Hands-on with Valorant's latest agent: Vyse is one for players who like to focus on crowd control

Riot Game's Valorant’s latest patch introduces the newest sentinal to the agent roster, dubbed Vyse. Having been teased ever since Valorant Champions and the Night Market, the 26th agent brings a unique blend of crowd control abilities with her liquid meta-based kit. 

Ahead of the live update, we had the opportunity to try her out in a few matches.

A sentinel with initiator skills? 

Some sentinels were already excellent at locking down sites, getting information, or healing. Vyse’s kit instead leans heavily into delaying pushes and disarming enemies. Her kit introduces a never-before-seen mechanic in Valorant: the ability to disable enemy weapons. This ultimate ability alone has the potential to make any retakes or attacks easier for the team.

Here’s a brief overview of Vyse’s abilities:

• (C) - Razorvine: Equip a nest of liquid metal. Fire to launch. Upon landing, the nest becomes invisible. When activated, it sprawls out into a large razorvine nest which slows and damages all players who move through it.
• (Q) - Shear: Equip filaments of liquid metal. Fire to place a hidden wall trap. When an enemy crosses, an indestructible wall bursts from the ground behind them. The wall lasts for a brief time before dissipating.
• (E) - Arc Rose: Equip an Arc Rose. Target a surface and Fire to place a stealthed Arc Rose, or ALT Fire to place the Arc Rose through it. REUSE to blind all players looking at it. This ability can be picked up to be REDEPLOYED.
• (X, Ultimate) - Steel Garden: Equip a bramble of liquid metal. Fire to send the metal erupting from you as a torrent of metal thorns, Jamming enemy primary weapons after a brief windup.
  
   

Pull off a defence masterclass

Vyse’s kit shines brightest when defending sites. Her Arc Rose can be placed before the round starts to delay or put a push to a halt. Similar to Deadlock’s Barrier Mesh and Sage’s Wall, I think that Vyse’s Shear is incredibly powerful for isolating the first one or two attackers and disrupting coordinated pushes. 

On attack, Vyse can help to lock down and delay a site retake with her Razorvine. Finally her ultimate, Steel Garden, is a game-changer for both attack and defence situations. It can nullify a fast push onto the site, or help to secure a post-plant situation by disarming the defenders. Additionally, with the ultimate in store, we might see players purchase a better secondary weapon in case they are caught lacking by Steel Garden. 

Having the opportunity to play a couple of matches with Vyse, I was pleasantly surprised to see her kit being used in versatile ways beyond what I just described. From pure aggression to a more lax playing style of "wait for the enemy to push into me", many players that I met were crafty in utilising her abilities.

On the attacker's side, I found her Q and E to be more useful in post-plant situations. This was especially so when I was holding key areas of the maps which include Hookah or Lamps in Bind and Garage, or Sewers in Haven. Besides that, I found her Razorvine to be the most useful on the offense for stopping aggressive picks from the enemy

Where she truly shines on the attacking side is with her ultimate. When using Steel Garden in tandem with another initiator (which was usually Gekko or Skye in my case), we were able to flush out the locations of the enemies and scale up the site efficiently knowing that they only had their secondary weapons. This makes it easy to guarantee a round albeit with good team play and knowledge of their locations which is crucial in the team-based game.

Moving onto the defence is what I would have expected from a traditional Sentinel. Her Shear had allowed my Duelists to grab the first blood without worrying for a swarm of enemies chasing after them for fear of my Arc Rose blinding them or Shear locking them in.

Besides setting up my teammates for aggressive play styles, her ability to crowd control and lock down key areas of the map by herself gives more reason as to why she was classified as a Sentinel in the first place. 

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed playing her in my multiplayer matches even if it reminded me that although Vyse is a Sentinel with initiator-like skills, it is still important to remember that the game emphasises gunplay. Even with flashes and a primary weapon disabling ability, it is all for naught if you can't secure the kill.

My 2 Cents

Whether you're looking to lock down a site with an indestructible wall or disarm an entire enemy team for the retake, Vyse has a versatile kit that goes beyond her Sentinel Role. She can be a valuable asset in closed-off maps such as Haven or Ascent and will be an agent to watch for in pro play.

In the meantime, Vyse is now available in the agent roster and players can update their game to the latest version to try her out.

Valorant is free to play and is available for download on PC.