donk misses out on playoffs despite sensational group stage showing

Often, when a player racks up loads of kills and his team loses, there's a little bit of nuance to it and maybe he wasn't playing quite as well as the surface numbers suggest. This was not one of those cases.

donk has been playing at an extraordinary level all tournament long, and yet will miss out on the playoffs, which cannot bode well for the future of a couple of other members of this team. magixx will come under a lot of scrutiny, but as a new IGL who is finding the same issues as the previous IGL, perhaps it goes a little deeper than that.

Only ZywOo, who waltzed through the group stage, has a higher rating than donk, who will be forced to watch playoffs with the rest of us peasants in the crowd or on a stream. Even with some of our advanced metrics, it's pretty clear that donk isn't just stat-padding or not doing as much as he could (well, obviously, but someone will claim otherwise), as his duel swing and round swing, as well as his CT player rating have been sensational.

mzinho, though, outperformed him as The MongolZ sent Spirit home in a relatively clean 2-0. What's most worrying for Spirit is not that mzinho was the best player in the server, or even the form of supposed second rifle star tN1R (which definitely is a concern), it's that they seemed to sort some of their T side issues and still lost.

Seven T side rounds on Overpass should pretty much always be enough to win for an elite team, and six on Nuke isn't terrible either. And yet, MongolZ scythed through their defence most notably on the former, to win the second half 8-2.

Just not good enough. PARIVISION donk anyone?

FURIA's form is officially entering 'concerning' territory, as they also missed out on playoffs, albeit to Falcons.

In many ways, though, this was actually the most reassuring performance they've had in a while as they went toe-to-toe with a fellow top five team and really could, and should, have won. And that's the crux; FURIA had nine rounds at the half on Nuke, and proceeded to run into a brick wall time and time again on their T side. m0NESY had the freedom of the map, and punished every early round move they made, with FURIA's only round being a fast A hit that proved unrepeatable.

KSCERATO, once again, had one of the highlights of the tournament with a back-breaking ace on Dust 2 to win the half 8-4, but even then FURIA needed OT to take the map.

FURIA won the half on every map, and didn't win a single one in regulation. That's damning.

Speaking of ridiculous aces...

Vitality were actually given a bit of a test by PARIVISION, not least on Inferno where they pushed the best team in the world all the way to overtime, just for ZywOo to find his secret seventh gear and hit them with an absolutely incredible 1v5 and ruin their day.

From there, PARIVISION were broken and didn't grab another round, but it's still a valiant effort and another reminder that Jame is one of the best IGLs in the world, while Team Spirit are running with untried IGLs. Just saying.

A thoroughly enjoyable game, and PARIVISION are deserved playoff participants who have come closer to taking a map off Vitality than anyone else. They have Falcons in the quarters, and we'd give them a pretty solid chance at beating them.

We're not getting tired of writing about how good makazze has been recently, but he's not had a poor game in a while. He's genuinely just frying every single game right now, and XANTARES and co had no answer for him.

NAVI look like one of the best teams in the world by virtue of being stable and consistent as an elite team, and we'd love to see them play Vitality in the final, just to see.