The VALORANT Champions 2024 race to the playoffs is heating up and some of the teams have already booked their slots. Day 8 of VALORANT Champions consisted of teams fighting to survive during the competition, one of them being Team Vitality.
Team Vitality Takes One Step Closer to Playoffs
Image Credits: Riot Games
Going into this VALORANT tournament, Team Vitality was one of the favorites to qualify for the playoffs. In our VALORANT Champions Power Ranking article, we placed them in the top 8. Their match against Trace Esports is considered one of the biggest upsets in the tournament so far. According to Riot Games, in the VALORANT Pick’ems, only 5% of players selected Trace Esports to qualify for the playoffs. In their match against LEVIATAN, Talon Esports came up short and had to fight for their survival.
This match-up was one-sided, as Talon Esports just couldn’t get the ball rolling. In game one on the map of Lotus, Team Vitality won with a scoreline of 13-6. Kicks and trexx took over the server in this game. With a kill-to-death difference of +13, kicks were crucial for Breach. He was being the focus initiator for the team. While he didn’t have any rounds with more than two kills, he secured two rounds for his team. He was winning a crucial 1v2 clutch to help his team win the map. On the other hand, Papaphat “Primmie” Sriprapha couldn’t show his magic to Clove.
Game 2 was played on the Sunset map. It looked like a leveled match during the first half, with a score of 6-6. On defense, Team Vitality shut down Talon Esports’ Cypher Deadlock team composition. Our previous articles discussed why teams have run this double sentinel team composition. Team Vitalty won the map with a score of 13-8. This means that Talon Esports got eliminated in their first VALORANT Champions event in the first round.
Paper Rex Shut Down FUT Esports During Day 8 Of VALORANT Champions
Image Credits: Riot Games
After losing to G2 Esports, many felt that Paper Rex wasn’t the same. They were a shadow of the team in the same event’s grand finals last year. It did look like Sentinels just couldn’t get over the hurdle—teams from VCT Americas. Going into this match, many wondered if we would see a change in the team dynamic, and we did.
On the first map of Sunset, Paper Rex used a simple team composition consisting of Raze Breach and Gekko. Multiple teams have used this and Paper Rex in the past. The gameplay was simple this time: just go for kills and finish the game. Each of the seven rounds Paper Rex won on attack was by killing FUT Esports, not by the spike timer. Paper Rex won game one with a score of 13-11
Game 2 was a one sided affair. After a long time, we saw Paper Rex use a team composition without Reyna or Yoru. This time, it was the double initiator team with Fade and Gekko. This time on Raze Wang Jing “Jinggg” Jie was a demon. He ended the game with a KDA of 21/13/3 and eight first-bloods. Just to put that in perspective, there were only 19 rounds of players. Of those 19 rounds, the first kill in 8 was just by Jinggg. Paper Rex won this match with a scoreline of 13-6.