The most dominant european team, ‘Fish123’ have just announced that Ardis “ardiis” Svarenieks is no longer playing with them. Here is their statement:
Why did “ardiis” leave?
Many are speculating that what led to ardiis’s decision was that there was a potential organization interested in signing the prodigy squad which consists of:
However we can confirm that the rest of us will be sticking together as a core including coach as well.
They have recently participated in the European Twitch Rivals: VALORANT Launch Showdown, which they managed to win, grabbing $12,250 in prize pool winnings. The biggest question is, what was the thought process behind ardiis’ leave from Fish123? Is a well known European organization signing the Prodigy roster? Who could it be?
Nothing has been confirmed as of yet as this is all speculation, however it is definitely exciting news, especially considering we are still in the early stages of Valorant esports.
Who could Fish123 get as a 5th?
A potential replacement for ardiis could be Owen “smooya” Butterfield. He has played with the Fish123 squad during Take The Throne #5, which they managed to win, even with a new player.
We promised you some of the very best teams to challenge the kings for the next #TakeTheThrone and here there are!
As @fish123Valorant don't want to lose their status and continue their winning streak, they will have a mystery stand-in 👀
Today, Fish123 will be playing in the Take The Throne #6 so they will be either trying out a new stand-in or announcing their permanent 5th. So make sure you stay tuned to https://www.esportsguide.com/ to keep yourself updated with all the latest esports news!
Within a week of release, Riot Games is already pushing out patches to keep up with the demanding Valorant community in its early beginnings. That’s where patch 1.01 comes into play, with some new small changes responding to the community’s recent concerns with this Valorant 1.01 patch.
Spike Rush Update – 5 randomly selected orbs, with three new orbs – Health Orb, Deception Orb and Golden Gun
Agent: Sage – nerfed Barrier Orb cast range from 20 to 10 metres
Map updates – all maps updated with new call outs with Ascent restitched to avoid falling through the map or walls
New pre-round HUD
Performance: small fixes to reduce dropping frames during gunfights and key moments
An array of bug fixes and quality of life changes
Valorant’s patch 1.01 patch notes features changes entail some Sage nerfs, Spike Rush changes and a couple of bug fixes
Credit: Riot Games
Let’s start with the changes made to Valorant’s main healing agent, Sage:
Barrier Orb cast range reduced 20 >>> 10 meters
The 20m cast range was allowing Sage to aggressively take control of neutral territory in a way that was inappropriate for her role in Valorant. This range reduction aims to keep her strong while defending territory but reduce her efficacy at taking ground.
Sage has received quite a few nerfs over the past few weeks. Back when the closed beta first released Sage was one of the strongest characters in the game. She was so strong that not picking her during agent select would probably result in a loss. So it’s definitely refreshing to have developers that are working off community feedback to balance the agents in the best way possible.
Spike Rush Changes:
Each game of Spike Rush now features a set of 5 randomly selected orbs
The Full Ultimate orb will always be available
4 of the remaining 7 orb types will be chosen at random
Chosen orb types will be shown in a description widget both in character select and during pre-round
New Orb Types
Health Orb – Grants teamwide health regeneration
20 second duration
12 HP per second (3HP per tick)
Sound Effects and Visual Effects only play while actually healing
Deception Orb – Applies “Paranoia” (Omen flash) to the enemy team 3 seconds after capture
10 second debuff
Vision is greatly reduced (and a small Field of Vision shift)
Fake footsteps and gunfire play for affected players
Minimap is disabled
Golden Gun – Grants capturing player a Golden Gun
One-shot, one-kill
Perfectly accurate at all times
Agent moves at knife speed
Only has a single bullet in chamber and 2 backup rounds
Kills grant an additional round
Spike rush has only been introduced for a week or so, and many have found it as a very fun warm up mode before they head to play unrated or scrims.
Credit: Riot Games
Overall this update does not include many game changing adjustments, however it’s nice to see that Riot are also putting the casual community as a priority as well.
Valorant will now begin to rub off of people comparing it to both CS:GO and Overwatch, and hence, the community may push for changes in either direction. My personal hope is that Riot Games listens to both sides and in doing so, carves a new and fresh path for Valorant.
We’ve seen quite a few esports events for Valorant in the past few weeks showcasing the abilities of some content creators, esport figures and professional players. Which means that we should already have a general idea of which teams and professional players will be dominating the scene in the very near future.
Credit: Riot Games
Here below is a list of the top teams at the moment and their recent achievements:
North America:
Gen.G – 1st in T1 x Nerd Street Gamers Invitational – $20,000 in winnings.
