"We are supposed to deliver entertaining games" G2 JoshRT VCT Americas Pre-Season Exclusive Interview
The VCT Americas Kickoff 2024 is on the horizon and as a prelude to the new season, Riot Games organized a Pre-Season Media Day featuring 1 on 1 interviews and press conferences.
During the Media day, we at Strafe received an opportunity to interact with G2’s Head Coach Josh “JoshRT” Lee.
The former NRG head coach, took on the Head Coach role of The Guard in 2022. During his time with The Guard, he dominated VCL NA and VCT Ascensions Americas, securing a two-year guest spot in VCT Americas 2024.
Despite securing the spot as a team, the organization fumbled and almost sabotaged the team’s future. Fortunately, the community rallied behind the team and G2 Esports swooped in to help them secure their VCT Americas spot.
Enter, VCT Americas 2024:
Coming into VCT 2024, G2 Esports successfully acquired the support staff and four of the players from The Guard, barring Ian "Tex" Botsch who found his way onto Leviatan.
As a replacement, G2 Esports brought in Nathan "leaf" Orf, a longtime duelist for Cloud9. We started our interview with Josh, with how he thinks the season will fare, what changes has leaf brought upon, and the matches up ahead.
“I expect that we’ll do very well”
[Interviewer] What are your expectations from the team
[G2 JoshRT]
I expect that we’ll do very well. We have been preparing a lot for the kickoff tournament, I think we have the personnel, in our players, in the skillset to keep going with any challenges throughout the season. I expect us to play really well and qualify for atleast few international tournaments.
[Interviewer] The biggest change during the off-season for the squad has been leaf replacing tex. Do you think that changes the team’s approach towards the game? Does it affect how the team plays at all?
[G2 JoshRT]
Oh yeah, definitely like whenever you change one player, it is essentially a new team. In the sense that, although four players are the same it is a brand new team dynamic and tex and leaf offer different types of communication styles.
For tex, he is very focused on what he needs to do and kinda lets other players lead a lot of interactions and bring his input when needed. That was good for when we have a team that talks a lot.
Now we brought Nate(leaf) in, he is very much a big communicator. He actually had to help with In-Game Leading in his previous team, so he has a lot of help brought over. In his previous team, him, zellsis, runi, even Xeppa too, were very active in making decisions in the game.
There were a lot of efforts to balance all that (leaf comms and teams comms) and ensure everyone has their voice, but not overcrowding the communication, that was part of the challenge for atleast pre-season/off-season training with us.
[Interviewer] Talking about the tournament at hand, in 15 days you will be facing KRU Esports and if you win you’d face EG. What are your thoughts about your group for VCT Americas Kickoff?
[G2 JoshRT]
I think it’s gonna be a really challenging group, a lot of people think it's the easier group because there are only three teams and EG got a bye, they have a different roster.
I don’t underestimate any team here, they are all very, very good in my eyes. They can always pull a really good win. It's also a brand new meta, lots of rosters have changed, anything can happen honestly. It's really up to each team to really prepare, to hope for the best and I think we will show that (preparations) in the upcoming tournament.
The VCT 2024 schedule debate
The overall structure for the season was also a point of conversation after the release. Multiple stakeholders have expressed strong opinions on that matter.
“We are supposed to deliver entertaining games”
[Interviewer] One of the biggest conversation points during the off-season was VCT 2024 schedule and the number of matches. As a coach what are your thoughts on the whole conversation?
[G2 JoshRT]
As a coach on the team Op side, I always want a little bit more room so you can prepare for matches and I obviously want more matches because it gives me more leeway to experiment a little bit.
But as it stands now, all the matches matter, which is great. I am for any setup or change that maximizes league viewership. I think that is the most important thing and at the end of the day, we are part of that and we are supposed to deliver entertaining games, that’s my job and no real complaints about the number of games.
I think in the future they are already looking to optimize the schedule anyways so it is just one of those transition periods we just have to go through.
The New Meta
VCT 2024 will see a return in action after almost 6 months. Since the last official game was played, the game has undergone major changes. We discuss with Josh about the agent changes, the meta composition and how the new changes affects the map.
[Interviewer] Since the last official game of the last season, there have been numerous agent changes. How do you think the meta would shape up now? What agents do you think would be a staple in any composition, like Skye was in the last half of the previous year?
