The opening tournament of the 2023 franchised VCT already has a completely different look from the last VCT tournament in Istanbul last year. The format is new, players have shuffled around, and there are likely even more surprises in store.
The big question on everyone’s mind is what the meta will look like for the best VALORANT players in the world. Previously, Chamber dominated the meta, and the biggest stars of the 2022 season kept pulling out the Tour de Force on their way to aces and clutches for their teams.
But several months later, Chamber is not the same agent he once was. After a slew of smaller nerfs chipped away at his power but did not remove him from the pool completely, Riot finally brought the hammer down in December of last year.
And all the pros seem to agree: Chamber is no longer in the meta.
“Chamber last year was extremely OP, to the point where he needed the nerf,” said Gen.G’s k1Ng via a translator during Sunday’s VCT press conference. “I feel like with all the nerfs coming to him, Jett, the former OP agent… we will see her a lot. I feel like a lot of teams will pull out Jett.”
K1Ng seemed fairly convinced that Jett, the once-powerful top-picked agent of the past, will be making a comeback. Her escapability is now arguably better than Chamber’s since she can dash at any time. And an Operator in a Jett player’s hands might once again be more deadly than Chamber’s Ultimate rifle.
Players like yay, the Cloud9 star who made a name for himself last year with OpTic, have even joked about the inevitable meta-change. Yay was almost infamously known as a Chamber one-trick, but he’s not worried about the season ahead.
“I’ve been playing Chamber for 14 hours a day for the last year,” yay said, laughing. He said he was actually happy to see the nerf.
As for if Jett will return as the go-to pick for top fraggers across the league, some players aren’t quite sure. DRX, the Korean team that continued to outperform extremely tough competitors last year, has one of the best Jett players in the business on their roster. Though maybe not quite to the same level of fame as Seoldam, the “Korean Jett,” DRX’s Rb has proven his expertise on the agent several times on the biggest stages.
Despite having a great Jett player on their roster with a ton of prior experience, Rb’s teammate stax doesn’t quite think the meta is headed in their favor.
“Honestly, I think Jett is good now, but I don’t see Jett being as explosive as Chamber used to be,” stax said to the media via translation. “So I think there is a world where we see less and less of Jett, and see other agents step up.”
Stax didn’t say which agents he thought might make a positive impression during the next few weeks of LOCK//IN, but the door certainly is open. If the general playstyle of teams continues to be what it was when Chamber is meta, Jett certainly could become popular again. But we have no idea if strategies look completely different this year.
For now, we’re still waiting to see who the “next Chamber” will be.
