Double Jump Gaming News

Rainbow Six World Champions

Article by: Travis Lisiecki

The Rainbow Six Siege Invitational 2022 is what all professional siege players strive for annually. This year with a prize pool of $3,000,000. The players at this event care more about the status of being the best players in the world and being crowned champions across all regions. The teams that made it out of the group stages and into the playoffs are TSM, Team Empire, FaZe Clan, MIBR, Team Liquid, Soniqs, Oxygen Esports, DarkZero Esports, DAMWON Gaming, Spacestation Gaming, FURIA Esports, Elevate, MNM Gaming, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Natus Vincere, Rogue, SANDBOX Gaming, CYCLOPS athlete gaming, Team BDS, and Team oNe Esports. Out of these twenty hardworking teams it came down to a showdown between TSM and Team Empire. At previous Invitationals, TSM has never made it to the finals. However, Team Empire on the other hand has been to the finals before back in 2019 against G2 Esports and lost. In terms of this Invitational, Team Empire did not want to be in second place again. Team Empire beat TSM in the upper bracket finals and sent them to the lower bracket finals to face FaZe. TSM had other plans and beat Faze to meet them back in the grand finals. Overall, both teams played very well with TSM coming out on top and being crowned champions. It's a win well deserved by capitalizing on Team Empires' mistakes and being more of a cohesive team making fewer mistakes.

What mistakes did Team Empire make that TSM capitalized on? Something that stuck out to me was the roaming game on Team Empire. Roaming is where you play off-site of the objective to slow down or kill the attackers. JoyStiCK from Team Empire is known for his success for his solo roaming. However, TSM did a great job at controlling him and limiting what he can do for his team. TSM did this by forcing JoyStiCK into unfavorable crossfires on his way back to the site. Another issue Team Empire had was a lack of adaption. It was clearly seen in the Oregon match. Team Empire's basement hold seemed outdated and something we have seen throughout the previous year by playing Aruni, Jager, Wamai, Smoke without a major off-site presence. Typically this operator lineup is good for slowing and soaking up attacking utility, but teams have attacked it enough to become proficient at taking site. Something TSM did well was taking advantage of Team Empires' mistakes, whether it was flanking unexpectedly or cutting off rotations.

Something I mentioned in my previous article (Possible hyperlink to article) was support players being the IGL (In-game leader). Merc from TSM is the IGL as well as an entry. He guided his team and created space with his hero plays and opening kills. Insanely impressive, but what else do you expect from world champions.

The last thing I want to discuss is general statistics from the Invitational. The most common operator bans at this event were Thatcher at 57% and Valkyrie at 73%. These bans cause struggles on both attack and defense. Thatcher being banned forces attackers to use other means to open reinforced walls. This generally increases the time to open walls and hatches by an extra fifteen to twenty seconds. This might not seem like a lot, but when you only have three minutes per round every second counts. Valkyrie being banned limits the amount of information the defending team can gather in different areas of the map. This makes runouts and other high-risk, high-reward plays happen less often. The overall event MVP was awarded to Achieved from TSM. This player is always doing the unthinkable with his grenades, soft breach potential, and denying enemy teams information. The true MVP in my opinion was the use of grenades by all teams. Within this current meta a majority if not all teams seemed to be bringing six to eight grenades to dislodge players from their positions. The operator Finka also seemed to have a major impact at this event with her ability to heal all her teammates after or during an engagement. They would use her in such a flexible manner by entering the site, dislodging players with grenades, holding flank while healing, or picking up downed players from a distance. Simply amazing to see how professional players can use operators to their full potential. Overall, amazing games to watch and congrats to the players on TSM.