Hey yall, this time I want to talk about the future of Valorant team compositions, something I hinted at in my last talk. Namely, what I’m going to be discussing is how the composition of Jett-Fade/Sova-Kay/O-Killjoy-Smokes might start to take over the maps of Valorant because of the latest patch 5.12.

First, we have to start with the Chamber nerfs. In my opinion, this completely killed the agent. By making his trap not have a global presence, and reducing his tp range, you severely nerf his capability to keep up with the other sentinels. Add to his op nerf, while still remaining at 8 ultimate points, I don’t think he’ll see much play. This is also due to Killjoy being absolutely broken because of the new patch. I went over this in my last post, but in case you missed it, KJ’s ult has more HP, and the nerf to utility damage on non-players means that only 2 non-ultimates can destroy it now, one of them being Kay/O’s molly. This will probably lead to KJ being played on almost every map (the new map is still unknown but it could also be a KJ map, in which case every map will be KJ-friendly).

With these changes, multiple things are thrown into the mix. First, the initiator meta is shifted greatly in favor of Kay/O, and away from Breach and Skye, since he can destroy the KJ ult, and he can suppress KJ util on sites. Secondly, the OP meta will have shifted back to Jett, since KJ will be much better than Chamber on all maps. This will lead to Jett-Kay/O-KJ being played on every map. Throw a Sova and/or Fade into the mix for info, and proper smokes, you end up with this:

Ascent: Jett-Sova/Fade-Kay/O-Omen-KJ, A comp that is already being run, and where this comp originated. Sova and Fade might be interchangeable, since Sova’s ult can destroy KJ’s ult still, so some teams might op to have Sova, but Fade has shown incredible value on the map. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some teams opt for a Sova-Fade comp or even triple initiator. I would also pick Omen over Astra simply due to the pistol rounds now favoring Omen way more than Astra now due to the ability to buy lights-flash-smokes

Fracture: Jett-Fade-Kay/O/Viper-Brimstone-KJ, This might be controversial, but I don’t think Breach will be as viable on this map anymore. Already we have seen comps without Breach on Fracture in the past, and they have worked incredibly. FPX, now Navi, and previously DRX ran comps that did not have any Breach and they were considered the two best Fracture teams at that time. Substituting a Kay/O for Viper might also be viable for extra control. Brimstone to counter KJ ult will probably be run too, even if we are seeing more Omen nowadays.

Pearl: Jett-Fade-Kay/O-Astra-KJ, This is a comp that is currently run by many teams, and I don’t expect it to change. With how necessary an OP is, especially on B site, I expect Jett to stay, and you can do a lot of cool things with Astra ult combined with KJ’s. We’ve seen Sova on this map, but I don’t think it can function without a Fade realistically, so I’m picking Fade here.

Haven: Jett-Fade-Kay/O-Omen-KJ, This is also a pretty common comp, just substituting Kay/O for Breach to adjust to the changes. Kay/O hasn’t been played a lot on this map, but that’s mainly because Breach has just been that much better, and the introduction of Fade took out the need for Skye to be played on this map. I also see Omen being the primary smoker on this map, since now you can buy flash-smokes-light shields for pistol, and there are really good positions to flash from.

Icebox: Jett-Sova-Kay/O-Viper/Harbor?-KJ, I’m sorry but Kay/O is just too good on this map to pick the new Sage over him. Not only does Kay/O solidly counter KJ, but Viper as well. And since the sites on Icebox are already pretty cramped and small as they are, a Kay/O ultimate literally forces defenders off the site completely, guaranteeing a safe plant. Sage, with her new wall, will probably have to compete with KJ if anything, and Kay/O will probably remain meta. Harbor might be a viable pick on Icebox, with pushing op’s off angles, and helping take sites aggressively, since Icebox is attacker-sided, but we’ll have to see. Rest of the picks should be self explanatory.

