A quick write-up on my thoughts for NA’s WC OT4 Semi-Finals

AMN:

At first I wanted to keep a close eye on them this weekend but I found myself not enjoying watching them. Phonyhead seemed irritated with AckBTW every time I tried to tune in and Ack was having to defend his actions. With a bit more chemistry they probably would have easily qualed, considering how close they were to making it. I wouldn't be surprised if this team is tweeting L-F-T by the end of this weekend.

CLG:

Only time I watched them was when they took that ballsy rotate via the Geyser into the back area, which was somehow completely free and led to the winning the game.. It absolutely reminded me of what Teq used to try to do (today he tried playing edge a bit more). Every other time I tuned in they were trying to no-audio people just like NRG and Sentinels likes to do. Not much more to say.

clown fiesta:

First off, congrats to this team for even making it this far. The first time I ever watched Maarcil he won a game in Group 3 scrims and he was the happiest man in the world. Now he has made an ALGS semi-finals. He wasn't streaming so I tried to watch Glider but I quickly became irritated when I realized that he would literally click on the healing item in his inventory to heal instead of just mapping heal to one of his keys. I would use exhaustion as an excuse for them but every other team was just as exhausted as them. They'll gain more experience and run it back. Every ALGS there's one team in the semi-finals lobby that is outmatched but learns a lot from it. This time it was them.

DCOPSOLVEWIGGREUNION:

The obvious feel-good story of the tournament so far. While I was a fan of Wigg back in the early days, I didn't really learn anything about competitive Apex until April 2020, and even then it was a very slow learning process. I'm saying all that to say I don't have the same nostalgia about this team like others did. I hear that back-in-the-day Wigg wasn't the one with the brains, but today it was clear that Wigg was the leader. Obviously the team was just made for fun but that didn't mean that they were playing without a care in the world; Wigg was visibly getting frustrated during the semi-finals but would attempt to brush it off with "It's ok, it's alright. We go next", etc. I wouldn't say that I saw anything overly impressive from this team this weekend, and I can't say I'm surprised Wigg made it this far because he has done an insane amount of watch parties and ranked grinding, something that I feel has given him enough knowledge to play passive enough that the game and the points come to his team. Hopefully Wigg gets a 'real' team together for LCQ because there's no reason why he should be letting his talents grow stale on the sidelines with watch parties while the next generation of controller players continue to take over.

Down with the Thiccness:

No thoughts on this team as well because I purposely chose not to watch them. I knew there was a chance that they could make finals but I gambled against it because I'm just one person and there's only so many streams I can watch at once, and even the streams I'm watching I struggle keeping up with what's happening for all of them.

Dudes Night Out:

This was one of the most consistent teams during the Autumn Circuit but for some reason this circuit just hasn't been theirs. No one on this team streamed but I did see them fragging out the last game until they eventually got taken out by Team Superior, who seemed to just absorb that momentum into the exact game they needed to make Finals.

Flash Point:

Definitely a disappointing tournament for this team. During semi-finals they attempted to play edge a lot but it didn't bring great results. To me it seemed like, when FP teamed with Teq, they expected a certain playstyle but were caught off guard with the willingness to be on edge and picking up KP if the zone wasn't a guaranteed God Spot, which isn't something that they're used to. This seemed to be a similar issue with the last version of Ability Legends with Dropped. There was also a Countdown zone that they didn't capitalize off of, that probably would have secured them a trip to Finals if they could have secured more than 2 kills. Rambeau just posted on Twitter that he's L-F-T and I hope a team that fully embraces his abilities can pick him up. There were so many times this weekend when you would think that they're about to retreat or move on during engaements, and suddenly Rambeau has done 300 damage and completely turned the fight around. I would say that Rambeau was easily the best player on Flash Point this weekend. Not reaching Finals could hurt for Teq because teams might stop respecting Countdown as his drop spot, especially since he'll likely have another new team for LCQ.

Farmboys:

Nobody on this team has been streaming so it's hard to make an opinion about them. I've believed in Lucas' competitive potential before he ever started competing so it's good to see that he's slowly becoming one of those consistent finalists teams (even though he barely scrapped in today). They were catching teams in really weird spots (like in ring or when ring was about to close on the edge of ring), but they're getting kills so there's some sort of method to their madness. To me, this seems like one of those teams that are only able to survive because of the chemistry they have and the insane amount of hours they've played together, farming Sao Paulo lobbies in ranked last season.

HRN:

Every time I tuned into Euriece's stream all I heard was the entire team giggling about what was happening. They were having fun while being one of the scariest teams in the lobby, and I could see them taking this momentum into tomorrow. Euriece is a superstar and it's only a matter of time until the whole world knows it.

Kanaka's Pets:

They almost played spoiler today. I didn't watch any of their POV's but it was pretty common to see a streamer dealing with Kanaka's Pets being very aggro early game while trying to grab the last bit of loot out of POI.

