I land at 7.

turn your case upside down to compensate.

oh man, nostalgia.

The ESEA one got me for a solid five minutes. I think they do the same joke every year, yet I somehow fell for it this time.

I'm not entirely sure if nip are having a bad day or envy are playing out of their minds, which makes this nip vs tsm bet so difficult.

that term is primarily used for determining 3rd/4th in a single elim bracket, but oh well.

Envyus is looking really solid right now. I don't even think NiP are playing that bad, but everything is going right for Envyus.

Right, but lower bracket finals would be the lower of Envy vs NiP and the winner of TSM vs Titan. TSM vs Titan is lower bracket semis, not lower bracket finals.

Shoutout to whoever negative fragged me. You know how double elim works, don'tcha?

why do they keep calling TSM vs Titan the lower bracket final? Envyus vs NiP are still in winners. Am I missing something about this tournament format?

allu is really showing his worth on NiP. A lot of people questioned him at first, but I think he fits perfectly on the team now.

Also, NiP's teamspeak chatter is hilarious.

I guess it's possible I might fly out to this, just because I'm from SoCal and this would be fun! I don't think I'm doing anything.

Unless I missed a part, I think one big change you're missing is that the capture time got cut in half in an update right after s6 LAN. If I remember right, 1x on the point used to be 24 seconds, and then got changed to 12 seconds. Eveb with quite a few bodies on point, it still took a very long time for a team to capture prior to the update. Because of this, I think "old Viaduct" should be considered s5 to s6.

This changed entirely how Viaduct was played, because back on Pandemic / blight-fanom, our strategy was to keep TLR and I in house. Justin ran sniper and everyone played mostly passive, maybe except ww going in to annoy the other team. Justin did a fantastic job at constantly rotating sniper spots to pick people off, too. Once the other team started to throw a ton of bodies on the point to start the ridiculously slow cap, then TLR and I would walk out of house and uber onto the point. Our entire team would collapse on them while Justin continued to snipe people.

In s5, we tried to make this work and did an okay job of it, but we were still a new team. In s6, I had no doubt in my mind that we were the best team in the world at it. I think that's because Ruwin was also incredible at roaming around as scout and getting important kills, along with Orzo just being a ridiculously solid Demo. I always felt like we played the map to near perfection in s6.

In s7, not only did we have a lot of roster changes, but we couldn't play Viaduct the same anymore after the changes. Staying in house was no longer a good idea, because you wouldn't get to the point in time if they threw a bunch of bodies onto point. You *might* get there in time, but it would be 95% capped, which isn't really worth it at that point. It's probably better to let them cap it, fight, and if you die, you get quicker respawns. But ideally, you need to play closer to point to stop them from getting a bunch of cap time.

None of this was an issue prior to s7, because by the time you would exit house to uber onto point, the point might have been capped somewhere around 25-50%, which wasn't a big deal. Also, running 24/7 sniper wasn't nearly as good as it was before, and playing more aggressively (such as forward holding) tended to be more rewarding.

I'm confident that if LAN and money weren't involved, it would still be a case of no one giving a shit to put in enough practice.

And nowhere did I or any other LAN player imply that going to LAN was a terrible experience. LAN is a fantastic time, but any player who makes LAN is not obligated to play the game for 40 hours a week. I also don't understand why you are so aggressive and edgy about this, but alright.

Basically this.

Froyo have stuck together for a while with the same group of core players (who are all incredibly skilled). If mix^ continued to play and eLevate had the same roster as last season, either of those teams could unquestionably be a serious threat to froyo. Unfortunately, mix^ died and eLevate had roster changes along with position changes, so they have a lot of readjusting to do. Froyo are good, and it shows. Those gorgeous gamers are talented, but the right amount of work ethic can take them out.

Will teams want to put forth the work? Probably not. Ash will be too busy practicing Melee so he can beat clockwork in Dallas. :D

I think you're missing his point.

For a very long time, a lot of Invite was mostly about who practiced the most. If you didn't practice, you would likely lose to a team worse than you, just because they put in more hours. It was a chore at times, but you're right, getting to go and hang out with everyone is a lot of fun. I still go to most of the ESEA LANs just to hang out.

Could one of the other three LAN teams beat froyo at this upcoming LAN? Sure, I think it could be a possibility.

Will it happen? I really doubt it, just because the amount of hours needed to catch up to them to maybe beat them can be daunting. I think it's got to a point where there's a lack of motivation. Froyo are established now. I think most teams aren't really willing to care enough to put in the large amount of effort to be on the same level as them. The LAN teams will obvious start practicing closer to LAN, but it's gonna be one hell of a task to give froyo a run for their money this upcoming LAN. There's not enough motivation or incentive to get on their level.

It sucks, but I knew people would feel this way once mix^ died, rando left eLevate, and then Invite decided to not really scrim anymore (at least not nearly as much as Invite used to scrim).

And all of this is leading back to the original point at hand. You could practice out of your mind and put in tons of hours with your team, and you might beat froyo. Hell, you still might get 3rd or 4th. Tagg was saying that it can suck to practice so much just to put on a good show, only to potentially come out negative after the LAN is over.

Also, to address the topic of this thread, I don't necessarily think that froyo will be the death of TF2. However, I think froyo will always be as dominant as they are right now until the end of TF2. Again, just because there's really no motivation or incentive to put in that much work anymore.

You're a fucking great person. deathconsciousness is incredible and is probably somewhere in my top five.

http://innocentwords.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Cursive-uglyorgan.jpg

Took me a bit to think about, but definitely The Ugly Organ.

Nine Inch Nails because they always put on an incredible show, especially with visuals. Caught Trent's tambourine at one! :D

Death Cab for Cutie at the Tower Theater. I'm sure they are great live at any other location, but it was so amazing to experience it at the Tower Theater.

Foo Fighters were pretty damn good when I saw them like seven years ago.

Rob Zombie is actually fucking incredible live. It was an Ozzy Osbourne concert with Rob Zombie opening up for him. I like both of them an okay amount but I'm not crazy about either of them. But holy shit, I remember being totally floored during the Rob Zombie set. There was a lot of stuff happening on the stage (props, girls, other stuff), the set list was perfect, John 5 did a few solos, and it was just fantastic.

Hm, I just realized that I saw Mae three times live. Nothing ridiculously incredible but I would say they are pretty good live.