T1 – 1st in Twitch Rivals: VALORANT Launch Showdown NA – $10,250 in winnings.
TSM – 1st in Lof x DTS Invitational Series – Qualifier #4 – $1,000 in winnings.
Europe:
Fish123 – 1st in Mandatory Cup – $6,506 in winnings
Team Scream – 1st in Twitch Rivals: VALORANT Launch Showdown EU#1 – $12,250 in winnings.
HypHypHyp – 2nd in Mandatory Cup – $3,253 in winnings.
StartedFromCS – 1st in LeStream x BMW – The 2 Gran Coupé – $10,975 in winnings.
Here below is an image showing the top 15 teams and their total winnings:
Credit: Liquipedia
These teams definitely have the strongest rosters in the current Valorant esports scene and they have undoubtedly shocked the world at how good they are at Riot’s new tactical FPS. With Valorant’s release, we can definitely expect more events to feature these top teams, so buckle in and stay tuned to https://www.esportsguide.com/ to keep yourself updated with all the latest esports news.
The Twitch Rivals Launch Showdown commenced this weekend, where we saw some of the best FPS players around the world competing against each other in Riot’s newly released tactical FPS, Valorant.
Here below are the Final Standings (1st – 4th) + Winnings for each
region and each tournament.
Team Mixwell had a very
strong showing at the start of Twitch Rivals, ending the group stage with a 3-0
scoreline and round difference of 32. They then advanced to the playoffs where
they would meet Team Skyyart in the quarterfinals, and then Team Lutti in the
Semi-Finals. After winning the Semi-Finals, they then moved on to the Grand
Finals to face off team ONSCREEN which is made up of 4 players from the UK
based team, “Fish123” which has been dominating the european scene for a
majority of the events. So this Grand Finals was indended to be an intense and
very close series, however Team Mixwell stepped up big time to win the Finals
with a clean 2-0.
Europe#2:
1st – $12,250 – Team Duno
2nd – $7,250 – Team wtcN
3rd-4th – $4,250 – Team Izak
3rd-4th – $4,250 – Team gdolphn
North America:
1st – $10,250 – Team Brax
2nd – $7,250 – Team Myth
3rd-4th – $4,750 – Team Mendo
3rd-4th – $4,750 – Team Sh0ts
Team Brax are your NA Twitch Rivals: @playVALORANT Launch Showdown champions! #T1Win
Team Brax, representing the T1 organisation also had an excellent start
to the event, ending groups with a 3-0 scoreline and a round difference of 21.
After groups they advanced through to the Semi-Finals to meet Team Sh0ts and
beat them 2-0. They then progressed to the Grand Finals to meet the newly
assembled TSM roster with Myth taking Hazed’s place for just this event. The
series was incredibly close, however Team Brax came out on top with a 2-1
scoreline to win it all.
Korea:
1st – $4,750 – Team juankorea
2nd – $2,750 – Team staxvlrt
3rd – $1,250 – Team ocheon2
4th – $1,250 – Team gabrielcro
Japan:
1st – $5,250 – BAKEMON
2nd – $2,750 – MOOOK
3rd – $1,250 – Team YamatoN
4th – $750 – 数え役満
Brazil:
1st – $5,750 – Team pannshi
2nd – $4,250 – Team mch
3rd – $3,250 – Team Sacy
4th – $2,750 – Team paulanobre
LATAM#1:
1st – $5,250 – Team blue_mx
2nd – $2,750 – Team mym_alkapone
3rd – $1,250 – Team RobertoCein
4th – $750 – Team Znorux
The Valorant Twitch Rivals Launch Showdown was the first official
tournament since Valorant’s release and it definitely was an event to remember.
From these past few events we’ve seen, during the closed beta and after, we’re
getting a better idea of how the esports side of Valorant will feel like and
what to expect in the near future. That being said, we can’t wait to cover more
events which include Valorant as it’s an exciting time in esports.
As you may already be aware, Riot Games’ Tactical FPS, Valorant, will be launching fully on the 2nd of June and the biggest question is, will it be a viable esport? In this article I’ll be sharing my opinion about Valorant esports, the game and if it has the potential to compete with other esports in the FPS genre.
Riot Games have been very smart with the development of the game, they
have managed to combine assets of other games into one game, to unite
all the communities into one. The game consists of abilities which are similar
to the ones in Overwatch, whereas the gunplay and weapons have a similar style
to CS:GO’s shooting mechanics.
