VALORANT Champions 2022 was truly one for the books.

There were a ton of great plays and storylines that showed off the pinnacle of VALORANT’s best teams.

We’re diving in to the top 12 things we learned from the tournament, including some things that you can apply to your own play.

If we missed anything, let us know in the comments!

1. Despite the nerfs, Chamber is still on top

Chamber boasted the highest pick rate in the tournament at 66.86%.

His  Rendezvous ability was nerfed, but it gives him an instant get out of jail free card that is too strong for teams to pass up on, especially on the defensive side.

Chamber is still the best economic character with a free Operator as an ult and a cheap, yet strong eco buy with Headhunter.

Due to the Headhunter price increase, a common pistol round buy was to buy Ghost and Trademark.

In Riot’s September State of the Agents update it was noted that Chamber will be receiving further nerfs.

2. DRX is no longer bound by the 5th-6th curse

The team moved Rb off of Jett into a super flex role in which he played 5 different agents in their best of 5 against Optic in the lower finals. Buzz took over the role of primary duelist and as a result both Buzz and Rb had an increase in First Kill Success rate as well as KAST (% of rounds in which a player got a kill, assist, survived, or was traded out).

Mako was side by side with Pancada of LOUD in terms of stats for best Controller player at the event.

The team went 4-1 in their matches against NA and EMA teams, two regions they have struggled against in past events.

3. The Vandal is the preferred rifle over the Phantom

Vandal usage rates were 2.5 times higher than that of the Phantom.

Buzz of DRX was the only primary Jett/Chamber player to use the Phantom.

The Phantom was more so used by Controller players to spam through smokes.

4. Astra was the top Controller on the new map Pearl

Astra was picked on Pearl 83% of the time.

Viper was often paired with Astra, similar to her role alongside Brimstone on Bind.

A common default smoke was to place a recall smoke between B Ramp and Club to force an Operator off an angle due to players being able to pass behind the sign and swing from either side of Ramp.

5. There is mostly good balance amongst Initiators… Fade is the exception

Double Initiator was Commonly Picked, and Fade was the Most Picked Initiator

Fade’s most picked maps were Ascent, Haven, and Pearl. Breeze was the only map she was not picked on. This is where Sova had a 100% pick rate due to being able to cover the long ranges the map demands.
September’s State of the Agents mentioned potential tuning to Fade’s kit.

Kay/O was essentially a must pick on Ascent, and a fairly popular pick otherwise Despite having poor ranked play stats, Kay/O is a very strong agent in professional play. This shows his potential with mastery and coordination. A flash to incorporate into your game on Ascent is from Defenders Spawn to B site for a player fighting Backsite B to swing off of.

Breach’s Best maps are Haven and Fracture (66% and 85% pick rate)
He is becoming more of a mainstay on Haven due to his ability to play defense Backsite C, utilize utility through the multiple walls on the map, destroy Killjoy ults (Haven is her second most popular map), and most of all his strong ability for retakes.

Many rounds on Haven resulted in 5v5 or 4v5 retakes, this is where Breach shines.

6. Raze is the Best Synergizing Duelist in the Current Meta

Raze pairs very well with the most popular initiator Fade.

Her Paint Shell plus Fade Seize were commonly paired to kill enemies stuck in and decayed by the Seize. Paint Shells and Showstopper also synergize well with a Chamber Trademark and Sage Slow Orb.

Jett is boxed out by Chamber in terms of Operator ability, but still offers offensive advantages over him.

Raze is able to emulate Jett’s space creating ability on offense with her Blast Packs, and boasts very strong defensive ability by delaying plants and disrupting choke points on defense. Meanwhile Jett’s defensive OPing prowess isn’t as pressing due to Chamber being stronger in that role.

7. Yay Cemented Himself as the Best Player in the World of the VCT Era

This is a heavy statement, but one that is backed by his consistent performances across multiple events.

Across all of his International events he had a First Blood Success Rate of 62%, got First Blood in 19% of rounds, was Top 10 in Average Damage per Round at all events, and had the highest Kills per Round stat amongst all players in 3 out of the 5 International events he played in.

In his 5 international events Yay went negative in only 1 series out of the 30 (3.33%) he played. For comparison, Derke, a common contender for best player in the world, went negative in 5 of 20 (25%) International series he played in.

8. Viper Continues to get Immense Value on her 3 Best Maps

On Icebox, Breeze, and Bind Viper was picked nearly 100% of the time at Champions.

Viper has been progressively nerfed since the first Masters Reykavic, but is still a near must pick on those maps.

Her utility is still good for post plant and defense despite the damage nerfs.

Her Toxic Screen is extremely strong for site executes on Breeze, defensive walls and retakes on all 3 of those maps, and for lurking into U-Hall on Bind.

Here are common walls used on Icebox:

• Example 1

• Example 2

Here is the lurk set up for Bind:

Throw the Poison Cloud by lining up the dot above the left click toss with the upper left corner of the window and jump at the same time you throw the orb.

The Toxic Screen just runs along the right side of A Short.

These two in combination give you a lane to walk up A short and even U-Hall.

9. Phoenix is playable

Phoenix was picked more than both Yoru and Reyna after not being picked once at Masters Copenhagen. Buffs to Phoenix’s flash made them more in line with Kay/O’s right click flash, and the ultimate which was the only redeeming portion of Phoenix’s kit was buffed to make it even stronger.

Scream of Team Liquid played Phoenix on Breeze, Pearl, and Ascent.
Liquid’s strategy revolved around feeding Ultimate Orbs to Scream to use Phoenix’s very strong ultimate, Run it Back. Rounds were opened up by giving one of the best aimers in the world a free life to run at the enemies to get kills and create space for his team.

There is no coincidence that Scream played Phoenix on the maps which have Ultimate Orbs that are easier for the attacking side to secure. It was common for him to run to both orbs in one round on their games on Ascent.

Victor of Optic was the other notable player to play Phoenix. He played Phoenix on Haven, resulting in some of his better games of the tournament.
Optic had similar strategies to Liquid in utilizing Phoenix ultimate as much as possible.

On multiple occasions, Victor would use Run it Back in the wide open, tap the spike on B site, then continue on with his ult. This play appeared to have potential, but definitely needed some fleshing out to be effective.

You’d also think the guy who pulled off this play wouldn’t be so privy to using Run it Back in the middle of the open in Mid Courtyard in front of B site on Haven.

10. “You can trust my bots. They only malfunctioned that one time” – Killjoy

XSET and FPX replayed the 24th round in their series deciding game due to a visual bug from the Killjoy Turret.

In the final round of regulation Ange1 of FPX jiggle peeked the Killjoy Turret, it shot at him in A Link and then redirected its shots towards A Rafters. Because of this Dephh of XSET was watching for an enemy on A Rafters despite no player being there due to the incorrect information from the Turret.

In the initial playthrough XSET lost the 3v2 advantage they had in the round, the match, and they were out of the tournament as they lost 13-11. Riot decided to replay the round despite no request from XSET, and in the replay XSET won the 24th round. Ultimately FPX won after multiple rounds of overtime and XSET were eliminated from the tournament.

This is a slippery slope of a precedent to set, as in the future teams can request replays if they believe an in-game bug caused them to lose the round.

Hopefully when franchising comes next year there is a comprehensive rulebook that classifies known bugs as that have set penalties if deliberately exploited (such as the old Cypher Breeze camera), are known and do not justify a replay, and are known and justify a replay. That way there is some consistency in decision making among hard to replicate bugs and exploits.

11. LOUD’s players had a very tight distribution of stats

All 5 players had very even stats through the tournament, and especially during the grand finals.

From VLR.gg

Across the 4 maps against Optic in the grand finals a different player on LOUD had the highest ACS each map, had only 6 kills between the lowest and highest fragging players, ACS only 13 difference between lowest and highest, as well as average damage per round only 6 apart between highest and lowest.

This trend translated into consistency of the team as a whole and less volatility due to less dependency on 1 or 2 players to carry the load.

It also shows the value of support players and IGLs that can show up on the scoreboard such as Mako or Shao, which will be a very hot commodity during franchising.

