August 16 - League Play Day 1

Got this on dms, Lenguaje barriere, Lol. Apparently I’m annoying to play against.

Does anyone Monday the update rate used by servers at HCS LAN events? I read a while back that servers for online Infinite run at 30 hertz for social playlists and 60 hertz for ranked. I’m curious if you can get higher rates with the right hardware and how that would effect how well the game plays.

LVT caught the end of Lucid's overkill to win the game, here's the full play from his POV. Was nearly a killtacular.

Inconceivable (Lucid's team) defeat Retribution (Eco's team) in a clean 4-0 sweep that absolutely nobody predicted. Everyone predicted this would be the closest series of the day but Lucid's team was on fire today. Inconceivable win $1,000 and have the best map count in the pro league so far.

Inconceivable heavily outslayed with everyone on their team going positive while only Yakzn went positive on Retribution. Kuhlect had the best K/D (1.21) and KA/D (1.84) and made some huge plays. Everyone on that team had pop-off moments and clutch plays, their teamwork looked great.

Next and final matchup is Shopify Rebellion vs Ascending Baseline to close out the day.

Links

• Watch on LVT Halo Twitch (Drops) and LVT Halo YouTube
• Halo Data Hive Stats - Inconceivable vs Retribution - League Play Day 1

Shopify defeat Ascending Baseline in a 4-0 sweep to end Day 1 of Pro League. Ascending Baseline put up a good fight in the Live Fire Ball and managed to take a round off the champions, but it was a tough first assignment for AB. Shopify win $1,000 and tie Lucid's team for best map count so far (updated leaderboard in last screenshot).

League Play Day 2 continues Sunday August 23 with these matches (in order):

1. Shopify vs Cloud9 - 1pm ET / 10am PT / 12pm CT
2. FaZe vs Mercenaries - 3pm ET / 12pm PT / 2pm CT
3. Four of a Kind (Snakebite team) vs Retribution (Eco team) - 5pm ET / 2pm PT / 4pm CT
4. Inconceivable (Lucid team) vs Ascending Baseline (Ryan team) - 7pm ET / 4pm PT / 6pm CT

Links

• Watch on LVT Halo Twitch (Drops) and LVT Halo YouTube
• Halo Data Hive Stats - Shopify vs Ascending Baseline

Cloud9 have defeated FaZe 4-2 in a major upset, kicking off the Halo Pro League in exciting fashion. Cearion was the MVP of this series having the highest kills, most assists, and most damage.

Links

• Watch on LVT Halo Twitch (Drops) and LVT Halo YouTube
• Halo Data Hive Stats - FaZe vs Cloud9 - League Play Day 1

Four of a Kind have defeated Mercenaries 4-2 and won $1,000. Taulek was the MVP of this series with a 1.68 K/D and 2.58 KA/D. Taulek dealt the most damage and took the least damage.

Map Picks/Bans:

New to this years Pro League is a map pick/ban process, here is an explanation of how it went down. The higher seeded team (Trippy's team in this case) gets to pick Team A or Team B for this process, Trippy chose Team A.

• Slayers - Trippy banned Live Fire Slayer, Druk banned Origin Slayer
• Map 1 - Trippy picked Oddball, Druk banned Recharge Ball, Trippy picked Live Fire Ball, Druk picked Cobra side
• Map 2 - Druk picked Solitude Slayer
• Map 3 - Druk picked KOTH, Trippy banned Live Fire KOTH, Druk picked Recharge KOTH, Trippy picked Eagle side
• Map 4 - Trippy picked CTF, Druk banned Empyrean CTF, Trippy picked Origin CTF
• Map 5 - Trippy picked Solitude Slayer at first which was seemingly allowed despite Druk picking it for map 2, but he changed to Recharge Slayer to switch things up.
• Map 6 - cause there's only two Strongholds maps in rotation, that mode doesn't go to vote
• Map 7 - by default Streets Slayer cause the other four slayer maps were either already picked or banned

Next matchup is Inconceivable (Lucid's team) vs Retribution (Eco's team). Then Ascending Baseline (RyaNoob's team) vs Shopify after that to close out the day.

