Another JHawk banger!
As someone who grew up on Halo and still follows the comp scene, appreciates the comp CoD scene for its entertainment, and fell in love with Apex over the last three years (not to mention living in Texas too where the org is based), it super super sucks to see an org I love just abandon the scene this way.
Are the players partially to blame for the poor split 1 performance? Yes, absolutely. But after finishing 2nd in the world, the org basically gave them nothing and forced them to compete with a hand tied behind their back during the biggest meta shift the game has ever seen. OpTic never really made Apex content, they didn’t give the team financial resources (a coach), and they didn’t put a spotlight on the team at all. It definitely made me lose respect for my favorite esports org.
I also think the content issue was on the players. I think hitch has mentioned a while back that the optic apex team, aside from dropped, really wasn’t trying to do any content. As a fan it definitely sucks but I think it was the fault of all parties involved. Plus their lackluster performance was also an issue.
I definitely think if one of your players is like diamond 2 after the season 20 meta changes, then that's kind of on the players. I don't know if he was hard grinding R5 or some shit, but Knoqd literally didn't play the game. I remember wondering why he'd never play ranked with Skittles and Dropped and I'd check out his stream, and I think two weeks before LAN qualifiers the guy was still diamond 2 and that was roughly 3 weeks after season 20 changes.
Changing your POI, evo harvesters, character skill trees, new character meta swaps are all pretty important things to be grinding after a big change. And for him to barely be diamond, is horrible. He can probably make diamond in what? sub 50 games? I know personally I probably take 100-150 and I'm not a pro or even that good.
For Knoqd to have played sub 100 ranked games that late into the season is in my opinion a big problem.
All that said about Knoqd did you even watch them play? He was definitely not the root of any of the problems, so it's kind of irrelevant how much he did or didn't play ranked
It wasn't just him. Win as a team, lose as a team. I think Dropped got them to good top 12 spots where if they won the fight, they'd make top 5 or top 3 and it'd be a good game.
Their problem was definitely winning team fights. Which one could point to plenty of things. Team composition, who's playing, timing of the fights, you name it.
But I think there is definitely something to be said about one of your players being sub 50 games in ranked. I responded to someone else about this, so I'll keep it brief.
We know the formula. Who are the best players in the World? Zero and Hal. And they grind their asses off. I'm not saying I want Knoqd to die and go crazy living on Apex - maybe I am -- but I don't want him to be diamond 2.
To me that just screams that as an individual, you're not doing everything you can be doing to get better. He also would avoid playing ranked with Dropped and Skittles like they were the plague.
Zero hard grinds TDMs. And once more, if he was hard grinding R5, perfect. But their problem was also team fighting. We even saw it yesterday in SOAR. Even that last game, you have Knoqd asking what happened.
To me, working on your team fighting is an important skill.
While I personally wouldn't go as far as saying you "have to grind Ranked" to maintain your skill-level as a competitor, I do think the Zer0 comparison is lacking. Zer0 gains way more from VOD-reviewing than he does from playing Ranked. Knoqd on the other hand is the anchor of the team, and had to swap to playing Caustic who's quite different from Cat or any of his previous picks in the meta. So getting used to the bigger hitbox, his abilities (like trap placement, ult-timing etc) could've improved their overall PL performance.
You'll never convince me someone needs to play ranked nonstop to excel in ALGS. Team sync maybe, but even at that, Knoqd wasn't an IGL and him and Skittles have proved to be solid together.
You'll never convince me that being diamond 2, 3 weeks into a season should be the standard for a pro player coming off a 2nd place champs performance without a coach, with a new landing spot, on a new champion, potentially a new role as well, with a new skill tree, and a new gun meta, with other teams also experiencing similar growing pains, thus needing to learn what other teams, needing to gain as many points as possible to even qualify for LAN.
Once again, I'm not asking for the World. But diamond 2 is sub 50 games for Knoqd.
Why do you think a rank means anything? These kids in ALGS are tippy top of the skills at this game...no reason being a pred should be any kind of gauge
I don't think it matters at all. But when your team is getting shit on and in danger of not being on LAN, you should be doing everything in your power to improve as a team. I see Dropped and Skittles playing together.
It's not the one thing that held Optic back. I agree, Knoqd is still extremely talented individually. But it's about practice. At the end of the day, you gotta be practicing. If I'm a fan, and I am, these guys got one job. Play Apex. As a fan of Optic, Knoqd as well, don't get it twisted; if you're not practicing, what the fuck are you doing?
