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Paper Rex is one of the ten participating teams in VCT Pacific 2023, which kicked off on March 25, 2023. The Singaporean squad is one of a kind in many ways. From having one of the most lively personalities in the league to being notorious for their outlandish Agent picks with respect to the meta, Paper Rex is one of the teams to look out for in the Asian VCT scene.
VCT 2023 season has been a hit-and-miss for the squad, but they have introduced some intriguing strategies that they will be able to fine-tune over the course of the tournament.
PRX f0rsakeN talks about playing against Team Secret in VCT Pacific League 2023 and more
Abhipsito Das of Sportskeeda Esports got to speak to Jason "f0rsakeN" Susanto of Paper Rex, arguably one of the most popular players from the Asian VCT scene. The star Duelist of Paper Rex spoke about Jett's relative absence from today's series, coping with stress, and their opponent's pistol-round starts.
Q: We saw a Jett-less Haven comp in the VCT after a while. How do you think the absence of the Agent affected both your team's and your opponent's playstyles today?
f0rsakeN: Jett can create a lot of space for the team, which is something that I could do with the Yoru pick as well. Especially with Jinggg on the Raze, we were able to open up sites for the team and helped establish site control.
Q: You are pretty much the face of Yoru in VCT games. What is your favorite thing about the Agent?
f0rsakeN: I like the fact that it is quite disruptive, especially on a map like Haven, where you can TP around or fake your TP to get into the opponent’s mind. You and your team can take advantage of the number of distractions Yoru can create on the map.
Q: A second part to that. Jett is considered the best operator user in Valorant. How do you think Yoru compares as the primary sniper?
f0rsakeN: What makes Jett the best Agent to use as the Operator is the fact that she can dash away and reposition within a site after taking a shot. I believe, with Yoru, you can do that and then some more because you are able to start off a round with the Op on A with a TP sent into spawn, and then you can move away to safety and be ready to catch rotating opponents on the other side of the map. I actually think that Yoru can be better than Jett on maps like Haven.
Q: Haven't seen you play Neon in a while either. Considering there is nothing objectively wrong with the Jett-pick, do you think PRX might be putting themselves at a slight disadvantage against your VCT Pacific League opponents in an attempt to try new things?
f0rsakeN: Obviously, Jett is a very good Agent, and it is one that I am comfortable with, but we are trying to create new metas for maps. We have been doing better than we performed today in scrims, and these team comps are working. We just couldn’t close things out today, and they (Team Secret) were playing very well and made the most out of that.
Q: PRX was down multiple rounds on both Fracture and Haven. Is it stressful having to climb back every time? And what would you say is more difficult to deal with, being down a lot of rounds or being ahead and then losing the lead?
f0rsakeN: I mean, it is hard. You can say it is hard because maybe if the score is zero-something, the players may get discouraged. However, as professional players we are trained to reset our mentality, so we can reset our mental game if we are down zero-five or something, and we have to trust that we can come back round-by-round.
Q: How do you think playing around a Viper solo-Controller affected your attack half on Fracture?
f0rsakeN: Maybe it did to some extent, but on our Fracture attack half, we didn’t play the way we do in practice. Usually, in practice sessions on the map, we have a lot of tactics that work out well that didn’t seem to work in the match today.
It is a bit hard to run Viper as the solo controller, especially on the attack side of the map, but we had practiced with it, and we will try to do better next time.
Q: Paper Rex seemed to be having some difficulty converting pistol rounds throughout the series. Anything in particular that was going wrong?
f0rsakeN: I am not sure what we were doing wrong. Team Secret’s pistol round is just too strong, I guess. Maybe we just don’t get close enough with each other in pistol rounds and maybe that is why we lose pistol rounds.
Q: Your next game in VCT Pacific League is against T1. What do you think of them, and do you have any particular expectations from next week’s game?
f0rsakeN: For next week’s game we will do better than today, and we will smash T1.
Q: What are some of the most fun things you have been doing outside of practice here in Seoul during your stay for the VCT Pacific League?
f0rsakeN: We played football last week with my team, which was kind of fun. The rest of the days we just go around together, go for barbeques and stuff.
