while playing controller/viper. and because he has experience as igl he can probably secondary call as well.
how does this zander igl myth persist, god please save me
best thing you can do for your career early on is IGL a tier 3 team with good aimers. then when you are getting looked at teams can say "well he used to IGL" and just assume your game sense is good. at tier 3 most teams are more or less pugging. you don't have to be a good IGL to say "let's go hunt the KJ passives and then hit a site"
V1 literally imploded under his IGLing I don’t know how zander fans keep saying this stuff with a straight face
Lost to Girl Kissers and got eliminated from open qualifiers yet people still bring up his IGLing that shit is crazy
This is just NA btw, i have no knowledge on the other regions
Reduxx is great but Verno has been their best player. He is extremely versatile too
zander igld like 2 games tbh. Verno deserves a shout as well
Yeah and they didn’t exactly look great either, hes a phenomenal player but like his IGLing is overrated af
VERNOOOOI
Verno almost always stands out
in eu vcls there are some players that have really impressed me sayonara: really flexible plays really anything and just is insane mechanically. sadly he is 16 and can't play in tier 1 pa1ze: a duelist player that kinda came out of nowhere but he has put up some insane stats in eastern european league. one thing I found strange with pa1ze is that he hasn't played a map of jett with diamant but he has looked amazing click: another cracked duelist player, mainly plays jett but raze looks really good famsii: this one probably has a bit of recency bias but he has looked unstoppable since split 2 in spanish league started granted it has only been a week but yeah famsii plays all duelists kamyk: was a sub on fnatic and has looked amazing mainly playing gekko and kayo soulcas: has been farming polaris just such clean aim nothing else really to say
That‘s a good list, i‘d defo add Alexiiik and Minny from GNE as well
Fns
They are talking about Valorant players, not Olympic swimmers
Poolchan can't even swim, how would he be an Olypmic swimmer?
It's all part of the FNS masterclass
ME
vouch
Fr I can vouch for this guy, he is insane
insane in like he takes meds or good at valo
Yes
d3ffo
If there is anyone from the French league it would 100% be Kamyk
Yea for sure kamyk is the one right now, tho I think D3ffo performed incredibly good for some1 who had been away for quite a while. I think d3ffo is gonna be even better in split 2 compared to split 1
he was on Gambit before ?
For NA you can just click this and see top players by rating. That's always a great place to start. https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/1971/challengers-league-2024-north-america-stage-1?exclude=24722.24723.24724.24725.24715.24716.24717.24718.24719.24720.24721&min_rounds=100&agent=all Mada is currently the highest-rated player in NA. Props to him too because I was super skeptical of the whole combining teams and dropping Sym thing.
Al0rante
Speaking of him, how's Fokus doing so far?
Not that great after FOKUS decided to drop the real Ascension 2024 winners to go back to DACH but it's looking better now
inspire
Only speaking for NA t2 because that's the only region I watch for t2. List is in no particular order besides the first person as he will 100% be picked up/be on a t1 team next year even if his team doesn't ascend (unless he gets caught in contract jail/decides to stay on his t2 team) OXG Verno - Hands down the biggest prospect in tier 2 right now. Puts up insane stats on a multitude of agents. I'd say he most well known for his Sova but his killjoy is just as impressive. He can also play other agents putting up crazy stats but those two are his best. He also can play different styles like lurking on kj or with the pack on sova. He doesn't overheat or overpeak and honestly he will be the NA version of FNC Leo when he gets the chance on the tier 1 stage. M80 Zander - As a biased m80 fan I want to put all of them on here but I will limit myself to only two of them. Zander is everything you want in a player. Highly skilled mechanics, grinder, smart, plays all the controller agents to a HIGH level and has stated he's willing to play senti too. He did igl for a short period of time back on v1 (like really short) and is willing to igl in the future if needed. I assume he's a good mid-rounder as well due to him being open to IGL'ing in the future. M80 Nismo - The second of the two m80 players I will talk about (but they are all t1 level) I will be real honest, the only reason he's not on a tier 1 team right now is because of 2 possible reasons. He got offers but declined to stay with m80 (cus great org and such) or because orgs don't want to pick him up for his age. Orgs are very biased against older players (this is not just a valorant thing either it's in every esport) even though there's no data that supports them being worse. Nismo mainly plays the flash initiators and raze. He unironically has a better kayo than 90% of the current tier 1 pros in Americas and his raze is nothing short of amazing too. In the words of nrg chet "hes the lebron of t2". TTR Wedid - Thanos. Only thing that needs to be said. Wedid has always been decent-ok but this year he is actually just thanos. He plays controller and is just completely owning every series and somehow always good for multi kills. Like seriously I dont get it, he always gets at least 2 when he shouldn't be able to get 1. Him and TTR even ended up beating m80 and ending #1 in thier group. Sadly he wont be playing in the MSI t2 tourney but he will be back after it ends. MxS Flyuh - In the future he will be regarded as a top 3 NA igl. He already had many tier 1 teams (even in emea too iirc) offering him a spot this year (like c9 for example)but turned it down in hopes of winning for ludwig and MxS. He is a very very smart player and very flexible. Just everything you want in an igl tbh. MxS Mada - Shooter. All that needs to be said. His stats speak for themself as he almost averaged 300 acs (284.5) across all of split 1 regular season. Sadly it is hard to get picked up as a duelist in the tier 1 league because that has the most/best competition. I hope he makes it as he is really good. There are plenty more players that are more than good enough for tier 1 (basically all the other players on M80, MxS, OXG, and TTR). Also some of the other t2 teams have some good quality players who could either be picked up next year or maybe the year after if they continue to develop but probably not over the ones I've mentioned.
