Expanding your agent pool in VALORANT featuring Theia
Theia is one of the most flexible players in all of professional VALORANT. Here, she’ll walk you through what it takes to expand your agent pool.
Developing a bigger agent pool is one of the most important gameplay aspects that any VALORANT player can work on, regardless of their rank. From duelists to sentinels and everything in between, you’re going to want to have an understanding of how to play multiple agents in VALORANT.
For this guide, we’ve recruited Dignitas’ own professional VALORANT player Melisa “Theia” Mundorff, who sports one of the widest agent pools in all of competitive VALORANT. With a mastery of controllers, smokers, sentinels, and intel-gatherers, Theia easily ranks as one of, if not, the most flexible players in the game’s competitive scene. Here’s how you can be just as flexible by expanding
Learning To Be Flexible
When expanding your agent pool, the most important concept you can learn is flexibility. VALORANT’s roster of agents might be limited, but the plays you can make with the characters that are on the roster are limitless.
If you’ve spent the majority of your VALORANT career playing duelists, for example, you might want to mix things up and try out a supportive agent like a sentinel or controller. Having more options in your back pocket is always a good thing in character-based games, especially when many characters are going to be hotly contested. If your main isn’t available in a certain game, you should always have a backup plan, just in case.
I think it’s important to play multiple agents that can work well in any composition your team is playing.As for a certain number, you should have at least three different agents you feel confident and comfortable with.
Additionally, if you feel as though a certain agent might fit into a team composition better than another agent, you should always be ready to fit your team’s needs. With backup agents at your disposal, you can always be ready to help your team. Advisedly, you should be picking up at least one duelist, one controller, and one sentinel in your agent pool.
For starters, agents like Phoenix, Raze, Brimstone, Omen, Cypher, and Sage are solid choices to start building your agent pool with thanks to their simplistic nature and relatively less-crowded ability kits.
If your team needs smokes, you should find an agent who can use smokes. If your team needs flashes, learn an agent who has a strong flash. Whatever you can do to fit in with your team and make them better, that’s what kind of agent you should be playing.
Making The Right Choice
While there’s going to be many options on the table for you to choose from, you really should only be playing agents in VALORANT that you’re comfortable with. Forcing yourself onto a certain character just because they fit a team composition is never going to be the right play. Instead, find a handful of agents who you know you find success with, and try to work them into a team comp. You can never have enough utility, so when in doubt make an attempt to slot yourself into a team comp through agents that can bring flashes, smokes, and other forms of utility to the table.
You should play roles that you’re comfortable with. Obviously, the difference between playing an agent like Jett and an agent like Cypher is night and day. If you like playing at a faster pace, maybe a duelist is right for you. If you like slowing things down, you should try out sentinels like Killjoy and Cypher.
The process of getting comfortable with certain agents takes time. In order to really know the ins and outs of a certain character, you’ll have to play at least ten games with them in order to get the hang of the way they play. Duelists play differently than sentinels, sentinels play differently than smokers, and so on. Even beyond your initial “tryout” period with a new agent, you’ll want to practice as much as possible with whatever character you decide to pick up.
However, don’t burn yourself out by trying out the entire roster only to find that you’re just “decent” or “average” at all of the game’s characters. VALORANT doesn’t reward “Jacks of all Trades,” so try to keep your focus on just a small handful of agents that you know you can find success with.
It is extremely beneficial to know what agents you’re comfortable with. So try them all out and try to find which ones you’re most comfortable with.
Plus, depending on what agent you’re playing, you’ll personally have to change the way you play and approach the game. For example, if you’re used to playing as an entry fragger, but decide to play an agent like Sage, you’ll need to hang back and focus more on your teammates than yourself.
What To Do When You’re New
VALORANT can be an often-intimidating game for new players, as the sheer amount of things to learn could be overwhelming. When it comes to picking an agent to main, new players should focus on mastering one character before trying to expand. Once your fundamentals have been perfected, only then should you try and master the rest of the roster. Frankly speaking, duelists give players the best opportunity to learn the game, as their kits aren’t flooded with abilities that focus on others, but instead, allow them to make plays for themselves.
To start off, new players should pick up duelists just to get the feel of the game. Duelists don’t have to support others as much, so they can really just focus on themselves and the game as a whole. Entrying for your team and focusing on your aim and gunplay is always a good place to start off if you’re new to VALORANT, and duelists allow you to focus on that.
A particularly great character to pick up if you’re struggling to choose a main is Phoenix. The agent has countless tools at his disposal, including a flashbang, molotov, and pseudo-smoke in the form of his wall. All three of those abilities have playmaking potential, and should be especially familiar to and comfortable for new players who might be picking up VALORANT after coming from other tactical shooter titles.
I think, specifically, Phoenix is a very good agent to start off with — especially if you’re coming from CS:GO. Phoenix has a close flash that he can use without help from his teammates, as well as a molly that is always useful.
Other agent options to pick up for new players include Raze, Jett, and Brimstone, as their basic tools allow players to grasp the basics of VALORANT above all else.
Defying the Meta
As a VALORANT player, you should never really be worrying too much about agent selection in comparison to the rest of your gameplay. All told, your agent’s ability and playstyle play a much smaller role in the outcome of a game when compared to your ability to aim, communicate, and think critically over the span of each round. A good player focuses on their fundamentals above everything, and never blames their failures on their agent choice.
The amazing thing about VALORANT is that there is no specific agent meta. You can put together a crazy team, but as long as you have teamwork and communication, you can win any game with any combination of characters.
All told, your agent is nothing more than a vehicle that allows you to do what you do best. If you’re consistently missing shots or planting the spike in poor locations, it doesn’t matter whether you’re playing a duelist or a healer.
Plus, agent selection plays a small role in the way your team succeeds as a unit. As long as you can communicate with your teammates and set up plays with the tools you have at your disposal, you should be able to find success. Obviously, you and your teammates are going to want to coordinate which tools you eventually have to work with, considering an abundance of one type of agent isn’t going to do much good. But still, the point stands that the best VALORANT players can succeed with any character, as long as they’re comfortable.
I’ve seen some crazy team comps in scrims and they work sometimes because you can really make the other team question how it’s ever going to work, but it’s clear that they’re coordinated and can make it work well enough to win.
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