DRX are one of the world’s best VALORANT teams, and easily a top early contender in the upcoming VCT Pacific season. The all-Korean roster is comprised of the former Vision Strikers core who dominated their region in 2020 and 2021, and since Champions 2022 the DRX team have inched closer and closer to eventually lifting an international trophy.
The team are fueled by some incredible star power, but individual prowess isn’t the only reason behind their prominent rise. DRX have found success with some fun and fearsome compositions, including a potent triple-initiator composition on Ascent that has led to numerous recent victories for the team.
Jakub “Lothar” Szygulski, a caster and analyst who also creates content for DRX, breaks down the team’s Ascent composition featuring Sova, KAY/O, and Fade in his most recent Lothar’s Lab entry. Given that initiators are designed to scout info and use their offensive abilities to flush enemies out of hiding spots, this triple-initiator comp maximizes the team’s map control.
Lothar demonstrates this by highlighting a defensive setup that gifts DRX a ton of information. A Fade Haunt in B main relays if the attacking team is pushing B fast. A KAY/O knife thrown from A Link to Mid Link will detect presence at Mid Link. Then Fade sends her Prowler through B Main to clear it out again, but Jett follows to take space, before a delayed Sova recon arrow lands in B Lobby to give Jett a clearer view of who’s there.
Lothar explains that this combo of utility will effectively “box out” the attacking side from coming anywhere close to the B site, allowing DRX players on B to rotate to A confidently just a few seconds into the round. This setup also lets DRX know that the opposing team are either top of Mid, or gathering outside of the A site.
As the round itself is played out, DRX’s opponents in BBL attempt to sell an A execute with a Sova drone and even a Killjoy Lockdown, but DRX used another KAY/O knife to figure out that BBL were not hard committing to A, and the Jett that took space in B Main at the beginning of the round never left. Jett gets a kill, retreats to safety, and that slows down the attacking push enough for DRX to rotate more people to the B site.
It’s only one round, but the setups and info gathered with this composition makes it extremely viable for DRX. In the past 10 Ascent games they’ve played using this composition, they’ve won eight times, and the only two losses were both 11-13. At Champions 2022, they beat OpTic, Fnatic, and FPX on Ascent using this composition.
Published: Mar 15, 2023 02:45 pm