[G2 JoshRT]
For sure there’s a big drop off in Skye, so any composition that relied on Skye as a solo initiator is effectively handicapped since Skye will have much less utils throughout the round. Given that just happened, the team will likely explore more double initiator comps or if they run double-controller, they have to sacrifice something, in order to have maybe a, still a solo initiator or two initiators with double controllers.
There are also map changes that happened, so the teams might have to accommodate for that. Then we have the big map pool change with Haven gone. Like I said you’d see a lot of different compositions going into Kickoff and it is going to be very exciting.
[Interviewer] Arguably, the most hated map in the map pool, Icebox is back. There are multiple changes to the map, what are your thoughts on the change?
[G2 JoshRT]
I can’t tell you everything but just based on the map changes, it kinda forces you to think about mid a little bit differently. Where it's advantageous for attackers or defenders only time will tell. We have our approach and our views on the map.
That is one part of the playoffs that will be explored a little bit more for some teams. Mid and mid to B is a little bit more streamlined. It also makes the defense a little bit happy about what exact pathing attack will go through, there’s only one little corridor to go from mid to B, so they simplified certain things.
But largely the A site, the B site, despite the changes is more or less the same. I think the map will generally be played the same way with slightly more emphasis on mid.
[Interviewer] Another map with change in the map pool is Lotus. Before the changes, every Lotus round followed the same pattern of fighting for A main control, fighting for C main control, do you think that'd change now?
[G2 JoshRT]
I think there might be an uptick on A main fight because remember, they removed one orb so attackers will prioritize orbs. There is no B orb, so I expect uptick on C and A main fights. It got a little bit more defense-sided. It is still a very hard defensive map with the three sites. But Riot did introduce more cover on the A site.
Depending on where the defense plays on C, it can be less cover or more cover.
[Interviewer] All the current compositions in Valorant have included dive-duelists namely Jett, Raze, Neon. Do you think that’d ever change and we’d see agents such as Phoenix or Reyna take the center stage?
[G2 JoshRT]
So the dive agents do something that all the agents can’t do and that is break through a choke point that is really hard to go through. They’d typically move crosshairs away from the chokepoint and it allows others to enter. So it is always preferred, like on Ascent, because there are chokepoint on a main.
Whether that’s gonna continue to happen, time will tell. But given, I am paying attention to the patches, Riot is trying to make things a little more balanced and try to encourage us to think about the game in a different way. So it could be more anti-dive, with Jett nerfs, Raze nerfs. Like the Raze nerfs were pretty big during the off-season. I think that’d make us think about the other agents.
Closing Notes
Finally, with the season in sight, Josh talks about his idea for the season and the upcoming meta, closing on commenting about other NA teams and G2 in the league.
“I expect us to be in the top four.”
[Interviewer] Do you have anything special planned for the season?
[G2 JoshRT]
We have some ideas for what the comp type would be atleast for us and I am just trying to maximize my team’s strength going to the kickoff. But I am always very open minded to consider other options and consider other composition types.
It’d just be which team executes the best. A meta gets established when there is a winning team, other teams will start to copy the winning team.
[Interviewer] Which teams do you think made the best off-season changes of all the playing teams? Which will be the strongest teams? Team’s that’d set the meta.
[G2 JoshRT]
In all 44 it's kinda hard to say. I will try to go region by region from my memory. I think NRG made the biggest news, they found the most experienced players under one banner. Maybe the roles aren’t super clear but they will make it work. They are all very good players. I expect them to be a top contender along with Lev(iatan).
Actually Lev, I thought, made some big moves themselves, which were risky because they are making an English only team, a multilingual team. That is a really big risk, because it will be hard to know if the culture fits but it sounds like they have the right direction, seems like it's working out so. I expect these two teams to do really well and they made great changes off season.
For other regions, my memory escapes me.
[Interviewer] Where do you think G2 stands in the Americas League?
[G2 JoshRT]
I expect us to be in the top four.
G2 Esports will play their opening games against KRU Esports in the Group C opener. Josh and his boys will be ready to tackle their LATAM peers.
The VCT Americas 2024 Kickoffs start 16th February with NRG Esports taking on FURIA. Follow the VCT 2024 action on Strafe.
For more information on the VCT Americas Kickoff, check out Strafe Esports' piece on the Format, Schedule, Teams and more. If one of the other Kickoffs catches your fancy, we also have previews for EMEA, Pacific, and China.
As an additional bonus, you can catch the VOD for the interview on our new YouTube channel. Also, check out our tier list for the 33 partnered teams (VCT China notwithstanding) heading into 2024's season.