Valorant: Epulze Valorant Prodigies, Groups C and D

This weekend saw the first big batch of high-level, full-team, competitive games in the European Valorant scene, in the form of Epulze Valorant Prodigies Group C and D.

This isn’t a recap of the full event or anything; the following links will get you there on that:

• https://twitter.com/joejedwards/status/1271442688274042881 was a Twitter thread I wrote on Friday as a whistle-stop preview of the groups in question.
• https://liquipedia.net/valorant/Epulze_Valorant_Prodigies has all the results.
• https://www.thespike.gg/ are the official media partner of the event, also have the results, and should have a recap article up within a couple of days.

This is where we are as it stands:

To be clear: yes, Group D isn’t actually concluded yet; scheduling difficulties on 2G4L’s side have forced map 3 here back all the way to Wednesday. Unfortunate, but it is what it is, let’s just get on with it, right?

With that being addressed, let’s look at a few points of interest from the event itself.

Meta notes

Won’t go into a full discussion here, particularly because this’ll overlap with a lot of other sections, but quick notes:

• Sage once again had her 100% record ruined, this time in the first game of the tournament — NiP played without her on Ascent (Sova/Cypher/Brimstone/Raze/Jett). I don’t know what the hell the idea there was, but it didn’t work, and she’s still effectively 100%.
• Cypher was actually a 100% pick, which was a little surprising. I had a discussion on the Plant the Spike podcast about this with Izak of Fordon Boars (who have, throughout closed beta, been using Phoenix in the same roles as Cypher usually takes): he mentioned that he thought Cypher just wasn’t that good, and shouldn’t be 100% on this patch, but that teams might take a while to adapt since so many competitive players went all-in on him for so many weeks during beta, and hence are going to be slow to adapt. Which, yeah. Smart guy on both counts, I think. Reckon we will see Cypher dominance start fading — Cypher mains as a group here did not have a good weekend even by their standards — but it might take time.
• On the lower picks, couple surprises; Breach a little more popular than anticipated (especially on Split), Sova a little less (even allowing for non-Split maps). ScreaM (7 maps, Prodigy) and hype (4 maps, ROYALS) were the main ones picking Reyna.

NiP tragic: unpacking the biggest surprise of groups

Quite a few teams will be disappointed with how this tournament has gone, but I think none will be — or at least, should be — more disappointed than NiP. They were far from the only big team to go out — HyPHyPHyP, #3 on my closed beta ranking, fell in Group A, and ROYALS, #5, went 0–3 in Group D — but this still feels like the loss that’s going to sting the most. Why? I mentioned this briefly back in the closed beta power rankings:

However, the thing that’s going to be dogging them over at least the next couple of months is going to be that classic question: given the nature of the roster being constructed here, is this a team who peaked on day 1 of the beta? Fingers crossed that we see them against better competition soon (they will at least be playing in Epulze next week, albeit against one of the weaker groups).

To elaborate a bit more, the issue with NiP has been that they weren’t seen all that much towards the end of closed beta. They missed Solary Cup, they they didn’t go to the Valhalla Invitationals where the second tier of teams was really being hammered out, they didn’t play in any of the Fnatic or Team Liquid competitions, and so on.

The one event they did play was the Elite Esports Rivalry Bowl, and while that field’s beginning to look a little better in retrospect (FABRIKEN, Demise, ex-Obsidian), it was still clearly a tier-3 field overall. They did OK at Twitch Rivals, but not great — won a weak group, got taken to 24 rounds by a German streamer mix (plus luckeRRR), and then rolled in the semi-finals by the ardiis-less iteration of fish123.

Anyway, to Epulze. This all meant that they came in this tournament with a lot to prove, and…they did not prove it. Two 0–2s, and to rub salt in the wound, they didn’t even get to play their final series against ForZe, with the CIS stack (also at 0–2 at that point) apparently choosing not to play the finale.

We should note here: technically, this was not their full roster. Zyppan, who had been playing with the team for the majority of closed beta, announced his departure on June 4th (just before Twitch Rivals), and the fifth spot hasn’t been filled as of yet, formally or informally. At Rivals (and at Absolute Masters tonight), they used melonhead, a Swedish entry primary who’s been on a couple of different mixes; for this tournament, however, they used luckeRRR, the star Operator user who just left VALORANDO (they will be using him again for TTT #6).

I don’t think this lets them, as a team, off the hook. I do think that it perhaps lets rhyme off the hook. Statistically-speaking, rhyme was absolutely abysmal here — of the 40 players here this weekend, he was 39th in K/D, 39th in KPR, 39th in kills. Only SmartSeven — ForZe’s Sage player — did worse in terms of pure fragging.

Now, I have been critical of rhyme before; he’s probably been one of the weaker primary Operator users on the big teams, and has shown severe inconsistency (see my Mandatory Cup piece). However, it should be emphasised: he didn’t really have a chance to make an impact here. He essentially never got to Op (luckeRRR was the primary, and NiP didn’t run double-Op setup, not even on Ascent), he was taking difficult positions both in general terms and in terms of how they worked with his agent pool (it is not coincidence that his two games under 10 frags were both on Breach), and he was honestly just left to starve here for the most part by NiP.

