October 2022 appeared to be the beginning of a golden chapter for Cloud9 VALORANT.
Fresh off of securing a coveted partnership with Riot Games for one of its 10 VCT Americas slots on Sept. 20, 2022, C9 announced its “heavy hitters” 2023 VALORANT program, headlined by the star-studded additions of Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker, Jordan “Zellsis” Montemurro, and new head coach Matthew “mCe” Elmore. Commonly dubbed a superteam from its inception, C9 were expected to not only contend for Americas supremacy, but also be a sure bet for Champions 2023 at the end of the year.
However, despite the team looking strong, coach mCe wasn’t so sure. In an interview with Dot Esports last week, he broke down the reasoning behind C9’s decisions to shake things up.
“I think the biggest thing is people underrate comfort and systems,” mCe said. “If you have a guy that’s very comfortable on three agents and he can play it well and that’s a meta agent [pool], you’re just instantly going to be better.”
Just over four months and two preseason LAN events after forming, the new regime’s run came to an abrupt end. After falling in a heavyweight battle against DRX in the second round of VCT LOCK//IN, C9 mutually parted ways with yay. A week later, the org announced the departure of its long-tenured in-game leader Anthony “vanity” Malaspina despite other members of the team reportedly expressing their desire for him to stay.
While C9 gave little clue as to why it dropped vanity, org owner Jack Etienne and mCe appeared in a video at the time to explain how yay’s release was mainly a result of issues involving changing roles and overlap—something many within the VCT community and El Diablo himself appeared to remain highly skeptical about.
MCe reaffirmed to Dot that the org is operating with a long-term view in mind, and confirmed that he thought C9’s LOCK//IN roster just wasn’t all that well-equipped to handle the ever-evolving meta due to conflicting agent roles.
“I just think leaf is incredible on a duelist role,” mCe said. “It fits him really well, his personality, his play style, everything. He was performing really well on sentinel and he likes sentinel but it’s like, ‘Would he be better in this role?’ It’s [about] trying to find comfortability.”
| Xeppa | Skye, Sova |
| Zellsis | Neon, Phoenix, Sage |
| leaf | Cypher, Killjoy, Viper |
| vanity | Astra, Omen, Killjoy |
| yay | Chamber, Sage, Jett |
MCe also explained that at LOCK//IN, it still appeared as though the team hadn’t addressed the hole Son “xeta” Seon-ho left after he was somewhat questionably dealt to T1 in May 2022.
“They’ve been missing a scan initiator since xeta left,” mCe said. “They’ve been trying to fill that role and haven’t looked as strong, so it’s like, ‘Do we need to finally pick one of those up? Do we look better?’ We’ve played a lot of trials with people in different roles to see where my core guys excelled and where I need to try to put those guys moving forward.”
Earlier this week, C9 confirmed its signings of two under-the-radar players in Jake “jakee” Anderson and Dylan “runi” Cade. Jakee has competed in collegiate VALORANT since the start of the year and appears primed to pick up the controller duties. Runi competed with Soniqs from April 2022 to January earlier this year, spending most of his time on Sova and Fade.
Heading into VCT Americas play, C9 likely won’t be very high on most people’s power rankings. To mCe, however, the sky is still the limit as long as his core players perform to the standard fans are used to seeing, and if his two new pickups mesh in.
“We did lose two very good players, but our core is still very good,” mCe said. “If those three perform, it doesn’t matter who is in our fourth and fifth slot. They will do well if those guys play anywhere near their normal level or peak. And if we can find two guys that also help that out, then we can be a really good team still.”
Cloud9 will face Evil Geniuses in week one of the VCT Americas split on Sunday, April 2, at 5pm CT.
