Cloud 9’s former CS:GO star is fitting nicely into his new role after moving over to C9’s Valorant team. Floppy is finding early success in the game learning to play Valorant’s newest agent, Astra.
It's less than two weeks ago when Cloud 9 announced that Ricky "floppy" Kemery would be moving from their CS:GO team to their Valorant Blue team. C9 has been struggling to find a consistent roster since Tyson "TenZ" Ngo stepped down from the team in January. However, since Floppy made the switch over to Valorant, C9 Blue has won four of their last five matches and are currently competing for one of two spots to represent North America at the first ever International Valorant Masters.
Despite the limited time playing Valorant, Floppy is starting to get a better grasp of the game and its current meta. “It's kind of a weird transition period for me because I didn't really play Valorant until like two or three weeks ago," said Ricky "floppy" Kemery. "But I think now that just playing more scrims, watching more games, and playing matches is definitely helping me individually get better.”
Although Valorant and CS:GO are both 5V5 competitive shooters, Floppy would like to see Riot make changes to some of the game modes, such as Deathmatch. He feels that the opponent sounds and radar assistant, that are not available in CS:GO, make Valorant’s version of the game challenging and not as fun to play. Floppy also critiqued the mechanics of Valorant and hopes that some of the aiming issues that have been plaguing it since launch, will someday be changed.
“Like you can't hold angles in this game," said Floppy. "You just have to either, like juggle peek something, and then you're standing still and you're just gonna die because people just swing into you and just lowball you. That's like, something that needs to change," said Floppy.
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Floppy is joining C9 Blue just in time for the latest meta to be developed, where Astra and Viper are being played in the controller slot. During the first day of competition in the NA Stage 2 Challengers 2 Finals, Astra had a 73% pick rate, the most of any controller available. According to Floppy, there is no reason not to pick Astra.
“I think Astra’s skillset compared to the rest of the controllers is just like way too OP. With the stars like there needs to be like an adjustment to the agent," said Floppy.
Cloud 9 Blue will look to continue their early success throughout the Stage 2 Challengers 2 and try to punch their ticket to compete in Reykjavik, Iceland this May.