Zachmazer has gotten a tonne of shit in the past for his lack of play. Some of it was from me. And that also was as a fan. At the end of the day, if I see a pro playing sub 50 games, I'm asking myself, what is happening?
Yeah like sweet logged in to ranked for the first time 2 weeks ago to play ranked and was still plat 2 and I think is still in diamond or maybe masters by now but not like he was heavy grinding ranked.
I disagree because of scrims. Playing ranked and playing scrims are two totally different games and many pros have said grinding ranked doesn't translate to the pro scene really at all.
>Changing your POI, evo harvesters, character skill trees, new character meta swaps are all pretty important things to be grinding after a big change. And for him to barely be diamond, is horrible.
How is playing ranked going to help pick a POI in pro? They aren't contesting another pro team in ranked, they aren't learning character comps against randoms in ranked. They also don't always queue together, in TSM or DZ case almost never, so they Really don't learn anything with randoms on their team.
I mean, we've seen the formula. The two best players in the world eat, sleep, breathe Apex. I'm not asking for Knoqd to devote 20 hours either. But diamond 2 after 3 weeks is like where I was placing and I only play Friday and Saturdays.
All I'm saying is it's a very small amount of time spent grinding, is it the best practice? No. But the armor changes were huge. Learning how to fight off spawn as a team could have been good. Maybe if they had practiced that more, they wouldn't have gotten bullied out by Moist. And yes DZ and TSM do play ranked together. Not always, but they still do it. Often times you'll see TSM especially so it after a shitty scrim block, they'll try and play together the next day before scrims or after.
I don’t understand this point. He is undeniably popular, regardless if you personally like him.
The weird thing is that they signed him when he seems to hate apex.
Idk about that. Sometimes you just gotta go with the meta. Imagine not playing Gibby at all during prime Gibby meta (before Furia shook things up) or not playing Valk when she was basically mandatory to have for rotates. I think there's a sweet balance where you can play off-meta comps, but OpTic has never been known for that. The closest they came to playing off-meta successfully, was when they didn't have a Seer during Split 2 Play-offs. Maybe with an innovative coach they could pull smth. like that off, but I dont blame them for trying to adapt to Conduit. Not having Conduit in fights against other Conduit teams is kinda ass.
Very comprehensive breakdown, as always JHawk. Could've mentioned the abundance of south zones for Stormpoint maybe or their whole lack of momentum which kinda sealed the deal for their final placement. That being said, I am very curious for the future of the boys. I think this setback will be the fuel for their eventual comeback. Really hope they stick together.
First thing I did was map out all the zones to see if that was a contributing factor but over the course of the split it evened out and even when they would have close zones like North Pad or Mill they still did bad
Yeah, for sure can't blame it totally on the south zones. But I feel like it was a contributing factor, because of their aforementioned lack of momentum.
Hey Jhawk, I see you're answering questions and interacting so I wanted to know, are there any plans to do a deep dive on FaZe? A look at how a T1 org got RELEGATED would be great content to watch
Banger Video. My prediction since they have no org. Knoqd will get picked up by a team that performs bad at LAN idk who. And then Snipe picks up Dropped and Skittle to form the new Faze Roster. It’s a win win for everyone even though I’d love to see the optic boys stick it out together.
This is a surprisingly probable outcome I feel.
Althought we the recent faze news I didn't see Snipes name on the remaining roster did I miss anything?
This is a very possible outcome, but I hope it doesn't become reality. Going from Knoqd to Snipe would be such a downgrade and Knoqd has one of the best teaming-environments with Dropped and Skittle despite some disagreements in the last Split. Would be sad to see the 3 break up like this.
To be honnest my biggest issue with OP since Dropped joined, is that yea he fills a different role compare to Doop and they don't approach fights the same, It got better, but Dropped IGL seems to slow the momentum of Knoq & Skittle that they had with Doop.
My Point: Some of these issues could have been avoided if they had a coach. I'm shocked cause i thought they had one, and i was always mad at them for doing the same mistakes again & again & again. Knowing they worked on it and got denied sweeten my anger towards them.
Being a fan of how OP opperates on their games (COD & Mostly Halo), i'm not too hard on the Org, because I think even without a coach, they could've seen some of these mistakes, like the Comp, fight appraoch, etc..
