"I don’t think it's a major advantage": stax on absence of stringent roles in DRX ahead of VCT Pacific League

The VCT Pacific League will kick off on March 25, 2023, in Seoul, South Korea. This is the Asian leg of the 2023 VCT season and features ten partner teams under the new format.

Riot Games organized a press conference ahead of the event, titled Face Off, which was attended by players from the ten participating teams. Among them was Kim "stax" Gu-taek from the Korean team DRX, who answered a question sent in by Sportskeeda.

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DRX plays Valorant differently from other teams in the VCT circuit

There is a strange anomaly when it comes to DRX’s playstyle that sets them apart from other teams. While most teams have designated roles for players, DRX is much more flexible, with members switching Agents based on the map, which may or may not be the ones that they usually play.

It was in this context that Sportskeeda asked stax how he felt this sort of flexibility added to the team’s performance in matches, and what advantages it gave them over others who have more stringent roles. Here is how he responded:

"To be honest, we don’t really think too much into it. If we had to choose an advantage, it would be that we can pick and choose Agents that are more meta on a particular map, but I don’t think that it's a major advantage.”

In fact, it is only Kim “MaKo” Myeong-gwan, who seems to never move out of his role as the primary Controller for the team. In comparison, Goo “Rb” Sang-Min, is what one might call a true flex player as there is not a single role that he hasn’t played. In their Alpha Bracket finals in VCT LOCK//IN, he played Killjoy, Neon, Skye, and Astra.

Not having specific players play specific roles has its repercussions. We have seen how much even pros struggle with the finer details when put on Agents they are not very used to playing.

Rb, and other DRX members, however, manage to play each of them to near perfection, as if they played those Agents on a daily basis. While stax might not credit himself or the team much for being able to achieve this, or for that matter acknowledge the advantages it nets them beyond meta-adherence, it does give the team a substantial upper hand.

This is because different Agents within a particular class have varied playstyles. A particular one might have to be played differently on different maps.

Moreover, players add a different dimension to an Agent when they play it. All these factors add a lot of depth to DRX’s playbook because they are able to free themselves of a stringent role-based structure.

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Going by past performances, DRX is by far the most successful team in the Pacific League and one of the favorites to grab one of the available seats for VCT Masters 2023 to be held in Tokyo later this year.