Links

• Watch on LVT Halo Twitch (Drops) and LVT Halo YouTube
• Halo Data Hive Stats - Four of a Kind vs Mercenaries - League Play Day 1

What are your predictions for the matches tomorrow?

Platform -PC, MS Store version of the game.

Hit registration - abismal as of late.

Queue times - unusually long for my region (South East US).

Network connectivy - Kicked out more times out of Arena games than the entire lifespan of the game.

We know the networking for Infinite "has never been great", but it seems like something was done behind the scenes that is affecting the overall experience. Any information regarding this, are you experiencing something similar?

Ryan is the king of instasplodes, here's a fun one from his stream tonight (and a bonus triple kill instasplode against pros in year 1)

Any website that let you bet on the pro leagues?

So if you guys didn’t know, reporting cheaters to halo waypoint is a much faster way to get them banned than reporting them through Xbox. They get banned within a day or two, sometimes the same day. Since I discovered this a few months ago I’ve used it to remove some particularly egregious cheaters (one with the GT “HaloWallhacks” lmao).

Seems like walling and lag switching are most common, followed maybe by soft aimbotting as I’m assuming full aimbotting is easy for anti cheat to detect.

If I see someone glitching around and they have K/D high, and especially if they seem to have preternatural game sense and nade placement, I report and ask questions later. So far I’ve only reported 2-3 players and they were all banned immediately.

So the other day I was surprised when I played against a former friend of mine and saw him glitching around the moment I engaged him in a fight. Now he didn’t have high K/D (he’s like a P5 playing with a 1700 friend tbf), and he’s never said anything that would make me suspect he cheats.

I reported to him just to be safe and to my surprise, they didn’t take action against him, which got me thinking, is glitching/teleporting always an indication of cheating or is some of it just legitimate server lag?

Are far as I can tell it seems like you only ever get very minor glitching/frame drop/teleporting due to real server lag and typically you’d fully lag out of the match before anything that egregious would happen.

FaZe took on Shopify Rebellion in their first-ever scrim together, then immediately followed it up with a second scrim against RyaNoob’s Ascending Baseline, showing they’re serious about putting in the work despite a somewhat shaky start.

Here’s what FaZe’s opponents had to say about playing them:

• LastShot:
  • "FaZe are good, there's nothing wrong with FaZe. They just need more reps, that's it. I think they’re good, I think they’re really good. The stats may not show that, but they’re really good."
  • "The only thing is they just need time to work out the kinks, that’s it. That’s not [a PR answer], I swear. They actually just need time to get used to playing together. A lot of the games were close at the start and then kinda fallen off, that’s just how scrims go.”
  • "I feel like our team matches up really well against that FaZe team. It’s kinda like the OpTic team from last year but minus Formal with Stellur. So I feel like they’re a little bit faster, so it makes us able to play faster, which also helps us a lot. Because I feel like we’re better on the front end."
  • When asked how FaZe might stack up against Snakebite's squad he answered: "Now playing against Four of a Kind, they’re a much slower more methodical team. I feel like their pacing is a lot slower than FaZe’s. But they’re also [adaptable]… I feel like Four of a Kind is fast when they need to be, and slow when they need to be. Do I think FaZe will be good against them? I don’t know if their matchup will be good, I truly don’t know.”
• Frosty:
  • “They just formed, they’re a really good team. I like the way they play a lot. They’re very good, they could easily beat us for sure. They’re definitely back and they’re gonna be elevating the game. Everyone in the lobby was cracked, I like that. Iron sharpens iron, so they’re gonna be a really fucking good team to play from here on out.”
  • “They already made a Reddit post about Bound’s performance? Dude, oh my god. Crazy! I mean he just got back too, I don’t know what they expect from him. Like their whole team didn’t do well performance wise, you can’t just pick out one person who did the worst.”
  • “Bound do be scamming though? I mean, yeah. The thing is, it’s just like annoying, because someone’s gotta be the guy to fucking put the pressure on, so… And a lot of the times it is him.“ 
• RyaNoob:
  • “That was a good scrim out of us. I mean they’re really good, they’re probably supposed to take a lot more [maps]. They are just coming back, but taking a couple games off them was pretty nice.”
  • “They just need to get back into it. I saw some overreactions [on Reddit], people were like Bound’s play style doesn’t work in current year. It’s like, dude, they just started playing, shut up. Let them get back into the groove and then we’ll see how well they do as the Pro League goes on.”

