Professional players across VALORANT’s three leagues—Americas, EMEA, and Pacific—are willing to take the game’s latest agent Gekko to official matches, but the bet hasn’t paid off so far. The newest initiator has been picked in a total of 14 maps in VCT Leagues, but the team who got Gekko won only five times.
Europe is the region where Gekko is most popular thus far. The initiator was picked in the very first series of VCT EMEA—KOI vs. Natus Vincere—by NAVI’s star Andrey “Shao” Kiprsky on Ascent and Lotus, but NAVI lost to KOI twice.
VCT EMEA was also the only franchised league where there was a Gekko vs. Gekko map thus far. NAVI’s Kyrylo “ANGE1” Karasjov picked the new agent and played against Giants Gaming’s Kirill “Cloud” Nehozhin on Pearl, and helped NAVI win 13-7 and score their first victory in the league. Gekko was picked a total of nine times in VCT EMEA and delivered four wins and five losses.
Related: Here are all the abilities for Gekko, VALORANT’s newest initiator
While Gekko has been a popular pick in VCT EMEA, the same isn’t true in VCT Pacific. Talon Esports are the only Asian team who played Gekko thus far in the league and they lost both of their maps against T1. Patiphan “Patt” Chaiwong played Gekko first on Ascent, which T1 won 13-8, and Itthirit “foxz” Ngamsaard locked in Gekko for Haven without success as T1 easily beat Talon 13-6.
It’s still too early to say whether Gekko will be popular or not in VCT Americas since the first round hasn’t concluded yet. The first matches of the league were played this past weekend and Gekko was picked two times by LOUD’s in-game leader Matias “Saadhak” Delipetro, who showed great prowess with the initiator on Split and not so much on Lotus vs. MIBR, and one time by Evil Geniuses’ Corbin “C0M” Lee on Pearl, which EG lost to Cloud9 13-11.
Related: The best agents in VALORANT: Ranked tier list
Two of the issues Gekko has in comparison to prime initiators Sova and Killjoy is that he doesn’t provide as much scouting and thus the team that has Gekko in their comp tends to struggle to get map control. His ultimate is also less valuable than Sova and Killjoy’s.
The good news is that pros are actively trying to figure out Gekko’s space in the meta and soon we’ll have more data on which maps he works best on, for example. Riot Games, on the other hand, has nerfed Gekko a bit in the latest patch, having reduced Mosh Pit’s (C) damage to objects because it was overperforming in comparison to KAY/O’s FRAG/ment (C) and Breach’s Aftershock (C).
