Valorant superstar Aspas calls out players for ditching duelist role

Leviatán’s Aspas has shared his outlook on the current stage of duelist players in the VCT and why changing roles isn’t always the right solution.

Aspas is a world champion duelist and is considered one of the best in VCT Americas, alongside zekken, OXY, and Icy.

Duelists can make or break a team as the main damage dealer, and Aspas believes that many players shied away from the role to better their chances of getting on a franchised roster.

“If there’s one thing that bothers me that’s been happening since last year, it’s that I see a lot of people who had the potential to be a good duelist abandoning the role because they thought that wouldn’t have a place in the franchise because there are plenty of duelists,” said Aspas through translation on X.

“I don’t see duelist/entry fragger as a disposable role as many think, in my opinion it’s a very important role as much as any other. Being a good duelist goes far beyond killing.”

Throughout his career playing on LOUD and now Leviatán, Aspas has retained his role as the main duelist for his teams. However, not all top duelists have been able to stick to their roles over the years. 

TenZ, once considered the best duelist in the world, has since changed his role to better fit his team’s needs by playing Omen and the occasional initiator. Despite this, TenZ has proven that his individual skill goes beyond what is offered as a duelist. 

Aspas wasn’t the only one to recognize this trend, either. Former head coach and now assistant coach of Fnatic, Mini, gave his own perspective on what it means for players to be able to hold onto the duelist role and when it’s time to move on.

“To add to this: anyone decent at building a team is going to know when a duelist player is simply a good enough player to transition: see Woot, TenZ, N4RRATE etc,” explained Mini. “I heard recently a tier 2 team had forced their duelist to play a different role to be more enticing to VCT teams… which is madness — not sure who’s at fault here, though.”

All three players named by Mini once played duelist-only before switching to a new role for their team. They are now on some of the best teams in the Americas and EMEA, like Team Heretics, Sentinels, and Karmine Corp, which puts perspective on the difference between a good player and a good duelist.