Valorant - New Update: Best Agents Tier List. Patch 5. 03
Tier s
At the top of the S tier for patch 5.03, we have this Super Battle Droid from Star Wars himself. It's been a long journey, but KO is finally getting his day in the sun as the number one pick on our agent tier list. It's pretty easy to understand why he's the top dog now as well as suppression.
It is one of the most valuable pieces of crowd control in the game right now, right behind flash suppression. It allows you to ruin an enemy team's plans, and it breaks their tempo of control on the map compared to other types of crowd control. KO also has other tricks up his sleeve that make them powerful, including One of the best flashes in the game is a Molly that can even hit through walls.
Since Chambers vacated the number one spot on our chair list, there's room for yet another initiator to be in the top three of our list, and the number two spot this patch goes to fade. The main reason Fade has skyrocketed to the second pick is because she has become a better and more aggressive information gatherer than Silva on a lot of maps.
Fade thrives on smaller maps where her Prowlers and Eye can clear space effectively. This means that on maps other than pretty much Breeze, only Fate is the preferred info gatherer and that is being reflected in her pick rate right now. She also has a plethora of crowd control that allows her to make plays both on the attack and defense sides of the map, which allows her to contribute crucial CC to a team comp that's needed to win rounds overall.
Flake currently has a very loaded kit, which makes her influence over a game quite high, hence the reason why she's becoming a big player in the meta and why she is now on the S tier. It was only a matter of time, but after getting hit by the riot balance team's Nerf Hammer, she has fallen a bit to the number three spot on her list.
Now hear us out. A lot of people will argue that chambers should be ranked lower than S tier because all four were nerfed in some kind of way in this patch, but there are some good reasons why that doesn't need to be the case. The main reason being that his numbers on his abilities did get tweaked and it is harder for him to abuse some parts of his kit now.
At the same time, the core mechanic that makes him super powerful is still there, which is why he is able to take almost any angle on the Defender side and teleport out is just too. It just gives him so many options that, in some ways, it's hard to justify him being put lower than S unless that gets changed fundamentally, so he's still going to be low-key broken when a good player pilots him in a game.
In closing, in the S tier, we have a new addition to the rank and that's the DC Speedster neon neon. They are up to S because their kit is already really strong on its own, as their overall speed and entry fracking abilities allow them to set up plays for their team and for themselves, and their speed is hard for players to deal with even at higher ranks.
Her stuns are very versatile and her wall is very hard to deal with in a lot of situations where she can get her team to bull rush a site with little the defense can do to stop it, Neon. She is a very valuable duelist now that the community has a better idea of how to abuse her speed and the abilities in her kit to make both her attacker side and defender side play very differently.
Tier a
Viper is kicking off the AIDS here. For this patch is the vision-blocking chemist, Viper. So how's Viper faring so far in this act? Well, she still has her maps that she's good on, which include Fracture Breeze. Icebox, and even Pearl now if used correctly, but Viper's value diminishes greatly if she's not picked on any of those maps.
She has good utility and a great set of tools, but she's not as necessary to a team as some of the agents have proven to be in Viper. It takes a lot of coordination to play well, and that doesn't bring a lot of value to a team in solo queue. It's less on your teammates to help get the job done. You do hate to see it, but Jet is down to the second spot in the tier this patch.
Jeff fell further behind because Chamber is still alive in the meta despite his Nerfs. He is also still the main uber for his team because of his teleport safety and his op ultimate, which does take away the main role from the op that Jet used to have, and on top of that. Neon is rising in the meta as a super fast-paced, entry-fragging duelist that teams want on their team.
She is falling in the meta because other agents are stealing her jobs because they can do the things she does, but better. I mean, Reyes is even becoming a standard pick that can replace Jet as well on some maps. It looks like some of those past nerfs are starting to catch up to Jet because she is surely losing her edge in the meta, Sova's.
In this weird spot in the meta where he is still good and functions well for his role, not many people are using him. The interesting thing is that this isn't even completely his fault either. The main thing plaguing him is that players are picking the other initiators over him in the current meta right now.
Skirmishing around the map and hard CC are the two most important things initiators can bring to a team comp KO. Skyfade and breach bring two of those most important qualities to a team comp. Sova, on the other hand, is a more passive long-range information gatherer who uses his abilities to function on the map.
It's not that Silva is bad right now; it's just that his kid is not as conducive to what the current initiator, Mata, needs in the game at the moment. Reyes is slowly but steadily making her presence in the meta known. She is becoming a formidable duelist pick on smaller maps where her close-quarters combat style can shine.
What makes her very team-friendly is that she synergizes well with agents that have a lot of CC in their kits. When you combine an Astra suck or a fade snare with a raised Nader ultimate, you have a lot of potential multi-kills that can come very easily. It's worth mentioning that Reyes does not have any sustainability in her kit like the other Duelists do, which makes it hard for her to stay hell multi throughout an entire round, but if she can do her job of getting in quickly and dealing massive damage even quicker, she is one of the scariest Duelists to go up against in the current meta.
A big play being made in the eights here this week is Phoenix, jumping straight out of the beat here and into the mid-a tier this week. If you're like me, you've seen tons of phoenixes pop up in your game since Buffs a month ago. Phoenix is up to eight here because, at the moment, Phoenix's flashes are basically undodgeable.
