Cryo is playing the exact same roles and started using the same dot crosshair and vandal even (probably a troll on their part), and its all fucking working wonders. He seriously could end up as an even better Demon1 that Boostio hyped up in that one 100t podcast. They recognized Demon1's strengths back on EG with Potter and gave him the playstyle and roles that made him necessary to perform, and they applied what they found to Cryo like a 1:1 conversion.

The EG effect should be a scientific term, Cryo is back in his prime.

With how good 100T is looking right now, we must attribute the success to not only the player but also the coaching staffs. I've been somewhat a quiet follower of Zikz for a while now. I first met Zikz in League of Legends soloq, he was the first person in the pro scene I came across in a game, and left a big impression on me since then.

For those who don't know, Zikz was a League of Legends coach prior to switching to VALORANT.

Between 2014-2018, Zikz served as analyst and head coach for the CLG team. Under Zikz, CLG achieved:

1st Place: 2015 LCS Summer Playoffs (3-0 against TSM)

1st Place: 2016 LCS Spring Playoffs (3-2 against TSM)

2nd Place: 2016 MSI (Losing 0-3 to SKT T1)

• multiple top 3 finishes within NA LCS

He then served as the head coach for TSM and 100T before taking a and switching to VALORANT.

Zikz joined VALORANT In 2022 as the assistant coach for NRG, then joined EG in 2023 during their Cinderella story run. Now, he is the head coach for 100T, a team that's looking amazing.

I urge everyone to read this from around 2 years ago, it shows how his experience as a MOBA coach translates to tac FPS game.

Some takeaways

Q: How are you so hot?

A: thank you so much

Q: What does your background in LCS bring to the team that other coaches with an FPS background cannot necessarily provide?

A: I think the biggest thing I currently offer is experience and a new perspective - having minimal FPS background, but 8 years of coaching offers unique insight into:

1. A wealth of knowledge in terms of coaching & making sure our process is helping us improve as a team consistently

2. MOBA background offering better understanding of maximizing utility to its highest efficiency

3. Experience in creating systems to simplify the complex details of a game

Q:Why switch from LOL to Valorant?

A: League over time for me has lost my interest and passion as a game as I took my split long break. During that break time I spent a lot of time playing Valorant climbing from gold -> immortal 3 over the course of 4 months & ended up deciding that I was a lot more passionate about the game. Valorant's given me a new drive and something to be obsessed about and spend countless hours watching/studying/playing to learn as much as I can - which is something I sadly no longer have with League.

Q: How does your ability knowledge in LoL translate into ability usage in Valorant? How are they different?

A: What I've noticed for sure is that League of Legends has a heavy focus on ability efficiency in all aspects. Trying to get the absolute most amount of value and do the most pressuring thing at all times has definitely given me a strong understanding of how to think about getting the most out of your utility. Valorant is a lot easier as you have less abilities/utility options, but applies the same concepts. Think about what the enemy would feel most pressured by and realize that it's likely the thing that's the strongest option. Do you feel more pressured by a sova scanning you at the beginning of the round or when you're trying to run out into site?

Q: What are the similarities between a moba and Valorant and how does that help with the prep? If there are any learning curves what are they and how are u overcoming them?

A: The similarities are definitely in:

1. Team play (Making sure we have a good understanding of how we can play off of each other and synergize with communication)

2. Maximizing abilities (Leaning heavy on MOBA experience for this)

3. Understanding the rock paper scissors of different playstyles

I really don't like twitter, and I haven't logged into my account in months (my anxiety thanks me) and I wasn't sure if I was going to announce anything anywhere and just ride off into the sunset, or if people even cared or noticed that I disappeared. But with the pride event coming up and my name being thrown around a fair bit I thought I'd address my disappearance and what's going on, and if I'm attending MCC pride this year.

To those who don't know, I have taken part in every pride event and my team has placed overall 1st each event (dodgebolt 3 times) and winning 2 of the 3 times! A lot of people say Pride is sort off THE event for Gizzy Gazza to pop off and people seem to be genuinely excited to see me each time (which is always a nice feeling!) I absolutely love MCC pride, and the people involved and the community and my team each year. And I'll always appreciate Scott and the noxcrew team for letting me be involved.

With that being said, I won't be taking part in Pride this year. It's not that I am traveling or busy, I just simply chose not to take part.

The reason is because I'm not entirely sure if or when I'll return as Gizzy Gazza. I never want to say "I am quitting" because I hate putting a full stop on things in life. A couple of months ago I randomly made a Runescape video after 10 years. Why? Because its fun! Maybe I want to randomly work on a movie/roleplay show when I have the drive/passion for it. Maybe I want to come back and make something that I find fun in a couple of years. I don't want to say I'm quitting and then come back in a few months. I did that in 2018 when I said I was quitting Minecraft to do animations and then eventually came back to Minecraft. I'm in a position in life where I don't need to make content for money. I want to use Gizzy Gazza as a creative outlet again like when I first started Youtube way back in 2009, and not because I need the money. Money wasn't even a thing in 2009, it was just fun!