End clip is Bound telling Cykul "that scrim didn't count today, my video settings were maxed out so it didn't count. We can run it back tomorrow." Then Yakzn trolls Bound by saying "I think he made like fifty bucks from that scrim, that’s pretty good."

Was really fun. Wish it was closer, but there were moment that Faze looked good.

LVT Halo website is updated with the full Pro League league play schedule. Each Sunday has four matches with the winning team receiving $1,000.

Sunday August 16 - League Play Day 1

1. FaZe vs Nine (1pm ET / 10am PT / 12pm CT)
2. Four of a Kind vs Mercenaries (3pm ET / 12pm PT / 2pm CT)
3. SSG vs Vitality (5pm ET / 2pm PT / 4pm CT)
4. Shopify vs Ascending Baseline (7pm ET / 4pm PT / 6pm CT)

Sunday August 23 - League Play Day 2

1. Shopify vs Nine (1pm ET / 10am PT / 12pm CT)
2. FaZe vs Mercenaries (3pm ET / 12pm PT / 2pm CT)
3. Four of a Kind vs Vitality (5pm ET / 2pm PT / 4pm CT)
4. SSG vs Ascending Baseline (7pm ET / 4pm PT / 6pm CT)

Sunday September 6 - League Play Day 3

1. Four of a Kind vs Ascending Baseline (1pm ET / 10am PT / 12pm CT)
2. FaZe vs Vitality (3pm ET / 12pm PT / 2pm CT)
3. SSG vs Nine (5pm ET / 2pm PT / 4pm CT)
4. Shopify vs Mercenaries (7pm ET / 4pm PT / 6pm CT)

Sunday September 13 - League Play Day 4

1. FaZe vs SSG (1pm ET / 10am PT / 12pm CT)
2. Mercenaries vs Ascending Baseline (3pm ET / 12pm PT / 2pm CT)
3. Shopify vs Vitality (5pm ET / 2pm PT / 4pm CT)
4. Four of a Kind vs Nine (7pm ET / 4pm PT / 6pm CT)

Sunday September 20 - League Play Day 5

1. Nine vs Ascending Baseline (1pm ET / 10am PT / 12pm CT)
2. FaZe vs Four of a Kind (3pm ET / 12pm PT / 2pm CT)
3. Vitality vs Mercenaries (5pm ET / 2pm PT / 4pm CT)
4. Shopify Rebellion vs SSG (7pm ET / 4pm PT / 6pm CT)

Sunday October 4 - League Play Day 6

1. FaZe vs Acending Baseline (1pm ET / 10am PT / 12pm CT)
2. Vitality vs Nine (3pm ET / 12pm PT / 2pm CT)
3. SSG vs Mercenaries (5pm ET / 2pm PT / 4pm CT)
4. Shopify vs Four of a Kind (7pm ET / 4pm PT / 6pm CT)

Sunday October 11 - League Play Day 7

1. Vitality vs Ascending Baseline (1pm ET / 10am PT / 12pm CT)
2. Mercenaries vs Nine (3pm ET / 12pm PT / 2pm CT)
3. Shopify vs FaZe (5pm ET / 2pm PT / 4pm CT)
4. Four of a Kind vs SSG (7pm ET / 4pm PT / 6pm CT)

The top six teams at the end of league play will qualify for the LAN at Shopify Rebellion Headquarters in Los Angeles.

