another one of those long posts no one will read, nonetheless enjoy.
TL;DR
Case is not a bad team but their reliance on wolfen won't get them far,
especially as i'll be shocked if no bigger team picks him up.
they gotta cut their aim focused playstyle and actually develop a deeper
playbook if they wanna conquer top spots.
so they were great, until wolfen wasn't.
case coming into this thing seemed like a no name team for many people,
i've started following them a while ago so i'm hoping they will look at
least somewhat good, but i wouldn't expect a lot.
Case vs Excel
this game first took us to ascent - Case's map pick. while Case's very
agressive and reliant-on-duels style is flashy, it was clear that XL
was prepared for this map. they knew exactly how to contain their
opponents aggression.
Case failed to adapt and just decided to keep running into the same,
suprisingly managing to still get quite a few rounds. nonetheless they
were very stubborn and it was definitely what cost them the map.
as Haven rolled around, things were looking grim with a 4-8 defensive
half, and although wolfen started popping off and got some mad kills -
Excel handled it well. But haven is a rather attacker sided map so Case
seemed not to worry too much.
on attack they were looking very comfy with wolfen giving them just too much
space as he won what seemed to be every single aim duel. add to that the
struggling jett of Alive and what you get is an easy comeback.
Finally moving onto icebox, after a slow start Case take control of the
match and end up destroying excel with a solid plan and an even better
performance aim-wise.
case vs tenstar
Tenstar's bind was looking very promising after their Vitality game but oh
boy was it awful this time around. A 13-2 result in case's favor that
certainly wasn't an accident.
I feel like this map came down to wolfen A LOT. whenever tenstar were on a
full buy and tried getting some space, he would often single-handedly stop
them.
Haven had a closer scoreline but it doesn't mean it was a pleasant game to
watch... quite frankly i would call it one of the worst maps of professional
valorant i've ever seen. round 19 sums it up, you can look for a vod if you
wanna know what i mean, nonetheless both team played like shit - but case
was just less shit than tenstar.
Case vs A.Titans
honestly while the first map was fairly tasteless in terms of startegy for
Case, and the yoru of Bipo diffed them completely - the other two maps were
complete blow outs.
13-2 on haven as their opponents ran Phoenix and Cypher.
13-3 on icebox as they clearly knew how to play against the reyna of Lime.
they were just levels above.
Case vs Vitality
This was the first game where something i was worried about since the start
got exposed - their reliance on Wolfen.
first we had breeze and it was clear that Case were unable to gain space
whithout Wolfen destroying their opponents.
So since wolfen was not as good as before it was now exposed that this team
does lack layers. their gameplan relies heavily on a chamber gaining space.
also often it would be just wolfen going in, wich is weird when you have
ambi on raze or jett.
Haven was an example of Vitality's poor map pool i guess. Case looked good
there as usually while Vita was lacking in terms of good executes on attack
and made some poor rotations on defence and lost.
and on ascent it was back to the issues from map 1.
gotta give case one thing tho' - they were less predictable on this ascent
than they were against Excel, so they actually improved it and still lost.
Case vs FUT
Case coming into this was the favorite but FUT is a cracked team with some
experience on the T1 scene, interesting matchup.
and it's the vitality game again but to an even bigger degree.
i'll just sum up all 3 maps.
-Case never had enough map control (maybe except on haven)
-Wolfen didn't carry
-FUT was able to outaim them all
so biggest take away?
depth.
they lack depth.
Player thoughts:
Wolfen - guy has to get picked up by a bigger team. i could see him replace
Meddo on G2 for example as he's show he can play sentinels and tbh i don't
think he's good enough to play the star player role in T1.
at least not yet.
Falltw - great player but probably will remain in the T2 stage for a while
in the group stage he would sometimes pick up the slack if wolfen stopped
carrying, but calmed down a lot in playoffs.
Ambi - his switch onto dueslist was definitely a good idea but idk why he
sometimes just isn't the entry. cracked player, could see him in T1.
yurii - falltw 2.0
Roxie - probably the most undewhelming one out of the bunch. sometimes
reminds me of shao and sometimes of an average matchmaking player.
the biggest plus is that his util seem susually on point but he often fails
at an individual level wich for case's playstyle should be unacceptable.
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