Why did I stop Gizzy Gazza in the first place? Well the name Gizzy Gazza, as mentioned above, started in 2009. That's 15 years. A lot of people who used to watch me growing up now have their own kids!! (!!) I'm 31, I'm happily married, I bought a house, I have my dog (who I consider my son, yes I'm THAT kind of millennial) and I've done a lot of things in my 15 years I am very proud of (and some things I'm not so proud of). When I started Gizzy in 2009 it was a fun thing to do that turned into a career as I was given an opportunity because of my friends I made from Runescape started to do well in Minecraft who helped me out. When making a character in 2009 at the age of 14 I wish I could tell myself "hey maybe don't be the white guy with dreadlocks" but suddenly I had a million subscribers and it was too late lmao. What I'm trying to say is, can I continue to do Gizzy Gazza for another 15 years? 10 years? 5 years? As a JOB...Probably not.

You see, I'm not part of a community really, besides MCC. I'm not in hermit, or any SMPs, and I haven't spoken to a lot of Minecraft friends in a while (I still love you guys! Hoping everyone is doing good and I am on discord if you wish to say hi). The community I was in, the roleplay community, died off many years ago unfortunately. When trying to make Youtube work in 2021 I did a lot of studying and found the roleplay niche thriving with channels like Aphmau and Checkpoint, and knew if I wanted an audience in the roleplay space again I had to make content similar to them. So I changed my content, stopped making "series" content like shows and focused on episodic content for kids. 2022 was the biggest year I've seen for Gizzy in a LONG time, it also came with a curse. The different between Gizzy and Aphmau, was that Aphmau had a lot of content focused around herself and her friends with maybe a trend every now and then... Gizzy just did trends. The best way to put it is simply...most people who watched me was Gen Z, and then I started making content for Gen Alpha. While it was smart for me to make content for a new demographic, gen z was MADDD. I don't like going on Twitter because its very negative. I don't like seeing people talk negative about me. I get I can't please everyone (I've done Youtube enough to know you can't make everyone happy), but I don't have to be on a platform I don't feel welcomed. As I dug deeper into this younger demographic I realize most of them weren't subscribing for ME, and only wanted specific things like Garten of Banban, or Rainbow Friends. When it got to the point in August 2023 when I was barely breaking 10k views on a Minecraft Skibidi Toilet video, I took a step back and said... WHAT THE FFFFF AM I DOING. And I had to stop. I wasn't making content I liked, for people who weren't watching. I killed my name. My legacy. My reputation. It hurt me to see so many people turn against me for an audience who didn't care about me. I was hurt. The audience who once cared for "me" was long gone. That was my fault. I pushed them away. I'm sorry if I pushed you away. My brain went "this is my job, I need to make content that makes money" and I didn't put the audience first. I didn't put YOU first. I fumbled the bag. So I stopped.

To clarify... I LIKED the content I was making. I REALLY enjoy improv, and acting, and setting up a scene, and directing, and creating stories. I studied TV and video production for 5 years, and this niche made sense considering my background as a roleplayer and storyteller, I just hit the wrong crowd. I'm definitely envious of Aphmau and Checkpoint because they did it RIGHT, and I tunnel-visioned the wrong thing, and that was greed. Youtube is not easy guys lol...especially if you try to maintain an audience for 15 years.

If I was to make Gizzy Gazza as my brand again, I would need to make another channel for it to even get recommended outside of the "skibidi toilet kids" who won't click any of the videos I want to make, or it'll take a LOOOONG time for Youtube to recommend me to an audience outside of that crowd. And honestly, I'm exhausted with Gizzy. Its been 15 years. I take anxiety medication. I have therapy. I had a cancer scare a couple of years ago (all good but man that was a scary month), and I HAVE BACK PAIN GUYS. Instead of making ANOTHER channel for Gizzy, I decided it could be fun to make a new brand entirely. I work on a few faceless channels now that I manage and run, and its been very fun working with an amazing team I get to work with every day, and from what I've learnt through the mistakes of Gizzy Gazza, I'm fixing with my new brands to not fall into the same trap (I'm only human, let me learn from mistakes and continue to grow), And its REFRESHED my excitement for Youtube again, and I can see myself doing Youtube for another 10 years, just not as Gizzy. I've also been enjoying not having my face public and enjoying life as GARY and then doing Youtube as a job and growing a community. An example of this is Gizzy Gazza would barely break 30 viewers on a stream whereas my new brand gets over 100! I promise I'm learning from my mistakes haha

