I'm not sure if this is a troll thread or not. Clawz did the same as all the other high level QL players who went on to QC. QC may have allowed for more cheeseball plays, from which he clearly benefitted, but the narrative is essentially the same.
I mean it would have been better if he rose in QL because it would have been interesting because he was starting to take maps from anyone and not just by luck but by force. But not only that he did not went to QC but even if he had, i still struggle to respect QC.
what difference does it make? qc has now failed as a game, and quake live wasn't going to be supported for another year. clawz was an impoverished kid living in an authoritarian shithole, and he managed to occasionally take a set off of more experienced players. that's already more than 98% of na players who struggled to learn more than 3 maps, or just ignored duel entirely for ca and ctf. he's won 2 quakecons, an event in italy, and he's made some money off of his silver finishes in 2v2 tournaments. and unlike serious, gnik, base, vengeur, he's never been caught cheating.
for anyone else it would have been a waste of time, but clawz grew up in a post-soviet shithole dictatorship in eastern europe, with no visa-free travel to eu countries. so it's not like he had other things to branch out to.
The guy adapted faster to the nuances of the game than the rest, period. He deserves all the credit. And im not a fan of him or his cocky attitudes, but even less of unfounded hate.
I don’t really know what you want to tell me but it feels a little bit like that you are thinking i want to take away credit from clawz. It is the opposite. I would have loved to see him rise. But it seems like only in QL. I am really trying to like QC from a spectator point of view and watching matches but it’s still the same for me. Everything feels wrong with this game. Look at the beauty that QL is. It’s instant universes better. Even the casters are. Additionally, clawz did not even transition to QC. I bet he would have stayed if it was QL. That’s what i want to express here.
Maybe watch the games i posted. It’s nice to see QL once in a while. Especially here see how clawz manages to get cypher, cooller, evil and k1llsen sweating. He is like a hack who nicely exposes the holes in the game styles of these very best players in the posted vods. See evil trying to desperately overun him according to his own gameplan and where he struggles a little by doing so. Or see cooller having to hide, even losing a map. Or cypher getting angry but with his extrem good item play always having an edge which letting him play his super aggressive style which otherwise would not work because clawz also has superb combat abilities. And it’s also interesting against dem0n who i would argue has a similar style like clawz.
If you want a brutally frank opinion on this, now that the dust of QC has settled, I would say clawz displayed obvious proclivities towards cypher's and av3k's style of play but was honestly just not as smart. But then again neither was strenx to begin with and he got better. But, you know, even the top guys in QL tragically foundered in the destructive trail of mismanagement and neglect left by Id Software. Clawz could have been a great player for sure, but imagine what a person of rapha's character could have become in a game like CSGO, let alone something on the scale of LoL. Just a thought.
Lmaoooooo i had forgot about this little nugget of gold. So typical for everyone involved. Weird chatting shit as usual, Clawz calls his bluff and then proceeds to style of him without even trying... gold.
Cypher was promising. If only he had a 120 hz monitor in the quake live prime years, instead of that crappy 75 hz one. When he finally upgraded it was already qc times, but the few times he went back to ql with 144 hz his aim was insane from the go. Oh, and he was reading Clawz like a book and beating him half assingly.
Who knows how many more cups he'd have won with decent hardware.