2021: Tenz
2022: Yay
2023: Demon1
2024: Kangkang
2025: ?
Imma put this here cause this is one long ass thread but KK in 24??? Blud won like a total of 2 international games pre champs
21: imo its Chronicle even if both nAts and Tenz had higher peaks
22: Yay no questions
23: Leo no questions
24: Texture or my king tenz (i know its cope but just let me have it, he was singlehandedly holding up that sen team)
25: so far id say you cant call an "MVP" since no ones been crazy in 2 events in a row but the sheer level of play that Alfa had this tourney has to put him up there even if he didnt win
0/8 but:
https://www.vlr.gg/371303/top-20-players-vlr-edition/
Overall:
Chronicle/Derke
2021:
nAts (2nd: Chronicle, 3rd: cNed, 4th: TenZ)
2022:
Yay
2023:
Leo (2nd: Alfajer, 3rd: Demon1)
2024:
T3Xture (Zmjjkk is not even close)
2025:
so far between Meteor/Alfajer/F0rsaken/maybe Derke/maybe t3xture/maybe nAts
edit: im being downfragged for the truth.
everything you said makes sense except:
kk > t3xture in 2024
Memory loss??
Zmjjkk didnt do anything until Champs 2024 playoffs (a pretty small part of the year)
Zmjjkk was realistically around the #11 overall player of 2024. No where close to the top (after T3Xture, Zekken, Meteor, RieNs, Aspas, Karon, W00t, Derke, TenZ, Chichoo)
kk was insane in shanghai and madrid. legit constant 1v5 with 0 utility to set him. Like legit watch it back.
Also chichoo is nowhere near the top players. He was insane at champs but shit the bed in Shanghai and Madrid.
Just because EDG is bad doesnt mean the player on the team deserves to get nerfed despite putting incredible performances
Madrid KK was underrated but legit everyone on EDG was ass during Shanghai you're coping by saying it was anything different. The entire team sucked. KK is not player of the year.
t3xture and Meteor were actually farming at every event, even at Champs Meteor was a top 10 player in terms of rating, and both of them had a better rating than KK at Champs too
but the fact that you put Derke 3rd and made it a debate between Zekken (and also over Meteor) even though he basically didn't do anything at every international kinda says everything.
you are putting too much importance in team performance and not individuals. look at shanghai and champs for derke, he was fucking insane, but im not here to argue about derke.
Lets just compare statwise for now, and keep in mind Zmjjkk had no good support utility because half of his players were off role (and kk had to fill kayo an agent he has played 5 times)
Zmjjkk vs T3xture Madrid:
Rating: 1.07 > 1.03
Acs: 252 > 224
K/D: 1.08 >= 1.07
Kast: 69 =< 71
ADR: 164 > 144
KPR: 0.88 >= 0.8
APR: 0.25 >= 0.16
FKPR: 0.19 >= 0.16
FDPR: 0.11 >= 0.13
C%: 14% =< 17%
Direct H2H: https://www.vlr.gg/312797/edward-gaming-vs-gen-g-champions-tour-2024-masters-madrid-swiss-stage-r2 Zmjjkk > T3xture
Reminder besides smoggy, everyone else on EDG was bottom 12
Shanghai:
ACS: 243 >= 241
K/D: 0.91 <<< 1.21
ADR: 154 > 148
KPR: 0.81 =< 0.85
APR: 0.15 >= 0.14
FKPR: 0.17 << 0.22
FDPR: 0.17 = 0.7
Reminder both of EDG intiators were bottom 6 players
Champions 2024
Rating: 1.10 < 1.14
ACS: 250 >= 242
KD: 1.20 >= 1.17
Kast: 69% = 69%
ADR: 160 >= 157
KPR: 0.88 >= 0.8
APR: 0.21 > 0.17
FKPR: 0.23 >> 0.18
FDPR: 0.19 < 0.14
C%: 17% < 19%
Lakia is bottom 3 but still has a 0.3 APR
Now maybe you are talking about peak performance?
https://www.vlr.gg/378829/edward-gaming-vs-team-heretics-valorant-champions-2024-gf
Zmjjkk has the greatest peak perfomance in all of valorant in a final, broke the bo5 without going into OT once, is +39 with a 1.4 rating.
So clearly it isnt that...
Well maybe its outside factors, like what zmjjkk and t3xture do outside the game...
This is until you realise Zmjjkk is EDG's hype man, and responsible for bringing back team morale, whereas t3xture has no notable outside benefactors, except being a superstar player which can bring morale but at no point in time where he is noticably bringing people up at all times.
Well maybe its regionals, im too lazy to write it out but you can see for yourself:
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/2096/champions-tour-2024-china-stage-2
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/2006/champions-tour-2024-china-stage-1
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/1926/champions-tour-2024-china-kickoff
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/2005/champions-tour-2024-pacific-stage-2
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/2002/champions-tour-2024-pacific-stage-1
https://www.vlr.gg/event/stats/1924/champions-tour-2024-pacific-kickoff
But TLDR Zmjjkk >>>>> T3xture. Regionally every single time
Maybe its agent pool, the better player that can flex around more
Zmjjkk: Raze, Jett, Kayo, Neon
T3xture: Raze, Jett
Well if T3xture has better supporting utility, while still doing statiscally worse than Zmjjkk both regionally and domestically, as well as losing h2h against Zmjjkk, as well as a worse peak performance, as well as less outside benefits towards the team, as well as a worse agent pool than Zmjjkk. What exactly makes t3xture the better player? Just because he got signed to a better team that got better performances?
