LOUD remain at the top of the VALORANT world, having been crowned the game’s second-ever world champion in 2022 and just missing out on making history in the LOCK//IN finals earlier this month. Heading into the first-ever VCT Americas season, LOUD is a heavy favorite to qualify for both Masters Tokyo and Champions 2023 with its South American roster not missing a beat despite replacing two of its players.
Aside from boasting one of the most well-respected lineups in the world, however, LOUD has demonstrated time and time again how there are levels to their approach to the game from a strategy standpoint, and the team recently showcased this on Lotus. During LOCK//IN, LOUD actually didn’t play the newest VALORANT map until its very final best-of-five series. Despite this, what transpired once they did play on it was something that all players could learn from.
As demonstrated in a recent VALORANT Alchemy video by Acend content creator Donnie “Elevated” Chell, the sample sizes for pro data on Lotus are still small, understandably so. However, if there is a team that is close to figuring out the meta team composition on the three-site map, it’s got to be LOUD.
With a double-controller comp of Viper, Harbor, Killjoy, Skye, and Jett, Elevated believes LOUD’s Lotus lineup is simply ahead of the game both on the stat sheet and in the eye test.
Elevated highlights this on an attacking round from LOUD in which the utility from their Viper and Harbor players, Matias “Saadhak” Delipetro and Arthur “tuyz” Vieira, appear to just completely force Fnatic to lose a ton of information and map control on A and C from the jump, despite not actually sending any players there.
A Viper Poison Cloud from Saadhak gets things started for LOUD. By cutting off the defenders’ vision between A Root and A Rubble, Fnatic’s A-stack is thrown off and causes them to turtle back on site. Meanwhile, to take map control on the C-side, LOUD uses Saadhak’s Viper Toxic Screen and tuyz’s Harbor Cascade to dissuade both of Fnatic’s C players from pushing up to C Mound. With these mind games in place, LOUD sends three players to B. Patiently and quietly, LOUD ends up getting an easy pick before planting the spike for free.
Although Fnatic ends up retaking the site and winning the round, Elevated explains how this sort of process is the way players should want to approach the attacking side of Lotus. As the attackers with this comp on Lotus, players have a lot of tools to cause problems for the defense. Instead of simply committing to a site immediately, which is easy to read, taking early space and control of the rotating doors with Viper and Harbor’s smokes allows players to confuse the defenders about what is really going on and gain positional advantages.
After losing the first three rounds of the map, LOUD ended up winning seven of the next nine, and the map entirely 13-9. Days later, both Turtle Troop and The Guard each nabbed wins on Lotus using the same comp in the North American VALORANT Challengers League.
