Tyler “Ninja” Blevins’ grind in Fortnite’s Arena mode is doing wonders for his competitive performance, but he’s not quite there yet.
He and his duo Malachi “Reverse2k” Greiner were two points shy of qualifying for the Fortnite World Cup Duos Finals during yesterday’s Open Qualifier in North America East. They scored 86 points, two less than the qualified duo with the least amount of points: FaZe Clan’s Danny “Dubs” Walsh and Megga.
Ninja and Reverse2k didn’t stream their matches yesterday, but both shared flaws in their gameplay that could’ve been avoided to get them the two points they needed. Reverse2k wrote that he was in a one-vs-one situation that “if I win, Tyler and I go to worlds, and if I lose, we don’t. I lost.” Ninja shared that they knocked down two players but didn’t finish them off to get the elimination points, so these players got revived and he and Reverse never got the points. “Please, thirst knocked players,” Ninja said.
Ninja and Reverse2k scored 51 points through placements, including three Victory Royales, and 35 through eliminations, with an average of 3.5 kills per match. Their approach of focusing more on survival than eliminations is unusual among top performers in previous weeks, who usually have half of their score coming from each source. Their average eliminations per match was the lowest among the top 20 duos.
The duo that got second place, Complexity Gaming’s Lanjok and Punisher, took the same approach of surviving but succeeded by having an average placement of fourth and scoring 59 points from placements in two matches less than Ninja and Reverse2k.
Like all other players, Ninja and Reverse2k will have two more shots at qualifying for the World Cup Duos Finals. The first will be in 15 days during the week eight qualifier, and the last will be during week 10 in a month.
The Fortnite World Cup Finals will take place in New York from July 26 to 28.
