With the final major tournament before the end-of-year World event coming soon, Roit have announced the Group Stage matchup for VCT Masters 3.
Unlike previous events, Masters 3 will include a Group Stage, where teams battle their way through into the final bracket.
Even at first glance, there are some glaring issues with this bracket.
Riot Games
The group selections are pretty wonky, with the first group containing the winners from NA, EMEA, KR, and BR.
It seems like the best teams should be distributed, no? Group 4 contains the lowest possible qualifiers for all regions.
Acend, the winner of NA, and SuperMassive Blaze, the winner of EMEA, face off in the very first round. That seems a bit lopsided to me.
The loser of NA and EMEA have a better draw than the winners of their region? That ain't it son...
Then, each team in each pool are drawn into a random Group from A-D. If a team already has a team from their region in their randomly-assigned group, they're put in the next group.
— VLR.gg (@VLRdotgg) August 27, 2021
What if that next group has a team already from their region? Yeah, that doesn't matter.
We still have some time until the event kicks off, so Riot could shuffle these groups around before then.
Riot have already caved to community pressure with the Masters 3 format, so they could do so again.
I think the Valorant competitive team needs to take some bracket-making classes...