12. Using the ropes on Fracture are great for relocating… but don’t have all 5 teammates use them at once

This clip is just too fun to leave out, but there are some lessons to learn on how to play Fracture here.

It has become commonplace on defense to crunch Attacker Side Spawn through aggression from A Halls and B Tree.

In this case, that strategy resulted in Boom taking the rope into Crashies’ waiting arms.

This is done using Breach’s stun and flashes as well as with Neon’s stun and mobility.

Closing Thoughts

The future of international play and competitive in general for VALORANT is incredibly bright! We’ll see how the upcoming franchising system will change the look of upcoming tournaments. See you next time and we hope this breakdown helps you in your matches.

The post 12 Things We Learned from VALORANT Champions 2022 appeared first on Mobalytics.

A lot of impressive, well planned and meticulous plays have been made by pro teams around the world recently. Here we will try to showcase a bunch of memorable rounds from various regions.

Pro teams have obviously spent time organising and practising how they will execute some rounds whilst on attack and defence and it is very interesting to see it come together successfully.

This blog post will aim to do two things, demonstrate how and why the attackers were able to force their way onto sites and secure the round. Secondly, what exactly it was that gave defenders the edge over the opponents trying to take sites.

The article deliberately leaves out the rounds that were heavily focused on aim-duels, the crazy flicks and the nutty one-taps.

Instead, it aims to focus solely on ability collaboration between teammates so that maybe us ordinary gamers can steal a few ideas and tactics!

1. The Next Level (TNL) execute onto A Ascent against DAMWON (KOREA)

TNL started off the first map of their quarterfinals on Ascent with a round straight from the training grounds.

What was most fascinating about their execution on A was how well-timed TNL exy (Phoenix) managed to molly off the entrance of A short (tree room).

Exy has a  Hot Hands lineup from A main meaning he can utilise this molly with maximum safety whilst also utilising the element of surprise against DAMWON (since it fell in a smoke).

I tried to investigate what the lineup would be like… Here is one I managed to find. This can be swiftly lined up by positioning Phoenix’s left pointing finger with the middle wooden block on the wall as shown below.

To contextualize how TNL set up for this execution, Astra is top mid meditating setting up a star on the A short door ready for smoking. The rest of the team push up A main, protecting Sova to gain information with his drone.

The drone is a great way to gather information and push opponents back and secure space.

DAMWON’s Phoenix, ‘iNTRO’ has his location revealed by the drone and is forced out into tree room to seek cover.

As this happens Astra smokes short so that Exy’s molly is hidden. As iNTRO enters tree room he loses the entirety of his health to exy’s HotHands; opening up the site for TNL.

[0:027] TNL’s Killjoy doesn’t waste a single second and immediately sets up her utility across the site for postplant. Her turret watches heaven for the team so they don’t have to peek and can gain some delay.

Further, she goes under heaven to place Nanoswarm in a way that can’t be destroyed by the traffic coming from above.

Activating this swarm forces the opponents to wait beside it or push tree. Knowing this, TNL Sova aims his shock darts to damage enemies who decided to wait.

Astra places a star down on heaven to smoke it only after the bomb has been planted and the site is secured. (Placing stars down early in the round or in the buy phase can give away which site you are executing).

Only now, Astra has finished meditating at top-mid. She begins a late rotate up cat-walk into the tree room to provide control there.

Her positionality here ultimately gets a pick on Jett and secures the round.

2. SENTINELS hold on A site Ascent against XSET (North America)

SicK and TenZ linked up on A site defence and ended up emphasising just how strong coordinated ultimate abilities can be.

SicK (Phoenix) and TenZ (Jett) start the round off by gaining A main control immediately.

SicK uses Hot Hands to zone out enemies from pushing into A main, forcing them to wait in A lobby.

Simultaneously, SEN zombs uses his paranoia towards the entrance of the lobby further securing control of A Main.

SicK then uses ‘Run it Back’ to flash and push into Lobby hoping to grab a kill. The audio queue of the Phoenix ultimate has XSET heavily anticipating his push.

This opens up the opportunity for TenZ to updraft from the top of generator with knives and pick off unsuspecting XSET members in A lobby who have prepared their crosshairs for SicK’s push.

This play by Sentinels is quite well thought out as the focus of the opponents in the lobby becomes split and confused between TenZ and SicK.

TenZ gets the opening kill on Skye, at the same time SicK flashes out to try and grab another pick.

Unfortunately, he fails and is forced to respawn on his ultimate marker.

This entices XSET PureR (Jett) to push and grab the pick on a vulnerable SicK.[2:16:24]

Like a chess game Sentinels have this well thought out and TenZ is able to cover for him and trade out the kill for free.

Despite the Phoenix ultimate failing to gain a single kill, Sentinels still end up 4v3 now with information on XSET’s whereabouts and full site control.

A very favourable position to be in, highlighting the strength of this play despite SicK’s mistakes.

[2:17:21] XSET decided to continue pushing A site however the rest of Sentinels are well prepared now to hold down the site.

TenZ displays some of his precision by jumping the double box to grab another pick.

He makes a point of just how important it is to stay mobile, jump around and make it difficult for your opponent to track you when you are using knives on Jett.

Ultimately, the 4v2 in favour of Sentinels becomes too much as XSET BcJ and AYRIN continue pushing a stacked site eventually leading to an impressive TenZ ace!

3. World Game Star (WGS) gain control of Ascent B site against NUTURN (KOREA)

WGS execute a fast B attack with the link up play of KAY/O and Breach. Initially, the WGS team are stuck behind NUTURN’s Astra smoke on B main.

This ends up playing in the favour of WGS as it allows them to set up their utility for a quick take.

Three particular ability usages are what allow WGS to take B site successfully:

• Breach’s Flash
• Astra’s smokes
• Kayo’s molly

The three pieces of utility are used in harmony with each other to force the opponents on B site into awkward positions and or have them fall off and play retake.

NUTURN Suggest (Skye) begins the round inside the market. Once WGS Sylvan (Astra) smokes off-market he makes the decision to peek just outside the smoke.

[11:15] WGS account for this possibility and KAY/O straight away before they have even pushed outside of B main throws his FRAG/MENT grenade towards the outside of market forcing Suggest down off the stairs into an awkward and vulnerable position.

At the same time WGS Has1ra14 (Breach) flashes out of B main to begin flooding the site with his teammates.

[11:18] NUTURN Suggest is flashed successfully by Breach and resorts to falling behind the box in the middle of B site, he is rattled and uncomfortable holding this line of sight and ends up dying, opening the site for WGS.

[11:25] At this point 2 members of WGS have gotten onto site to play post-plant whilst KAY/O holds B main for greater map control and WGS Skye pushes right up to the CT Astra smoke to look for another pick which he does end up finding.

Playing this position definitely caught NUTURN’s Sova off guard and ended up bringing it down to a 3v3 with site and B main control.

4. ACEND execute A site very cleanly on Haven against FunPlus Phoenix FPX [EU]

The round begins with the majority of ACEND clustered outside A garden.

The key to this round was the diligence they had in slowly using their utility to gain control over A sewers rather than just smoking cross and W keying from garden.

In this image you can see ACEND Kiles and ACEND starxo using the Skye wolf and Cypher camera to gain information both over sewers and long.

[1:28:14]By this stage the cypher cam can confirm that FPX Omen has fallen off and there is probably no one holding A long. However ACEND are very careful to only let cNed first peek long with his Operator whilst the rest of the team take cover behind the wall. If they were to W key they would have run the risk of falling victim to FPX ANGE1’s Operator.

They also make sure to stay quiet and hide from FPX Shao’s owl drone coming up short which only ends up finding information on one ACEND member (that shoots the drone). Hence, with the lack of information FPX have they keep 2 members anchoring C site.

Slowly cNed begins clearing sewers by crab walking down with his Operator. His teammates stick right behind him to be able to trade him out. Eventually the awkward verticality between the bottom and top of sewers means cNed is able to find a pick on FPX ANGE1.

[1:28:45] Instantly after cNed finds the pick, a very systematic take of A site by ACEND begins. ACEND zeek pops Phoenix ultimate and begins running up sewers. He uses Hot Hands to prevent the FPX player behind main box in the middle of site from peeking A long.

