VALORANT players agree one agent would be permabanned if Riot introduced pick and bans

Amid discussions of whether map pick-and-bans should be a thing in VALORANT ranked, imagine a similar system for agents—like Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege. Interestingly, if Riot Games were to introduce such a thing, the community seems to have no confusion about one agent suffering the most from it.

One redditor’s intriguing post on April 11 got several VALORANT players talking about the agents they would like to permanently ban based on maps and the Elo they play in. While Reyna, Killjoy, and Viper crept up in multiple comments, most were convinced Cypher would take the biggest hit.

After his latest buff that has almost made his traps invincible, especially on certain maps, Cypher has become the VALORANT player base’s worst nightmare. Most players I meet in my ranked games opt to rotate and steer clear of a Cypher site—even if the enemy Cypher has the lowest number of kills on the server. It has become a huge gamble to even try defying some unbreakable Trap Wire setups.

Reyna was the second-most popular choice, and for an interesting reason: Most smurfs choose to pick her. Whether banning an agent popular among smurfs would solve the problem is a discussion for another time. 

While an agent pick-and-ban system seems to be a far-fetched idea for VALORANT right now, one player described the possibility of such a system existing in pro play. “Teams could theoretically target ban a dive duelist or other key character if they don’t play them,” they wrote. “Heretics could ban Jett/Raze because Miniboo plays Neon, but I doubt that’d be a common occurrence and you’d just ban whatever is the strongest/most prevalent character on the map.”

Well, it certainly would introduce more possibilities in VALORANT pro play and make games more diverse. In ranked games, however, a system to ban agents may cause more hindrances than good, restricting our experience.