Coach Faded answered us regarding the adaptability of Team Vitality to meta shifts in VALORANT following the series against DRX.
Team Vitality is rolling through VALORANT Masters Bangkok as the first team to qualify for Playoffs. They've taken down both Pacific region teams, besting T1 and then DRX. Following the latter contest, we attended a post-match press conference and delivered a question to coach Daniel "Faded" Hwang.
This year has seen a big change in how teams approach VALORANT. The meta shift is arguably one of the largest we've seen in the game's history. From a new Agent right away immediately to frequent map pool changes, we wanted to know how his team adapts to these situations and stays on top.
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Coach Faded discusses his Team Vitality players and their ability to control the VALORANT meta
These post-match press conferences at VALORANT Masters Bangkok are a great way to get insight from players and coaches with the entire team available. It gives them a chance to respond to each other and sometimes gives us great banter between teammates.
Other times, you'll get moments like our question to coach Faded where he gets the chance to talk about how his players are utter superstars. We asked him to kind of just go down the line of Team Vitality players and how they've shown the aforementioned capabilities in different metas.
Here's what he had to say:
"Yeah, I mean, I think if I went player for player, I'd probably talk for like 30 or 40 minutes, and these guys know. I think there is a couple things that I do want address. I think, starting with Less, Less' understanding of the game is, and I always glaze this guy.
"I know, I'm sorry guys, but he actually has a very strong understanding of the game. And it's not just mechanical. He is always thinking about different macros with different compositions, different ideas or different ways that there are strength and weaknesses to all the comps.
"And I think that also translates to how Sayf thinks about the game. And Sayf is, Sayf is actually very, TLDR, Sayf is very natural when it comes to understanding agents and their ability to be integrated into different systems.
"And every single one of the players, they're always kind of giving input into ways we can play, the troubles or issues they're experiencing, what they're seeing, how we can counter it, what the gaps are. And you know, it kind of relates to our adaptable style of play.
"But it also influences how we see the meta and how we see ways that we can kind of manipulate or change the meta. And I think that's one of the key things about teams, you know, with the Pacific region, right? They're very structured. They have a lot of good systems that play very strong.
"They have a lot of set strategies, rotations, and different protocols that they do. And the way that our team operates is that we incorporate that along with our understanding of what we expect from the different regions. And I think that's where all the players kind of, their input valued.
"And that's the way we actually shape, quote unquote what the meta is, but we kind of shape it for what we want it to be, right? We study other teams as we play them, we watch them, but in reality, we build what we want to as a team with our players' core identities. We are capitalizing on those core identities."
That's where he ended, saying if he spoke about the other players then he might give away some secrets. Then Sayf chimed in with a quip, stating we needed to buy the DLC if we wanted to hear the rest of what coach Faded had to say.
We got a good laugh out of that ending, and it is clear that this is a very structured team of incredible players who want to win and know what they need to do to make it happen. You can see the question and answer in action through the press conference, as well as watch the entire conferences for DRX and Team Vitality below.
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