Valorant: Breaking down fish123’s Split dominance
fish123 are the best team in Europe, and fish123’s best map is Split, by a meaningful margin.
Of course, a team with the record they have don’t really have a map that could be meaningfully described as ‘bad’ anyway, but Split has been the one where they’ve rarely been played close, and the one they’ve never actually dropped to any team; their one failure to win a tournament was a 13–5 Bo1 loss to Prodigy on Bind at Fnatic Proving Grounds (and they dropped it in the quarter-finals of Solary Cup to BlackBelts, by far the lowest-ranked team that they’ve ever dropped a map to), and they also lost to Prodigy on Haven in back-to-back Bo3s at Solary Cup and Take The Throne #3.
Well, it WAS the one they’d never dropped. More on that later. But, in any case, Fish have quite clearly been the kings of Split over the beta period. So, let’s do a deep dive into how they play the map out, and what they perhaps do differently in areas compared to other teams.
Agents
- ec1s: Breach
- ardiis: Brimstone
- L1NK: Sage
- Kryptix: Cypher
- soulcas: Raze
On the whole, fairly standard, but it’s worth drawing attention to the Brimstone pick by ardiis on Split. Fish are one of the few teams that have shown a willingness to drop Brimstone where appropriate—ardiis runs Jett over it on Haven, and they have gone with Sova over it on Bind before (albeit more typically dropping Breach, though will note that ardiis played Sova Bind a bunch during the G2 Brawl II show-tournament on Tuesday and Wednesday).
Still, they retain it here. Why? My suspicion is that it’s mostly to do with attacking A site. Fish aren’t the most smoke-heavy team in general, and one of their big features has been ardiis’ ability to take a pick off an aggressive position and open up a naked rush, but it’s nearly impossible to safely execute on Split A as O even after a pick without two simultaneous smokes on window and screens/elbow. The fact that Split in theory offers some of the most inescapable targets for Brimstone ult surely doesn’t hurt either.
(note: Liquipedia currently says that ardiis used Jett on Split against VALORANDO; that’s presumably a typo. There was indeed a sniping Jett in that game, but it was played — in fairness quite successfully — by luckeRRR; ardiis has, as far as I can tell, not used it outside of Haven yet.)
Defence
Initial notes
Split was famous, at least pre-0.50, for being the map that was generally agreed on to have the biggest bias towards one side of the starting three — namely, towards the defending side. This was taken seriously enough that the map received a number of changes on 0.50, with pre-round barriers being pushed more in favour of the attacking team (the big one being that top mid was cut into two) and a couple of other small changes being conducted (notably, the box in the middle of B site being changed so that it could no longer be easily sprayed through from window).
I still tend to think that it’s D-sided in spite of the changes; they’re nice, but don’t seem to have altered the dynamic too much in high-level play. In any case, Fish have kept doing very, very well on the defensive side here. The main things that stood out to me:
a) They’re very much an one-Operator team, it’s always playing A-site angles, and as usual with ardiis, it’s pressed all the way up — this is how they try to take the initiative as D.
b) As of 0.50, they run very, very light on mid, especially ropes side, and almost never peek anything. This hasn’t been that uncommon across the board post-0.50 in particular — teams can’t rush as hard, and in particular, the nature of A ropes in terms of movement time and sound cues make it very hard to ever get anything from going that way unless you’ve basically already secured the site — but they are notably underweight on it.
c) They feel far less concerned with keeping height advantages and keeping site control compared to most teams on this map, which does make me wonder if there’s something of a trap effect to focusing too much on advantages from verticality here.
Defaults
Cypher (Kryptix)
Same general area as almost all good Cypher players occupy right now on this map — plays B, uses camera and traps (from what I could tell, he often uses cage twice in the opening, though tends to save trapwire for mid/window), remit stretches up towards window and mid. Mostly just does the reasonably convention high camera at back (I can’t remember ever seeing him push through on 0.50 at least) but did have a particularly interesting setup vs. VALORANDO:
Would say that he tends to want to play on the site itself more than some Cyphers. Probably best to assume that he’s squatting at double boxes near the tunnel any time that he’s making an eco-level buy (I’ve seen him use Classic, Shotty, and Frenzy here), and unless you’re doing a full rush, assume he’s somewhere on ground level on the site; he rarely stays on window or ledge for very long.
