Best VALORANT Controllers to Play, Understand, and Rank Up with

Brimstone is built for zoning and gaining information during the round. Your incendiary is perfect to close off entry points or clearing out corners where somebody might catch you off guard, enabling you to take sites in a more comfortable way rather than strictly rushing in.
As far as ultimates go, Brimstone’s is one of Valorant’s overall best. Even if you don’t get a secured kill from using it, it’s perfect for moving enemies from angles or for punishing opponents who are camping in corners.

Brimstone’s main focus is taking and holding sites, use your smokes to control areas where enemies might be lurking while covering their lines of sight. They’ll either be forced to wait around 19 seconds while the smoke clears, or move to a worse angle. No matter the situation, learning good lineups for your smokes is a must to get all the value from this agent.

Here are Brimstone’s abilities in more detail:

• First Core Ability — Incendiary (250 credits): Equip a Molotov launcher. FIRE to launch an incendiary grenade that will bounce twice before exploding when it hits the floor, igniting an area of effect which will damage enemies and teammates when stood on.
• Second Core Ability — Stim Beacon (100 credits each): Fire to throw the disc onto the ground, creating an area of effect which, when stood in by Brimstone and teammates, will buff players’ rate of fire by 15% for 12 seconds. This ability has two charges.
• Signature Ability — Sky Smoke (100 credits each): Left-click to select target areas, and right-click to send smokes to the targeted areas. Smokes will obscure vision for 19.25s. Brimstone can equip up to three charges for this ability at the beginning of each round.
• Ultimate Ability: Orbital Strike (7 points): Fire to send an AOE beam of light that will rapidly cause damage over 3 seconds to all Agents who get caught in the area of effect.

2. Viper

Viper utilizes a plethora of gas-based abilities to contour the battlefield in her favor while trapping and killing her prey. To help you grasp this contagious agent, we’re bringing you everything you need to know about the master of toxins.

Two of Viper’s abilities rely heavily on her toxin reserves, so you’ll need to keep track of exactly how much fuel you have left during the round. Perhaps Viper’s most valuable ability is her Toxic Screen. This line of gas can be used to divide a portion of the map in two, one of the main features that makes her a controller agent. Mastering lineups with this can be quite useful when trying to take control of certain rotation routes or angles on the map, as it will reduce the number of areas you need to cover when striking a site.

Both her Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen drain Viper’s fuel reserves (as mentioned before). You need to keep a strong focus at managing them, or else she becomes pretty much useless. Both take 15 seconds to fully drain her toxin reserves when used individually. Finally, her Poison Cloud acts like a smoke, it can be placed at entry points to stop enemies from catching you off guard. It’s made even more effective, as it does 30 decay damage initially and 10 damage over time while inside of it, so enemies are apprehensive to push through it.

Here are Viper’s abilities in more detail:

• Ability 1: Snake Bite (200 Credits): Equip a chemical launcher. Fire to launch a canister that shatters upon hitting the floor, creating a lingering chemical zone that damages enemies and applies Vulnerable, doubling incoming damage. Vulnerable lasts for 2 seconds upon leaving the area of effect.
• Ability 2: Poison Cloud (200 Credits): Equip a gas emitter. Fire to throw the emitter that perpetually remains throughout the round. Re-use the ability to create a toxic gas cloud at the cost of fuel. This ability can be re-used more than once and can be picked up to be redeployed. Poison Orb goes on a 6 second cooldown after being deactivated. If active when Viper dies, Poison Cloud now remains up for an additional 2 seconds, or until Viper runs out of fuel.
• Signature Ability: Toxic Screen (1 free): Equip a gas emitter launcher. Fire to deploy a long line of gas emitters. Reuse the ability to create a tall wall of toxic gas at the cost of fuel. This ability can be reused more than once. Toxic Screen burns through walls, placing emitters at all valid locations over its length. If active when Viper dies, Toxic Screen remains up for an additional 2 seconds before deactivating
• Ultimate Ability: Viper’s Pit (7 Points): Equip a chemical sprayer. Fire to spray a chemical cloud in all directions around Viper, creating a large cloud that reduces the vision range of players and maximum health of enemies inside of it. Hold the ability key to disperse the cloud early. Lasts forever if Viper returns to refuel it every 15 seconds, or remains inside of it.

