On the subject, Towa's team looks VERY good. Two 1st places and a 4th in 4 matches is extremely strong.
However, I do suspect Aqua may end up getting a nerf like Astel and Gorilla. Not because of Aqua herself, but because of Suisei.
You see, Suisei's spot was locked in whilst she was mid-Gold, but now she is being professionally coached, and the last we heard she was in mid-Plat (an entire tier above where she said she was). Unlike Astel and Gorilla who selected actual Gold players, Suisei is a Gold in name only and could easily be a low Diamond player by now given that she plays with more confidence than someone like Ars who is Plat 1.
Without a nerf, Towa's team could be tournament favourites just by virtue of loopholing the point cap system, as a D4 Suisei would make the team worth 20/18 points.
tl;dr Due to Aqua's autism, the team stumbled onto a player who appears to just need some coaching to help her reach higher ranks. I don't think Suisei naturally groks shooters in the same way Aqua does because of lack of FPS experience but having someone to iron out the kinks and point her in the right direction appears to have been the push she needed.
On one hand, it's a bigger issue because Towa ranked up to Diamond 3 shortly after being chosen so she's actually worth 7 points not 5. (Partially balanced out by the fact that the tourney inexperienced Aqua was given a 10 instead of a 9.)
On the other hand, this wasn't some attempt to game the system. Towa was on record that
she wanted someone more experienced (probably a Plat 4 player like Fubuki or Roboco). Suisei was a gamble on Aqua's part, and I don't even want to call it a gamble because Suisei was partially chosen because Aqua and Suisei had an
KiritoxAsuna role-play Apex date a year ago. (Yes,
really.)
Additionally, I think you're overestimating the current Suisei because you were seeing her at her best in those scrims and she's been improving rapidly so her level of play can fluctuate heavily. I think Plat 2 is legitimately where she's at now but her level of play can fluctuate from Gold level decision making to flashes of low Diamond level mechanics. And there's no difference point-wise from Suisei starting off as a Plat 4 and improving to Plat 3 compared to going from Gold 4 to Plat 1. It's just that her starting point was lower, and being a legit low-Gold scrub when she was chosen instead of a serviceable low-Plat player shouldn't be held against them. It's only an issue because it shows a rate a progress where if she doesn't hit a wall (not guaranteed but appears to be a real possibility), she has a decent chance of being a low Diamond-level player by the time the tourney rolls around.
And no one knows who the coach is, how much coaching she's been getting, or when the coaching started. But my guesses:
- It's probably someone Towa knows (duh). Either Uruca who has been watching Suisei's POV a bit too much or Alelu who said he's helping two other players on the side. Maybe some Apex stalker knows more but those seems like reasonable guesses.
- I feel like you're assuming the amount of coaching she's getting is more than a player from a team with a coach. But the likely candidates indicates that's probably not the case or if it is not by much.
- Even three weeks ago, she was gold-level (stream on March 12th). I'm guessing the coaching started a week or two before then and something clicked in her head afterwards or straight up started afterwards.
Some additional context on the type of person Suisei is:
- She was a mid-tier scrub (Holo-wise) and not close to being in contention to win the 2021 Mario Kart tourney. After around a month of grinded her ass off, she became the 2nd best player, and beat Aqua just because people said no one else stood a chance of winning besides Aqua and that pissed her off.
- She is a grinder. She's on record staying up 24 hours to play Apex and practising Apex while chatting all night after a Shiraken (Flare, Polka, Miko, Noel) collab. 5 hours a day of grinding for this year's Mario Kart tourney was considered light work.
- I don't think Suisei is as mechanically gifted as Aqua, but she arguably has the quickest mind in Hololive. Even ignoring Tetris which she can play at a high level, sing/read chat at the same time, you can see her raw processing power in this Big Brain Academy stream. When things click and she sees the solution in her mind, she's blazing fast. There are points where I can't even follow and she's already inputted the solution.
- She's improving this rapidly when Apex isn't her #1 priority to the point where she said she wouldn't join if Aqua wasn't the one asking. She has her Anniversary Live coming up this Thursday, please come and watch. She's also participating in the VTuber Fes 2022 on April 30th.
Honestly, any talented player with some coaching would progress as fast as Suisei and some a lot faster. Plenty even progress faster without coaching. I'm sure if you took a random snapshot of Predator-rank players, Suisei's rate of progress would seem pedestrian. The fact that she was ever stuck at low gold makes it insulting to compare her to them. The problem is most players in the tournament aren't talented. They're hard stuck Platinum or low/mid Diamond players. They won't improve this quickly even with coaching.
On the team itself:
Over the past two days, they've either finished really high or really low and mostly low. Right now, a bad drop location is a big enough nerf because of their issues (Suisei's inconsistency and Aqua's solo-queue habits) and has easily knocked them out of contention. However, once they're in a comfortable position they're clearly very strong. if they get their issues sorted out they could be a problem balance-wise that's definitely an issue that needs further consideration beyond drop location
This has had something of a domino effect, as some Japanese fans are speculating that no one provided a POV because they are hiding the presence of a coach to protect their Gachikoi. There have been a few occasions where Towa is too sick to stream her POV in a tournament but can still be heard in the POV of the other two, so the fact all three of them are the only non-viewer team without a POV is raising eyebrows as to the veracity of Aqua's claim that they aren't being coached.
Suisei revealed on stream that she has a personal coach. Anyone with a brain knows it's a guy introduced through Towa. It's clearly not an issue.
I don't doubt that Towa is getting feedback from someone that makes it's way to Aqua indirectly. You could argue that's almost the same thing and I agree but I don't think they have an actual coach.
So why not stream? Suisei was a legit gold scrub only three weeks ago and they had low expectations and were legitimately worried about their performance. Here's a clip of Towa talking about their performance yesterday
here. Suisei wasn't even familiar with the map they were playing on. They were getting rolled until the last two customs yesterday. Was it a fluke? Well, it's clearly not a fluke now but there was no way to tell that after a single win on the last match.
