What happened to it

I see, fair enough ^^

partner events only created a problem now because only now has enought time passed to partner events create some sort of a bubble effect, specially EPL, it started with the best teams becoming partners with its players but as time passed it ended up being the same teams competing with almost the same players between them and this is where the bubble starts, they get used to play against the same players and teams, the top tier got stale, playing good or bad they farm ranking points that got them in cologne and kato keeping the bubble alive then the major happens and upstets start to happen, take in consideration that EPL went on with the partner system in 2020 and blast series came on also in 2020 and if we look at upsets in the major circuit the trend of t2 teams upstets starts to take form with the Antwerp major in 2022 where we see teams like EF, CPH flames, forze, entropiq, mvs riders coming up to the majors and then rio happened and then paris it would be a good topic for an article in hltv

there is always a difference between the tiers, tier1 is tier1 for a reason, and i mean the real tier1 not what people now days call tier1 for some reason... its not teams that fight head to head with each other and can beat each other, its the teams that make deep runs at big events. Like i dont think we will see ITB doing anything for the rest of their roster life. Of course they have far less opportunity to qualify for those events, but for some they do have chance to qualify and if they don't its their fault.

Why would Katowice be on par with Cologne?