The Cypher era: How one of VALORANT’s weakest agents went on to become a mandatory pick

“Alright guys, listen up. I have a plan,” one of my VALORANT teammates announced right as we loaded up in Breeze’s attacker spawn. Hearing their enthusiasm, I was expecting something solid, but all they had was, “If you see Cypher, rotate. We win.” Well, they weren’t entirely wrong.

The Moroccan spy wasn’t always a point of discussion before a match began. Let alone rotating to a different site. Instead, players would be happy if they saw Cypher instead of a Killjoy or Chamber in the enemy team. It wasn’t too hard to break through his setups using a Skye dog or Yoru clone. Coupled with his underwhelming ultimate that used to reveal enemies only once, he naturally wasn’t a popular pick in VALORANT. But then, Patch 7.09 happened.

While buffs to his ultimate were deployed through older patches, Patch 7.09 gave Cypher a new personality and incredible power in VALORANT, making him an essential choice on most maps in the current rotation. Following this update, you can no longer destroy his traps with scouts or clones. In fact, the patch made it harder for enemies to even detect the traps, thanks to the change in the hitboxes of Skye’s Trailblazer and Fade’s Prowlers.

You have to use damaging utility or shoot at their source to break them, meaning you have to choose whether you want to use abilities like Raze’s Paint Shells or Sova’s Shock Dart to break his traps or save them up for a different use. The only fair counter to Cypher right now is KAY/O’s ZERO/point, but his knife can be dodged or broken too. It’s also incredibly difficult to break a trap yourself after triggering it; in most cases, you’ll die before you can do that.

To top it off, Cypher’s traps now stun faster and for a longer time, needing the enemy to react to it quicker. If you fail to break the trap or die after getting stunned by it, the trap rearms itself. This is probably the strongest an agent buff can get in VALORANT. Riot Games also nerfed Killjoy and Chamber several times to ensure that Cypher had the space to grow. Well, now he’s scary to say the least.

With Cypher by your side, you can easily lock down sites on defense, effectively manage flanks without worrying about range, and offer valuable intel to your team. What else do you need from your sentinel? No wonder his pick rate shot up in Episode Seven, Act Three after the patch dropped, establishing him among the top five agents.

A present-day Cypher has the power to change the odds of a seemingly unwinnable match on defense, provided he knows how to punish the attackers with his traps and Spy Cam. On attack, he can lurk and offer crucial intel in ways no other sentinel can. Then again, I’ve had clumsy Cypher players on my team who refuse to control the flank and don’t know how to adapt to their enemies’ plan. They aren’t open to learning either. Well, you can’t fix the trolls, can you?   

Not that there aren’t ways to bypass him, but a good Cypher would know exactly where his enemies are and what they are capable of.