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The Pacific League of the VCT International Split kicked off on Saturday, March 25, 2023. Day 1 of the tournament was grueling and went on for much longer than intended due to unforeseen technical issues, and Day 2 was not short of drama albeit for different reasons.
The second match on Sunday, March 26, 2023, was between Team Secret and Talon Esports. While most members of the analyst desk were in favor of Talon winning the series, given their superb performance at VCT LOCK//IN in Sao Paulo, Team Secret came out on top with a 2-1 scoreline.
The series went to Ascent, Icebox, and then Fracture. While the first two maps were comfortable territories for the Filipino team, they struggled quite a bit on Icebox. Here is an overall analysis of the second map of the series with inputs from Jessie "JessieVash" Cuyco himself and what went wrong for them.
JessieVash says Team Secret was thrown off by Talon Esports players' hero plays in VCT Pacific 2023
Team Secret played with the same composition on Icebox that they used in VCT LOCK//IN against Team Liquid and Natus Vincere, which consisted of KAY/O, Sova, Sage, Killjoy, and Viper. What sticks out is the absence of a Duelist.
This team composition allows them to throw a nearly infinite number of abilities at their opponents. Those familiar with the game know how difficult (and annoying) it is to cope with an endless range of utilities coming your way when you try to defuse the Spike in post-plant situations.
Moreover, given that Icebox is a relatively attacker-sided map, on paper this team should have found a lot of success on that side of their VCT Pacific League game. However, they only managed to get three out of the twelve-round half.
It must also be noted that Talon Esports was running a slightly off-meta composition, replacing the traditional Sage with Harbor. In this context, Sportskeeda asked Jessie whether the team found it difficult to break through the defenses because of their opponent's Agent choices.
He responded as follows:
"I don't think that their Agents picks were giving us a hard time, rather that their hero plays were working for them."
It is true that they did get the Spike down on seven out of their twelve attacking rounds, and things fell apart for the squad post-plant. Jessie went on to corroborate the same.
"I think we always got the plant. It was the post-plant situations that did not work because they always pushed. They always gambled and tried to get hero plays and they kept getting one or two kills like that. I think this happened for about four or five rounds."
While it's true that Team Secret's composition is not designed for hyper-aggression, it does offer them the ability to counter such plays using a variety of utilities, which they failed to do in their first Icebox game.
While forgoing a Duelist can work for Team Secret, as they have proven in VCT LOCK//IN, they must be prepared to handle potential aggression from their opponents, particularly given the current Valorant meta's shift towards faster-paced gameplay facilitated by Agents like Harbor.
