That’s a pretty powerful wristwatch.
It has been a while since Riot Games brought in a Controller Agent fans can be excited about. The last time VALORANT fans got a new Controller Agent was in Patch 2.04 when Riot Games released the mighty astral guardian in Astra – that was over a year and a half ago.
Since then, other Controller Agents such as Viper, Omen, and Brimstone have received minor reworks that changed how these Agents are played in matches. Minor changes now and then made things just a bit more exciting to play the Controller role in VALORANT, but nothing beats having a new Agent to play around and experiment with in-game.
Harbor Abilities
Harbor brings the power of water into the battlefield. While the Indian Controller Agent is content with using his dominion over water to spawn torrential water walls and reinforced water domes to aid his allies, he can also call forth the power of geysers to concuss and wreak havoc on the battlefield.
High Tide (E)
EQUIP a wall of water. FIRE sends the water forward along the ground. HOLD FIRE to guide the water in the direction of your crosshair, passing through the world, and spawning a wall along the water’s path. ALT FIRE while bending to stop the water early. Players’ hits are slowed.
- Key Details
- Cost: Free
- Windup: 2 seconds
- Duration: 12 seconds
- Cooldown: 40 seconds
- Debuff: 30% Slow
- Health: N/A
High Tide, Harbor’s Signature Ability, is a mix between Viper’s Toxic Screen and Phoenix’s Blaze. High Tide can spawn through world objects around maps like Toxic Screen and can be bent to the desired shape like Blaze.
High Tide is more versatile than Toxic Screen, thanks to its cooldown-based nature and the large area it can cover around maps. Although it does not have the same decay effect, it does inflict a slow debuff on enemies that try to cross the water wall.
If you are familiar with how pro teams abused the life out of Toxic Screen in the past, you can expect the same thing to happen with Harbor’s High Tide. The ability to slice bombsites in half upon site entry will be a godsend for the Attacking team. On the other hand, the Defending team can also use High Tide on retake situations.
Cove (Q)
EQUIP a sphere of shielding water. FIRE to throw. ALT FIRE to underhand throw. Upon impacting the ground, spawn a water shield that blocks bullets.
- Key Details
- Cost: 350 Credits
- Windup: 0.8 Seconds
- Duration: 15 Seconds
- Cooldown: N/A
- Debuff: N/A
- Health: 500 HP
Looks can be very deceiving, and with Cove’s smoke-like visual, you can be forgiven for mistaking it for just another smoke ability in VALORANT.
Cove is anything but just a smoke cover – it is a powerful bullet-blocking ability that absorbs incoming bullets. Riot Games showed the fans the best way to use the Cove in VALORANT – post-plant clutch defuse situations.
Cove can absorb up to 500 damage from incoming fire. This means you need to shoot the Cove at least 13 times with guns such as the Vandal or Phantom before the Cove breaks and diffuses. The duration is 15 seconds, which is more than enough time to defuse the Spike (Spike defuse from naught takes 7 seconds.)
Cascade (C)
EQUIP a wave of water. FIRE to send the wave rolling forward and through walls. RE-USE to stop the wave. Player hits are slowed.
- Key Details
- Cost: 150 Credits
- Windup: N/A
- Duration: 5 seconds (after settling)
- Cooldown: N/A
- Debuff: 30% Slow
- Health: N/A
Harbor’s Cascade is similar to Omen’s Paranoia and Breach’s Faultline. All three abilities can drive enemy players away from key areas around bombsites to aid site entry or retakes.
You can also stop the wall short of using it as a pseudo-smoke cover that lasts 5 seconds.
Reckoning (X)
EQUIP the full power of your Artifact. FIRE to summon a geyser pool on the ground. Successive geyser strikes target enemy players in the area. Players caught within a strike are concussed.
- Key Details
- Cost: 7 Ultimate Points
- Windup: N/A
- Duration: 9 seconds
- Cooldown: N/A
- Debuff: 2-Second Concuss
- Health: N/A
Reckoning reminds us of Breach’s Rolling Thunder and Fade’s Nightfall and their ability to cover a ton of space around the map. Reckoning is arguably more powerful than both, as this ability will automatically target enemy players around the area for 9 seconds and concuss players hit by the ability. Enemy players concussed by the geysers will have a golden stripe on their heads, which should give you a good idea of their exact location.
Go into The Range and play around with Reckoning. The ability will appear to have a total diameter of 40 meters, and the area moves forward slowly throughout its 9-second duration. We can imagine the ability to be great for site entry with its ability to drive away any defender from any space within the bomb site. Reckoning should also effectively drive away enemy players in post-plant and retake situations.
Water Bender
Harbor’s abilities are already looking good for coordinated team play in VALORANT. If you think about it, Harbor might even end up playing more like an Initiator/Controller hybrid thanks to his excellent site-entry ability in Cascade and his powerful Ultimate. That said, we will have to wait for the pros to stretch the new Agent’s abilities in competitive play before we begin seeing a meta for the newest Controller.
You can expect to see Harbor in more games in the coming weeks as more and more players unlock and acquire the new Agent in-game.
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