Predictions and General Thoughts on 2023
Chamber is Dead. Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Below are some of my thoughts on the prevailing narratives as we head into the 2023 competitive season, as well as some of my own predictions for how the meta will shape up. I plan on revisiting this piece after Champions to see how my predictions turned out, and I’m interested to know what all of your expectations are for the year. Leave a comment below or reach out to me on Discord @Glizzy#3224.
The last two years of competitive play have each been largely defined by a single agent’s dominance (Jett, and Chamber, respectively) despite team-level deviations and fluctuations in the smoke and initiator metas. I’m not quite sure how to quantify the effect that an agent like Chamber had on the game relative to Astra at the peak of her power, but thankfully it looks like his stranglehold on the game has been weakened somewhat. This, coupled with the buffs duelists have seen, Yoru’s rework, the marginal improvement to the actual sentinels in the game (whichever dev classified Chamber as a sentinel was on meth), a shocking level of parity among smoke agents (Harbor excluded), and a similar level of variety among initiators, leads me to believe that 2023 will likely have a healthy amount of compositional diversity as we enter the “franchise” era of Valorant.
There has been some discussion recently of what Chamber’s death will do to the meta overall, with many arguing that we will see a return to double-duelist. The argument, at least in part, hinges on the strength of Yoru, who, much like Chamber, does not properly fit the role bestowed upon him by Riot. Yoru’s effect on the game increases as enemy numbers decrease, and despite his 3 flashes, is not as effective a space taker as the three dive duelists currently in the game. Yoru is at his best when paired with a space taking duelist, a slot which, up until recently, was often taken by Chamber in the composition (assuming Yoru occupies the other potential slot). If you’re running a Chamber and need a space-creator, why pick Yoru over Jett, Raze, or Neon? To say nothing of the triple-initiator compositions on Ascent, or 0 duelist Icebox. Yoru might be among the greatest beneficiaries of Chamber’s demise, or so the argument goes.
I do expect Yoru to gain in popularity this year, and I also expect to see a rise in double duelist at Sao Paolo relative to 2022. I don’t, however, expect double duelist to dominate the entire year of pro play as it did in 2021, and expect the prevalence of this compositional archetype to decrease over the course of the year. The trend away from double duelist in favor of having two initiators or controllers (or both!) began in 2021, and while I would argue that Chamber acted in many ways as a duelist in 2022 (meaning double duelist was still, in some ways, prevalent), this trend continued in 2022 with maps like Ascent and Icebox seeing a variety of viable compositions that included either a single duelist or Chamber in their place. I expect this pattern to continue, and therefore am not buying into the double duelist hype, at least in the long-term for 2023. What I am very much buying into, however is the return of Jett on her maps, and Raze’s continued play on the others.
Smoke agents are in an interesting place with patch 6.0 removing Omen’s unique (within the role) one-ways despite never before seen parity within the role. The discussion I’ve seen on the topic thus far is something to the effect of “Omen is bad now so Astra will be good”. Omen was uniquely capable of pressuring certain areas of certain maps relative to other agents (A halls on Fracture and A main on Split spring to mind), but I’m not sure how much I rate that part of his kit relative to his ability to smoke 6 times in a round compared to 4 or 3 for his dome-smoking counterparts. Should double duelist, in fact, become dominant, this might be the critical point that keeps Omen’s pickrate up, both because of his effectiveness at site hits and his constant pressure across the full duration of a round. This, as I see it, is his main strength, and why I doubt that the nerf will have a huge effect on his pickrate in the long-term.
I expect Fade’s dominance in the initiator slot to decrease somewhat with her recent nerfs, especially as the reintroduction of traditional sentinels makes Sova’s shock darts far more valuable than they were. I don’t, however, think she’ll fall out of play entirely, as I’m expecting Fade + Sova to emerge as a viable initiator pairing. This is something I expect to write about in the future, but coordinated recon timing in certain areas like yellow on Icebox all but ensure valuable info, and the slower pace I think likely with the resurgence of sentinels makes both recons more valuable on their own.
I think Valorant is currently in the healthiest state it’s ever been in, and am very much looking forward to seeing inventive compositions go head-to-head at the largest international tournament we’ve seen so far in the game. Despite this, recalcification as the year progresses seems imminent, and expect that at least 3 of the 7 maps in the pool will be in a similar place to Icebox soon enough, with 4/5 agents being essentially invariant with changes only possible in one or two slots.