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The VCT Pacific League started off with a banger match between the Korean team DRX and the Japanese team ZETA DIVISION on March 25, 2023. This was only the first series of the first week of the eight-week tournament, and it already saw some excellent plays from both teams on various occasions.
DRX came out on top in a dominant fashion, closing the game over the first two maps of the three-map series. The series started off on Ascent and then headed to Pearl, both of which the Korean VCT team closed out comfortably.
It was interesting to see how both DRX and ZETA DIVISION approached each of the two maps they played against each other. While Ascent saw a mirror matchup between the two teams, with both playing the same set of Agents on the map, Pearl saw two different takes on the same idea.
DRX played a Sentinel-less Agent composition on Pearl in their VCT Pacific League opening match
2022 World Champions, LOUD, started the trend of playing a combination of Harbor and Viper on Pearl during their VCT LOCK//IN matches earlier this year. When DRX played against LOUD in the Alpha Bracket finals of the tournament, DRX brought out a mirror composition but suffered a 5-13 loss on the map.
Coming into the VCT Pacific tournament, the Korean giants decided to make a slight adjustment to that composition for their first match. Instead of the standard Skye and Killjoy combination, they decided to scrap the Sentinel role altogether. They brought in twice the initiation power with a combination of Fade and KAYO, which proved to be an effective change.
When questioned by Sportskeeda during the post-match interview about the potential dangers of making a decision that could make the team more susceptible to being flanked and weaken their defense, DRX's coach Pyeon "termi" Seon-ho responded (translated from Korean):
"This is a rather sensitive question, so I will answer it briefly. It's not a pact that we will always use two Initiators and no Sentinels all the time. There are other compositions we can use on the same map. Just know that we have all these things covered in our game plan."
The fact that they had things covered was evident from their ability to defeat ZETA DIVISION 13-5 with this combination. However, it was their first time playing the map with this composition, and the strategy may not work at later stages of the tournament.