Lonely Fans:

This is a team that no one saw coming. Blight isn't known as a top competitive player but the way he was cleaning up teams today he might have had them thinking differently. This team has a cracked woman on their squad as well, so hopefully this could inspire some other cracked women in NA to start competing and make some waves (I know it's easier said than done because many of them deal with an insane amount of misogyny on a daily basis). I don't think anyone on their team streamed but it felt like I was watching them on mute because there was ALWAYS someone spectating them today.

mTw:

One of the lowkey teams I had my eye on, and they qualed off of one giant game where daviswave had 10 kills by himself. This team still needs more experience but TechedCandy has all the potential in the world to be a consistent competitive Apex player.

NRG:

They won games 1 and 3 and never looked back. They had a lot of fun today, not much more to say about that. Sweet openly spoke about struggling to know when to use Wraith's Q when it's a 50-50 shot between getting his tactical off or hitting someone for 100 damage in that time. This might explain why Sweet seems to be carried in a lot of fights with NRG, and perhaps those moments of hesitations (or making the wrong decision) leads to him getting knocked so often. Maybe he's just overthinking because he's an intelligent player...or maybe I'm just overthinking it. Oh well, lets hope their jokes about 'running out of fuel' for tomorrow isn't prophecy.

Rare Xcellence:

Once again, Blurr ended stream early after getting only 2 points in the first 3 games, and when he does it usually means that they'll clutch up. And truthfully, they did: 1st place in game 4, 3rd place in game 6. However they just fell short because they couldn't overcome 4 games with either 0 or 1 point.

Sentinels:

When I tried to tune into Retzi's stream I was shocked he wasn't streaming because that man will stream through anything. All day today it seemed like they were griefing other teams by doing stupidly aggressive pushes that gets both teams killed by a 3rd party, but surprisingly they did well in every round they played today. I wonder if it's a situation of them being stupid, but mechanically good enough to kill lesser teams with their pushes, or they're doing something right and they're simply cornered into choosing death or at least a couple more KP.

Team F8:

This team is now officially a mystery to me. The first time they ever contested TSM was in a Community Cup, and they got absolutely dominated. Second time was in ALGS Finals, where they split the games. Third time was in an ALGS semi-finals, where they won most of the encounters. Fourth time was in the most recent Community Cup, where they absolutely mopped TSM. A few days later they meet in semi-finals, where EVERYONE is ready for the showdown...and Team F8 decides to suddenly land Skyhook? It really didn't make much sense considering TSM was the ones with their backs against the wall after all those contests, but I'm thinking maybe they decided that they wanted to not 'grief' both of each others games and wanted to qual for finals, I'm not sure. Regardless they were absolutely lost in Skyhook, where they kept running into (and subsequently running) from teams and died before they could get anything going the first 2 games. Eventually Protectful says he wants to go back to East Frag because it's "easier dealing with just one team", which was a red flag because clearly they didn't have enough conviction and they didn't get to do enough preparation going into it. This is happening after they already barely scrapped through quarter-finals, so now the vibes and confidence are already low. I don't want to get into it too much, but the decision to not contest the first 2 games allowed TSM to remain confident, pick up momentum and cruise through to the Finals. This means that F8 will likely never bully TSM out of East Fragment at any point. As a fan of Competitive I'm disappointed; perhaps they wouldn't have successfully won East Frag. However, at minimum TSM would have had to come to a compromise on splitting East Frag had F8 continued rolling them off drop. Oh well.

Team Superior:

It wasn't looking good for them but they clutched up the last game to comfortably make it. There's nothing flashy about this team and it's really easy for the vibes to get really low for them, but they seem to always find a way to take advantage teams scrambling during or after a fight to boost the morale for just a while longer. Hopefully vibes stay high for tomorrow.

TSM:

They were in great form today but you could tell the anticipation and anxiousness was building towards semi-finals, where they expected to deal with a contest. They seem to be embracing playing edge more and Hal's mechanics has been shining even more because of it. Not going to get into them too much because everyone else already does that.

WE KNOW SHROUD:

I've never really had any motivation to watch anyone on this team before, but I decided to actually give SynceDez a watch during semi-finals so I can at least form an opinion on them. This team has a decent amount of experience, yet it seems like they're just constantly reacting to what's happening around them instead of creating their own opportunities and it leads to them being free kills more often than not. It wasn't pretty at all, and I wasn't surprised when I saw synce's stream end early.

Westside Gaming Club:

I would say that this has been a disappointing Circuit for this team. I had a lot of high hopes when Muffins (COL_iShiny's brother) was added to the team, but after 4 OT's they have not reached a finals. They have good comms and they seem to be friends - or at least friendly - with one another, yet their way of communicating seems too...formal (or maybe the word I'm looking for is professional). There's nothing wrong with this, but it somewhat feels emotionless. Comms don't seem as urgent, voices aren't really raised in the heat of the moment like with other teams. I like the maturity Muffins brought to the team but as just a regular guy I'm wondering if perhaps it's a double-edged sword.

Hopefully I didn't talk too much nonsense, and I'm really too tired to edit any of this. A few pros have told me that they read my previous write-up, so I just want to make it clear that I don't mean to badmouth any pro, and I don't have issues with these guys. It's nothing personal, I'm just enjoying this tournament like any other fan would enjoy a sporting event.