By doing this he coerces FPX ShadoW (the player mollied off) into taking a duel with himself which is very favourable since he is using ‘Run it Back’.

At the same time – [1:28:48] ACEND starxo uses his Skye bird to flash over on top of the site all the way from A Main. This catches FPX Shao off guard and ends up giving zeek a very free kill.

All the while ACEND BONECOLD (Omen) has managed to use his ultimate to teleport to Heaven and gain further control over A.

ACEND Kiles (Cypher) has set up trap wires down on A garden to watch over for the flank and the round becomes a certainty as it is a 5v2.

Closing Thoughts

The rounds that have been described aim to highlight the power of teamwork and synergised abilities. Hopefully, there are a few moments within these rounds that have been impressive and or new to you.

I do recommend watching some Pro play if you want to learn a bit more and improve your own VALORANT knowledge.

Hopefully, some rounds were a learning experience, maybe you now have a few new ideas when trying to collaborate with teammates.

Exy’s Phoenix Hot Hands over A main Ascent to block off tree room was a clever play that stood out to me and I might make note of it for my future games.

Best of luck with your climb!

To improve your coordination check out our article on How to Climb with a 5 Stack and be sure to consult our VALORANT Agent Tier List.

The post 4 Coordinated Pro VALORANT Rounds You Should Learn From appeared first on Mobalytics.

Welcome to the third episode of your favorite Valorant tips & tricks series “How to Valorant”!

Within this series, you can learn all about the different existing kinds of mechanical and tactical gameplay mechanics that are crucial to the game.

As always, our primary goal is to help out everyone interested in becoming a better player and thus the focus of this particular series is on explaining the respective gameplay topics in great detail but still in an understandable and easy-to-learn way.

This specific article will be all about how to “trade frag”!

The topics we’ll be covering are:

• What Is Trading in Valorant?
• Example From A Professional Matchup
• When And How to Trade Correctly
• Advantages of Proper Trading

If you find yourself enjoying this article, be sure to also check out our first episode of “How to Valorant” on how to crossfire in Valorant or the second episode containing everything you need to know about Valorant flash abilities.

What Is Trading in Valorant?

The term trade fragging, oftentimes just called trading, describes a method to always be able to make up for the death of a teammate with the frag onto the enemy who killed that teammate.

Compensating for the death of a fallen teammate by immediately killing an enemy in return can be viewed as a one-for-one trade regarding the overall numbers of living members of both your team and the enemy team. That’s the origin of the term trading.

Here’s a simple illustration to explain what is supposed to happen in a successful trade:

Step 1: Stay in close proximity to your teammate playing entry

Step 2: Be always prepared to react in case of your teammate losing the initial duel

Step 3: Trade the enemy who just killed your teammate

It basically only describes what’s happening or is meant to happen in-game and therefore is a very intuitive term to use for players at all skill levels.

Although trading itself isn’t really a complicated concept, sometimes it’s not as easy to practice as you may think. And it always helps to look at vivid examples to internalize certain things a little bit further.

That’s why we are now going to have a brief look at an in-game scene showing a perfect showcase for effective trading.

Example From A Professional Matchup

The following in-game scene comes from a pro matchup of the first VCT 2021: NA Masters tournament between Team Envy and Gen.G Esports.

To be completely honest, you don’t have to look far to find typical examples for trading in actual matches. All teams do it consciously or unconsciously on countless occasions in the game. This is just a simple example without further meaning.

However, it takes real skill to consistently and purposefully make use of trading to maximize your chances of success in every situation.

And maximizing your chances with effective trading is exactly what Gen.G did in this particular round.

Therefore, we’ll carefully pick this round apart in its pieces with an extra eye on the happening trades within the round:

[1:39] Gen.G decides to do a relatively fast A Split in this round
Since they do an eco round and thus only have pistols, they try to stick in groups and overrun Envy

[1:27] The first trade takes place on A Short / Lamps
Shawn satchels towards lamps and gets killed by mummAy
gMd immediately trades mummAy → very important

[1:19] Another great trade for Gen.G close to the Showers entrance
The elevated kaboose can only utilize his high ground for one kill onto koosta
Again, MkaeL immediately trades him to balance out the numbers

[1:16] gMd continues to pressure the opponent by pushing Lamps and getting an additional kill back site onto FNS
Pay attention to the spacing between gMd and his teammate behind him: HUYNH would’ve been ready to instantly trade FNS if gMd lost the duel

Those initial two key trades alone enabled Gen.G to plant the Spike on the A site and start the afterplant in a 3v3 situation despite their obvious handicap of having an eco round and only pistols in hands.

Gen.G even managed to get an additional kill to make it a 3v2 situation in their favor and using this advantage they also won the round in the end.

All in all, effective trading brought Gen.G the victory in this round in spite of having the economical disadvantage.

On this account, this specific example should adequately show you how important and impactful well-played trading can be and that even the best of the best still struggle against teams that manage to trade frags in a consistent manner.

When And How to Trade Correctly

Trading is a tool you can and should keep in mind at any point in time whilst in-game. However, it certainly is more useful in certain situations compared to others.

Here is a compact list of situations in which trading can help you immensely to keep the upper hand over the round:

Situations in which…

…your team managed to workout a numbers advantage (e.g. 4v3 in your favor)
…you want to take certain map control without unavenged losses on your side
…you intend to sacrifice a low-HP teammate for a full-HP enemy
…you want to retain the control over the situation in general

Those use-cases mentioned above are definitely not the only situations but surely one of the most common ones for players to attempt trading in.

So, now you know when to aim for effective trades. But how do you go for these trades the best way possible?

To ensure a certain trade, you basically have to stick to your comrade-in-arms at all times. A close proximity to your friend makes it complicated for your enemy to escape the situation after the first duel.

In case the opponent wins the initial aim fight, he mustn’t be allowed to flee without punishment. That’s why you have to be able to trade immediately in most scenarios.

There are only a few exceptions to this rule. For example, if the position of the second challenger is unknown and the enemy, therefore, doesn’t expect another duel, you can easily take a little bit more time to find the perfect timing for the re-frag.

Agents who can escape a confrontation with one of their abilities (e.g. Jett’s Tailwind and Reyna’s Dismiss) have a huge advantage in this regard because of the way trading works.

These agents are able to get entries without the enemy being able to trade. This is one of the reasons why both Jett and Reyna are popular picks for the duelist slot in many compositions.

Also, Yoru is capable of getting out of a situation at any time using his Gatecrash ability. It’s going to be exciting to see if Yoru gains in popularity after the recent buffs in Patch 2.06.

Advantages of Proper Trading

The advantages of trading are pretty straight-forward:

• Multi-kills on the side of the enemy are unlikely
• All players in the team know how to proceed in the round
• Low-HP players can still have great impact for the team
• Numbers advantages can be obtained throughout the round

As you may already noticed, these advantages naturally go in line with some of the most common use-cases which were displayed in the section above.

Generally speaking, effective trading makes life difficult for the opponent who searches a way to turn around the situation in their favor.

Nevertheless, trading cannot replace getting entry kills. Instead, it can help to retain the resulting numbers advantage until the very end and thus the round win.

Conclusion

In summary, trading is an incredibly powerful tool you are better off to have in your personal repertoire.

Besides the obvious required mechanical skill, reliable communication and a solid understanding of teamplay is needed with every player of the team to consistently pull off successful trading.

In spite of all, only practice creates masters and to assume that you suddenly master trading after reading this article is probably going to turn out to be a misconception.

Just try to keep trading in mind as a possible way to achieve your goals mid-game and remember to communicate with your teammates when you intend to trade in specific situations.

To find the best positions to set up trades, check out our Valorant maps tool.  We recommend coordinating with your 5-stack!

The post How to Valorant – Trading (Episode 3) appeared first on Mobalytics.

The North American VCT Masters tournament boasted the largest prize pool for a VALORANT competition yet and pitted the best eight teams of NA against each other.

In this analysis, we’ll be taking a closer look at the course of the tournament along with the trends regarding agents, maps, and weapon preferences of the participating teams.

We’ll also explore how the meta of current NA VALORANT can be compared to those of other regions like Europe and Korea.

