The ESPN Esports VALORANT Invitational brings together teams of pros, former pros and streamers from a huge variety of esports. You've got your battle royale squads from games like Fortnite, PUBG and Apex Legends. You've got your ability-focused players from Overwatch and Rainbow Six Siege. You've got Counter-Strike pros who know prefiring and recoil patterns by heart. You've got a League of Legends squad who are coming to a completely different style of game. To top it all off, you've got the VALORANT developers who might be the tournament's version of a final boss.
We know you'll all be rooting for your favorite squads, but only one can win it all. Though the game is still brand new, we've ranked each team in the tournament based on how we think they'll perform.
1. Team Dev
It's something of a stereotype that developers are bad at actually playing their own games, but that is not the case at all with the team Riot Games are sending to this tournament. Earlier this month, a dream team of Summit1g, Fl0m, shroud, Dizzy and Skadoodle all took on the VALORANT devs -- and got absolutely massacred, with the devs taking their series by a total score of 39-10. The VALORANT dev team includes former pros in CS:GO, Call of Duty and League of Legends. These guys are no slouch in the aim department, and as for map knowledge, well, who'd know the maps better than the folks that built them? -- Joe DeMartino
2. Team Mirage
Braxton "brax" Pierce
Keven "AZK" Larivière
Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham
Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert
Spencer "Hiko" Martin
Talk about stacked. Other than the VALORANT development team, it's become clear the past few weeks that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players' skills transfer most applicably one-to-one. The aim, gun recoil, map play and game pace are all inspired by CS:GO.
The core of Team Mirage won the 100 Thieves Invitational and the exact team participating in the ESPN Esports Invitational won the T1 Invitational. It's clear that these guys are much better than the other teams on this list, except maybe the developers. They won't meet the devs in the group stage but a head-to-head final between the devs and the Counter-Strike players seems inevitable.
Watch for Team Mirage to dominate Group A, with only Team Six likely to give them a challenge, albeit probably not much of one. I don't expect Team Heroes or Team Rift to hold any sort of candle to the Counter-Strike pros. -- Jacob Wolf
3. Team Canyon
Brandon "Aceu" Winn
Coby "Dizzy" Meadows
Lucas "Mendo" Håkansson
Justin "Kellar" Kellar
Timothy "Syncedez" Putrow
The two names that stand out on this lineup are definitely former NRG Esports teammates Dizzy and Aceu (Ace). Dizzy took the Apex Legends world by storm, emerging as one of the game's rising stars. Apex Legends also catapulted Aceu from relative obscurity to popularity due to his myriad highlight reels. On Dec. 19, 2019, Dizzy retired from competitive Apex Legends, citing a desire to become a streamer. He's taken to VALORANT well and impressed at the closed alpha bootcamp. Aceu is still playing Apex with NRG.
In addition to the former NRG duo, there's FPS all-rounder Mendo (Overwatch fans may remember him as Mendokusaii), Kellar and Syncedez.
Outside of Riot Games' own developer team and Team Mirage, Team Canyon is the only other team that looks to have a good shot at taking the tournament. There's a strong correlation between gunplay in Apex and VALORANT that should allow these players to transition better than a former Overwatch or League of Legends pro. -- Emily Rand
4. Team Six
Troy "Canadian" Jaroslawski
Javier "Thinkingnade" DeAndre Escamilla
Ammar "Necrox" Albanna
Nathanial "Rampy" Duvall
Nathan "nvK" Valenti
Want to talk about pedigree? Team SIx has pedigree. All five of their starting players have won a world championship in Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege, including three of the players having the most recent title in Montreal earlier this year.
How they'll compare in this tournament, however, involves a lot of guesswork. Unlike some of the other teams that have been competing in -- or, in Team Mirage's case, winning -- VALORANT beta tournaments, the members of the Team Six just wrapped up their proleague season in Siege and are now in the offseason. While players like Canadian and Thinkingnade have openly discussed playing the game on social media, we won't truly know how strong this team is until they jump into the group stage and start playing the other teams.
