Guild Wars 2

(This is entirely a hypothetical question for me since my team doesn’t have a substitute but I’m curious.)

The first two rules for the Tournament of Legends are:

• One substitute will be allowed per team, and that substitute will be prohibited from playing for a different team.

• Teams are only allowed to bring a substitute if a player on the roster cannot make it to the games. Substitutes may not be used as an alternate for tactical purposes. Only the players that participate in the team’s final match in the tournament will receive rewards.

This makes it sound like being a substitute is a big gamble. You can’t play for another team but you also don’t get to play for your team unless someone else drops out, and unless you’re in their final match you get nothing at all for participating.

Have I missed something here? And if I have understood everything why would anyone want to be a substitute?

Can’t give errybody prizes :/
64 teams Will get a worthless Lama (64 Extra Worthless Lamas)
11 Teams will get a Black Lion Claim ticket (11 Extra Tickets)
8 Teams will get 4k gems each; (6400 gems extra)
3 Teams will get Precursors and Legendaries (2 Extra precursors +1 Extra Legendary)

It does seem harsh if the sub doesn’t get to play. It would be nice for anet to have a tier of rewards for the sub for a team based on placement.

On the other hand a player being a sub likely doesn’t have a team and the possibility of playing with a high quality team as a sub is better than the 100% chance of scraping together a medicore team for the tourney.

This does seem real bs to me since my group is from my guild, and on the chance that we get a llama one of us is going to miss out. It is demoralizing that one of us won’t get the mini and it was a tough choice, but I had to sign myself up as the sub cause of it.