Last but not least, we picked ourselves three key rounds out of the first map of the Grand Final which we’ll explain in further detail and draw respective learnings out of.

Overall, we hope that you’ll pick up some helpful tips and tricks that you can apply in your own games based on our insights and recommendations.

This deep dive into the NA Masters Stage 1 Masters is brought to you by Secretlab, the Official Founding Partner of VALORANT Champions Tour, and Mobalytics.

Event Recap

The tournament took place over two consecutive weekends, beginning on March 11th, 2021, and ending on March 21st.

All eight participating teams qualified through the Challengers events, which were a series of smaller tournaments that took place through February.

Masters represented a huge step forward for VALORANT esports as it put an overall prize pool of $150,000 USD on the line, with $60,0000 of it going to the first-place team.

Not only did the prize pool reach an all-time high, but the total number of viewers of just the NA Masters event alone went beyond the 300k mark on the streaming platform Twitch.

The State of the NA Masters Tournament Meta

Agent Picks

If you’re a fan of unusual agent picks and daring agent compositions, you may have been disappointed by the NA Masters agent pool

Both Viper and Brimstone didn’t find any use in the entirety of the tournament, leaving only Omen remaining as the sole and lonely Controller for literally all matchups played. This also explains the 66 picks out of 66 matches and therefore the 100% pick rate for Omen.

Skye’s potential as a flashing Initiator was completely negated by the teams which rather played Breach if necessary or Duelists with flashing abilities like Phoenix or Reyna.

The last agent which found no use at all is Yoru. But to be honest, this is something we could’ve predicted before the event even started as he’s been lackluster in ranked play since his launch

Besides the four neglected agents who had a pick rate of 0%, there are no real abnormalities in the agent picks for NA Masters.

With 62 out of 66 possible picks, Sova finds a spot in most lineups, no matter the map.

Overall, the usage of the four viable Duelists, Phoenix, Raze, Jett, and Reyna, is distributed nicely.

Some teams preferred either Phoenix or Reyna but every team ran either a Raze or a Jett in most of their agent compositions.

Agent Compositions

Since four agents in the agent pool didn’t find any use at all in NA’s first Masters tournament, the agent compositions didn’t differ much from what we were already used to seeing in past pro events.

Let’s take a look at the most picked comp for each map during the tournament. If you’re a new player, we’ve included each agent’s role and difficulty level for learning:

Ascent

Bind

Haven

Icebox

Split

To compare these pro comps to the ones used on the ranked ladder, be sure to check out the Mobalytics agent tier list to find our personal recommended team comps for every map.

In terms of trends, nearly every lineup included popular agents like Omen and Sova in addition to either Killjoy or Cypher as their main Sentinel to hold flanks and gather information.

Only the Duelists of the different comps switched up for each team and each map.

A characteristic feature of North American agent comps is the double duelist

lineup on almost every map in the current map pool.
Combinations of different viable Duelists like Jett, Raze, Phoenix, and Reyna are very common in NA and on the contrary to other regions like Europe or Korea.

For example, in EU, teams sometimes even decide to run a non-Duelist lineup in the current meta (we’ll get to more regional meta comparisons in a bit)

Maps

In the visual above you can see a pretty normal distribution of map picks as you would find in most other regions.

Previously, Icebox was a very disliked map within the pro scene in basically every region.

However, you can spot a trend for the newest map in the pool that indicates an increasing acceptance in this regard.

Icebox now seemingly overtook Split in popularity and teams get a glimpse of how you can master the map successfully.

Haven, Ascent, and Bind are the more popular maps within VALORANT’s current map pool and thus the most played.

Since its release, Ascent was widely regarded as one of the most balanced maps despite or maybe because of its simple structure.

These three maps find the approval from both the community and pro scene and therefore, teams in NA Masters agreed to include these three in basically every best-of-three.

Weapons Usage

The two main rifles in VALORANT, Phantom and Vandal, seemed to be equally popular in NA Masters.

The balance of those two weapons shifts from event to event but generally neither of the two dominates the other one by a huge amount of purchases in NA.

Riot managed to give both guns an equal amount of pros and cons so that no one can really say which one is better overall.

For example, the Vandal tends to be more favored on offense since you’ll often face a wider variety of ranges since you don’t know where the defenders will be.

Meanwhile, the Phantom can lean more towards defense since you have more control over where engagements will occur.

Besides that, the Stinger nerf showed its effect as the Spectre is now the clear favorite of the SMGs and a common choice for players for rounds with a low budget.

The Frenzy, another recently nerfed gun, found itself trailing slightly behind the Ghost, which is equal in cost at 500 credits.

How the NA Meta Compares to EU and KR

We are starting this meta comparison with a bold statement: Phoenix is the embodiment of NA VALORANT’s playstyle. Confident, wild, and explosive.

He is an agent that mainly finds use in NA and only NA, at least as far as the pro scenes of the different regions are concerned.

European and Korean teams don’t really play Phoenix anymore because other Duelists like Reyna, Jett, and Raze have gained the upper hand in their respective metas.

Additionally, two-Duelists lineups are very uncommon in those regions nowadays. Rather the opposite is the case. Teams like the European FunPlus Phoenix (FPX) are pioneers of the non-Duelist agent comps in which not even a Jett or a Raze find a spot in anymore.

Just like Phoenix’s personality in VALORANT’s lore, North American pro players build their success largely on the confidence to dominate the enemy face to face.

Of course, every player needs a basic strategic structure to operate in and NA pro teams are great in creating those, but at the end of the day, rounds can often be decided by individual plays more often than by a cooperative execution of an idea.

Nevertheless, this is not a necessarily negative aspect. NA teams have mastered the art of starting the round with a plan and then deviating from it if the situation demands it.

Quick decision-making and confidence in what they do make NA players very unpredictable and even after the second re-peek into an angle, you can’t be certain that there won’t be a third one.

In contrast, the EU and KR pro scenes resemble each other a little more in regard to their general playstyle.

Many players in teams of these regions prioritize the prevention of mistakes over instinctive acting. They weigh up their chances in split seconds and make a decision they think is “the right play”.

However, the aiming and overall skills of EU and KR players are in no way inferior to that of the North American pros. They just choose to obey a system that is very well thought out and takes a lot of work and preparation to get right.

Later this year when the best teams of all different regions come together at VCT 2021: Stage 2 Masters in Reykjavík, we’ll be able to finally see VALORANT’s first international clashes.

Will the fire of NA teams overpower all other regions or are they prepared for the individual skill and confidence NA is notorious for? We’ll have to wait and see.

Regional Winner Comparisons

Let’s take a look at how SEN, the NA Masters champion, compares to the winners of Europe and Korea, which are respectively, Ascend and Vision Strikers.

Many of these differences were already covered in the meta comparison earlier in this article. For example, the characteristic explosiveness and untamed confidence North American teams have in general, is also a great strength of Sentinels in particular.

The concentrated star power Sentinels have with players like TenZ, SicK, Dapr, ShahZaM and Zombs is reason enough to also build their game plan mainly on individual skill.

Nevertheless, Sentinels know how to handle the inconsistency that comes with counting on individual plays. They have a great tactical foundation each player uses to make smart decisions based off of.

Ascend surprised everyone watching and following the tournament in each game they played with their incredible performance. They took down the main three tournament favorites Ninjas in Pyjamas, FunPlus Phoenix, and Heretics, and showed off a new superstar in cNed.

Here’s how cNed compared to TenZ and Babybay, the two standout stars of the NA tournament:

Jett is an agent that downright attracts mechanically-skilled players. TenZ, Babybay and cNed all managed to put up insane numbers for their teams with this Duelist especially.

The newborn European star cNed was on the same level as his North American colleagues in basically every aspect of the game. He opened rounds for his team with an insane amount of entry kills on each and every map and even achieved a 25% headshot rate despite playing Operator a lot of the time.

Ascend decided to withstand the current European trend of no-Duelists lineups by even playing two Duelists, Jett and Reyna, in 3 out of 5 maps in the map pool. Thus, Ascend are definitely one of the more aggressive teams in their region.

In a direct comparison to Sentinels, however, Ascend’s approach to the game might still be considered a bit slower and more strategic overall.