Now for the deviation:
Split: Raze-Omen-Cypher/KJ?-???-???, Split is a real toss-up for me and is the only map that has decent variation in my opinion. This is, for one, due to Raze being too good to not pass up on, and also because there are many ways to play this map. Here are the possible meta combinations you can make:

Raze-Fade-Breach-Omen-Cypher
Raze-Initiator (Not Sova)-Omen-Viper-Cypher/Sage
Raze-Jett-Omen-Sage-Cypher/Viper

Keep in mind changes to split are being made, which is why I don’t have Sage in my top comp (since mid might get reworked heavily) but you can already see the issue here. If 4/7 maps follow the same sort of team comp, the game will be repetitive and stale, and might even throw the game itself off. Think about it really quickly. The comp of Jett-Fade/Sova-Kay/O-Smokes-KJ is an attacker sided team comp inherently, which makes sense considering it was started on Ascent, a notoriously defender-sided map. If most of these maps were to bolster this composition, along with Icebox being an inherent T-Sided map, the game would start to swing to being attacker sided as a whole, which could throw off the feel of the game and make the overall viewing experience rather boring. You'll roughly know how they’ll retake, you'll roughly know how they’ll attack, it won’t be as fun to watch.

This obviously hurts the game overall but nothing can really be done about it unless significant changes are brought to KJ and Kay/O to allow for other options on other maps, because right now, they are too hard not to pass up. Another thing is the issue that the Chamber nerf brings to Jett. Jett and Chamber go hand-in-hand, if one drops, another rises to fill the void of an op-er. The only map where an op might not be needed is shocker Split, which is coincidentally the only map where neither Jett nor Chamber were meta on, and the only map that would show agent diversity according to my model.

Sure this is all heavy speculation, but you can’t deny that the implementation of this comp is already happening. Previously, in Champions 2022, the “meta” comp for Pearl varied between the comp of Neon-Fade-Kay/O-Astra-Chamber, or Fade-Kay/O-Astra-Viper-Chamber. Fast forward to now, in the Off-Season, many more Pearl compositions consist of the traditional Ascent team composition, Jett-Fade-Kay/O-Astra-KJ. If you don’t believe me, go to recent Tier 2-3 tournaments, I highly recommend checking out the NSG Lockdown Opens 2 & 3, VRL MENA Off Season, and the VCT Oceania Tour, and look at the most picked agents, then compare that to Champions 2022. Sure the meta shifts all the time, but this time I don’t know if it’ll be good.

If you made it this far, thanks, and hope you have a great holiday season. Feel free to add your thoughts, I'll prolly turn this one into a yt video too so I would love feedback on my theory. Till next time I feel like overanalyzing Valorant out of boredom. cya

I disagree, fades nerfs aren’t huge, it’s not like it’s a rework and it was mainly intended to let sova have some breathing room.

Also this is probably the worst argument to use “give it some time”, the whole point is that skye has been slowly dying due to power creep and changes to other agents opposed to being directly hard nerfed.

That being said I respect the opinion on sage but I think that sages heal is a lot better since it heals 100 and you can use it more often in better opportunities, you don’t have to be 100% safe to use it

Yea I feel like Skye is kinda like Phoenix now, trying too hard to do too many things, thus being able to not do anything as good as others. Kinda makes sense when you think about it since she was made as a mix of breach and sova.

Only issue is now she’s being outclassed at everything like Phoenix was.

Yay would turn his monitor off so he cant flash himself and get 6 every round

TS_ChedZ + WRONSKI fan summon

Going to make a longer YT video explaining this all in detail once I get back to the states from India, but for now I'll post a simpler, compact version of why Patch 5.12 put the final nail in Skye's coffin and nobody seemed to notice.

Everyone’s already given their two cents on the major changes in this patch, how Chamber is now dead, Killjoy is set to make the comeback of a lifetime, and what Sage’s place will be in the future, but nobody has talked about Skye at all, which is kind of concerning because it almost seems like nobody even noticed she's pretty much a dead agent.

First of all, Skye's pickrate over the last few major tournaments, from Masters Berlin to the recent RBHG3 has fallen from 58% to 16%, despite there not being a significant nerf to her this whole time. The only map teams ever played Skye was Bind, and even in mid-high elo ranked (D3+), the only maps you would ever see Skye on is Bind and Breeze, with some Haven sprinkled there. The only time Skye was picked in RBHG3 outside of Bind was once on Pearl, courtesy of C9 getting humiliated by T2 EU team FOKUS and losing the series, so not a great track record.

