After the kick off tournament in Sao Paolo for the new VCT format, every franchised team is back in their home regions to fight off their peers for a slot in the first VCT Masters in 2023.
The Pacific region will kick off the tourney with DRX leading the pack. Oddsmaker Pinnacle has DRX winning VCT Pacific at 1.95. A clear favorite despite other heavy hitters in the region such as Talon Esports at 4.88, Paper Rex at 5.81 and Team Secret at 7.69.
※ Current Odds Date & Time: March 16th, 11:00 A.M. (EST)
Team DRX has been a staple representative of the Pacific region in international tournaments and has represented well, making it to the top four of the Sao Paulo Lock In tournament to kick off the 2023 season after a gritty 2-3 defeat against the home team LOUD, who finished the tournament in second place. DRX consistently finishes at the top but has always fallen just short from making it to the grand finals. Losing to Team Optic in the lower bracket finals in the VCT Champions 2022 and finishing 5th-6th in both Masters Copenhagen and Reykjavik.
Chemistry seems to play a huge role in the team’s success as they have the longest standing roster in all of VALORANT’s franchised teams with the roster being the same since January 2022. The team goes as far back as in the early days of the VALORANT pro scene under the Vision Strikers banner before Team DRX bought their roster. Despite the shuffling that happened en masse, it seems like the DRX boys are fond of sticking together to finally be crowned world champions.
Talon Esports is surprisingly ahead of Paper Rex in terms of the odds despite Paper Rex being a very successful team internationally. Hailing from Thailand, Talon Esports shocked the world in their international debut by making it as deep as the quarterfinals in Brazil. They were eliminated by Pacific neighbors DRX by a nail-biting 2-1 score. Meanwhile, Paper Rex will be fielding in their iconic aggressive roster that has reached as far as 2nd place back in VCT Masters Copenhagen when they lost to the star-studded FunPlus Phoenix in the grand finals.
Team Secret did not have a very deep run in Sao Paulo, although they did pull off the best upset in the tournament in eliminating Team Liquid in the first round. Team Liquid notably employed the services of world champions Nats and Redgar from Gambit Esports. However, an unfavorable bracket matched them against Navi in the second round that ended their tournament run.
The VCT Pacific League is stacked with some of the best talent in the world. Amongst such great teams, will team DRX prove themselves the best?