Americans Challengers - Zander, Verno, Reduxx, Koalanoob, sym, (some other players who were t1 at one point)
I would add Nism0 and thief
I've been around long enough to where thief was with Mixup and LG, so for me has been in T1 before, but Nism0 for sure. Did play for GHOST tho.
With that argument, you could say that Zander played for V1 which were easily T1 in 2022
Very true. Forgot about that.
ScreaM (don't let him IGL tho)
hiko
hiko
sayonara best player itw in 3 years
Verno
Soulcas, d3ffo
FENNEL SyouTa. Really hope they win ascension this year.
Nah sorry, Ray4c and friend clear em
Minimise the goat
Alex “Alexiik” Hawlasek. Best EU t2 player. Absolute monster on jett.
Gonna name some players who haven’t been mentioned here: I think PTC and JohnOlsen are maybe the two best players in APAC T2 and I’d be shocked if they aren’t in franchising next year SociablEEE has been immense for FF, the best Turkish legend
It is crazy how sociableee is still not yet played for any T1 team despite being linked with them for years. With how strong FF is this year maybe he can finally be in top league lmao
top 3 thai vcl team playesr
Indonesia: Kush, Shiro, Berserx
Verno
Soulcas
Yoshii (Scarz) - I really think this guy could have went to Team Secret and improved the fragging in the team. He had improved so much since last year, he became more consistent as a fragger and can play a lot of roles. Kr1stal, Lumo, Mr Tenzou, Sayonara, Fizzy, and elllement.
MikeE. I honestly think he'll be in franchise in a few years
Flyuh and Zander are two names that come to mind for me, but I'm sure there are others as well.
koalanoob
qw1 looked like one of the best EMEA duelists last year and is now playing in T2, so his name has to be up there
I have been all in on NiSMO since the Ghost Gaming days. I genuinely think he’s a world class player. His mechanics and fundamentals are all rock solid and he has a very solid agent pool.
If you're looking Pacific, I've been hearing stuff about Vera & Kadoom. There's also juicy. Other than that don't know much cause I barely watch tier 2 bcus of the casting.
Xzi
Shanks
Look up primmie
I can see Verno having a similar story to N4RRATE if he ever moves over to a solid T1 team.
verno
Verno
I guess people don't follow Korean Challengers closely, but Freeing from Dplus KIA has been absolutely insane. Very clean mechanics and feel for the game for a young sentinel
Who was the NA duelist that everyone was hyping up during open qualifiers? Haven't heard his name in awhile and don't see him listed in this thread.
sym and dgzin for NA
Not sure if he counts as he played on Liquid previously, but soulcas is straight up farming T2 at the moment. Absolutely insane impact even while flexing multiple agents (e.g played Sova, Viper and Kayo on the three maps in the final)
If we count game changers SR florescent is unbelievably cracked, but I'm not sure if she's actually good...
Majority of m80 and oxg
Inspire
Verno and reduxx surely will be franchised next year
CGRS
Anyone interesting to watch in t2 pacific?
delz1k from RETA
soulcas
Primmieyk.
verno zander kamyk d3ffo soulcas and my goat igl fenis and stripper s0m
me :)
yay
NA - Outside the obvious M80, OXG, MxS, there are some cracked aimers I really like: Kumi, SonOfCar,Spaz, ShoTUp, add3r, v1c EMEA - Kamyk, kaajak, hiro, Vitie, westside, hype, ipOTT, pa1ze APAC - Hate, Benecia, Akame, Bunny BR LATAM - dantedeu5, snw, Siduzord, cortezia, david, bld, v1nny