VALORANT Agent Preview Impressions – Fade-ing Pain

Fade is the latest Agent to join VALORANT‘s lineup, her reveal trailer debuting at the Masters Finals. If you haven’t already seen her trailer, here it is:

PROFILE AND TOOLKIT

Profile: Fade

Role: Initiator

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Bio: Turkish bounty hunter Fade unleashes the power of raw nightmare to seize enemy secrets. Attuned with terror itself, she hunts down target and reveals their deepest fears – before crushing them in the dark.

Ability 1: Prowler (250 Credits, you can hold 2 charges)

Use this ability to equip a prowler, and you can send the prowler out by using the Fire button. You can also hold down the Fire button to steer the prowler towards where your crosshair is (Similar to the bird of Skye). It’ll chase down the first enemy or Terror Trail it sees. Once it chased down the enemy, causing Nearsighted (Greatly reduced vision).

Ability 2: Seize (200 Credits)

Use this ability to equip a ball filled with fear, and you can throw it. It can bounce off the wall, and after a certain amount of time, or you reuse the ability it will drop down and rupture on impact. Enemies within the area will be held there, as in they can’t leave and are Deafened (Everything is muffled, like you are in the water so there’s little to no audio cue) and Decayed (Temporarily loses a fixed amount of HP, can’t go lower than 1).

Ability 3: Haunt (Starting ability, 40 seconds cooldown)

Use this ability to equip a Haunting Watcher, and you can throw it out. Just like Seize it can bounce off the wall, and you can either reuse the ability to drop it down or just wait. Once the ability dropped, it will reveal the location of enemies, and creates Terror Trails to them. Enemies can destroy the Haunting Watcher.

Ultimate: Nightfall (7 Kills to charge)

Equip with the power of nightmare itself, use the Fire button to send out a wave of unstoppable nightmare energy, it is somewhat similar to Breach’s Ultimate, except hers does totally different things. Enemies caught in the blast will be marked by Terror Trails, Deafened and Decayed.

IMPRESSIONS

Fade’s skillset is basically to make her damn good at her role, i.e. Initiator. All her abilities as is, aside from her Ultimate, has some kind of scouting utility. Prowler, for example, doesn’t give you line of sight, but when it gets out of your control, you know there’s someone nearby. If that wasn’t already handy, the Prowler inflicts Nearsighted too.

On paper, it looks like Riot intended to combo Prowler with Haunt and Nightfall. However, in practice, there isn’t a particular need to “force” this interaction as the Prowler will function fine without Terror Trails. Terror Trails’ functionality is similar to a footprint, to help narrow down the enemy’s position.

It doesn’t mean she’s all scouting either. Seize sounds like a headache to deal with in theory already. A “lock down” and buffet of debuffs is probably not something you want to get struck by. Haunt is decently manageable in comparison but shooting it down does reveal your location, which can then lead into a Prowler or worse.

Then, we come to Nightfall, with a ridiculous AOE that’s bigger than even Breach, and capable of covering an entire site, making it just a touch overpowered, perhaps. We’re looking at you, Icebox Site A or Haven Site B. Learning how to reposition post-plant is going to be extremely important should this see no changes.

Of course, even with all these skills, I suppose it still pays to remember that she’s meant to be an Initiator. Defending a site won’t be her forte, instead taking point to scout ahead and play havoc to the opposing composition. She has the potential to completely shift the meta, usurping Sova’s recon utility, more so when it comes to entry or recapture. Players will have another choice now, so we’ll have to see how the ladder gets shaken up.

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