Not every agent in VALORANT can be the best. In fact, not every agent can be good or even serviceable.
One thing that’s attracted various former CS:GO players over to VALORANT, especially in North America, is the game’s ability to stay fresh with new agent additions and changes. Over time, though, that does mean some agents are going to be nerfed into the bottom tiers or perhaps even released as a bottom-tier character.
Only a couple of names may come to mind when you think of the worst VALORANT agents right now. This is a good sign for VALORANT, indicating that the game is balanced and that you aren’t just seeing the same one or two compositions every time you play or watch a pro match. That being said, there are a couple of agents that truly are the worst right now—and we’ll start with the most obvious one.
Yoru
Since his debut in Patch 2.0 in early 2021, the most recent duelist added to VALORANT has failed to make a significant impact. As fun as it can be to play with him, virtually every other duelist or flasher has better utility that makes them a more viable option.
Yoru’s ability kit consists of Gatecrash, Fakeout, Blindside, and his ultimate ability Dimensional Drift. Gatecrash, allowing him to teleport to a moving or stagnant rift tether that he sets, is rendered completely useless when used aggressively because it can easily be spotted if it gets too close to an opponent. They can just camp the spot. It can only be legitimately used as a retreat measure or maybe in a post-plant scenario. But in post-plant scenarios, the audio cue will give away the Gatecrash.
Fakeout, which creates fake footsteps, doesn’t fake out any VALORANT player of serviceable quality. No one is going to panic and cause the entire team to rotate because of one set of footsteps. Blindside, his flash ability, is his only consistently useful ability, but it’s just a flash. Other agents have a flash but also have additional abilities that are more viable and useful. His ultimate is like Omen’s. At best, it lets him flank an opponent, and at the very least, he can gather a bit of information to relay to the team. Several other abilities do a better job of gathering information, like Sova’s recon arrow, KAY/O’s knife, Cypher’s ultimate, and almost all of Skye’s abilities, for example.
It’s for these reasons why he averaged the worst pick rate across both Challengers events in NA VCT Stage Three—two percent across the open qualifiers and the main event for both tournaments, according to VLR.gg. Don’t expect this number to rise anytime soon, either. Riot confirmed in August that any significant changes to Yoru have been “significantly delayed.”
Breach
The second obvious entry on this list is Breach, arguably the least useful and certainly the least picked initiator. He’s designed for players with map knowledge who like to use crowd control, and while his set of abilities is less egregiously useless than Yoru’s, Breach’s kit does create some problems.
The biggest issue with Breach isn’t that each of his abilities is objectively bad. The problem is that these abilities combined create two main issues that stack on top of each other. Virtually all of Breach’s abilities can be avoided in some way (except his flash) and his abilities require the player or his team to play aggressively. Aftershock, Fault Line, and Rolling Thunder can all be side-stepped by an opponent.
Now because these abilities are designed to disorient opponents or force them out of hiding holes, it requires a team to play aggressively to punish players hit by them. But Breach players don’t know if these abilities connect, unlike other abilities like KAY/O’s knife or Skye’s blinds that tell the player if they were effective. So Breach and his teammates might be rushing into sites and challenging enemies who aren’t disoriented or concussed at all.
Breach’s lack of abilities that gather any information puts him a level below the other initiators, especially when his abilities can be avoided. He’s not the worst, though. His flash is annoying and hard to avoid, and his other abilities have some solid post-plant potential. But compared to Sova, Skye, and KAY/O, he’s just not as viable in his category.
The worst aspects of other VALORANT agents
Honestly, there’s really no other VALORANT agent that can be definitively labeled “the worst.” Even Breach seems like a stretch, but it’d be rude to the Yoru mains out there to just make it about him. They’ve suffered so much already.
But even some of the most viable and popular agents aren’t perfect, so we’re going to come up with a couple of reasons why a few of the best agents aren’t the best.
- Reyna: Aside from her Leer ability, her kit is designed just to get herself kills, and she’s not much use to the rest of the team outside of just that regard. Apart from carrying the team by getting a ton of kills, she doesn’t help the rest of her teammates, other than maybe taking the attention off of them.
- Omen: His ultimate has the same problem as Yoru’s. In a best case scenario, you can backstab an opponent. But mostly, you’re just going to be gathering some information, which seems underwhelming for an ultimate. Cypher’s ultimate is excluded from this critique since it gathers all the information.
- Raze: Raze can really only thrive on sites and maps that aren’t wide open. She’s effectively useless on maps like Breeze and Icebox (except for spots on Icebox like Kitchen or the A site).
- KAY/O: His recon ability has a smaller radius than Sova’s and his ultimate gives away his position. His recon also isn’t as specific with pinpointing enemy locations as Sova or Skye.
- Phoenix: Phoenix kind of has worse versions of each of his abilities. There are better flashes, better molotovs, better walls available on other agents. He has a similar problem to Reyna where his kit is more geared toward making plays just for himself, plus someone has to babysit his recall point when he uses his ultimate.
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