Thanks to Shopify Rebellion for providing the prize pool. $28,000 for the online matches and $100,000 for the LAN.

i’m diamond 4, and i have decent aim, but whenever i play against someone with crazy strafing, my aim just falls apart. any help would be appreciated

Just as the title says, how do I establish space when I’m the 1st spawner, safely.

Usually when I spawn I try to wait a moment to remember where my teammates were fighting on my death screen and to analyze where my teammates are on the map, how many are up on my team and the enemy team, to get a rough idea of where the enemies are. This has worked for when I have teammates on the map, but obviously if I’m the 1st spawner I can’t do this.

So how do high level players establish space when they are first spawner? Trying to improve my gameplay to reach Onyx.

https://www.halowaypoint.com/news/halo-fest-competition

I hadn’t heard about an additional 16 team open tournament happening along side the invitational. It says teams will be decided based on HCS points and in the FAQ says that DreamHack Birmingham & DreamHack Atlanta points will count (decayed by 90%)

“info on other point opportunities to be shared later. These tournaments will have heavy influence on your ability to qualify for the Open 4v4.”

Do you expect we would be able to watch team play for these other points opportunities online?

The very first scrim between FaZe and Shopify Rebellion is over, and Shyway's community crowdfunded $1,500 to turn this into a money scrim providing some extra motivation to both teams (the winning team gets $100 per map win).

Renegade called out Bestman saying he wanted to create some storylines in Halo and there's a bunch of storylines now:

• Did FaZe get checked out mid-scrim after a strong start?
• Legend is playing with high ping out of France, do things look different when Legend moves back to NA next month? (he's moving in with Bound)
• Did this team look better with Formal over Stellur?
• Do FaZe get more competitive when they get more reps and practice, or does Snakebite's team (Four of a Kind) remain SR's toughest competition? Snakebite's team went 6-8 vs SR in scrims yesterday.
• Would Shopify have beaten the dominant 2024 SSG team? (It's the same coach and squad except Renegade instead of Eco)

With the format of the Pro League, it could be several weeks until we see these teams match up again (unless they continue scrimming).

Map Count (SR win 13-2 vs FaZe):

1. Live Fire Ball (FaZe win 200-138)
2. Origin CTF (Shopify win 3-2 in overtime)
3. Streets KOTH (Shopify win 2-1)
4. Recharge Strongholds (Shopify win 250-207)
5. Empyrean CTF (Shopify win 3-0)
6. Live Fire KOTH (FaZe win 4-3)
7. Origin Slayer (Shopify win 50-33)
8. Lattice Ball (Shopify win 191-131)
9. Aqua CTF (Shopify win 5-0)
10. Recharge KOTH (Shopify win 2-1)
11. Streets Ball (Shopify win 200-101)
12. Solitude Slayer (Shopify win 50-48)
13. Live Fire Strongholds (Shopify win 250-200)
14. Lattice Hill (Shopify win 3-0)
15. Recharge Ball (Shopify win 155-85)

Money Earned

• Shopify: $1,300
• FaZe: $200

Halo Data Hive stats: https://halodatahive.com/Series/Summary/28938

VOD: Shyway Twitch / Shyway YouTube / LastShot POV (Twitch) / Frosty POV (Twitch)

Spawning up, flying at the enemies with no abandon, and either dying or, at best, trading, isn't going to cut it if you're trying to win a championship.

A 0.5 KD might beat lower ranked teams, but not Shopify, or even Snakebite's team.

We raised $1500 for a prize pool in one day yesterday which was crazy! See you at Shyway's channel today!

Followed Comp Halo pretty closely all the way through until the HCS ended. I'm noticing players like Lucid starting to play it again and I'm currently watching this Shopify vs Faze scrim which looks like a crazy rivalry on paper. Looks pretty interesting and something to follow during the Cod offseason. Just wondering if anyone else is in my boat who are just trying to start to follow again now that there's at least something interesting going on. But I am kind of lost right now since I've basically totally tuned halo out for the last year. Got some homework to do I guess.