A little side note: we certainly don’t want to detract from Ascend’s stunning performance in Masters but there currently is no best team or even best player in Europe. All teams within the Top 5 to Top 10 are basically able to beat every other team in the region.

The competition is tough and the balance between the teams shifts again and again in a way that makes it impossible to elect a consistent number one in this region.

However, you can assuredly say that for Vision Strikers in the Korean region. With a flawless record of 56 won matches and not a single loss in the team’s history, Vision Strikers are dominating their region and undisputedly is the current king of Korean Valorant.

Here and there, Korean rivals like NUTURN and TNL Esports were able to steal a map but in the end, they never managed to bring home the whole match and dethrone Vision Strikers.

In summary, Vision Strikers are a luminary regarding utility usage and never seen setups and mini-plays in Valorant. This team comes up with new ideas in almost every game and regularly demonstrates to us new possibilities and different points of view on the game.

The core of Vision Strikers already existed for years before the release of Valorant, playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on the highest national level. Therefore, the roster already had great chemistry and lengthy trained teamplay from the beginning.

Highlights and Key Takeaways

Standout Players: SEN TenZ and FaZe Babybay

Before we get into our match analysis, the two standout players we want to highlight are SEN TenZ and FaZe Babybay, who dominated the entire tournament and unsurprisingly met in the Grand Finals.

If you want to try to replicate their play, we’ve included the settings each player used for the tournament so you can try them out at home.

The first, ex-Cloud9 star TenZ, was only recently acquired by Sentinels on March 11th as a short-term replacement for original starter Sinatraa, who was suspended from VCT Masters due to an internal investigation by Riot Games.

Before getting picked up, TenZ had been a full-time streamer after stepping down from C9’s VALORANT roster on January 12th – at the time, this was shocking news as he was one of the top players of 2020.

Despite only having a short amount of time to practice with SEN, TenZ was not only able to keep up with the rest of his team, but he achieved the highest overall rating, K/D, and average Combat Score of all players over the course of the tournament.

TenZ was consistently performing at a level only one other player, FaZe’s Babybay, could match.

Babybay, the mechanically gifted duelist playing for FaZe Clan, dominated his opponents from day one of VCT Masters.

Beginning with FaZe’s first upper bracket match against XSET and all the way up until the Grand Final against Sentinels, this man put on a show every single match.

FaZe Clan itself is a team notorious for incredible aiming and absolutely no fear, and he proudly acted as FaZe’s spearhead in this tournament.

Match Analysis

To quickly summarize their paths to the Grand Final, Sentinels made it undefeated all the way through the upper bracket and even kicked FaZe Clan into the lower bracket in a prior clash.

Although Sentinels came from the upper bracket into this match, they didn’t have a head start in the form of a map win granted by Riot. Both teams came in with equal chances.

Nonetheless, Sentinels managed to win in relatively quick succession after only three out of five possible maps were played out.

To give you a quick overview of the general performance of each player in the matchup, here is the scoreboard including all three maps.

To go into further detail on a few things you can take away for your own game, we chose to highlight three rounds of the first map of this best-of-five matchup, Ascent.

We recommend following along with the VOD link and timestamps we’ve provided to get the most from our analysis.
Let’s dive in!

Highlight #1: Sentinels 1 – 4 FaZe Clan

In this round, both teams had a full buy and could afford all abilities they needed. You can even see an Operator in the hands of Babybay on FaZe Clan’s side.

Let’s see how the events of the 6th round of the map played out in chronological order.

[1:39] Sentinels decide to tackle early Mid control.

• ShahZaM uses his Owl Drone to clear Lower Mid, Pizza, and Market and pushes Babybay back to Defender spawn with it.

[1:29] TenZ gets killed by Babybay’s Blade Storm by using his updraft at Defender Spawn to get a peek into Mid.

• Babybay effectively traded the lost Mid control for an entry onto TenZ, a trade in favor of FaZe Clan to be fair.

[1:05] With a one man disadvantage Sentinels decide to try an A Split with two players coming from A Main and two from A Short.

• However, a really well-placed double setup in Wine basically decides the round since no one ever expects two players in this position.

[1:00] Marved gets both Sentinels players who came A Main and didn’t even need the help from Corey who also hid in Wine with him.

• Meanwhile, Sentinels two Short players, Dapr and Zombs, make their way to A site as well but get pinched from all sites with no chance to turn the round.

Key Takeaways:

In hindsight, the round was decided by the two-man setup in Wine and Marved’s insane 3K that arose from it.

Nevertheless, you have to give credit to Babybay who opened up the round by trading map control for a first kill onto TenZ, the star player of Sentinels.

Babybay’s impact with this one kill is exactly what you should take away from this round for your own play in the future.

If the enemy team indicates to target the map area you are responsible for as a defender, don’t just back up without any resistance. You have to take something away from them to compensate for the loss of map control.

Whether it is getting a kill, drawing a lot of abilities from the enemy, or gaining control somewhere else one the map, you have to balance out the situation in some way.

By the way, the entry kill coming from Babybay wasn’t a one hit wonder either.

Babybay had the most first kills of the whole tournament. Overall, 43 first kills were on his record at the end of NA Masters.

However, Babybay had to share the number one place in this statistic with his victim in our clip, TenZ. He also gathered 43 first kills over the course of the tournament.

Highlight #2: Sentinels 7 – 10 FaZe Clan

At this point, the sides have switched with Sentinels defending and FaZe Clan attacking.

Sentinels struggle with their economy and can only afford two Phantoms on SicK and TenZ, the two Duelists in the lineup.

Besides these two rifles, Bucky, Spectre, and Bulldog were also purchased for the remaining players, so not an ideal buy for Sentinels.

On the other side, FaZe Clan has the means to buy five rifles and full armor. So, on first sight, FaZe has the clear edge over Sentinels already starting into the round.

But it remains to be seen if this economical advantage is going to help FaZe Clan win the round easily.

[1:39] This is a rare sight: FaZe Clan starts off the round with patiently waiting for aggression on the part of Sentinels.

• This is probably because FaZe knows that Sentinels must have a low buy and may try to go for early aggression to get the upper hand in the round.

[1:00] 40 seconds into the round, FaZe decides to fake B with Killjoy’s Lockdown just to rush A Short shortly after.

• What they don’t know is that TenZ is Lower Mid and can call all steps FaZe is making. Therefore, Sentinels quickly realizes it is indeed only a fake on B.

[0:45] Due to this information, FaZe runs into three consecutive Sentinels players and gets decimated.

• First off, TenZ is not able to get a frag but confirms FaZe’s plan to go A Short further.
• Second contact is on SicK who manages to kill Babybay but is traded immediately.
• However, the third Sentinels player, Zombs, is able to get both remaining frags on A Short, Marved and Rawkus.

[0:34] The 3v2 situation Zombs is able to secure is quickly turned into a 2v2 by Corey who is the A anchor for FaZe in this round.

• It is now that Corey realizes he’s in a 1v2 because his teammate, ZachaREEE, is timed out.
• Corey can pick up the dropped Spike at A Short and plants it on A.

[0:20] Corey tries to clutch the round by getting into Garden after the plant but is caught off guard by Dapr.

• He clearly underestimated how close Dapr would already be and he probably was also perplexed about what happened to ZachaREEE.

Key Takeaways:

Besides the obvious chaos that was caused by ZachaREEE’s sudden timeout in the middle of the round, you can spot an important thing regarding fakes in this round.

Sentinels had an early read about what FaZe Clan was trying to do because TenZ had a close position in which he was able to hear the rotation of FaZe very clearly.

TenZ was able to call the rotations to short and quickly expose FaZe’s fake on B. Although he didn’t get any kills onto the rotating players, his calls alone won Sentinels the round.

He gave SicK and Zombs time to find positions to effectively hold the push from FaZe and the close quarters of A Short enabled Zombs in particular to get two kills with the Spectre.

An important lesson you can draw from this round besides ensuring a stable internet connection before playing an important match, is to remind yourself to clear out possible positions that could reveal your movement to the enemy.