This happened due to both a change in overall playstyle and an initiator power creep. As teams changed from the simple Sentinels-style 5 man site hits to more defaults and split pushes, utility became more important, the reason why double duelist died, and why Skye started to explode in popularity in the first place. But as executes got more and more complex, teams started to favor Kay/O and Breach over Skye for flashes, and the introduction of Fade pretty much killed the viability of Skye's information, as the Prowlers and Nightfall eclipsed the Dog and Seekers, and the information given by flashes has always been unreliable.

The one area where Skye's flashes were better than any other was pop-flashing through smokes and walls, but popflashing with Skye and Kay/O got hard nerfed with patch 5.07, lasting only 1 second. Kay/O doesn't really have a problem with this, since his long flash is still really good, and with the proper lineup you can make it work like a regular underhand from before, but Skye's long flash is slow, easy to dodge, difficult to coordinate compared to Kay/O's and Breach's, and make a noise when it travels, unlike Kay/O's, and much louder than Breach's, which gives enemies a better opportunity to play antiflash.

Her heal seemed to be her saving grace, but once again, Sage's is just better now as a team heal, since it heals for full on a teammate, you get it back after 40 seconds, and you can instantly fight once you cast the heal, unlike Skye's where you have to have it out for a while, resulting in less opportunities than Sage to heal your teammates.

So her heal is worse than Sage, her dog is worse than Fade/Sova, her flash is worse than Kay/O, Breach, and even Phoenix now, and her ultimate is worse at taking sites than Fade's and giving info than Cypher's. Can't get worse right?

Bind and Breeze are going to be gone, which are her two best maps. On top of this, a nerf with Chamber will lead to a rise in Killjoy, especially since her ult is much harder to break now. A rise in Killjoy means more teams will want to have agents that can counter her, namely Kay/O with his supress, and the fact that his molly can still break the ult if placed correctly (60 damage max for 4 ticks = 240 dmg, 1x multiplier, KJ ult has only 200 hp) only adds to his benefits over Skye.

Skye did get changed in the new patch, but I would say it hurt her more than helped. Sure, you can buy heal+flash+light shield now on pistols, but her dog is still really good, and apart from pistols, I don't see how a change to the prices of Skye's heal and dog will change anything, if anything, it will only make gun rounds harder for Skye, since most people would rather have a dog on a gun round rather than a heal.

Skye's last hope at coming back literally relies on if the new map is a Skye map and I really hope Riot does something to fix this, I just wanted yalls thoughts on this and any proposed changes that I can put in my video. I also have another post I'm gonna make sometime later about why I expect agent compositions to get really stale and repetitive with the new changes. That's all, thanks for reading if you did read, have a great Christmas everybody.

ah ok fair enough

Bro said rnt is good 💀💀💀💀

Based as fuck that whimp guy is garbage disappointment to the whole SA scene

Who’s kripz

Visiting family, I decided to go drop into the BME vs RNT game to see my home team play and Jesus fucking Christ this Whimp guy might genuinely be the worst t2 player I’ve ever seen.

Yea I know that tier 2 in SA/Asia isn’t equivalent to t2 in eu or NA in terms of skill but still holy fuck what did I just watch. The other 2 Indians didn’t do much better, but for a support player, it was like this guy was playing for the other team.

I don’t really get to watch many Indian teams due to time diff from California so I don’t know if all these players are like this, but from their results in APAC so far I’m inclined to believe so but lmk if I’m wrong 💀💀💀💀

Said no one ever

You are d3 with the name instalock Reyna please go outside it is not that deep I promise you bro

Thanks bro needed this

4/8

The sparkling cherry lime one cleared everything but it went extinct for some reason

Rn prolly the mango one

Bros using internet explorer

Low fade black
5’9
Baby Keem or Nardo Wick
Swimming or MMA
Lil bit of both
Instagram

Chad horimiya enjoyer

There is no way you called root beer mid

That has to violate the Geneva convention or something

crws and buzz arent the igls for xerxia/drx

pretty sure its foxz and zest

if ur watching the nyfu vs 100t game, yk what im talking abt

bro hes dropped 5 kills on all 3 maps so far "bad map" my ass

Challenge: Go above 5 kills (!Warning! impossible)

Edit: challenge completed lfg

mods ended prediction with TL win