That, in turn, leads to the greater concern about NiP: there was a certain incoherency to their play from top to bottom, even down to weird things like Tenner (who has been a Sage main throughout closed beta, albeit not a great one) splitting time between Sage and Sova. It feels like they’ve not only not progressed, but have perhaps actively gotten weaker in their team play over the last month or two.

They can still pull off impressive things on offence in particular thanks to Yacine (who, while not as explosive as usual, was still 2nd in first bloods per round this weekend, barely trailing rEplan and barely ahead of Zyppan). However, they just don’t look great as a team, particularly on D, where they went 12–32 across the four games (29–20 on O).

That is a major problem in particular for a team where the team captain is a Cypher main (and the other confirmed player, Tenner, has mostly been on Sage) — the defensive performances have been below any team’s Mendoza line anyway (alright, maybe not the best expression in a game and scene where Travis L1NK Mendoza is one of the best players but still), but it’s particularly galling to see for a team that actually should be well-organised in that department.

In any case: this rather breaks a bit of a spell of sorts with NiP, where they had to be considered top-5 in Europe in spite of a rather weak record, and they’ve got a lot to prove now. The good news is that they’re going to get a couple of chances to start proving it this week — they’ll be playing at Take The Throne #6 against HyPHyPHyP and (potentially) nu-fish123, and while they’re now out of Epulze, they’re still an invite at Rise of Titans (which, for now at least, still has a mostly-elite field of invites).

Raze Week

Here’s a ridiculous table for you: every agent this week sorted by their cumulative K/D and KPR:

Now, granted: we would tend to always expect Raze in general to be high on the kill charts for…well, pick any reason you like, really: she’s played mostly by entry players; her kit is basically all-damage with limited utility outside of that; there was a reason that her existence combined with the dev statement that “we don’t think abilities should generally kill in Valorant” became a low-level meme for a little while.

However, the numbers haven’t quite swung that way in most tournaments. For a quick comparison, in groups A and B (on 0.50), she was at a 0.96 K/D — 7th out of 10 agents. Granted, this was largely because of some outlier games, and she gets to a more respectable 1.00 (3rd, behind Jett and Sage) once those are removed. Still: these figures are clearly surprising.

So, what happened here? Has Raze suddenly become the best agent in the game, just as everyone started to write her off? Well…yes and no.

There were a few things at play here basically:

1) Split. Nine games on Split, and as discussed in the meta article last week and other articles ad nauseam, you still probably don’t want to play Split without Raze even with the mid changes; her utility is just too lethal around pretty much every nook and every cranny of B site, right down to boom bot being able to check what I am now dubbing the Kryptix Corner just left of B Main.

She was picked by 12 out of 18 teams on Split, and posted an aggregate 1.20 K/D and 0.88 KPR there — actually lower than the total, but we’ll get to that.

2) Zyppan. I watched these games, and I’m still not quite clear what in the hell happened here. For those who aren’t as obsessive about these things as me: Zyppan, as mentioned in the NiP section, was part of NiP for most of beta. He put up average numbers there, mostly playing Breach and Sova. He left NiP just after closed beta wrapped up, and was quickly picked up by FABRIKEN to replace the outgoing N1KOLA. The results?

Two thirty-bombs against, of all teams, Prodigy, and even after a relatively poor set against 2G4L (which, I will note, isn’t actually concluded yet — he needs just six kills to overtake ScreaM for most kills and he’s already there in first bloods), he’s at or near the top of the pack in every statistical department possible.

Clearly, an incredible performance, and more than anything it else, it seems to illustrate that he has a very good level of in-game IQ that he hasn’t had a chance to really showcase before — remember that in NiP, he had to be a bit more static to make the system with Yacine work (and was forced onto Breach/Sova despite not being an Operator user). By contrast, at least so far, he seems to be given a very free reign to lurk and pick his spots in FABRIKEN , and it’s working — the Ascent game vs. ROYALS where he drops 29 is a great example of how effective he can be given that flexibility.

We’ll see how sustainable it is as teams get used to how he plays in that role — he did struggle against 2G4L, and given how many times 2G4L and NiP were in the same tournaments (even if they only met once at Mandatory Cup), there might be something more than simple fatigue or tilt to his drop-off against them (it did feel like they had a better read on his aggression/positioning than Prodigy or ROYALS). Still, though: otherworldly numbers, and a dream debut (even if it might not feel it if they lose the decider on Wednesday).

In any case, though: obviously, this ends up adding a huge swing on its own to the numbers. Subtract Zyppan’s contributions, and the K/D goes from 1.26 to 1.18 (and KPR from 0.93 to 0.87) just like that.

3) The field. We’ve mentioned Zyppan, and we’ve mentioned Yacine. The other three players regularly going for Raze in this tournament where Shao, rEplan, and hype. Both Shao and rEplan have been the standout fraggers on their respective teams (Party Parrots and 2G4L), in rEplan’s case to an aggressive degree; this hence feels like something of a case of a happy confluence where a bunch of the best fraggers in these groups all ended up on the same pick.