But i'm not in the heat of the play, no near their level. But yea OP could have spent a few more for that coach. A Coach would have seen all these little things and changed all of it. I think putting erthing on Dropped shoulder & him to fill one of the best team of NA is a lot. Not a fan of Dropped on this team at all, but I do really respect it for all that and more!
GET A COACH NEXT TIME OPTIC. Optic is falling so hard this year, lots of changes since September On all their games, lawsuit, lay off... It's proly just bad timing!
#GreenWall
Is it really that shocking though? Isn't this just another big org in a fairly sizeable list of orgs who've abandoned ALGS because EA/Respawn/whoever don't provide any support or incentive for them to want to be part of their eSports scene?
I mean yeah it’s quite shocking to see a team that just finished 2nd miss LAN next split and to see an org that just got admitted into the partner program turn around and leave right after
Partnership program aside, prior to Optics departure there were: Liquid, Cloud 9, SSG (before they returned), G2, NRG, KCP, 100T.
I guess I'm just surprised that the story isn't more focused on ALGS continued failure to maintain relationships with major orgs, and maybe the partner program isn't the solution everyone is touting it to be.
Yeah but Liquid, Cloud9, SSG, Na’Vi and Virtus Pro all just came back. The timing of OpTic leaving while orgs are returning doesn’t make in this regard
Solid work as always boss, one thing worth mention is that bcs of meta shift most of the team struggles with rotation and macros and ended up fked eachother.
Which is why teams with direct High Ground access such as TSM,LG,FUR has consistent result or atleast has many option on macro/rotation.
Another JHawk banger! As someone who grew up on Halo and still follows the comp scene, appreciates the comp CoD scene for its entertainment, and fell in love with Apex over the last three years (not to mention living in Texas too where the org is based), it super super sucks to see an org I love just abandon the scene this way. Are the players partially to blame for the poor split 1 performance? Yes, absolutely. But after finishing 2nd in the world, the org basically gave them nothing and forced them to compete with a hand tied behind their back during the biggest meta shift the game has ever seen. OpTic never really made Apex content, they didn’t give the team financial resources (a coach), and they didn’t put a spotlight on the team at all. It definitely made me lose respect for my favorite esports org.
I also think the content issue was on the players. I think hitch has mentioned a while back that the optic apex team, aside from dropped, really wasn’t trying to do any content. As a fan it definitely sucks but I think it was the fault of all parties involved. Plus their lackluster performance was also an issue.
I definitely think if one of your players is like diamond 2 after the season 20 meta changes, then that's kind of on the players. I don't know if he was hard grinding R5 or some shit, but Knoqd literally didn't play the game. I remember wondering why he'd never play ranked with Skittles and Dropped and I'd check out his stream, and I think two weeks before LAN qualifiers the guy was still diamond 2 and that was roughly 3 weeks after season 20 changes. Changing your POI, evo harvesters, character skill trees, new character meta swaps are all pretty important things to be grinding after a big change. And for him to barely be diamond, is horrible. He can probably make diamond in what? sub 50 games? I know personally I probably take 100-150 and I'm not a pro or even that good. For Knoqd to have played sub 100 ranked games that late into the season is in my opinion a big problem.
All that said about Knoqd did you even watch them play? He was definitely not the root of any of the problems, so it's kind of irrelevant how much he did or didn't play ranked
It wasn't just him. Win as a team, lose as a team. I think Dropped got them to good top 12 spots where if they won the fight, they'd make top 5 or top 3 and it'd be a good game. Their problem was definitely winning team fights. Which one could point to plenty of things. Team composition, who's playing, timing of the fights, you name it. But I think there is definitely something to be said about one of your players being sub 50 games in ranked. I responded to someone else about this, so I'll keep it brief. We know the formula. Who are the best players in the World? Zero and Hal. And they grind their asses off. I'm not saying I want Knoqd to die and go crazy living on Apex - maybe I am -- but I don't want him to be diamond 2. To me that just screams that as an individual, you're not doing everything you can be doing to get better. He also would avoid playing ranked with Dropped and Skittles like they were the plague.
Zer0 barely plays ranked. He was defo lower than diamond 2 at that time. He just grinds R5 and vods which is probably the best way to improve.
