NA Player Spotlight: Cloud9's Nathan "leaf" Orf

With only a couple of days left for the Playoff stage of VCT 2022 - North America - Stage 1 - Main Event, THESPIKE.GG has decided to shine a spotlight on some of the high-performing players in the Group Stages. Cloud9 was one of the only two teams with a 5-0-win record in the tournament, and Nathan "leaf" Orf deserves a lot of credit for his consistent performances. Before we dive into his contributions in the Group Stages, let’s take a brief look at his esports career.

Journey to Valorant

From the time he turned 15-years-old, Nathan had already begun competing in CSGO tournaments, which were either C-Tier tournaments or qualifiers. He continued to participate in those tournaments throughout 2019 with limited success in events like ESEA Season 30: Advanced Division - North America and ESEA Season 30: Advanced Division - North America.

It became evident that he possessed a lot of potential, but needed support from his teammates and a strong organization to back him. However, it wasn’t until May 2020 that an organization named Chaos Esports Club signed him to their roster. At the time of signing, a familiar name in the Valorant scene and the now-IGL of T1 Joshua "steel" Nissan was also a member of the roster, as well as Erick "Xeppaa" Bach and Anthony "vanity" Malaspina, both of which are leaf’s teammates on the Cloud9 roster. The new roster that leaf was a part of won several tournaments, most notably the Intel Extreme Masters XV - Beijing Online: North America, and DreamHack Masters Winter 2020: North America and also the 3rd-4th place in ESL One: Cologne 2020 Online - North America and 5th in ESL Pro League Season 12: North America.

In December 2020, the organization announced their departure from the CSGO scene and release of their current roster via a tweet:

Tournament history

Although Cloud9 was one of the first organizations to realize the potential of Valorant esports and sign a roster, they faced an immediate need of replacement after the departure of Josh "shinobi" Abastado and Tyson "TenZ" Ngo’s decision to pursue content creation. Leaf and Son "xeta" Seon-ho joined the team to aid the roster in Stage 1 of the first-ever VCT. Unfortunately, though, they couldn’t managed better than 5th-8th place in any of the three qualifiers.

As time passed and the chemistry between the roster grew, their performances faced an improvement with consecutive wins in NSG tournament followed by a spot in VCT 2021 - Stage 2 - North America - Challengers 1. Despite a poor performance in that tournament, they received a direct invite to VCT 2021 - Stage 2 - North America - Challengers 2, where they placed 2nd at proceeded to VCT 2021 - Stage 2 - North America - Challengers Finals. A 3rd place in that event left them one match short of a qualification for VCT 2021 - Stage 2 - Masters Reykjavík, the first ever VALORANT LAN event.

This dominant performance fell through in both of the Stage 3 qualifiers and resulted in the signing of leaf’s Chaos Esports’ teammate, Anthony "vanity" Malaspina, as the team’s new IGL. Following his acquisition, Cloud9 won VCT 2021 - North America Last Chance Qualifier to guarantee a spot at the most important event of VCT, VCT 2021 - VALORANT Champions 2021. Their start to the tournament was better than their NA counterparts being the only team to qualify from group stages after wins against FULL SENSE and DRX.

Their run in the brackets was cut short by Team Liquid placing them 5th-6th in the entire event. With impressive performances from the roster, Cloud9 didn’t feel the need to introduce any changes, which proved to be helpful as the team started with a win in Knights Arena VALORAMPAGE - Main Event. Their qualification for the Champions event gave them a direct invitation to VCT 2022 - North America - Stage 1 - Main Event, and they proved themselves to be worthy of the spot with 5 back-to-back wins against the best teams in the region.

What do the numbers say?

In the last three months, Leaf has competed in Knights Arena VALORAMPAGE - Main Event and then the Group Stages of the ongoing event. In both of these events, he combined for an average of 1.31 Rating, 263.6 ACS and 1.41 KD. These numbers may not look extremely commendable at first, but its important to realize that maintaining consistency with these numbers is extremely difficult. There are players who have exceeded these statistics during a single matchup, but failed to maintain it. Furthermore, Leaf’s teammates including Erick "Xeppaa" Bach also make important contributions to Cloud9’s performance; so, leaf’s numbers are, in reality mind-blowing.

Here is a look at Leaf’s stat sheet in the current tournament:

In only three of the thirteen maps Cloud9 played on his contributions have been subpar with a Rating under 1.0, but he managed to compensate for it by having outstanding performances in the deciders against both Evil Geniuses and The Guard where his impact on Cloud9’s win was significant. He also sits atop the stats leaderboard for the Challengers event with 1.34 Rating, 272.8 ACS and almost 1.5 KD.

Best play of the Challengers:

Here is arguably one of the best plays made by Nathan "leaf" Orf during the Challengers’ event:

With a 5-0 record in the Group Stages, Cloud9 have eased their way into the Playoffs, which will be played in a double-elimination format. Being 1st on the Group A leaderboard landed them a battle against Pittsburgh Knights, 4th place finish in Group B, in Upper Bracket round 1. Pittsburgh Knights with only two wins in the Group Stages put them, on paper, at a disadvantage against Cloud9, but the esports scene has proven to be unpredictable in the past so the Knights' roster still has a plausible chance of redeeming themselves in their second ever head-to-head against Cloud9.