Draygo

yes we are doing this again. i decided to map out all of the more popular comps to see if i could fit them within the given rules and it really opened my eyes to a few things. just to give them names, duels are usually defined by their ability to make favorable 50/50s and create 5v4 scenarios more often, which are a high indicator of round wins. they are also really good on the pistol due to the low economy and have either really strong signature abilities really cheap util which allows them to oftentimes win the pistol round (in theory), teams like this require the highest mechanically skill but doesn't necessarily require a good in-game-leader. biggest weakness is it's defensive side because you cannot take aggressive space without burning a lot of nonchargeables you don't necessarily need to play double duelist to play duels. in this current meta however that is just kind of how it goes. slow is generally defined by the access of the rechargeable utility which allows them to condition their opponents and conserve a lot more utility into the post-plant or late into the round. these teams are the ones you most commonly hitting on 1:40, 1:00 and 20s because that is when your utility will come back online. again, viper is going to be really common on this comp but isnt necessarily required. before viper was really popular on Haven, a lot of teams were conditioning their opponents with cypher and jett, who have both fallen out of favor in her stead. slow comps has the highest skill ceiling out of the three imo, which also makes it its biggest weakness as being very reliant on an experienced igl is just not available for everyone. Without a macro focused coach-igl duo youre going to run into some serious problems. it's also hard to pull off on attack. scripts is really good for teams that have low-experience. usually defined by their simple defaults and heavy map control theme. having two initators isn't required (see lotus) but it can make execs way more powerful. think of it like a flowchart. if a, then b. if c, then d type of thing. again, it's really good with younger / inexperienced players to help them warm up to their environment and simplify the game for them, which is also their biggest weakness in that it has the lowest skill ceiling of them all because it is a lot harder to conditon and kind of relies on your sentinel to do most of the work. basically, making these charts really opened up my eyes to what a team is thinking about when picking their comps. for example, just by looking at what agents Cloud9 play, i can tell you with pretty good accuracy how they play in game. Viper + Sentinel is a clear indicator of a slow comp playstyle. they played this shit every map with neT exclusively playing Viper 20/21 times. no matter what map they played they were going to play super slow because of their comp that is meant for heavy conditioning. this is also why they would perma ban sunset, because a slow comp on that map is really terrible. you cannot condition at all on Viper and you need to be explosive on A Main and Mid otherwise all of your map control is gone. This was one of the reasons for their decline, despite coming so close to Champs, no matter the map you always knew what kind of playstyle they were going to play: slow. i think MIBR had a similar problem in Americas where they were perma playing duel comp and would just get hard countered by slow in a region and meta where slow is just so dominate. i feel like GIANTX could also see similar problems if they continue to play scripts, where it could stunt the players long term by not learning macro. but this is not exclusive to them by any means, and a lot of teams were doing this, especially in the earlier years of valorant (2022 scripts meta) sticking to just one playstyle can severely stunt your teams growth, so make sure to pull from all 3 archetypes in order to make it harder for your opponent to read you. i really like how G2, NRG and FNC are all playing, mixing up all three styles to make anti harder. but obviously that is going to be really map dependent. i talked about how sunset is impossible to play slow, but think about what your opponent might pick and try to counter them for ex. if i knew a team i was playing was young and inexperienced i would play slow versus them because slow generally beats scripts if i saw they had a really experienced igl, i would try to just run them over with a duels comp, looking at your minimap is really hard when there are two duelists on your screen. I could be completely wrong in my ideas or the comps that i picked so I would love to know your thoughts on this.