Valorant Outlaw Showmatch | What happened?
Here's your first look at what the Outlaw looks like in competitive Valorant
Valorant recently entered Episode 8: Defiance which brought in a number of new map changes, agent buffs, and more prominently, a new Sniper rifle to play with, the Outlaw. It’s only been a couple of days that the gun has been out and a significant portion of the player base has deemed it to be a fantastic mid-point between a Marshall and an Operator. Lethal against half shields and a devastating blow against those who opted to go full. One of the most burning questions that everyone has in mind is that how will it look like when applied in a competitive setting? The Valorant Outlaw Showmatch aims to answer exactly that by bringing in some of the best of the best Philippine pro players and pits them against each other using only the Outlaw.
The Showmatch was held on January 21 at Highgrounds Cafe in Quezon City. The tournament had a best of 3 format with the first 2 matches requiring players to only use Outlaws and secondaries excluding the Sheriff. An interesting set of rules that definitely led to an interesting series of matches. Razzie Binx and Rebyczko joined forces to be the dynamic duo of casters for the day. You can watch it all in full in the official Valorant Facebook account.
Joel Guzman, Riot Games PH Country Manager, says that the Valorant Outlaw Showmatch was just a taste of what’s to come for their plans in 2024. “It really gets the community excited. This is a good opportunity for us to feature something new in the game such as the Outlaw but also celebrating the start of the year as a community. The pro players we have here today have seen a lot of success in the tournaments they’ve recently competed in, so we just wanted to give them an opportunity to celebrate it with the fans.”
Valorant Outlaw(s) till the end
Various players from Team Secret, Team SMG, and Oasis Gaming were scattered to build two exciting lineups to match up against each other. Team Ego has JessieVash, Alexy, Tesseract, Borkum, and Jremy. On the other side of the stage, Team Prism included NDG, Kamiyu, Shirazi, Invy, and Wild0reoo.
As soon as the matches started, it was all laughs. Shuffling the pro players to team with each other was already funny enough, the added caveat of restricting all of them to use only the Outlaw sniper made things even more interesting.
The first map was Breeze, well known for its large open areas and long rotations. The perfect place to see how 10 snipers going at it with each other will look like. Every shot was felt in the venue with the boom of the Outlaw waking everyone up. With only 2 rounds available before having to go through a relatively long reload animation, the pro players would resort to rushing each other with knives and pistols, favoring the Shorty for added flair.
Team Ego took the first map with a 13-10 scoreline with Tesseract and Alexy putting up MVP numbers in the lobby. However, Team Prism wasn’t going out without a fight as the second map, Icebox, being recently brought back into the rotation after being gone for quite some time, is where they make the comeback to tie the series 1-1 with a 13-8 scoreline.
Map 3 is where all rules are lifted. Both teams are now able to use any weapon they choose. Lotus was the final map to determine as to whether Team Ego will be locking in their series win or Team Prism will secure the comeback.
With a 13-8 final scoreline, Team Prism secures the win in the Valorant Outlaw Showmatch. The whole map 3 was just an Invy highlight reel as the man finished with a 29-13 final K/D.
“There’s going to be a lot of announcements for Valorant on the first half of the year, starting off with VCT, and some other things we got cooking for Q2 and Q3. As we look deeper into activating the grassroots, look forward to more community tournaments and showmatches with not just pro players but also with prominent content creators and public personalities who play the game. We’re trying to bring everyone together,” Guzman says as a final sendoff to the day.