Like are we serious? What else?
your stats are missing key details like the fact that t3xture played double the rounds kangkang did (328 vs 154, 2 times more rounds), and h2h doesn't mean anything lol. if someone is dropping 25+ kills every map but dying to only one person on the other team, that doesn't make them a worse player.
your shanghai analysis of KK's stats are based off of 78 TOTAL ROUNDS compared to t3xture's 388!
that's a difference of 310 rounds, in other words t3xture played FIVE TIMES more rounds than KK
of course it's easier to have inflated stats when you play less games. Over time, performance averages out.
When it comes to key stats in defining a duelist, t3xture has KK beat at most of them during playoffs
higher K/D, equal ACS, higher KPR, higher FKPR, and barely worse FDPR
and this is with almost 200 more rounds played
it's no coincidence then that t3xture won the stats game at Champs with 155 rounds played to KK's 449
in terms of peak performance of course KK was the best player of 2024, he broke the kill record and won Champs with it.
in terms of overall performance over the year then t3xture was just the better player. KK has had inflated af stats that you use to justify a better performance but you cannot deny that KK's sample size was at the very least half, to 1/5th at most of t3xture's. If we want to compare players that way then it's fair to say that primmie was actually one of the best players at Champs even though he only played 85 rounds.
you are putting too much importance in team performance and not individuals.
also you:
keep in mind Zmjjkk had no good support utility because half of his players were off role
Reminder besides smoggy, everyone else on EDG was bottom 12
Reminder both of EDG intiators were bottom 6 players
you are also putting too much importance in team performance. just because the rest of kangkang's team had, according to you, no good support utility, does not cover for gaps in kangkang's own individual performance. In fact, ironically, when EDG's players started to have better support utility like at Champs, KK's individual performance barely changed, and if it did, it mostly went down. This actually suggests that the reason EDG didn't do well at Madrid or Shanghai wasn't because they were failing to set up KK properly, it was more likely that they couldn't hold their own while trying to set up KK.
KK's performance stayed the same or got slightly worse as his team's utility got better. so i don't understand the "his team had poor support utility and t3xture's had good support utility and that's why KK is better" angle.
In fact, when t3xture's team crumbled and KK's team got better, t3xture's own individual performance was comparable to KK's when KK's team was doing bad.
t3xture vs KK (i'm going use Shanghai since I think we can agree that was when EDG were at their lowest during the entire year) when their teams are shitting the bed:
rounds: 155 > 78
ACS: 242.6 = 243
K/D: 1.17 > 0.91
ADR: 157.2 > 154
KPR: 0.84 > 0.81
FKPR: 0.18 > 0.17
so as you can see the two are pretty similar when it comes to how well they do when their team shits the bed.
As for regionals, EDG during 2024 literally farmed China. They won Kickoff, Stage 1, and Stage 2, and they did it 2/3 times from the upper bracket. And you could tell that China (minus EDG) still had to catch up considering they got first rounded at every event except Champs, when the narrative finally started to shift. It's not exactly difficult to win your region when you're on the most dominant regional team of all time.
Maybe its agent pool, the better player that can flex around more
Zmjjkk: Raze, Jett, Kayo, Neon
T3xture: Raze, Jett
this is also a non argument because both KK and t3xture have different teams with different players and the way roles and offroles work is different. There's a reason players like Aspas don't get compared to players like f0rsakeN because of their ability to flex. it's about who does their job better and more consistently. KK and t3xture are both duelists, so compare how they do as duelists. Idk where this team hype merchant stuff came from. Zellsis the goat then or what lmfao
Well if T3xture has better supporting utility, while still doing statiscally worse than Zmjjkk both regionally and domestically, as well as losing h2h against Zmjjkk, as well as a worse peak performance, as well as less outside benefits towards the team, as well as a worse agent pool than Zmjjkk. What exactly makes t3xture the better player? Just because he got signed to a better team that got better performances?
Well if t3xture performed to a similar level over more rounds and matches with a good team compared to KK with significantly less rounds and a bad team, and then performed BETTER than KK over less rounds when KK had a good team, what exactly makes KK the better player? Just because KK had roughly similar stats when he had a worse team and played to a 5th amount of rounds compared to t3xture? KK got his good team, got a guy with 0.49 APR (the 2nd highest APR in the tournament) and ended up performing worse than t3xture at the stats game.
So are we serious? What else?
bro the entire team was ass at Shanghai you don't have to be a genius to see that a 9-26 loss to heretics and a 17-26 loss to PRX is a pretty bad performance. alternatively you can watch the games, i'm not saying kangkang was the worst player on the team but he wasn't exactly performing super well either.
kangkang and his entire team performed poorly at shanghai, especially after they had just won regionals. kangkang was underrated at madrid and he was good at champs, although i personally believe chichoo was the real standout player at that tournament
it's not dense to have a take that's different from others as long as there is some reasoning to it. my take simply hinges on the premise that we have seen a more consistent performance from t3xture over a larger amount of rounds regardless of how well his team has been doing compared to kangkang.
you can disagree with how i evaluate players, but i think the numbers don't invalidate my reasoning.
Your argument just really isnt good, EDG were bad not kangkang, you only need eyes to see. Haodong did not have any good calls since 2023, his utility on iniator was not good, and the rest of the team were bottom 5 players except smoggy and kangkang. The stats alone show how impressive kangkang was in shanghai. saying he was bad is just wrong. Maybe he was worse than usual but still a top 10 player in shanghai.
Kangkang was also better than t3xture in 2/3 events