VALORANT - Champions 2025: Dragon Ranger Gaming, a rise in power (12/16)

This year’s Champions, the annual world championship of VALORANT, will take place in Paris from September 12 to October 5. To build anticipation for the tournament, Sheep Esports is introducing one of the 16 qualified teams each day in the lead-up to the event. This Friday, the spotlight turns to Dragon Ranger Gaming, the second seed from the VCT Pacific.

Coming from Ascension CN just like XLG Esports, DRG is preparing for its second international LAN after competing at Masters Shanghai in 2024. Throughout most of 2025 they were seen as a mid-table team, but a strong run in Split 2 lifted the Chinese squad all the way to a top-two finish and earned them a direct qualification for Champions Paris.

Placed third in Group Omega behind AllGamers and XLG Esports, DRG entered the playoffs with little external pressure, but immediately made noise by facing the reigning VCT champions. They swept EDward Gaming 2-0 in their opening playoff match, then edged past XLG 2-1. Those victories sent them to the winners’ bracket final, where they kept surprising by toppling BLG before eventually falling to them in the grand final.

The recent adjustments to the map pool have worked in Dragon Ranger Gaming’s favor, something that has been reflected in their latest results within VCT CN. With three maps sitting at a win rate above 67 percent, DRG comes into Champions Paris with some serious weapons at their disposal. Those maps are Abyss, Corrode and Bind, though the sample size remains small with only three matches played on each.

A more telling number comes from Ascent, where DRG has collected five wins across eight appearances. Lotus and Haven have been the team’s most played battlegrounds of 2025, with 14 and 12 appearances respectively. While both maps feature the complexity of three sites, their outcomes differ: Lotus has been more reliable with a 57 percent win rate, whereas Haven has been a weak spot at only 42 percent.

The player who shines most within DRG is Ilya “vo0kashu” Ushakov, especially across both Stage 1 and Stage 2, although the team as a whole has been operating at a high level. It should be noted that the latter could miss a large part of the Champions Paris due to visa issues, and will be replaced by Ilya "vo0kashu" Ushakov, World Champions in 2023.

The Russian sentinel may not often appear in the overall top-five rankings, but his consistency keeps him close to the top. His kill-death ratio has been particularly impressive, ranking third in the league during the last split at 1.29.

What makes this even more notable is his role. Unlike duelists who usually dominate the leaderboards, vo0kashu achieves his numbers while playing mainly on Cypher, with occasional appearances on Vyse or Killjoy. Excelling statistically as a sentinel is no easy feat, making his presence on DRG all the more valuable.