Cloud9’s Vanity spoke on why he’s not ready to call his team the best in NA just yet – there’s still a job to finish.
Cloud9 closed out a perfect group stage, one of the only teams to be perfect so far across the VCT, and certainly have cemented their status as a favorite heading into the VCT Challenger playoffs. Despite that, C9 isn't ready to proclaim anything about their status as the "best team" in North America, or anywhere for that matter, just yet.
Not the best around - yet
Anthony "vanity" Malaspina was tagged for the post-match interview, where C9 clinched the perfect group stage, despite a shake appearance on Bind. For him, the specter of Champions still haunts his team - one where things went right in the group stage, but as soon as the playoffs hit things fell apart.
"We still haven't won anything - we won the group stage. It was the same thing at Champions, right?" Vanity said. "Obviously, it's cool. I'm really proud of what my team has accomplished, but we haven't done enough to warrant calling ourselves the best in NA. I don't think anyone has that title yet. You can make arguments, opinions behind it, especially since the meta just changed. But it's hard to call a team the best, and it's hard to call us the best, yet."
Cloud9 stuck in a Bind
As mentioned, Bind has historically been Cloud9's worst map. That hasn't changed at VCT Challengers, but even when you look at their historical stats, it's very clearly their worst map. Of course, that's not mentioning Fracture, which they've only picked once in competitive play according to VLR.gg.
Cloud9's map win rates:
- Bind: 50% across 48 maps
- Haven: 72% across 69 maps
- Split: 64% across 55 maps
- Ascent: 71% across 84 maps
- Icebox: 71% across 34 maps
- Breeze: 88% across 17 maps
- Fracture: 0% across 1 map
"Bind is the worst map ever created," Vanity said, laughing. "I'm sorry for ever disrespecting Ascent. Even Inferno is a better map than Bind. I never thought I'd say that. I think our only two map losses have been on Bind. They played well, but we're just bad at the map."
Indeed, Cloud9 even managed to ace out the Haven map, which historically has been the Guard's best map. Coming into yesterday's match, The Guard had only ever lost 2 maps on Haven. Guard has proven a bit better than Cloud9 on Bind historically, with a 5-3 record so far across 8 maps.
"It's our least practiced map, and doesn't click in our heads. Hopefully, we can get it before playoffs but otherwise, we just have to keep winning the other maps."
Astra to Omen - a sign of randomness this patch?
The most recent Valorant patch has introduced a number of changes to the game that's shifted the meta dramatically. Some, like Sentinels, have noted that it's a less utility-heavy meta. This is something that Vanity echoed in his interview and even called the patch's competitiveness into question.
"I'm not sure if this patch is that good for competition, it could lead to more inconsistencies," Vanity said. "I like playing Omen it's a lot of fun, allows me to be more self-sufficient. It can lead to more inconsistencies because when you're Astra you can control the map more, but it's been fun to get back on Omen more, maybe mix some Brimstone in there."
As for the future, could we perhaps see Vanity and C9 break out Neon and Yoru? Vanity was coy and not quick to give anything away, but it's certainly been explored.
"It's something we've tried," Vanity explained. "Before Liquid tried their Haven composition, we talked about running the exact same composition with Neon on Haven. It's not completely impossible that we try it. The more recent matches, probably not, but maybe in the future."
Cloud9 will now await their opponents in the VCT NA Challengers playoffs, for their chance at a ticket to Iceland.
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