Edward Gaming was crowned the champions during last weekend’s VALORANT Champions 2024. This year, the tournament took place in Seoul, and it was pretty surprising that the event had a winner from Asia. Some moments left fans’ jaws on the floor or made them gasp in shock. In this article, let’s look at five surprising facts from the tournament that may or may not be the answers to your following VALORANT pub quiz.
Image Credits: Riot Games
The first stat that would be pretty shocking is that Ascent was the least picked map during VALORANT Champions. In the eyes of many, this is the OG map of VALORANT. The map picked the second least within the tournament is the map of Haven.
There could be a significant reason for this. First, this map was banned as it is one of the best maps for various teams in the tournament. The second is that none of the teams really wanted to play this map, and thus, it was rarely picked. We saw a team composition with Clove and Phoenix in a single team during the tournament.
Another team composition that was widely used was the Cypher, Deadlock composition. This was due to both the agents having abilities that don’t have a range to be activated. It won’t be surprising to see the new agent Vyse being used similarly due to its universal presence. This is due to her abilities ArcRose and Razorvine having no range limitation to be activated.
For those who are interested, Lotus was the map picked the most, with Bind coming in second place.
Image Credits | Riot Games
While researching this article, I found something quite interesting that I feel isn’t widely discussed within our community. This concerns the health of the VALORANT meta. If we look at the combined stats for both the group stages and the playoffs, out of the 24 agents available to use, 23 were used in one game or more. This is quite a rare feat in any game with a dedicated Esports circuit.
The exciting aspect is that each “niche agent” also won their matches. An agent like Iso played during two games and won both. This was on the Haven map, one of the bigger maps within the game. Riot Games gradually finds the right balance between the maps and agents meta.
One might wonder why no one picked Reyna during this tournament. The answer could be pointed to one team, Paper Rex. This tournament showed that they didn’t select their signature team compositions. During the 2024 season of VCT, Paper Rex was one of the few teams to use Reyna.
Omen was the agent with the overall highest pick rate in the tournament, with a 100% pick rate on the Lotus and Haven maps.
Image Credits: Riot Games
If there was one player who stole the spotlight during the Grand Finals of VALORANT Champions 2024, it was Kangkang. This is due to his clutch play during crucial moments. His performance vastly improved during VCT Masters Shanghai, a tournament that took place in his home country.
During the Grand Finals, Kangkang broke the record for the highest amount of kills during a B05 in a VALORANT Esports tournament. This was one of the highest feats a player can achieve. This is because the Best of 5 series is all about a player’s mental fortitude and stamina to endure playing for over 3 hours with minimum breaks.
Kangkang, by the end of the match, had 115 kills under his name. The previous record was held by t3xture. During a game against Paper Rex, he had 105 kills in his name while they lost the game.
Below is a list of the players who previously held this record:
Image credits: Riot Games
Returning to the agents used within the tournament, there was much to break down. An interesting nugget was that Neon had the highest win rate for agents who had played over 35 rounds: 62%.
This means that out of the 37 rounds she used, she won 23. We haven’t picked agents for less than 35 rounds because that would be unfair. As stated previously, if we removed the 35-round criteria, Iso would have won this with a 100% win rate during the tournament.
Below is a list of all the agents which was picked for the highest amount of rounds within their respective classes:
Controller:
Omen: Played 107 maps with a 52% win rate
Sentinel:
Cypher: Played 73 maps with a 47% win rate.
Duelist:
Raze: Played 70 maps with a 46% win rate.
Initiator:
Sova: Played 90 maps with a 52% win rate.
These stats signify that there isn’t one agent that is quite overpowering and a sure-shot win condition within VALORANT.
It feels fitting that this list of VALORANT Champions ends with Kangkang. His performance during the Grand Finals is immortalized. Following his performance in the Grand Finals, he was given the inaugural MVP award of the match. During the Grand Finals, he broke multiple records within VAORANT Esports. The first record he broke was that he secured 26 first kills during the series. The previous record was 22.
Compared to his teammates, the summation of their first kills was 27. This was an incredible feat by Kangkang, proving that he is the entry-fragging duelist every ranked player dreams of being. There was a remarkable moment during the Grand Final where Team Heretics had won 5 maps in a row, and the momentum looked like it was slowly slipping away from Edward Gaming. In the next round, Kangkang picked up a guardian and rushed towards Team Heretics. He got the first kill and followed it up with three more, each kill being through a headshot. This was a display of his immense awareness and aim within the game.
The second stat that Kangkang broke during the VALORANT Champions 2024 Grand Finals was the highest amount of kills by a player in the grand finals of VALORANT Champions. He ended the tournament with a total of 115 kills in the series. He became the first player to get 100 kills during the Grand Finals.
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