How to play Viper in VALORANT: Ultimate, abilities, and tips

One of the agents in VALORANT with the most “toxic” ability kit is actually one of the most useful agents in virtually any team composition, Viper.

Her abilities and playstyle revolve around zone control, reducing the vision and health of enemies to weaken them, and making them vulnerable to a barrage of bullets—not to mention, obstructing their vision and communicating in the process.

Here’s a comprehensive guide to playing the “toxic” controller agent Viper.

Viper’s ultimate and abilities in VALORANT

• Poison Cloud (Q) – Create a toxic gas cloud that obstructs and decays all who enter.
• Toxic Screen (E) – Create a Wall of Toxic energy that obstructs vision and decays all who touch it.
• Snakebite (C) – Launch a canister that shatters upon impact, creating a toxic zone that damages all those standing on it.
• Viper’s Pit (X) – Spray a chemical cloud in all directions from where Viper is standing, creating a large cloud that reduces the vision range and maximum health of all players inside it.

Tips and tricks for playing Viper in VALORANT

At the beginning of rounds, your most important task as Viper is to wall or smoke off enemy chokepoints. Thankfully, with Toxic Screen, you can see where the wall will go up as you’re placing it, so you don’t have to memorize every spot. However, both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen have limited charges, and that charge meter depletes quicker when both are active.

Snakebite is used to flush out enemies when you’re certain you know where they’re hiding, but more importantly, it’s used as a premier post-plant ability. A well-timed and well-placed Snakebite can cost the opposing team their retake opportunity, and if you’ve really mastered the art of Snakebite lineups, you can be nowhere near the spike but still able to prevent a defuse.

Viper’s most powerful tool, naturally, is her Viper’s Pit ultimate. It can cover an entire site in a toxic cloud, reduces any opponent’s health down to near zero, and obscures their vision. Viper instantly takes and maintains the advantage in any encounters that occur in the pit, and there are a few different times its value can be maximized:

• On defense, at the very beginning of the round in the primary entryway to the site. This will force the opposing team to either execute on-site with a disadvantage or feed them into the other site where hopefully the rest of your team is stacked.
• On defense, at the very end of the round on a site. If the attacking side has left themselves too little time, make it worse on them by forcing them to scramble and try and get a plant down in the middle of an enemy Viper’s Pit.
• On attack, during a spike plant. With the spike planted in the middle of a Viper’s Pit, it becomes a much more daunting challenge for the defenders to attempt a retake.