3. Omen

Omen is rather unique, this controller utilizes his abilities to hunt down his prey, while also thematically being able to manipulate space and time. There’s no question that Omen is difficult to fully master, but once you get the hang of where to use his utility, you’ll find yourself enjoying his lucky play style quite a lot.

As a whole, Omen’s abilities focus on being able to support his team’s overall play style, while keeping the enemy paranoid by constantly leaving them guessing where the next crowd control might be coming from.

Omen’s kit feels good at everything but a master at none. He’s good on both attack and defense, which has made him one of the game’s most consistent agents. He has smokes, he has flashes, and he has the ability to play either passively or aggressively with his Shadow Steps.

That ability allows him to get to unexpected spots, but it can become rather predictable if not changed, similar to his ultimate. If you use it to jump into high ground, just be careful of holding the same angle constantly, especially if you’ve used it successfully previously against your enemy.

While playing with your team, you want to find a position to use your Paranoia to lead your allies in, and then follow up by covering flanks. Because of the long range of his entire kit, he can afford to play a bit further from the site thus being quite good at covering lurkers.

Here are Omen’s abilities in more detail:

• Ability 1: Shrouded Step (150 Credits): Equip a shadow walk ability and see its range indicator. Fire to begin a brief channel, then teleport to the marked location.
• Ability 2: Paranoia (300 Credits): Fire a shadow projectile forward, briefly reducing the vision range of all players it touches. This projectile can pass straight through walls.
• Signature Ability: Dark Cover (100 Credits, 1 free, 40s recharge): Equip a shadow orb and see its range indicator. Fire throws the shadow orb to the marked location, creating a long-lasting shadow sphere that blocks vision. Hold alternate fire while targeting to move the marker further away. Hold the ability key while targeting to move the marker closer.
• Ultimate Ability: From the Shadows (7 Points): Fire to begin teleporting to the selected location. While teleporting, Omen will appear as a Shade that can be destroyed by an enemy to cancel his teleport.

4. Astra

While Astra’s kit looks confusing at first glance, it just takes a bit of practice to get used to it. Her kit is entirely guided for teamwork and is focused on setting multiple traps to capture enemies rather than relying on raw damage to kill them. Her stars are amazing tools for distracting and slowing enemies, or misdirecting them with her Signature Nebula smokes around choke points or key areas in planting sites.

The more important abilities to understand are her Gravity Well, Nova Pulse, and Nebula, with her Cosmic Divide being the most impactful of the entire kit. With the ability to cut the map up however she wants it, Astra’s ultimate is quite the defining feature.

Astra’s main focus is ensuring that her team can use her array of crowd control to their advantage. From the shadows, she’s in charge of cutting off important transition routes and creating a lot of opportunities for her allies to strike with.

The best way to accomplish this is to use her Gravity Well. Dropping it at an important choke point will move enemies into one place which lets your team line them up to knock them down one by one. Great examples of this are A Tower and Mid Window on Haven.

Here are Astra’s abilities in more detail:

• Ability 1: Gravity Well (25s cooldown): Place Stars in Astral Form. Activate a Star to form a Gravity Well. Players in the area are pulled toward the center before it explodes, making all players still trapped inside fragile.
• Ability 2: Nova Pulse (25s cooldown): Place Stars in Astral Form. Activate a Star to detonate a Nova Pulse. The Nova Pulse charges briefly and then strikes, concussing all players in its area.
• Ability 3: Nebula/Dissipate (1 free, 150 Credits, 15s cooldown after Dissipate): Place Stars in Astral Form. Activate a Star to transform it into a Nebula (smoke). Use a Star to Dissipate it, returning the star to be placed in a new location after a delay. Dissipate briefly forms a fake Nebula at the Star’s location before returning.
• Signature Ability: Astral Form (150 Credits): Activate to enter Astral Form where you can place Stars with primary fire. Stars can be reactivated later, transforming them into a Nova Pulse, Nebula, or Gravity Well.
• Ultimate Ability: Cosmic Divide (7 points): When Cosmic Divide is charged, use secondary fire in Astral Form to begin aiming it, then primary fire to select two locations. An infinite Cosmic Divide connects the two points you select. Cosmic Divide blocks bullets and heavily dampens audio.

We hope that this list gives you enough information to understand why all of these agents are so good at their roles. Don’t forget that if you want to get into esports betting, knowing why a certain agent is considered strong is important because the esports odds are constantly changing as the professional players select their agents. We’ve plenty of esports bets for you to consider.