Valorant PAX Invitational: 5 major takeaways from T1’s crushing defeat at the hands of Team Homeless

Image Credits: Nice Gaming FPS Central

In what looks like the biggest upset of the season, T1 gets destroyed by Team Homeless in the best of 3 of the Valorant PAX Tournament.

The Valorant Ignition Series is off to a great start, and a lot of tournaments have been held on the game ever since the official release.

The PAX Valorant invitational is the latest tournament to be held so far, and it is an online event that has promotional support from Seagate and will be sponsored by Riot Games. It has a $25,000 prize pool and sees a lot of prominent North American teams participating in it.

In yesterday's best of 3 Valorant games, Team Homeless destroyed T1; making for one of the biggest upsets in the tournament. The fan favourites, lead by Braxton' Swag' Pierce, went out of the competition 0-2, and team Homeless defeated them rather convincingly in both Bind and Ascent.

Screen Grab from: THESPIKE.GG Image Credits: CrossFire West Image from Dreamhack

And here are some of the significant things that we learned from the game:

1. Team Homeless is a well-oiled machine.

What surprised most fans about the upset was that a Valorant squad which had been formed back in the closed beta, was soundly defeated by a roster that was patched together just days before the tournament.

But to Homeless' credit, the Valorant team did not look like an org-less squad. They were on point with their shot-calling and ability chaining and played as a much better cohesive unit than T1.

And though the first map of Bind may have been a close affair, the one soon after on Ascent was nothing less than a beat down.

The Valorant squad is primarily made up of former Echo 8 players in the form of 'supamen', 'psalm', and 'dephh', and unlike T1, they do not have much experience playing together.

2. 'supamen' is nutty.

In the game against T1, Phat' supamen' Le looked nothing short of a prodigious talent. He was just insane with his mechanics and accuracy and soft-carried Team Homeless for a 2-0 victory.

To those unaware, 'supamen' is an ex-CrossFire pro player, who used to play for Team Carbon alongside req, Kaiz, Brando, and xfam0usx. However, due to the game's lack of popularity and an even smaller player base, he didn't gain much notoriety and was later banned from all tournaments of the game.

'supamen' was regarded as one of the best western CrossFire players, and was especially known for his incredible accuracy and how easily he was able to land headshots.

And contrary to popular belief, 'supaman', 'req', and 'Solo' were not banned from the game for cheating, but for attempting to steal keyboards. This made for a highly embarrassing scandal in his professional career.

3. 'food' and 'crashies' disappoint against well-coordinated teams.

The game against Team Homeless won't be the first time that T1's 'food' and 'crashies' were humbled by a Valorant squad who knew how to coordinate among themselves properly.

In yesterday's game, they were outclassed by their opponents at every step, and their lacklustre performance got a lot of T1 fans worried about the future of the squad. Things look quite dire for the team as this wasn't the first time that 'food' and 'crashies' fail to deliver.

In the previous T1 x Nerd Street Gamers Valorant Showdown in June, they were styled on by TSM, and they conceded a 0-3 beat down.

T1 were the heavy favourites in both these tournaments, and losing out to teams like this, without even putting up a fight, is a worrying sign.

4. Brax and Skadoodle can't do it alone.

No matter what the match-up is, or how bad T1 are playing as a Valorant team, Brax is still the 'knight in shining armour' for the squad.

He and Skadoodle are, by far, the most consistent Valorant players in the squad and have solo carried rounds when all hope seemed lost.

But that being said, sometimes, the Valorant team gets too heavy to carry no matter how well these two are playing, and in the game against Team Homeless, we saw just that.

5. Team Homeless players are in need of an org.

Team Homeless has showcased that they have some incredibly talented players. And if their victory against T1 proves anything, is that the players, especially 'supamen' deserve to be a part of an esports org.

They will have offers coming their way when Act 2 finally takes off in the first week of August. And there are chances that the whole Team Homeless roster might be signed up by an organization in the coming months.