Credit: Riot Games
Valorant’s main selling point (apart from combining the core gameplay of other
games) were their promises to the community, which ironically, were things
Counter-Strike was suffering from. In a video they released back in October
of last year, the executive producer behind Valorant, Anna “SuperCakes” Donlon
mentions that the issues like bullets not registering correctly and cheaters
will definitely be something that they will be tackling with full force. In
fact, all of Valorant’s official servers are set to 128 tickrate to
avoid these hit registration problems. With regards to cheating, the Valorant
developer team worked together to create Vanguard, Valorant’s anti-cheat
system. However this did not work out as expected.
On the very first week of closed beta, there were already quite a few
cheaters that were surfacing on popular twitch streams, which created a lot of backlash
with regards to the anti-cheat. However Riot have addressed this by saying
that the anti-cheat was still in its early versions, and now has the capability
of not only detecting cheaters, but also banning them.
Credit: Riot Games
If Riot Games manages to keep cheaters as far away as possible
from playing Valorant, the better the atmosphere of the game will be.
What about gameplay?
Valorant is quite similar to Counter-Strike when it comes to its
core gameplay. It’s a 5v5 tactical shooter where one side attacks the enemy
team to plant the spike (bomb), and the other side defends them. Game duration
lasts for a maximum of 25 rounds (if overtime is reached, 12-12) and games last
for about 40 minutes.
Credit: Riot Games
The weapons feel very polished and have a certain flow to them.
There are a total of 17 weapons which are split into 6 categories:
Sidearms (Pistols)
SMGS
Shotguns
Rifles
Snipers
Heavies
Each weapon has its own purpose, which means that not everyone will be
viable in the same position or scenario, however that is where the abilities
come in handy.
For the most part, the agents in Valorant are quite balanced,
however there are some that are more balanced than others. This has led to a
point of controversy, as with the release of the 10th and newest agent Raze,
players were noticing that she was maybe a little bit too strong. This
immediately caught the attention of the developers and released a patch
with a nerf shortly after.
Does it have potential to be an esport?
This is definitely the biggest question that Valorant will have to
answer. Riot Games, having League of Legends be the esport that it is nowadays,
will certainly want Valorant to have similar success, and definitely
have a vision for the game’s future as an esport. However it does come down to
two things:
Is it going to be a fun esport to spectate?
Will there be a strong community to sustain a Valorant esports healthy competitive scene?
Valorant consists of a lot of stuff happening at the same time, especially
when fights are happening across the map, things tend to be chaotic, and as a
viewer, I’m not sure I’d find it fun to spectate. However not everyone is the
same, and maybe another viewer would like the turbulent action happening
throughout most of the game.
We’ve already seen instances of events which showcased professional
FPS players battling it out versus each other in Valorant, and on the
whole, (even though the spectator tool is not very polished and optimized) it
was quite an enjoyable viewer experience.
The FPS community has already embraced Valorant’s core gameplay,
which in fact led to a couple of professional players from other games (CS:GO,
Overwatch, Apex Legends, Fortnite) to completely switch over to Valorant.
Credit: Riot Games
If it were up to me, I’d say the game has a bright and long future in the world of esports. It’s very fun, easy to understand, and hard to master. The three key points for an esport to succeed and have a long and healthy lifetime for Valorant esports.
With their latest announcement, 100 Thieves revealed that they are once
again entering another esport, that being Valorant, the newly released tactical
FPS. In addition to their announcement regarding them entering Valorant, they
have also revealed that the first player joining their team will be Spencer
“Hiko” Martin. Here is their announcement:
Everyone that has been following Counter-Strike since 2016 knows who Hiko
is and what he’s capable of. Hiko, aged 30 has had a very long
Counter-Strike career, starting in 2008 and announcing his retirement with his
entry to Valorant. Hiko is the oldest professional Valorant player to be
signed by an organization as of right now.
Credit: Dreamhack
What he offers to the 100 Thieves Valorant roster
With the amount of experience Hiko has culminated during the past decade
of competing he definitely has a lot to offer to not only his team, but also
the 100 Thieves organisation, as whilst he’s been competing, he’s also gained a
lot of fans through his streaming community. As mentioned by Hiko on his live
stream yesterday, he said that he is the team captain and will be in charge of
the rest of the signings to the 100 Thieves Valorant Team.
We’re in a very exciting time in esports currently where we’re seeing
old (in esports terms) or retired players, returning to competitive play in a
totally different esport title. There will definitely be more signings in the
very near future, so be sure to stay tuned to https://www.esportsguide.com/ to stay
updated on all the latest esports news!
T1 have just announced that their Valorant roster is complete, with their
recent addition of Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham being their fifth and final
player to represent them in Valorant.