On paper, though, this team should be a challenge for anyone in the tournament to put away. Though VALORANT's gameplay is much slower-paced than Rainbow Six Siege, the two games do share some similarities, especially when it comes to the chess-like nature of using character abilities to oppress the opposing side. -- Tyler Erzberger
5. Team Battlegrounds
Jaden "Vegas" James
Zachary "Venerated" Roach
Keane "Valliate" Alonso
Dionedre "YaBoiDre" Bond
Mike "Sharky" Gariti
Tanner "7Teen" Curtis (coach)
According to Jaden "Vegas" James, there is very little correlation between PUBG and VALORANT, and the transition will be difficult. That can be said about any battle royale genre game coming into VALORANT -- the two kinds of games play quite differently. However, one area that PUBG will have an advantage is recoil control -- PUBG's is much more intense than in VALORANT. This might certainly help Team Battlegrounds, but it's not necessarily a major advantage.
One thing is for sure: This community took this tournament very seriously. Team Liquid coach 7Teen did a whole tryout camp to determine the squad that would participate in our ESPN Esports VALORANT Invitational, and the five you see above were chosen. Right now, they may be the five best PUBG players at VALORANT. So, no matter where they place, this will be the best and most accurate representation of how a PUBG pro will fare in VALORANT. -- Arda Ocal
6. Team Llama
Harrison "Psalm" Chang
Zander "thwifo" Kim
Joseph "Joseph" Rivera
Tyler "HighSky" Tereso
Damion "XXiF" Cook
I asked Harrison "Psalm" Chang, who is leading the Team Llama in this tournament and recently retired from Fortnite to pursue a professional VALORANT career, what the crossover is in mechanics between the two games.
"There's like zero correlation" was his response.
At first, that seems logical, as Fortnite is a game built on speedy building mechanics, rotations and crafty wall hacks to outduel your opponent, particularly in the late game. But Psalm also offered a different look.
"The only good thing is our mental fortitude, because Fortnite is the No. 1 most tilting game in history."
This is where I think Fortnite players will succeed the most: As gratifying as it is to score an elimination in the game, it's equally as maddening to get eliminated. For Fortnite players, this might be an advantage, because they are used to the ebb and flow of such a roller-coaster ride perhaps more than any other team in this tournament.
Psalm certainly knows all about that, having achieved second place at the Fortnite World Cup and a prize of $1.8 million. Add Highsky (the elder, not the younger FaZe Clan member), Xxif, joseph and thwifo to the mix and you have a team of top-level competitors. The squad of Fortnite pros might be a sneaky darkhorse that could turn some heads. -- Ocal
7. Team Heroes
Gale "TSM Gale" Adelade Jeff "emongg" Anderson
Brian "Kephrii" St. Pierre
Carter "Carter" Smith
Kelden "Boostio" Pupello
Team Heroes is full of recognizable names from streams like Kephrii and emongg, the latter of whom streamed for the Philadelphia Fusion until late last year.
Due to a heavier focus on ultimate ability usage and coordination around abilities as opposed to gunfights, the transition from Overwatch to VALORANT is a bit different. That's not to say that Team Heroes won't be successful, but that there are stronger FPS players on other teams who have also played games more similar to VALORANT for much longer periods of time. -- Rand
8. Team Rift
Danny "Shiphtur" Le
Yiliang "Doublelift" Peng
Marcus "Dyrus" Hill
Michael "Imaqtpie" Santana
Jake "Xmithie" Puchero
If we were ranking teams purely on name value or accolades in the history of esports, this team probably tops them all. Doublelift is the most decorated player in North American League of Legends history, Xmithie is not too far behind him and Dyrus even has an international championship, winning the IEM World Championship in Katowice, Poland, back in 2015 as part of Team SoloMid.
And though VALORANT is developed by Riot Games, this isn't League of Legends. While Shiphtur and Dyrus are rumored to be doing well in the closed beta, the three other players on the starting roster are unknown in terms of how good they really are at the new tactical shooter or even first-person shooters in general.
The silver lining for this team is that they have no expectations going into the tournament. If they go 0-3 against players who play shooting games professionally, then no one is going to bat an eye. But if this team can come out and surprise a team or two, the games those squads originate from will never hear the end of how the guys from League of Legends beat them at their own game. -- Erzberger