If FaZe Clan had checked Lower Mid and killed TenZ before running such a risky B fake, Sentinels would’ve had no information to work with and probably rotated at least one more player towards B site.

Highlight #3: Sentinels 12 – 11 FaZe Clan

Now comes the map deciding round. This is what it all comes down to.

Both teams have a solid buy but FaZe’s is a bit on the lower end of the spectrum with two Spectres on Marved and Rawkus. Each team has enough abilities and full armor to play out this all deciding round properly.

This is how the two arguably best North American teams fight each other in the last round of the first map.

[1:39] FaZe Clan decides to run a default in which they take early Mid Control and control of A Main.

• Mid control is basically given to them for free by Sentinels, A Main however is defended by Zombs.
• Corey successfully uses his Paint Shells to push Zombs back.

[1:22] ZachaREEE uses his Ultimate, Lockdown, in A Main to help his teammates get control of A Short and the Garden area.

• But no FaZe player really takes the control, it’s just indicated by Marved with a Dark Cover and Paranoia used for Garden.

[0:56] Instead, FaZe decides to clear Market with Rawkus’s Owl Drone and then it starts to get chaotic and undetermined on the part of FaZe.

• They are fighting both Defender Spawn and B Stairs before they withdraw again

[0:28] While his teammates run around Mid aimlessly, Marved flanks A Heaven and probably calls his teammates to go back to A site due to his advanced position.

• Unfortunately for FaZe, he loses the fight against Dapr who still is in A Heaven.
• Also, Corey dies to TenZ in Market because he doesn’t manage to get back in time.

[0:22] After Dapr falls to ZachaREEE on A site it comes down to 4v3 afterplant situation in favor of Sentinels.

• SicK expects Babybay’s flank and Sentinels play out the numbers advantage smartly while retaking and manage to close it out

Key Takeaways:

The indecisiveness of FaZe’s midround calls was what cost them the round and thus the map.

Approaching the round with the intention to take A Short control using Killjoy’s Lockdown was a great starting point to win the round but FaZe never really cleared out A Short with the Ult and decided to go B Market instead.

From this point on, it was confusing and not apparent what plan FaZe was pursuing and they probably didn’t know what to do themselves.

Sometimes it’s better to go through with a plan despite potential better possibilities just because everyone knows what to do in this preplanned scenario.

If you choose to change an aspect of your strat every player has to automatically adjust to that change. And that’s not as easy as it may seem when you’re in-game and you feel the pressure at this moment.

So, try to stick with your plan as far as possible and only do minor changes to it if there is no way around it. Overwise, it is hard to process for your teammates that are unaware of your thoughts and intentions.

Closing Thoughts

We hope you learned a few useful tips and tricks from our deep dive!

The future of VALORANT esports is incredibly bright and only continues to grow, especially with the first international clash in Reykjavík on its way.

One last piece of advice we want to leave you with for future events is to observe the starting positions of each team and predict what they’re going to do.

This allows you to test your current knowledge while learning new things with each match you watch.

Good luck, have fun, and see you next time.

This article is brought to you in collaboration with Secretlab, the Official Founding Partner of VALORANT Champions Tour.

The post VALORANT NA Stage 1 Masters: Meta Analysis and Expert Insights appeared first on Mobalytics.

Trying to summarize a whole scene and therefore countless individual teams doesn’t necessarily sound like a great idea when you hear of it the first time.

Nonetheless, we as an esport community tend to always compare players, teams and in the end also different regions of the world to each other regarding their playstyles and capabilities in the games we are passionate about.

Since everybody is talking about it but no one really captures the essence of it, Mobalytics made the effort to sum up the main current Meta differences of Valorant’s different regions.

Today’s article focuses on the South Korean (hereinafter only referred to as ‘Korean’) Meta in particular.

To explore and furtherly explain all important aspects of the current Korean Meta we are first looking at bare statistics of the region like agent pick rates & win rates, map pick rates and such.

Afterward, we are ready to look at a few gameplay examples to identify the key traits of the current Korean Meta in pro play and what you can take away from it in particular.

To round off our take on the Korean Meta we are also comparing it to some of the main characteristics of the North American (NA) and European (EU) Valorant Meta practiced at the current stage of the game which is Patch 2.03.

However, as long as there are no competitive matchups between teams of different regions, all we can do is speculate. The first true test for the different regional approaches to Valorant will be at the international Valorant Champions tournament at the end of 2021.

But as a preparation for this mentioned clash of the regions, let’s get into the analysis of the Korean Meta first.

Disclaimer: We are solely moving the gameplay-related characteristics of the Korean pro scene into the spotlight of this article. South Korea’s FPS history, community, or other inherent trademarks of the region are just as interesting but simply not in today’s focus.

Pro Korean Valorant Stats

For this section we are taking a look at the bare statistics of the most recently completed tournament in the Korean scene: VCT 2021: Korea – Challengers 2.
Amongst other things, we’ll include the most relevant stats regarding agent picks, map picks and weapon usage of the tournament.

Agent Picks

Pro Scene

Source

Here you can clearly identify the typical agent lineup for most Korean teams: Breach, Omen, Sova, Jett, and one varying pick.

For some maps and teams this varying pick might be an additional duelist like Raze but most of the time we saw a Sentinel like Cypher or Killjoy complementing the lineup.

But the favorites under the currently selectable agents are clear for most Korean pro teams:

• Omen – 97.9% pick rate and 50% win rate
• Jett – 93.8% pick rate and 48.9% win rate
• Sova – 87.5% pick rate and 50% win rate
• Breach – 75% pick rate and 47.2% win rate

Seeing a Breach so far up on that ranking kind of already tells you a lot about the general playstyle and ability to change pace in the Korean Meta.

Both in North American and European agent rankings it’s probable to see a lot more Sentinel picks like Cypher, Killjoy, and even Sage to replace Breach’s potential slot in the lineup.

Also, Duelist alternatives to Jett and Raze like Reyna and Phoenix are noticeably more popular in other regions.

But let’s not spoil too much regarding comparisons between the regions, we will philosophize about that in a whole different section later on in the article.

Ladder

The agent picks in the Korean ladder look drastically different to the ones in pro play.

Very popular agent picks in pro play like Breach and Omen are rarely picked in normal Ranked matches in Korea with Breach only having an underwhelming 7% pick rate.

Most of the time you’ll find multiple Duelists in one game. Phoenix, Raze, and especially Jett and Reyna have very high pick rates compared to basically all agents associated with the Sentinels class (Cypher, Killjoy, and Sage).

For me personally, it was very interesting to see the extraordinary pick rate of Brimstone. In no other region is Brimstone that much more liked and preferred over Omen, his main rival in his field.

In general, it seems like in the Korean ladder there are a huge amount of solo players who aren’t too keen on helping out teammates with their abilities and rather want to play for themselves.

Having up to three Duelists in a team apparently is highly common and team-focused agents like Breach, Cypher, Killjoy and Skye find absolutely no niche in the current casual Meta at least.

However, it’s important to mention here that these statistics were drawn from the ranks of Platin 1 and everything above. So there is a certain degree of knowledge and skill regarding the game to assume at this level.

Map Picks

Pro Scene

Source

In the visual above you can spot a trend that unfortunately is common for pretty much all regions of pro Valorant: Icebox didn’t really find approval on the part of both the ladder and professional players.

This seemingly also goes for the Korean scene. Teams in this region generally put in a lot of work and thought in their setups on maps and how they are going to approach specific map control.

Finding and successfully establishing those setups and prepared executes on a new map in the map pool takes a lot of practice and time. I could imagine, many teams don’t want to risk playing on Icebox due to the feeling of not being fully prepared for it.

Besides that, a pretty much normal distribution of map picks took place at VCT 2021: Korea – Challengers 2.

Split played fewer times overall compared to Bind, Haven and Ascent but that’s also a fairly common thing we were able to observe in tournaments all over the world the last months.

Ladder

You can find a similar distribution in the played maps in the Ranked ladder in Korea over the last few weeks. These numbers in particular are drawn from the timeframe 02/17/2021 until today, so as up-to-date as you can get.

Icebox apparently is the most dodged map in the current map pool and therefore is the least played overall. So, as you can see the already mentioned trend to dislike Icebox is also clearly displayed in the ladder stats.