With their latest change, their roster is as follows:
Players:
Braxton “Brax” Pierce
Keven “AZK” Larivière
Austin “crashies” Roberts
Victor “food” Wong
Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham
Coach:
Daniel “fRoD” Montaner
Skadoodle’s past as a professional player
Skadoodle, despite not being known as one of the best
players to ever touch the game of Counter-Strike, had an immensely great career
overall and was one of North America’s best AWPers. Here are some of his
personal achievements:
1st in iBuyPower Masters 2017
1st in DreamHack Open Denver 2017
1st in ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals
And his most notable achievement, his Victory
at the ELEAGUE Major in 2018
How will he impact the T1 roster
Skadoodle has been competing since 2012, which means he has
been competing for a very long time, in comparison to some of his teammates.
With his experience the young guns could definitely learn a thing or two when
it comes to being a professional player and tackling situations that a
professional player goes through. Not only that, but his aim is definitely one
of the best in North America, which will definitely be evident once we see them
compete at the upcoming events.
Credit: Starladder
The T1 squad is undoubtedly one of the best rosters at the
moment, and they will definitely be a force to reckon with for the years to
come.
On the 27th of May, twitch announced that the 2020 Summer Game fest will have the Twitch Rivals VALORANT Launch Showdown taking place between the 5th and 7th of June. In this article, we’ll be covering everything you need to know about the Valorant Launch showdown and how to watch it.
Tournament’s
background
With the release of Valorant
on June 2nd, it was only natural for Riot Games and Twitch to partner up for a
second event as their first official event since the release of the game. For
this Twitch Rivals, there will be 8 tournaments in total, covering a majority
of the regions, which include: 2 tournaments in Europe, North America, Korea,
Japan, Brazil, and 2 tournaments in LATAM.
To celebrate launch, we’re teaming with competitive FPS creators to hold a global tournament and crown 1 winning team from each region. Up for grabs is a $200,000 prize pool and the right to count themselves among the first global VALORANT champs. https://t.co/8KTOqeVsck
A prizepool amounting up to
$200,000 is to be distributed between all tournaments of all different regions.
How to
qualify for the main event
Unfortunately it was not
available for everyone to take part in the Twitch Rivals VALORANT Launch
Showdown. Most of the participants that were picked to participate are either
Content Creators, Esports Figures or Professional Players.
Credit: Riot Games
Tournament
format
Europe 1 & 2:
32 teams are divided evenly into 2 sub-regions (EU 1 & 2)
Regions do not mix and compete independently from one another
Group Stage
4 Groups with 4 Teams in each Group
Round Robin, Best of 1 Matches
The Top team from each Group advances
Playoffs
Single Elimination Bracket with 8 teams
Quarterfinals: Best-of-1 Match
Semifinals + Finals: Best-of-3 Matches
North America:
Group Stage
4 Groups with 4 Teams in each Group
Round Robin, Best of 1 Matches
The Top team from each Group advances
Playoffs
Single Elimination Bracket with 4 teams
Best of 3 Matches
Brazil:
Group Stage
2 Groups with 4 Teams in each Group
Round Robin, Best of 1 Matches
The top 2 teams from each Group advances
Playoffs
Single Elimination Bracket with 4 teams
Best of 3 Matches
LATAM 1, LATAM 2, Korea, and Japan:
Group Stage
1 Group with 4 Teams
Round Robin, Best of 1 Matches
The top 2 teams from each Group advances
Playoffs
Single Elimination Bracket between teams
The Round Robin winner between the 2 Playoffs teams will begin the series with a 1-0 advantage.
Teams
Participating
There has been no
announcement with regards as to which teams will be participating in the Twitch
Rivals VALORANT Launch Showdown, however we can definitely expect the top teams
currently to be included. The teams are to be formed by a mix of content creators
and professional Valorant players.
