"It's a fun way to play the map": yb on the RRQ's Breach-Skye combo on Lotus at VCT Pacific 2023

The Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) is an arena where top teams from across the world showcase their skill. The Asian leg of the international split called the Pacific League began on March 25, 2023, in Seoul, South Korea.

Under the new format of the VCT circuit for 2023, there are ten Riot-partnered teams from across Asia that are playing in the tournament, which follows a round-robin format. This means that all teams will play against each other over eight weeks of the league stage of the tournament.

The first match of Week 2 on April 1, 2023, was between the Indonesian squad Rex Regum Qeon (RRQ) and the Japanese team ZETA DIVISION. It was an evenly matched series, with ZETA DIVISION taking the series 2-1.

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RRQ's analyst yb shares his thoughts on playing Lotus without a recon-gathering Agent in VCT Pacific League match against ZETA DIVISION

The first two maps of the VCT series contained nothing unusual to write home about for either team. The series started on Haven (picked by ZETA), which went the way of RRQ with a scoreline of 13-10. The match then headed to Ascent (picked by RRQ), which ZETA took 13-10.

It was on the final map, Lotus, where both teams made different choices when it came to their Agent compositions. These choices had a fairly large impact on the outcome of the map and series.

Both teams opted for a double Initiator composition, with Breach being the common pick. While ZETA DIVISION ran Fade as the second, RRQ ran Skye. The former is able to reveal the exact locations of enemies, while the latter can only indicate an enemy's presence. Fade is more useful for both attack and defense, as she helps in determining whether to commit to a site take or call for rotations.

In addition to their lack of information gathering, RRQ also struggled with executing their attack strategies effectively, which contributed to their difficulties in finding success in the first half. When Sportskeeda asked RRQ's analyst, Lukas "yb" Gröning, about the thought process behind this decision, he responded:

"It is more about having utility to flash and stun, which allows us to go for more plays if we can find the right timings. It's a fun way to play the map. On Lotus, we don't rely so much on the revealing utility as we have to take space anyway, and by the time we enter, it doesn't pay off so much, at least as of now."

James "2ge" Goopio seemed to have a slightly different opinion on the matter and stated that having some hard recon would have been helpful in securing their first victory in the VCT Pacific League. He said:

"We couldn’t see the enemy because we didn’t have Sova or Fade, while our opponents (ZETA) had Fade. We only had Guiding Lights for info, but we couldn’t tell how many people were there, and we couldn’t be sure if they were executing or just faking."

While yb's idea of having two flashing Agents to give the team more leeway in initiating fights has some merit, the lack of success with the Breach-Skye combination cannot be ignored. Moving forward into VCT Pacific 2023, it will be interesting to see how the team addresses this issue and adjusts their composition to improve their performance.