The other four maps, Ascent, Bind, Haven and Split seem to be equally popular in Korea’s ladder. Only Ascent stands out slightly as at least the most played map in the pool.

Weapon Usage

Pro Scene

Source

To be completely honest with you, this pie chart shocked me the first time I found it.

In all regions except Korea the Vandal has a 60/40 or even 70/30 majority over the Phantom in its overall purchases. But not in the Korean Meta.

Here the Phantom rules over the Vandal with an approximate 70/30 buy ratio.

Apparently, this proves that the term “ninja” truly originates in Asia. The Sneaky Beaky effect of the Phantom’s silencer evidently found a huge fanbase within the Korean scene.

Apart from that significant balance shift regarding the two main rifles of Valorant, there is nothing greatly unusual here.

However, there are some indicators in this chart that may suggest a slight tendency to skip force buys in Korean pro matches.

“Why?”, you rightfully ask. Because SMG’s like Spectre or Stinger are noticeably less dominant here compared to other regions and on the other hand pistols like Classic and Frenzy hold great numbers. In situations you can’t or don’t want to afford an SMG you are likely to stick to a pistol.

Whether this is the actual case or not we’ll evaluate in the following playstyle analysis of the current Korean Meta.

Ladder

The main peculiarity in the pro scene regarding weapon usage is the incredible ratio of 70/30 for Phantom/Vandal purchases.

But, this behavior doesn’t seem to also apply to the Korean Valorant ladder. Here, the Vandal has gotten the upper hand over the Phantom with a usage ratio of 55/45. Not a difference as distinct as in the regions of NA or EU but after all a turnaround compared to the Korean pro scene.

Other than that, the Ghost is noticeably more popular than the Classic in the ladder. That’s definitely something contrary to the conception of Korean pro teams regarding pistols.

Playstyle of The Current Korean Meta

Capturing the essence of the Korean playstyle is not an easy task. However, the whole purpose of this article is to make an educated and reasoned attempt to do exactly that to maybe give a better insight into this for most players foreign region of Valorant.

So, let’s begin.

Korean Valorant is very well thought out. Only a few things regarding rounds seem to be depending on quick decision-making coming from individuals ingame.

Most of the early round approaches are well-considered and look like the teams practiced them a thousand times on offline servers before implementing it into an actual match.

The overall pace of most Korean teams is very slow. Nearly every buy round starts with a default from both teams which is oftentimes spread over the whole length of the map.

Nonetheless, every team has various ways in store to take or retake map control on each part of the map. Again, very planned out and calculated and oftentimes in a really explosive fashion.

The very popular Korean agent combination of Jett and Breach, which we already saw in the agent pick rates of the region, mainly represents the ability for explosive plays of this kind.

Also, things I found to be very characteristic of the Korean playstyle are revolutionary, never-seen-before utility combos and mini-plays all over the map.

All this requires a huge amount of teamwork and coordination only a few teams in the world could potentially match as of today. Thinking of teams like Sentinels in North America or FPX in the European region.

To adequately visualize these main qualities of Korean Valorant, we are now looking at an gameplay example extracted out of a matchup between Vision Strikers and NUTURN in the VCT 2021: Korea – Challengers 1 Open Qualifier.

This is a round of the first map Bind which the arguable number one of Korean Valorant, Vision Strikers actually lost in the end.

We see all kind of “typical” Korean gameplay details in this round:

• Slow pace by both teams in the beginning of the round
• A nice utility combo at B Long by the defenders (Vision Strikers)
  • Killjoy turret holding the line of sight
    • Breach ready to flash on turret’s contact
  • No action until only 40 seconds are left on the clock
• But then an explosive confrontation at B Long with the infamous Breach flashes

Overall, two defaults collided at the 0:40 minutes mark in this round. The attacker team’s (NUTURN) slow and careful approach to the round was matched by a well-prepared defender team (Vision Strikers) that was only waiting for contact.

You will find many rounds in Korean pro matchups which will run like this or in a very similar way.

Also regularly, the devilish duo Breach + Jett will tackle early round map control with some form of combination of Jett’s dash and Breach’s flashes.

This playstyle is very inherent to many Korean teams.

Comparing the Korean Meta to NA/EU

We already briefly addressed the differences in agent, map and weapon preferences between the Korean Meta and the North American and European ones.

To do a short recap, the devilish duo Jett + Breach is something that is very prominent in Korea’s ladder and pro scene especially. Of course, other regions adopted the principle of “flashing and dashing” as well but use it not as excessively as Korean teams do.

Also, we mentioned a drastic difference in the total usage of Phantom and Vandal regarding Korea and the rest of the world.

Whether this is going to impact future encounters on international stages is hard to predict but probably something that is going to have a marginal impact compared to other differential views on how to play the game.

Conclusion

Maybe the following is a bit over-simplified but as a closing statement I would leave you with this:

Pace and utility usage of the Korean Meta resemble in some regard the approach many EU teams also try to follow. Very well planned-out and strategic.

Nonetheless, some of the plays to get early round map control or a few instant rushes seen in the Korean Meta could just as well be part of the repertoire NA teams typically have.

However, the first real test between the regions will occur at the end of this year at the VCT 2021 Champions tournament. Feel free to come back to this article then and rectify my wrong conceptions and suppositions.

Keep track of all the best players in Korea and other regions with our Valorant Leaderboard.

The post Valorant Pro Korean Meta Analysis appeared first on Mobalytics.

From 4th to 7th February the first VCT Challengers tournament was played out in the North American region.

The starting shot for the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) 2021 NA had many interesting and unexpected matchups to offer since a few of the so-thought favorites didn’t even make it out of the Open Qualifier a week prior.

Teams like T1, 100Thieves, TSM and Cloud9 Blue failed to survive the Open Qualifier but that didn’t diminish the quality of the games later on. Rather the opposite was the case.

In the end, these eight teams were able to close it out and earned the chance to participate in the Main Event of VCT Challengers #1 with a price pool of $50,000 USD:

Image via Liquidpedia

Today, we are taking a closer look at the matchup between the two teams that made it all the way to the Grand Final: Immortals and Sentinels.

Game Analysis

Immortals showed a more or less clean performance throughout all their Upper Bracket matchups and secured themselves a spot in the Final after beating XSET 2-1, Gen.G Esports 2-0 and Luminosity Gaming 2-1 in maps.

Sentinels on the other hand lost their very first Upper Bracket matchup against Luminosity Gaming and therefore were forced to rebuild confidence for a challenging upcoming route through Lower Bracket. Spoiler: They did it.

The Grand Final was designed to be a best of five, which means the first team to win three maps overall wins the Grand Final.

However, since Immortals came from the Upper Bracket into this matchup they received one map win in advance and theoretically only needed two additional map wins to close it out.

Source

In spite of this considerable head start for Immortals, Sentinels defeated their opponent in clinical fashion.

Three maps, three clear wins for Sentinels and thus the overall tournament victory of VCT Challengers #1 Main Event and the associated $20,000 USD prize money for Sentinels.

And here we are, having the exciting opportunity to go over three specific and especially interesting rounds out of the first map of the Grand Final: Split.

But let’s take a look at a few relevant statistics for this map regarding both teams before we are getting into the analysis part.

Before this matchup Immortals only played Split two times in the entire VCT Challengers #1 tournament.

They won their first game on it 13-8 against Team Envy and lost their second one 10-13 against Cloud9 Blue.

Sentinels on the other hand have a bit more experience on Split. Overall, played five times in Challengers #1 and four times a win. Only against Luminosity Gaming they had to swallow a 9-13 loss.

So, on paper Sentinels have the clear edge regarding experience on the map.

Agent compositions for both teams seem to be fairly non-discussable on Split in the past and therefore pretty easy to predict for this matchup.

Immortals Comp

Sentinels Comp

In the following section, we highlighted two different rounds to show why Sentinels’ approach to the map worked out basically across the board and how Immortals tried to cope after losing six consecutive rounds in the beginning of the game.

Additionally, we also took a closer look at the second Pistol Round due to the meta-describing use of the Frenzy by both teams.

While observing these aspects, we will also be pointing out useful tips and tricks that you can apply in your own matches.