Europe 1 – Groups A/BEurope 1: Groups C/DEurope 2: Groups A/BEurope 2: Groups C/DNorth America: Groups A/BNorth America: Groups C/DLATAM 1LATAM 2BrazilKoreaJapan
Credit for all the images above: Twitch.tv
Schedule
list
Europe#1:
Friday, June 5 at 1pm CEST – Group Stage
Saturday, June 6 at 1pm CEST – Playoffs
Sunday, June 7 at 1pm CEST – Finals
Europe#2:
Friday, June 5 at 4pm CEST – Group Stage
Saturday, June 6 at 1pm CEST – Playoffs
Sunday, June 7 at 1pm CEST – Finals
North America:
Saturday, June 6 at 12am CEST – Group stage
Sunday, June 7 at 12am CEST – Playoffs
Korea:
Thursday, June 5 at 5am CEST – Group Stage + Playoffs
Japan:
Monday, June 8, at 9am CEST – Group Stage + Playoffs
Brazil:
Saturday, June 6 at 4pm CEST – Group stage
Sunday, June 7 at 4pm CEST – Playoffs
LATAM #1:
Saturday, June 6, at 8pm CEST – Group Stage + Playoffs
LATAM #2:
Sunday, June 7, at 8pm CEST – 2 Group Stages + Playoffs
Streaming
platform list
The Twitch Rivals VALORANT
Launch Showdown will be live streamed on the official Twitch Rivals twitch
channel over at https://www.twitch.tv/twitchrivals and the Twitch Summer Game Fest will be live streamed on https://www.twitch.tv/twitchgaming. If need be, the tournament can also be viewed from the
participant’s point of view by going over to that player’s stream.
Watch the Twitch Rivals Valorant Launch Showdown stream on esportsguide.com
You can also watch Twitch Rivals Valorant live stream via our very own website. Providing an extensive list of the biggest esports together with streams for each esports match live today or upcoming matches.
Predictions
As for predictions, we’ve
seen what the top EU and NA teams are capable of doing from the past events
that have been hosted. We can confidently assume that the UK based squad
“Fish123” will be dominating the European region, and that Gen.G will be the
top team in the North American tournament. In Japan we have “Absolute JUPITER”
being the best team that the country has means that they have the highest
chances of being triumphant in the Japan tournament. Unfortunately for the other
regions, we still have not seen any event which showcased these regions as the
game was not accessible everywhere around the world. However, the game is now
released world wide and we’ll definitely see these regions shine in the Twitch
Rivals VALORANT Launch Showdown.
Credit: Riot Games
On the whole, for the first
major Valorant event it will definitely have a great competitive atmosphere
filled with content from popular esports figures and professional players. So
be sure to tune in to the official Twitch Rivals live stream and stay tuned to https://www.esportsguide.com/ for all your latest esports news!
21 year old Dapr had quite a decent Counter-Strike career for his age.
He’s played at the highest level of CS:GO for approximately 3 years and has
been one of North America’s superstars for the longest time. A few of his
previous teams are: eUnited, Team Singularity and his most recent team, Bad
News Bears.
Before the finalization of this signing, there were rumours going around
that Coby “Dizzy” Meadows will be their fifth man, as they had been playing
with him for a very long time during the closed beta, especially in
tournaments. So it only made sense that he would be the final player to join
the squad, however it seems like it was not meant to be.
Credit: Dreamhack
The Sentinels Valorant roster is destined for greatness. The roster is
filled with players that have a bunch of experience in the FPS scene and will
surely be one of the strongest teams for the years to come.
Following the closure of Valorant’s time as
an open-beta title, many players have been left with a small piece of emptiness
as the community awaits for more news with regards to the future of the potent
competitive title. Just recently, Riot Games continued to fuel the fire with a
newly announced agent – making that the eleventh
one yet.
Meet Reyna – A ‘Vampire- Type’ Agent
Vampire? Supposedly, the new addition has
the ability to steal health from
opponents to supply herself. Packed with red eyes and dark eye, it’s definitely
a respectable claim. Riot Games dropped the gameplay trailer for the character
on Twitter, as viewable below:
There’s a lot to dissect with not much
official information on the character. The ability to increase health is
definitely obvious here and it seems to be correlated
to the number of kills as her voice becomes more intense too. After downing
foes, they seem to leave a purple aura
behind them with a timer beneath for Reyna to quickly act and take the
health. What most people have drawn their attention to is the spherical orb she
throws while stating the words ‘see nothing’ – that leaves most to believe that
this is a form of flashbang.
What does she offer to the current meta?
While Riot Games are definitely working on certain patches until release, Reyna seems to offer new levels of strategic and risky play. By being sneaky, taking your shots, drawing life and throwing ‘flashbangs’, the agent seems ideal for scouting. One can easily bounce back with some health drawn from your own frags or those of teammates.
Credit: Riot Games
The community doesn’t have to wait long,
fortunately, as the official release
date of June 2nd is almost upon us.
Will Riot Games change the meta entirely by
then? I’m unsure, but adding a new agent is a great way to get players back
online and experimenting with strategies and playstyles. On Day One, the
community will be expecting Riot Games
to release a more comprehensive breakdown of the character including her
strengths and weaknesses.
