It was a close call, but Korea’s DRX has made it through the group stage once again at an international VALORANT Champions Tour tournament. After falling to Evil Geniuses and dropping to the lower bracket, DRX were able to fight their way back against FUT Esports on June 13 to make it into playoffs at Masters Tokyo.
The team has been struggling to integrate a new young player into their roster all season and has received heavy criticism for switching him in and out at some of the team’s most important moments.
Today, the team opted to play the entire elimination match with their tried-and-true experienced roster. Instead of Jung “Foxy9” Jae-sung, the team chose to start Kim “Zest” Gi-seok. In addition, they returned to some of their signature compositions on their best maps to close the series out 2-1 and send FUT Esports home from Tokyo.
The series began on Bind, and DRX looked absolutely out of it.
Normally, one of DRX’s strengths lies in their team play which benefits from the expertise of their controller and sentinel players. But Kim “MaKo” Myeong-kwan, largely considered one of the best controller players in the world, had one of his worst performances in months on today’s first map. He was struggling to get kills, and struggling to work together with Zest, who was playing Brimstone, on the team’s double-controller setup.
On the other side, FUT’s Konur “qw1” Şahin was demolishing everything and everyone in his path on Raze. DRX has struggled to yield a solid duelist player all season, and Byung-chul “BuZz” Yu’s Raze performance just couldn’t stand up to the numbers qw1 was putting up.
Though DRX began to mount a slight comeback on their defensive side, FUT is known as one of the most momentum-based teams in the entire VCT, and they wouldn’t let the map get away from them. FUT won Bind 13-9, and DRX looked finished.
There was hope for the Korean team, however, as they reverted to their original agent composition on Fracture which has continued to net them wins both in Pacific League and internationally. The composition features DRX’s flex player Goo “Rb” Sang-min on Neon. Today’s casters even mentioned that Rb might be one of the best Neon players in the world at this point, even though the only time he plays duelist is on Fracture.
Just two days before, DRX lost to EG with a different Fracture composition that attempted to utilize Foxy9, who doesn’t play Neon. They looked awful on that map, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth of DRX fans who had memories of Rb’s flashy Neon weighing on their minds.
Related: VCT Masters Tokyo 2023: VALORANT scores, schedule, and format
Qw1 again performed well, but certainly didn’t put up the same destructive numbers as he had on Bind. FUT only managed two rounds in the second half of Fracture and lost the map 13-8.
All tied up, the two teams made their way onto Haven. This map is known historically as one of DRX’s very best, though they only have a 50 percent win rate on it in the Pacific League this season. Unsurprisingly, most of their losses on the map came when they had Foxy9 in the lineup playing Jett.
Haven was a show of classic DRX, with BuzZ on Jett, Zest on Sova, and MaKo on Omen. Their familiar strategies made the map look effortless, and FUT only managed one round in the first half. The map was virtually unsalvageable by halftime, especially for the momentum-based squad.
FUT eventually fell 13-4 on Haven, losing 1-2 to DRX, and are thus eliminated from the tournament at the behest of the Korean squad.
With this result, DRX move on from the group stage, but it was a close call. The team still has a lot of thinking to do if they want to accomplish their long-awaited goal of bringing home a VCT trophy.
As for FUT, their Tokyo campaign is over, but they secured their spot at VCT Champions Los Angeles later this year after their EMEA counterparts NAVI were eliminated yesterday. They now have time to rest and recuperate before hopefully emerging with a strong showing in August.
