Why are all these players banned from div1 lmao ether soldier is the only one that makes sense. Shouldn't the div below invite allow up and coming players/teams to practice together and improve versus forcing players to form these hodgepodges of offclassers? Alanny is good but if he can't get picked up on an invite team this basically just prevents him from playing his main (and presumably favorite) class at all which is super lame (same for um and everyone else who was in div1)
Hell it's even possible that the team that wins the div1 dies and some of the individual players don't end up finding invite teams, don't you want them to be able to join or form teams in div1 that can improve together and have another shot at playing invite? Otherwise these players are effectively removed from the system just by virtue of winning and getting unlucky. Invite this season only has 6 teams so it is even more selective for div1 players to get picked up, it seems very unreasonable to just block them from playing imo. If your anti-sandbagging rules are forcing people to offclass or potentially switch their main (if they are permanently banned from the class in the future) that's probably not a good thing...
Also, I would argue that it is better to risk having "stacked" div1 teams with people who did well in playoffs because that allows more teams to move up to invite. ESEA was way too lenient (and shouldn't have let 8k and johnmilter sandbag as much), but at least there were always teams alive at a high IM level that could be moved up to invite when it needed teams. Having 9 teams in invite every season definitely felt more healthy than such a small division as 6 teams where one team dying can drastically change the dynamics of the season and playoffs. But if RGL is fine with 6 team invite and wants to be more restrictive that's their prerogative obviously.