Total Shorty Kills
BLAST Valorant Twitch Invitational: What we learned from the last EU Ignition Series event
Naim "EnKay" Rosinski
09/14/2020
The last Ignition Series event in Europe finished with the best best-of-five (BO5) final we’ve seen to date. FunPlus Phoenix drove G2 Esports to the limit, as both sides showed expert level of Valorant mastery. The three-day event came after the patch that nerfed Sage and buffed Breach alongside the Vandal. After watching BLAST Valorant tourney, here are our main takeaways on the current meta of the game basing on the European event.
Breach is back (and 2 Breaches make Fireworks)
Breach has suffered from the official launch of Valorant, as the Initiator failed to find his place in a team composition. After the recent buff, which most notably increased his flashes to 3, and increased their duration, Breach has been picked up on the regular throughout the event. In fact, he was the most picked agent at BLAST, as Sova took second place.
This is all great, however, some very dramatic exchanges can emerge when two Breach players on opposite teams decide to out-flash one another. The following play comes from the final between G2 and FunPlus Phoenix on Split’s A Long.
FPX’s Pontus “Eek” Zyppan was caught between 2 Breach players having a flash-off. He was left blind until all six flashes were used up by both parties. Fun time.
In conclusion, Breach seems to be a powerful offensive and defensive agent once more, as he finds his place in the meta.
Sage Fades from the Pro Scene
Following the devastating nerfs to Sage in patch 1.07, the general suspicion was that agent Sage will see a decline in her pickrate. Though, we did see David “davidp” Prins still pick her up on some maps he played. In general though, it seems like her heal nerf especially, was big enough for players to decide other agents are a better choice, like Breach. Sage was the least picked agent at BLAST Valorant Twitch Invitational.
Team Liquid’s No-Smoke Setup Backfires
Team Liquid decided to roll with something unique. Instead of picking up at least one main smoke agent, Omen or Brimstone, they decided to focus on pure flash power. To deepen their questionable composition, they picked up Sova only once throughout the six maps they played on. Other times, the team picked up Reyna instead. This gave Team Liquid 7 flashes to work with (Reyna’s Leer is a type of flash). However, the team didn’t pick up Cypher either. What resulted was a very offensive team that had no way of gathering intel. The team rather relied on their fragging power and how well Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom will perform on Reyna.
As we saw at the event itself, Liquid only managed to overcome NiP in the event. FPX made short work of ScreaM and co. twice. Will Liquid change their setup next time around? Time will tell.
FPX proved that G2 is not Unbeatable
The grand final of the event was a show. Despite being 1 map advantage in the series due to coming in from the upper bracket, FPX made it all square and forced Split, the decider. Some may argue, that FPX was the better team, as G2’s early handicap. Nevertheless, G2 prevailed, as Split came so close it was anyone’s game at the end. What FPX proved was that G2 is a team that can definitely be beaten. In Europe, the CIS-Swedish mix were the closest thus far to beating Oscar “mixwell” Cañellas Colocho’s side. We can safely say that FPX are the second best team in Europe, while G2 reign as the undeniable kings.
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