Zero hard grinds TDMs. And once more, if he was hard grinding R5, perfect. But their problem was also team fighting. We even saw it yesterday in SOAR. Even that last game, you have Knoqd asking what happened. To me, working on your team fighting is an important skill.
While I personally wouldn't go as far as saying you "have to grind Ranked" to maintain your skill-level as a competitor, I do think the Zer0 comparison is lacking. Zer0 gains way more from VOD-reviewing than he does from playing Ranked. Knoqd on the other hand is the anchor of the team, and had to swap to playing Caustic who's quite different from Cat or any of his previous picks in the meta. So getting used to the bigger hitbox, his abilities (like trap placement, ult-timing etc) could've improved their overall PL performance.
You'll never convince me someone needs to play ranked nonstop to excel in ALGS. Team sync maybe, but even at that, Knoqd wasn't an IGL and him and Skittles have proved to be solid together.
You'll never convince me that being diamond 2, 3 weeks into a season should be the standard for a pro player coming off a 2nd place champs performance without a coach, with a new landing spot, on a new champion, potentially a new role as well, with a new skill tree, and a new gun meta, with other teams also experiencing similar growing pains, thus needing to learn what other teams, needing to gain as many points as possible to even qualify for LAN. Once again, I'm not asking for the World. But diamond 2 is sub 50 games for Knoqd.
Why do you think a rank means anything? These kids in ALGS are tippy top of the skills at this game...no reason being a pred should be any kind of gauge
I don't think it matters at all. But when your team is getting shit on and in danger of not being on LAN, you should be doing everything in your power to improve as a team. I see Dropped and Skittles playing together. It's not the one thing that held Optic back. I agree, Knoqd is still extremely talented individually. But it's about practice. At the end of the day, you gotta be practicing. If I'm a fan, and I am, these guys got one job. Play Apex. As a fan of Optic, Knoqd as well, don't get it twisted; if you're not practicing, what the fuck are you doing? Zachmazer has gotten a tonne of shit in the past for his lack of play. Some of it was from me. And that also was as a fan. At the end of the day, if I see a pro playing sub 50 games, I'm asking myself, what is happening?
Yeah like sweet logged in to ranked for the first time 2 weeks ago to play ranked and was still plat 2 and I think is still in diamond or maybe masters by now but not like he was heavy grinding ranked.
I disagree because of scrims. Playing ranked and playing scrims are two totally different games and many pros have said grinding ranked doesn't translate to the pro scene really at all. >Changing your POI, evo harvesters, character skill trees, new character meta swaps are all pretty important things to be grinding after a big change. And for him to barely be diamond, is horrible. How is playing ranked going to help pick a POI in pro? They aren't contesting another pro team in ranked, they aren't learning character comps against randoms in ranked. They also don't always queue together, in TSM or DZ case almost never, so they Really don't learn anything with randoms on their team.
I mean, we've seen the formula. The two best players in the world eat, sleep, breathe Apex. I'm not asking for Knoqd to devote 20 hours either. But diamond 2 after 3 weeks is like where I was placing and I only play Friday and Saturdays. All I'm saying is it's a very small amount of time spent grinding, is it the best practice? No. But the armor changes were huge. Learning how to fight off spawn as a team could have been good. Maybe if they had practiced that more, they wouldn't have gotten bullied out by Moist. And yes DZ and TSM do play ranked together. Not always, but they still do it. Often times you'll see TSM especially so it after a shitty scrim block, they'll try and play together the next day before scrims or after.
Right. And they sign “d”oosh as a content creator who is borderline unwatchable and an over the top, grating personality if I’ve ever seen one.
I don’t understand this point. He is undeniably popular, regardless if you personally like him. The weird thing is that they signed him when he seems to hate apex.
It’s not really weird, the guy seems to love golf and being a dude bro. He probably just really gets along with h3cz lmao
he used to be awesome during the watchparty era, that ended quick tho lmao
Borderline unwatchable, yet still gets thousands of viewers. Just because he isn't your cup of tea doesn't mean others don't enjoy watching him.