I wanted to make some kind of announcement but I didn't want to do it on Twitter. I don't like Twitter. I don't feel welcomed on Twitter. MCC I always felt welcomed and accepted. A lot of you guys watched me growing up and always rooted for me in the games, so I felt this was a fitting place to say something, to people who actually would listen to me and wouldn't be toxic or make me feel unheard. I truly appreciate anyone who watched at least ONE video of mine within the 15 years as Gizzy. I truly am happy, and I am satisfied with everything I have accomplished with Gizzy, and I'm ready to focus on the next chapter in my life with my new "job" on Youtube doing other things. And again, I don't want to say I'm quitting Gizzy, I just don't know if or when I'd return. I've love to make Clue 7 and maybe another Purge show. They were so much fun to make, I just don't have the drive right now to do Gizzy.

Sorry this had been a lot longer post than I thought it would be. I was just going to say I'm not doing Pride and then I couldn't stop typing and thought I might as well just say my peace. I'm sure this'll be shared around and that's okay. I'm happy, and healthy!

Through wide queue we were able to produce the and the ; the tank started unranked (probably with a GM2 MMR and placed GM5) and the support started M1; the tank is now champ 5 and the support is GM3. We only wide-queued and have been doing this since the start of the season; the tank has won 60/64 games played in 12 hours played and the support has won 55/57 in 8 hours played. While both of these players were t500 players going back to OW1, neither of them peaked higher than 4.4/4.5 in OW1 and shouldn't be anywhere near rank 1.

Obviously we achieved this by exploiting wide queue’s matchmaking. Wide queue takes the average of the group and matches it against other wide queue players. We aren’t sure about the mechanic in detail, but from our testing it does not account for the range of the wide queue, merely the average and the fact that it is wide. This means that a GM + Bronze will queue into the same games as Diamond + Gold (along that line). We both 3 stacked and 5 stacked through this; it is worth noting that when we were 5 stacking we only got a 5 stack once and only ever played into 3+2s.

The SR (%) gain also made this exploit work. A win generally gave anywhere from 1-8% progress, but the issue here being that the low elo players were always on the low end of the SR gain and the GM/Masters were getting the high end; the low elo players would get around 2% average and the GM/Masters were getting 6% on average, meaning the GM/Ms were rewarded for winning functionally free games. Losing a game lost us roughly the same amount, but we did not lose enough to get a good sample size in. Assuming a player would get 22% per win in a non-wide game (and in high GM this number is much lower), you would need a 64+% winrate to beat this efficiency.

Now while we do admit we did this because it was funny as hell, we also partially did this because this mechanism is incredibly exploitable and we strongly urge Blizzard to either remove or modify how wide Q_U_E_U_E works. This mechanic is horribly implemented, exploitable and ruins the integrity of the ranked ladder. While we could've just made a post about it on the blizzard forum, we all know blizzard only listens to nuclear options so we had to make rank 1 to prove our point: Remove this feature ASAP.

btw we are making an OD team xoxo dm for tryouts rank 15 and above only.

A lot of the original big name Val guys were ex cs guys and still are to be fair (Tarik). By this point tho, a lot of the best players are young Val players and not old cs players. Glad that this game is developing its own style.

Disclaimer: this discussion is about collegiate and I know many of you probably don’t care about the scene, but what’s being done by the current TO is criminal and ruining CVAL.

GGTech Entertainment is the current officiator of College Valorant and League.

In regards to regular season we have had delayed schedule postings, signups taking place during Christmas break (causing over 100 teams to miss the deadline) and a wide variety of minor errors.

Start of 2024 however things took a steep decline.

• They announced that they were ending all official broadcasts of CVAL matches (not even broadcasting grand finals)

• Reduced the champions prize pool by 80% (this one really hit home as a Collegiate player for a club with no scholarships)

• Moved CVAL Champions playoffs location from Riot Games Arena to Boise St University in Idaho

• Limited the teams to attend the offline tournament from 3 to 2 (top 2 travel across country in the summer for 1 bo5 for $400 more)

• Seeded teams unfairly, for example, a university got 6th place in the 3rd split, but qualified as seed 3 because they were given the “1st place” qualification because everyone else qualified by getting 1st OR second in previous splits

• The resulting seeding means teams like Winthrop and Blinn who are both in NA challengers will play each other in ro16

Lastly cause I know people are gonna comment “college esports is dumb it makes no money”.

ABSOLUTELY, it is a waste but if it’s to eventually become the pipeline for talent in the future, maybe we should start streaming matches and not cutting the prize pool.

Other TO’s like CECC have shown that you can host a national collegiate tournament offline: 32 teams traveled to Texas with stipends, took part in media days, and played for the entirety of the weekend.

How many viewers did CECC have?

4k-6k, that is how it is supposed to be done.