It’s VCT 2024, round 24, a 12-11 lead for star VALORANT duelist yay and his team. He’s in a 1v4 scenario, and manages to pick off each enemy one by one to secure the post-plant, and the victory. Somehow, that isn’t even the craziest moment of the match, as he’s on…Killjoy?
This hypothetical might actually be real too, with VALORANT analyst Sean Gares and reporter Rod “Slasher” Breslau suggesting as much in a podcast on Aug. 2.
Yay is doing whatever he can to return to tier one play, Slasher suggests, and is even remaining open to switching roles to initiator or sentinel.
This role swap is not that out of place when you think about what yay has played outside of his traditional duelist role. He’s known for his Jett, but he was also one of the best Chamber players in the world, especially in 2022 for OpTic Gaming. That VALORANT agent was technically a Sentinel, despite a lot of duelist players moving onto that role.
That said, moving from Chamber to Killjoy, Sage, or Cypher is an entirely different story, as you usually can’t play as aggressively with their utility.
Now, not only was sentinel one of the roles that the two podcasters brought up, they also mentioned the possibility of yay playing initiator. That would mean you’d potentially see him on agents like Sova, Fade, Breach, KAY/O, or even Skye. In the VALORANT field, we’ve only seen a couple of players flex between duelist and initiator, with key examples including The Guard’s trent and Cloud9’s leaf. These roles suit people who flex them a little better than sentinel and duelist, but still is quite a change to get used to.
Looking back at yay’s career profile from VLR.gg, he does have some experience on both sentinel and initiator agents in professional play, but limited in comparison to his Jett and Chamber.
In his career up to Aug. 2, 2023, he’s chosen either Jett or Chamber 75 percent of the time. He’s only chosen an initiator or a sentinel, other than Chamber, 20 percent of the time.
As for stats, his Sage looks to be his third-best agent, with an average combat score nearly matching his Chamber and Jett. However, the Breach and Sova do seem to be more average, with scores of 206 and 201 ACS, respectively. 200 is the barometer for a decent game of VALORANT, no matter your rank, so he fit the role statistically, but didn’t explode on the stats sheets like he did on duelist.
Considering his time with Disguised, yay’s stock from his 2022 year has dropped. He went from the best player in 2022 to a man unable to win in tier two for 2023, finishing his time with Disguised winless.
Related: It’s over: yay’s Disguised run ends with last place, relegation from NA VALORANT Challengers
A lot of that had to do with team cohesion, as OpTic was a powerhouse from top to bottom that suited yay better both in VALORANT and out of it. Now, yay will have to find another team to give him a shot, with him even stating that he would play for league minimum to get that opportunity.
Even if he might not be getting those signature Jett aces or Chamber fadeaways, he’s still got a chance to be among the best NA stars in VALORANT come 2024.