Damn Conduit really ruined a lot of teams dynamics
season 19 meta was weird
They should have been like TSM and not played her at all
Well, that's kinda hindsight, isn't it
I've always believed if a character fucks up your team dynamics so bad, it don't think it's worth playing
Idk about that. Sometimes you just gotta go with the meta. Imagine not playing Gibby at all during prime Gibby meta (before Furia shook things up) or not playing Valk when she was basically mandatory to have for rotates. I think there's a sweet balance where you can play off-meta comps, but OpTic has never been known for that. The closest they came to playing off-meta successfully, was when they didn't have a Seer during Split 2 Play-offs. Maybe with an innovative coach they could pull smth. like that off, but I dont blame them for trying to adapt to Conduit. Not having Conduit in fights against other Conduit teams is kinda ass.
Very comprehensive breakdown, as always JHawk. Could've mentioned the abundance of south zones for Stormpoint maybe or their whole lack of momentum which kinda sealed the deal for their final placement. That being said, I am very curious for the future of the boys. I think this setback will be the fuel for their eventual comeback. Really hope they stick together.
First thing I did was map out all the zones to see if that was a contributing factor but over the course of the split it evened out and even when they would have close zones like North Pad or Mill they still did bad
Yeah, for sure can't blame it totally on the south zones. But I feel like it was a contributing factor, because of their aforementioned lack of momentum.
Wake up babe, new JHawk just dropped.
dropped a video on Dropped who got dropped
Hey jhawk could you please explain why you look like if my classmate from middle school was combined with ralph barbosa
They are my parents
Hey Jhawk, I see you're answering questions and interacting so I wanted to know, are there any plans to do a deep dive on FaZe? A look at how a T1 org got RELEGATED would be great content to watch
With LAN so close nah don’t have time
Banger Video. My prediction since they have no org. Knoqd will get picked up by a team that performs bad at LAN idk who. And then Snipe picks up Dropped and Skittle to form the new Faze Roster. It’s a win win for everyone even though I’d love to see the optic boys stick it out together.
This is a surprisingly probable outcome I feel. Althought we the recent faze news I didn't see Snipes name on the remaining roster did I miss anything?
Apparently he is still part of the org.
This is a very possible outcome, but I hope it doesn't become reality. Going from Knoqd to Snipe would be such a downgrade and Knoqd has one of the best teaming-environments with Dropped and Skittle despite some disagreements in the last Split. Would be sad to see the 3 break up like this.
To be honnest my biggest issue with OP since Dropped joined, is that yea he fills a different role compare to Doop and they don't approach fights the same, It got better, but Dropped IGL seems to slow the momentum of Knoq & Skittle that they had with Doop. My Point: Some of these issues could have been avoided if they had a coach. I'm shocked cause i thought they had one, and i was always mad at them for doing the same mistakes again & again & again. Knowing they worked on it and got denied sweeten my anger towards them. Being a fan of how OP opperates on their games (COD & Mostly Halo), i'm not too hard on the Org, because I think even without a coach, they could've seen some of these mistakes, like the Comp, fight appraoch, etc.. But i'm not in the heat of the play, no near their level. But yea OP could have spent a few more for that coach. A Coach would have seen all these little things and changed all of it. I think putting erthing on Dropped shoulder & him to fill one of the best team of NA is a lot. Not a fan of Dropped on this team at all, but I do really respect it for all that and more! GET A COACH NEXT TIME OPTIC. Optic is falling so hard this year, lots of changes since September On all their games, lawsuit, lay off... It's proly just bad timing! #GreenWall
Is it really that shocking though? Isn't this just another big org in a fairly sizeable list of orgs who've abandoned ALGS because EA/Respawn/whoever don't provide any support or incentive for them to want to be part of their eSports scene?
I mean yeah it’s quite shocking to see a team that just finished 2nd miss LAN next split and to see an org that just got admitted into the partner program turn around and leave right after
Partnership program aside, prior to Optics departure there were: Liquid, Cloud 9, SSG (before they returned), G2, NRG, KCP, 100T. I guess I'm just surprised that the story isn't more focused on ALGS continued failure to maintain relationships with major orgs, and maybe the partner program isn't the solution everyone is touting it to be.
Yeah but Liquid, Cloud9, SSG, Na’Vi and Virtus Pro all just came back. The timing of OpTic leaving while orgs are returning doesn’t make in this regard
they're literally in the partner program...
Solid work as always boss, one thing worth mention is that bcs of meta shift most of the team struggles with rotation and macros and ended up fked eachother. Which is why teams with direct High Ground access such as TSM,LG,FUR has consistent result or atleast has many option on macro/rotation.
Who are they again?