VALORANT players want an agent who steals abilities—but balance could be a huge issue

VALORANT players have brewed up their own ideas for an agent designed to steal other abilities, but it might be difficult to balance such a strong ability with the rest of the crew.

The ideas started rolling after one creative VALORANT player brought up the idea of having a new agent who can steal Ultimates from other characters on Reddit on Sept. 26. Right away, this sounds pretty broken, considering it opens up the possibility of having access to two Killjoy Lockdowns or two Viper’s Pits in a single round. It’s terrifying to think of all the new Ultimate combos you could make with two of the same prime abilities.

That’s why an ability-stealing agent would have to be carefully balanced, fans claimed. Thankfully, others chimed in on how they could make this cool concept work with the other VALORANT agents without being totally broken.

One of the simplest ways to buff or nerf an Ultimate is to adjust the number of required Ult points. For an Ultimate that can steal other Ultimates, VALORANT players suggested either taking the average number of Ult Points for every Ultimate in the game or setting it at 9 or 10 points. Ten would be the most of any agent so far.

Another possible restriction would be to limit the Ultimate to only work on dead enemies, similar to Cypher’s Neural Theft. That way, it won’t be as easy to target the best Ultimate on the enemy team without killing that specific agent first.

Other players aren’t as sold on the idea of stealing Ultimates because it sounds too broken for the game—especially when there are cases where certain Ults counter other Ults.

The best example of this is using Brimstone’s Orbital Strike to destroy Killjoy’s Lockdown. That just shows how advantageous it would be to steal specific VALORANT Ultimates, and it might be a little too powerful to handle.

Instead, they would like to see a signature VALORANT ability that can steal other agents’ signature abilities, as that would still be cool but less impactful than getting Ultimates involved. For example, this agent could steal a Sage heal to help out an ally, or they could steal Raze’s Paint Shells to push enemies back.

At the very least, something like this is less likely to break VALORANT’s balance than stealing an Ultimate, and that could be perfect for this fan creation.