Is Neon the Best Duelist on Lotus? (Probably)

Regular seasons over which means I finally get time to write about something so we’re talking about duelists on Lotus.

Lotus still remains in a very interesting place regarding duelist choice. It still doesn’t have a consensus best in slot duelist, Jett and Raze are definitely the most popular choices but Neon has been an incredibly successful pick for teams who have chosen to play her. So is she the best duelist for the map?

First we’re going to talk about why you might even consider Neon in the first place over Jett/Raze

Why Not Jett?

OPing Sucks

This is a given, double controller is an incredibly common comp variation at the highest level of play on Lotus and with so much vision denial, it can be very difficult to OP effectively.

Less Need for Space Creation on Attack

When executing why do Jetts dash? It’s to create space. Why do teams want to create space when executing? It breaks enemy crosshair placement and defensive setups, and it puts pressure on the site anchor(s).

This isn’t really relevant on Lotus though, look at where your likely to be dashing.

First of all you physically don’t gain very much space by dashing, you’re unlikely to be breaking any sort of defensive set ups because it’s very common for defensive site anchors to play very passively or be in retake setups on this map. This is the same reason why it’s difficult to pressure the defenders as well by dashing in, you can’t put pressure on the site anchor if the site anchor can just leave or isn’t even there in the first place.

This is also all assuming you need dash in the first place when it’s really likely you won’t need it. A is very easy to split through door so don’t need it there, most times when you’re hitting B it’s either after you’ve defaulted out the Sentinel utility or you’re going through broken door, both scenarios don’t really need dash. It could be useful at C but again it’s common that you default out the Sentinel utility out at C and then rehit later. Only scenarios where you would really feasibly need dash are just site rushes which already is just an uncommon strategy.

Few Updraft Opportunities

Not a huge deal but there aren’t a lot of opportunities for Jett to use updraft and place herself in weird off angles or to take a bunch space on Lotus.

On Lotus Jett ends up losing her 2 biggest strengths, she can’t OP effectively on defense due to the prevalence of double controller, and on attack there just isn’t much need for space creation via her dash.

Why Not Raze?

Less Need for Space Creation on Attack

Same issue that Jett, if you’re satcheling in you’re potentially landing in a terrible position not to mention sharing the same problems with Jett’s entry ability..

Limited Utility

Raze has pretty limited utility to try and take space with, this ends being a pretty big issue on Lotus because so much of the map and how its played revolves around your ability to take and hold space especially around A.

Raze can nade A long once and then she can’t do much else, which really sucks because nade is really strong on other areas of the map so just to have your one charge of Raze nade thrown down A long isn’t the greatest feeling choice.

Nade is really great on attack though cause you can actually use the ability instead of sending it down A long every round.

While Raze is likely a better option than Jett, her lack of use for her mobility really drags her down and on defense chucking your nade down A long every round is terrible, especially if you want to condition your opponent into believing that you’re taking A Long control most rounds, if not every round.

Why Neon?

Faster Rotation Times

Self-explanatory, Neon can run so she can rotate faster where ever she is needed, whether that’s on defense to help with site holds, or on attack to quickly put pressure on several areas of the map. This ends being a more significant advantage than normal because Lotus is a 3 site map so it’s very big. This ends up being really noticeable when Neon gets played by a team with very good reads and excellent initiator utility usage.

More Utility

Again simple, on defense you use one stun to take A long control then you have another you can still use. On attack the stuns aren’t too great but for the most part they’re serviceable enough that Neon will get some decent use out of them.

Uncommon Timings and Fast Pace

Neon’s fast which means if she wants she can break all conventional timings, she can be in certain positions sooner than expected and that could net a few free kills or even round wins if the opponents aren’t ready.

Neon doesn’t have many big upsides but she doesn’t really have any downsides either, sure she can’t OP but OPing vs double controller is never going to be successful anyways, and anything Raze does well, Neon can do just as well while providing her own benefits.

The Stats

Now that we’ve talked a little bit about why teams and players might consider playing Neon in the first place. We’re gonna dig into a few stats and see if any sort of notable trends occur.

