i don't like having to race to the server to avoid playing a class i explicitly don't want to play. i also don't like potentially being captain, especially if people alias or i just actually don't know them.

fatkids also are an issue. an extreme example would be if there are 11 high intermediate and invite players in an advanced pug with rainoflight. whoever is forced to have him on your team will lose. this is just an example

adding to classes and captain were always the best advantages (in my eyes) over inhouses that irc, pugme, and pugchamp did well.

i mostly want to add on classes and not be RNG'd to captain. matchmaking queue systems don't work properly when the playerbase is tiny. i would like to say i'm not a baby, and these qualities didn't stop me from pugging, but it's definitely an influencing factor to the "should i play tf2" question

good luck to the faint gaming eu team! maybe next go around i'll have enough money to game beside you guys at lan :)

lingq is great for reading and listening, $10 a month. however the script of the sinitic languages is really quite difficult to learn and i've never tackled a language with characters instead of a phonetic alphabet. i think reading and listening are the most important skills to start off on.

i'm a big fan of steve kaufmann and his website, lingq. he has a youtube channel but it's pretty ranty. he has a video specifically about mandarin and personally i take this guy's word on language learning as near gospel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMQqDWrJ034

edit: i should add: lingq is a website you should use after you understand the phonology and a bit of grammar about the language. until this point, i would actually recommend a random TSY or linguaphone, etc starter book, or even duolingo

pineapple is actually my favorite fruit, it's so sweet and, imo, the texture is very fun to bite into

we would all wonder why we aren't being properly healed. it's impossible for ALL of us to take 30% >:(

could be worse

https://puu.sh/Aqs9C/cea26f4f41.png

shoutout to cbear and bloodsire for being great casters

skye, rekuso, and jarrett reunited once again at last!

i'm a big fan of the corepad deskpads, they're great for those with slower sensitivities. i personally have owned the corepad xxxl since about like 2014 iirc. currently unavailable on amazon, however
http://www.corepad.com/pads.html

https://clips.twitch.tv/SmellyTalentedArugulaPipeHype

i saw shrugger constantly put out poor event performances until he returned with elevate/ronin and became a pure god scout in like season 20

at this point, yuice has been around a while and would certainly make a good teammate for those start up invite teams this season :)

honestly i'm not fond of cleaning this cup if i'm just going to use it the next morning

https://i.imgur.com/ndU2li1.jpg

btw it has the letter J on it because my name is justin >:)

https://clips.twitch.tv/MagnificentSpeedyShrimpPraiseIt

I don't fully appreciate the criticism that "oh we'll just play a few maps over and over again." If both teams want to avoid granary and viaduct (badlands and metalworks to a lesser extent), it sounds like they're the ones dealing with it. Why would a team willingly play a map they think is less enjoyable, worse, or simply not as strong a team on?

I personally think it's insane how an abortion like granary made it through this long. Shouldn't competition replace the least prefered maps with the favorites?

However, with that being said, I understand the appeals against monotony and scrim finding/playing. I don't know a solution to the scrim situation (this seems to be a good point for teams who are serious about their week's practice), but there is no way this would be as controversial an implementation if we didn't so strongly favor half the maps over the other half. Having better maps would, at very least, mitigate the damage of this change. I advocate a change in the map pool.