Revisiting My 2023 Predictions
And some thoughts on 2024.
With the 2024 season underway I thought it would be fun to look back at my read on the meta heading into the 2023 season. The full post can be found here for those interested.
(I) 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.
Excluding teams like PRX, EDG, and T1, double duelist saw continued play on only one map (split) in the pool over the course of 2023, with 3 of the top 4 teams at champs running this comp. Outside of split, however, teams tend to heavily favor either Jett or Raze, with the preferred agent sitting between 70 - 100% pick rate on a given map. Split, bind, lotus, and fracture are Raze maps, Ascent, Pearl, and Haven are Jett maps.
…(Omen’s) 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.
Here are the pickrates at champs 2022, the last major tournament prior to my predictions for 2023.
Here are the pickrates at champs 2023. Not much has changed, Omen is still the go-to dome smoker everywhere other than Bind, Split, and Fracture, which has sadly been removed from the map pool for 2024. There is some regional variation from map to map, but Omen seems poised to remain the de facto pick on maps requiring dome smokes.
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…
2023 saw Fade relegated to a niche pick everywhere other than Lotus, where she sat slightly above a 50% pickrate at champs. I don’t expect much to change for her. I did expect to see experimentation with her paired with Sova on maps like Icebox, which has returned to the pool for 2024, but I’m no longer open to the idea that the value that paired recons brings outweighs the value that Harbor or Sage bring.
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.
I still think Valorant is in a healthy state overall. Jett has her maps, Raze has hers, each smoke agent still sees play, though not on every map, initiators and sentinels are in a similar place. While I’m happy to see teams experimenting with Yoru, Reyna, and Phoenix, I’d be absolutely shocked to see any of their pickrates take a sizeable chunk out of Jett and Raze’s on their respective maps.
Despite excitement over the 1 for 1 Gekko / Skye replacement on Bind and Split, Yoru popping up a bit more often, and whatever the hell Loud was doing on Ascent recently, I don’t expect the meta to be upended on any of the long-standing maps in the game over the course of 2024 barring the introduction of an agent with peak Jett/Chamber/Astra level power. Sunset will likely fall into the same trend as every other map with one or two (almost always one) dominant composition as the year progresses, and that’s totally fine, if a bit less fun. Overall I’m happy to see more teams in the league and sad that the season will end in about 6 months after having very little Valorant to watch since last August.
Today’s recommendation is buying a marshall over an outlaw.