Raze (soulcas)
Again, a fairly typical position for Raze on Split: usually B-side of mid, tending to play back at window. I have seen them switch it up by bringing ec1s into that area and letting soulcas push up slightly or even start A-side, but it’s reasonably uncommon and not typically effective; soulcas is good, but not a Yacine-level pure fragger, and you would need to be that sort of player to justify giving up on the chance to send all of Raze’s utility into that cramped area against a rush. Doesn’t tend to rotate off too quickly.
Breach (ec1s)
ec1s is the wildcard, as you’d probably expect given he’s the IGL — has by far the most fluid role here, at times drifting very deep (all the way back near and around the D-spawn route), though I would tend to say that his most common position actually ends up being pushed right up on B-side mid — gives Fish enough time to organise for a good retake against all but the most effective rushes while still sealing off A ropes.
One big trick to note here, that they pulled off (involving moving ardiis out of his normal A position) vs. Absolute Legends in Epulze:
If you’ll remember from the power rankings article: there is something of a split between teams who have their IGL or closest thing to it on Breach (ec1s, HyP, ROYALS DPS, VALORANDO Braexco), and those who give it to an Operator user (mixwell, FABRIKEN ShadoW, 2G4L replan, DPS is at least ROYALS’ secondary Op) or at least a mostly pure fragger (NiP Zyppan). On the one hand, the nature of Breach’s E is a good argument for keeping your Breach player as positionally flexible as possible.
On the other, a flash — by far the best flash in the game — is such a massive asset for a pure fragger. Hence, we get this — Fish’s way of getting ardiis a look in a place that he usually doesn’t. Do note, however, how empty it left A for a while; if they hadn’t gotten that prediction of a mid rush right, it could have been punished badly. Do note also that they felt the need to bring said flash before being confident about peeking mid at all.
Brimstone (ardiis)
ardiis plays a very typically ardiis game here — goes A, Operator whenever he possibly can, is aggressive, insanely consistent with the kills, etc.
The key note here: from what I saw, he’s rarely found in the two obvious LoS-maximising spots on A, in the form of screens/elbow and rafters, which honestly should probably be a lesson to everyone else anyway with regards to the obvious comfort spots being a lot easier to pick on in Valorant just because of how Valorant smokes work.
Key thing to understand in my view is this: if teams can’t out-duel him (and good luck with that), they need to establish presence on site almost immediately. A lot of teams will happily allow attackers onto A Main, even A Ramp, because they feel more comfortable dealing with them from there; ardiis will absolutely not give up A Main early on almost any round, so you need to circumvent that in one way or another.
Sage (L1NK)
Not too much to say here — plays A site, tends to play conservative positions (a lot of heaven/rafters, rarely on site itself, the odd push now and again), listens for info and waits it out. Doesn’t tend to spend much ability-wise on stopping rushes, more focused on the retake.
Offence
Initial notes
The one thing that stood out for me — and this surprised me a little — was just how patient Fish is on offence on this map, perhaps to a fault. They have one very, very aggressive execute onto A-site (which they run well), but when not running that, they’re very slow, just patiently chipping away and taking ground from the enemy before trying for their (admittedly well-timed and well-paced) entries.
To a large extent, I think that’s the nature of Split; as much as they’ll keep tinkering, it feels like it’s fundamentally just not an easy map to execute offensively onto compared to Bind or especially Haven, and the team that can defend it better.
