The Strongest Valorant Teams Ahead Of 2023 VCT Kickoff

The 2023 Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) season is set to kick off on February 13, with the opening round of VCT 2023: Lock//IN Sao Paulo as the season’s opening tournament. And even though we’re over two months away from the season’s opening games, a few teams have earned the tag as the favorites to leave a strong impression.

• Odds to win: 5.50

DRX acquired the entire Vision Strikers roster in January 2022 and has since not made any changes. The Korean esports organization seems like it decided not to fix it if it’s not broken, and you can’t really blame them, considering the squad’s success over the year.

Comprised of some of the top Korean Valorant talents, DRX had a bumpy road throughout 2022. They won Stage 1 and 2 of the Korea Challengers but could only manage a fifth-sixth place finish in Reykjavik and Copenhagen.

But despite DRX’s lack of success on the international stage throughout the regular season, they found serious traction at the VALORANT Champions 2022, where the Korean powerhouse claimed a bronze medal after a narrow defeat against OpTic Gaming in the lower bracket finals.

Although DRX had hoped to go all the way, they looked surprisingly good against some of the world’s top teams, including former Valorant champions FunPlus Phoenix, who they defeated twice.

Given the team’s success, it makes sense for DRX to keep the squad intact as they look to make a splash in the 2023 season on the wings of BuZz and MaKo.

• Odds to win: 7.00

Cloud9 are one of the biggest winners of the offseason, having acquired the services of some of Valorant’s biggest stars, including Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker. Yay, who is known as one of the best Valorant players in the world, will team up with vanity, Xeppaa, and leaf, who joined Cloud9 from OpTic Gaming after reaching the finals of VALORANT Champions 2022.

Although this squad as a whole is powerful, it’s yay’s signing that makes Cloud9 a scary team to face. He has shown incredible talent since he first entered the Valorant esports scene, and given his success over the years, he’s bound to leave a mark in 2023 as well. But perhaps it’s the signing of Zellsis that deserves even more attention.

But with so much talent on the roster, it’s fair to question whether Cloud9 will ever reach their ceiling and whether coach mCe will manage to get the best out of the stacked lineup. Either way, the potential of Cloud9 is high, and if things fall into place, Cloud9 will be a serious threat in 2023.

• Odds to win: 6.00

Fnatic didn’t change its 2022 championship-level roster too much, keeping Boaster, Alfajer, and Derke as the core trio, which helped the Black & Orange make a name for themselves last season. With these three players alone, Fnatic should be highly competitive, but Fnatic took a step further and added two more star-level players in Leo and Chronicle.

Leo is arguably one of the best players Fnatic could’ve signed. He was the standout performer at the 2022 Masters Copenhagen, leading the tournament in kills, assists, and trade rate. Leo was undeniably the top player of Guild Esports, with whom he finished the event in seventh-eight.

Joining Leo and Fnatic’s trio is Chronicle, formerly of M3 Champions (Gambit), with who he placed second at VALORANT Champions 2021 but came one game short of qualifying for VALORANT Champions 2023.

Although arguably not the most stacked Valorant roster heading into the 2023 season, Fnatic are hard to ignore, as they field some of the top EMEA talents who have shown before how deadly they can be. But for the world to start taking Fnatic seriously, they first need to show up in Rio.