Grand Final – Split

To make the rounds we want to further explore with you a bit more clear and vivid, we summarized the respective rounds to a few key points.

This allows us to focus on the most important decisions and duels in the round and to fade out everything less important for explanation’s sake.

Because oftentimes winning or losing rounds comes down to very few decisions and key duels within the round.

Simplifying the events of a round can help immensely in tracking down these deciding factors and also mistakes that happened.

So, let’s get right into our first highlighted round!

Highlight 1 – 5th Round (Score: Immortals 0 – 4 Sentinels)

At this point in the game Sentinels already started well into the game. They won the Pistol Round and three consecutive rounds after.

For the first time in this match both teams have the money for a full-buy. The Immortals bank even recovered enough from the passed round losses to be able to afford an Operator.

This is how the 5th round went in chronological order:

[8:23] Sentinels (attacker site) decide to run a default in which they take early B tunnels control in a fairly aggressive fashion

• Sinatraa plays a very aggressive role and instantly peeks B site
• He finds the entry frag onto Khemicals who misses his Operator shot

[8:32] Simultaneously, Sentinels work their way forward in Mid after registering that there is no Mid aggression on Immortals side

• They trade a one-for-one: Immortals’ ShoT-UP pops out of cover to kill Zombs but ShahZaM immediately refrags him

[8:52] Since Sentinels managed to get numbers advantage (4v3 at this point) they decide to make use of it and do a simple execute on A site

• This is possible because Sentinels’ Cypher Dapr did his job in this specific default: Showing presence on A and holding any potential aggression from Immortals

[8:58] Dapr manages to get the round-concluding kill onto NaturE in A Heaven because Immortals consequently decide to safe their weapons for the next round after

[9:32] Nonetheless, since Sentinels bank is close to the maximum of ¤ 9,000 credits they decide to hunt the remaining Immortals players

• The hunt isn’t successful – three Sentinels players get killed in the process

Key Takeaways + Tips and Tricks

Overall, the round was decided by the first frag coming from sinatraa onto Khemicals and the maintaining of the resulting numbers advantage over the whole round.

A successful default, efficient trading and a solid round-closing execute by Sentinels never really left a chance for Immortals to turn the situation around after the initial whiff from Khemicals’s Operator.

And that’s exactly what you can take away from this round for your own play in the future. If your team manages to get an early entry kill and doesn’t get traded, retreat for the time being and think about how you can capitalize from this numbers advantage.

Many teams want to compensate for a loss of manpower by pushing somewhere on the map and getting information about the enemy positions. Waiting for this kind of aggression after an entry kill might be a good plan.

A simple execute like Sentinels decided to do is oftentimes a solid way to benefit from your numbers advantage and win the round.

However, there are many other ways to round off a round like that. As long as you maintain the earned numbers advantage by trading kills in the consequent duels you should be fine.

Highlight 2 – 7th Round (Score: Immortals 0 – 6 Sentinels)

In the 7th round of the game Immortals seemingly found a way to counter Sentinels B Tunnels default and even won their first round in the end.

Again, it was a full-buy for both teams and Sentinels as well as Immortals bought one Operator each.

Let’s see how Immortals went about this round and what they did differently in comparison to previous rounds.

[13:23] Sentinels run their usual B Tunnels default seen in many rounds before

• This time Sinatraa doesn’t go for the B site peek right away
• Him and SicK are even holding for potential re-aggression

[13:38] Immortals try for the first time in this match to retake B tunnels control – and succeed

• Even though two Sentinels players are holding the push, Immortals is able to trade it out and win the 3v2 confrontation
• An additional resurrect (Ultimate ability) from Immortals Sage, Genghsta turns the situation into a 5v3 in favor of Immortals

[13:55] Sentinels A players in their default, Cypher Dapr and Jett ShahZaM are slowly contacting A to regain map control and balance out the situation

• The Immortals A player, NaturE, on the other side, plays it correctly and stays defensive to not give Sentinels a chance to turn the situation around

[14:10] Nonetheless, both Dapr and ShahZaM get a frag to make it a 3v3 retake since the Spike is getting planted on A site in the meantime

• The numbers are even again due to this two kills and Immortals has the considerably worse position by having to retake and defuse the Spike

[14:35] Immortals retake becomes possible because Dapr left his teammate Zombs alone on site who then gets sandwiched and killed

• The location of the Spike plant was suboptimal for defending it from ramp or heaven
• Therefore Immortals could just stick the defuse after killing the only enemy on site and thus win the round

Key Takeaways + Tips and Tricks

The entire round the balance was shifting between both teams.

After Immortals’ successful B Tunnels reaggression the round was in favor for them.

But the moment both Dapr and ShahZaM equalized the situation by killing a player each on A, the Spike plant was made possible and a 3v3 retake situation for Immortals resulted.

But then Dapr made one wrong decision by not considering the Spike plant position and he left the site and his teammate by himself.

This was the key factor that enabled Immortals’ remaining three players to kill the site player without a trade and just defuse the Spike without any risk.

An important learning you can draw from this round is to always keep the communication in the team alive. Most likely the Spike planter zombs didn’t realize he was able to plant more open for heaven and ramp because ShahZaM didn’t call him that he was holding heaven in the meantime.

And also Dapr’s round-defining decision to leave the site after the Spike plant probably came from bad comms in this particular situation.

So, always communicate the important details of what you are doing to your teammates ingame.

Independent of Ranked ladder or team-based matches this makes winning the rounds that matter a lot more consistent. Even if adrenaline and focus are high in those situations.

Highlight 3 – 13th Round (Score: Immortals 3 – 9 Sentinels)

In the last highlighted round we are looking at the second Pistol Round in this game. After half time the defender team now is Sentinels and the attacking team Immortals.

You don’t like to see it but it simply summarizes the current pistol meta in Valorant pretty perfectly: Nine Frenzys and only one Ghost was bought for this round.

Let’s look at how the best teams of NA work with this gun.

[23:46] Something that looked like an instant A rush attempt by Immortals was blocked by Sentinels’ utility early on

• Sentinels seemingly anticipated a certain amount of A presence by Immortals’ side and stacked A with three players
• The utility (Slow and Barrier Orb) of A Heaven player Sage, SicK mainly blocked the enemy rush, ShahZaM and Zombs set up a close range crossfire with the Frenzys

[24:10] Immortals decide to rotate to Mid in a very noisy fashion which gave Sentinels’ dapr also the chance to rotate to ropes in time for their cross to B Heaven

[24:22] Dapr manages to get a kill on an unaware Immortals player, Khemicals and also got away with his life

• He lures the rest of Immortals into ropes because they wanted to trade him

[24:29] A close range massacre takes place when all remaining Immortals players drop down ropes into to two Frenzys held by Dapr and Sinatraa

• The kill onto the lurking NaturE on A secures the round win for Sentinels

Key Takeaways + Tips and Tricks

Sometimes it’s better to let the enemies run into your well-prepared set up without any resistance from your side. By blocking the enemy team just because you can, you might take the fight somewhere else where you aren’t that well-prepared for a hit.

Sentinels did that. They blocked the initial A rush although their setup on A was really solid to begin with.

But in the end it worked out for them because Immortals were unlucky by dropping down into a close-range fight in which not even one but two Frenzys were just waiting for their prey.

Outro

Let’s take a look on the overall scoreboard of VCT Challengers #1 Grand Final.

Our personal MVP (most valuable player) of this matchup is Sinatraa from Sentinels.

Not only is he the top fragger of the Grand Final, but he also holds an unbelievable ratio when it comes to entry kills and entry deaths.

In three maps he opened thirteen rounds with his first frags for Sentinels and only died trying six times.

For a pure entry player which Sinatraa for sure is, this is an incredible statistic. Also, no other player on the server came close to his performance.

The agent comps we saw this game were also very congruent with the previously known comps on each map from the respective teams. No real surprises here.

But if you want to let yourself be influenced by our take on agent comps on each map, be sure to check out our Valorant Agent Tier List.

It’s always up-to-date and highly discussed by our high-ranked staff.

To learn more from the pros, check out our Valorant Leaderboard and Profiles.

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