Defaults
Defaults can’t really be diagrammed in the same way as on D, but this is a fairly typical one to start with (round 5, TTT #3)
Raze (soulcas) will almost always play B, Cypher (Kryptix) will almost always play A; I don’t have exact stats on it, but outside of situations where Fish have a specifically planned play, I’d say it’s true at least 80% of the time. Sage (L1NK) and Breach (ec1s) will typically play towards mid, although not exclusively so (if someone is going to back up one of the wide players — particularly soulcas on B — it’ll often be ec1s). ardiis is a wildcard; most commonly, he either ends up peeking the same angle (A main->A ramps) that he plays on defence, or goes bottom mid to B.
soulcas/Kryptix generally don’t play too far up; soulcas will only start moving into the tunnel itself after a good 10–15 seconds a surprising amount of the time (even if it looks like he has full control of it), and Kryptix relies on camera at least until he has backup. If there’s an early pick, it’s generally either an overextension on the enemy’s part, or occasionally an aggressive push mid by L1NK (which isn’t exactly ideal in theory for a Sage, but he’s had a proven aptitude for those sorts of plays in general).
Fast executes
I cannot remember seeing a single Fish fast execute on B or mid; not to say that it 100% hasn’t been done, but I legitimately can’t think of one. If they’re making a quick play, it’s almost certainly on A, and it looks like this (round 10, TTT #3)
Three things to notice in that screenshot:
- This isn’t quite an instant no-stop round-start rush, but I’ve basically never seen them take more than a few seconds and a cursory glance towards ramp before starting it.
- No B player, no mid player, no sewer player; get five on site and worry about the rest after.
- The smokes. Those are the two spots they almost always hit them with, with occasionally a third spent near the actual entrance into A-site itself to let them get onto site with minimal visibility given up (i.e. they run through the smoke — a lot of players play on or under rafters, so this ends up cutting a lot of them off). They’re not concerned about getting physical window control here, they’ll take their chances.
Once they have control, it looks something like this:
Sage wall will typically be used on one of the two corridors (either screens or lobby), and they’ll challenge the enemy to retake from there, flinging utility to slow them enough to guarantee a win (which they got on this round).
Slow executes/formations
Possibility space here is clearly enormous, but depending on what site they’re going for, there’s broadly two sorts of positions that they want to get themselves in apropos of picks. For B-site, it’s typically resembling this (Solary Cup round 11):
ec1s/L1NK push mid, soulcas and Kryptix are on essentially the weak side, ardiis helps cover their push mid initially but has a freer role to go towards long afterwards. If nothing presents itself, generally it’s ec1s who’s forced to try to make the entry play.
For A, an example from Epulze (VALORANDO, round 5):
Again: ec1s and L1NK have very, very slowly pushed mid, but this time, rather than making the entry themselves, the intent is to wall off a push-through from B->mid->A — that’s the key point here, because they are in isolation taking a losing fight trying to go through ropes, so they’re moreso just ensuring that they’re well-positioned to capitalise on the other three (two in this case because they lost Cypher early) to take control of A Main and then of the site.
Hence, the character of the push is a little different— ec1s/L1NK are more in the supporting role here, and it’s up to the other three to make the breakthrough. Breach does, happily, at least have some utility that will help support that push from that position thanks to his E.
Results
So, how have they been doing? Recent results have been, to say the least, interesting:
You are (presumably) reading that right: they did, in fact, finally lose on Split recently, going down 13–9 to StartedFromCS (Ex6tenZ, beyAz, Maniac, AKUMA, Happy) in Take The Throne #4 (before going on to win the next two to take the series), as well as underperforming in a couple of other cases (the Fordon game really shouldn’t have been close at any point, and while VALORANDO are a top-10 team in both rankings, they’ve generally been very, VERY poor against top opponents).
We should say that these scorelines are being exaggerated somewhat by the fact that, unless I’ve missed something, they have started on O in every single game (that I have tape on) since the Mandatory Cup semi-finals. Watching the Epulze games in particular, you do get the feeling that Fish are a little unsteady with playing out O with the far less frantic nature of mid. Ironically, they may have suffered on O from a set of measures intended to make teams in general better on O. Competitive play on beta games: truly a wonderful thing.
In any case, interesting, worth keeping an eye on, etc.