Of course, there is going to be a question of why things fell that way, but…I don’t think there’s too much to it beyond some lucky coincidences. Raze has always been Yacine’s pick, Shao only played it on Split. Zyppan explicitly wanted to find a new team to have a chance to play Raze in particular and entry in general.

rEplan is the slightly weird one — he’s typically been a Breach main up to this point — but 2G4L have always run Raze basically 100% of the time, and it may be just that it ended up in his hands with JESMUND gone.

For the most part, it did feel like he could have picked most agents and done similar things, but there were a few interesting moments on their Split games in particular with how he used it to gain entry with an Operator (rEplan and Shao are both primary Operators) onto B site through B Main/long — I tend to think there are better options, but I would like to see the birth of The Legend Of The Sniping Raze if I’m being totally honest about it.

The ScreaM vs. mixwell debate

I don’t know if this can really be called a debate, given that I think that I’m the only one taking the opposite side to consensus of it, but I’m going to persist anyway. The Prodigy stacks have been consistently at the top of the pecking order in closed beta and in the early days of release, and, while the full composition changes pretty much day-to-dau, there have been two completely consistent elements to said stack — ScreaM and mixwell.

This time around, Prodigy as expected took the 3–0, and as he often has, ScreaM showed up with some insane figures — his 173 kills was the most across both groups, and while part of that was simply that Prodigy played more rounds and maps than anyone else (8 maps, 180 rounds), his K/D and KPR were both up there too. He dropped 20+ almost every game, and if nothing else, I will absolutely concede that he’s probably the best Reyna in Europe right now (playing her on 7 out of 8 maps) — just as he was arguably one of the first to see the potential in Sage (i.e. understanding just how crazy a heal like hers is in practice and not falling into the trap that even a few great players/teams did of just seeing her as support), he’s getting the most out of Reyna too (even it it’s far more obvious what you want to be doing with her in general terms).

Yet…there’s still part of me that’s far more interested in seeing how mixwell does, be that on the same team as ScreaM, separately, whatever. I would tend to say that this was mixwell’s best individual showing in competitive Valorant so far; he’s tended to take relatively low-risk, static positions previously, but was far more active this time around, picking Jett 6 times (including once on Bind and twice on Ascent), taking a steady stream of first bloods (30 overall, 2nd across both groups and 4th per round), and finishing below a 1.0 K/D only once.

I genuinely think that he’s probably more important to these Prodigy stack successes, and I absolutely want to see more of him. I’m not a CS:GO expert, so I’m going to risk running into talking-out-of-my-derriere territory here, but: my understanding is that in CS:GO, a large part of mixwell’s problem and why his career went so far up and so far down over and over, was that as good as he was with the AWP, he for some reason always felt slightly uncomfortable as a full-time AWPer, and was continuously switching on and off it there.

Obviously, that’s not exactly a good thing, but: it does make me wonder if the way that the Operator works in Valorant might just end up being a match made in heaven (no pun) for him. The nature of abilities and movement in Valorant have, so far, made it feel like a far less static role positionally than it seems to tend to be in CS:GO.

If you want a touchstone for that, well, look at Jett, right? The idea that Jett with her movement abilities and the like would be mostly used as an Operator user was so far off base that almost nobody was trying it for weeks and weeks; then, ardiis (and others, I’m sure) gave a demonstration of how it could be done, and now everyone’s doing it. Including mixwell.

In general, I’m not too excited about the old tier-1 players from other games coming in (insert joke about my own background in LCS here), to the point that it honestly might be a bit of a bias (e.g. I would have absolutely had StartedFromCS 3rd in Group C here, and look how that turned out). I am very excited for mixwell, and I think if we look 6 or 12 months down the line, this is absolutely going to be a real debate. So, for now, I’m going to note it and move on.

Team of the Week

Happy (SFCS): Sage players everywhere rejoice at no longer having to compete with ScreaM for a mention! Has taken to Valorant better than I think anyone expected, extremely solid performance and don’t think it’s a coincidence that the one map they dropped was with him off the agent.

beyAz (SFCS): Not too much in the way of spectacular, but neither was anyone else playing a similar role this week (read: Cypher), and tend to think he actually deserves a lot of credit for SFCS shutting down NiP as well as they did.

ScreaM (Prodigy): See ScreaM section, but in summary: great week, consistent contributor in Prodigy’s wins, can’t take anything he did on the server away from him this week.

Zyppan (FABRIKEN): I have already eulogised enough about him in the Raze section, so suffice to say: I want to see it grow up healthy, I want to tell all my friends and neighbours about it, etc.

rEplan (2G4L): Still the absolute shining star of 2G4L, and I’m really interested to see how he and synde develop as teams start figuring out how to really get the best out of Operators (and Marshals).

Honourable mentions: synde (2G4L), leakeN (ROYALS), ANGE1 (Party Parrots), Shao (Party Parrots), mixwell (Prodigy)