Note that the data set used consists of all REGULAR SEASON Neon Lotus games in the three major international leagues (Americas, EMEA, Pacific) I figured that this would be the best compromise between quantity and quality.

Neon Wins A Lot

The first thing I want to establish is that Neon wins a lot on Lotus, she currently is 15-6 (71% WR) across the three international leagues.

Compared to Jett who is currently 20-25 (44% WR) across the three international leagues

and Raze who is 17-19 (47% WR) across the three international leagues.

Now obviously there’s a couple of caveats here, Raze and Jett have nearly twice the sample size and that’s probably because teams that don’t have a strong Lotus are generally going to pick Jett/Raze and because they’re just not super good at Lotus in general, it’s just going to contribute a lot more losses compared to Neon. Additionally because of the amount of Jett/Raze played there’s a good chance for those two duelists to play against each other which is likely a big reason for the ~40%-50% win rate for both agents because one of those two agents has to lose when they play each other.

Still though 70% is a absurdly high win rate for an agent pick and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most teams who have a strong Lotus play Neon.

Defense and Attack

Disclaimer: I had to manually collect all the data for this section so the numbers might be incorrect but it should still be good enough for analytical use.

Defense

Starting off with defense, Neon sits squarely in the middle, not as bad as Raze but not as good as Jett. This checks out, Raze on defense has issues with her limited utility and having to make the decision between saving utility and not taking strong map control, or using it but not having much utility for late round situations.

Neon has a 49.4% defensive win rate

Jett has a 50.2% defensive win rate

Raze has a 47.2% defensive win rate

So defensively, Raze is by far the worst option while Jett and Neon actually seem to do much better than the average defending win rate on defending rounds of around ~43%-46% at least in Americas and EMEA, in Pacific Lotus is an incredibly defensive sided map with a 54% win rate on defense and I’d imagine that’s a sizable chunk of Jett’s defensive wins because Jett is the most popular Lotus duelist in Pacific.

Neon definitely out performs defensive expectations, Neon has only been played once in Pacific so most of the data comes from Americas and EMEA and within Americas and EMEA Lotus is a significantly attack sided map. While Jett is mainly played in a region where Lotus is actually a defense sided map so I would put less stock into the idea Jett defensively does well to the same extent Neon does.

Attack

Moving onto attack we can see that Neon outperforms every other duelist by a very large margin when attacking. This is actually a bit surprising to me because I had believed a lot of the advantages I listed with Neon would be more applicable/significant on the defensive side. To be honest I’m not sure why this gap between the duelists exists, it could very well be just a sample size issue or a starting side issue where Neon comps start on defense, do well, and then only play a few attacking rounds to win the map, e.g Neon comps wins defense 9/3 then plays a 4/1 attacking half to win the map.

Neon has a 61.9% attacking win rate

Jett has a 52.9% attacking win rate

Raze has a 49.4% attacking win rate

Shockingly though Raze is the worst duelist for attack but I think this can kind of be waved away because most of these attacking losses came from KOI and KC who combined for 40 wins - 64 losses on their attacking halves although FNATIC does kind of partially nullify that because they went 42 wins - 16 losses.

Is Neon the Best Duelist on Lotus?

To answer the question that’s also the title of the article. Yeah I think so, at the very least when played well Neon out performs defensive expectations while also out performing attacking expectations (although take that data with a grain of salt), there isn’t much reason to not play her when statistically she is incredibly dominant and when watching games with her she looks incredible.

I think the main hurdle for most teams is simply just going to be implementing Neon, not everyone can play her well (Keloqz) and there’s going to be some growing pains as teammates learn to play around her. But when done well Neon completely surpasses any other main duelist choice and it’s honestly not even close.

Who To Learn From

If you want to watch teams that have implemented Neon very well, just watch Cloud9 in Americas, for my money they’re the best Lotus in team in the world currently. FUT Esports in EMEA though is also very solid and can be good supplemental material.

Data

If you want the full spreadsheet I used for gathering and visualizing the data used in the article the link the can be found below:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1odtXJZEMu7Vx9sdRAUDfMS3daShvFA8dL0X6V3aAJtg/edit?usp=sharing