Valorant continues to add new agents to its ever-expanding roster of playable characters, but have the game’s latest additions pushed it over the edge in being overly reliant on utility and abilities?
Valorant is a hero-based tactical FPS game that combines traditional shooters gameplay like that established by Counter-Strike with ability usage inspired by games like Overwatch. Each and every playable agent has different abilities that make them stand out, including three utilities and an ultimate ability. From teleporting around the map to returning from the dead, these ultimate abilities can be game-changers when used correctly.
But recent additions to the game’s agent roster have many wondering whether Valorant has actually made its utility and abilities too important. Riot Games still insists that Valorant has a good balance between utility usage and raw aim, but how true is that really??
Good aim absolutely still helps the best players to stand out in Valorant, but new agents made utility more important than ever, sometimes at the expense of rewarding player skill.
Such agents as Vyse, Tejo, Deadlock, and Iso bring multiple ways for players to lock down spaces, interrupt pushes, or block traditionally effective sight lines. Having just one of these agents on the enemy team is enough to force players to strategize around the agents’ abilities, and most teams tend to stack them. For example, playing around Deadlock’s barrier and net is tough as it is, but combining it with Vyse’s utility makes it extremely difficult to enter a given site successfully, even for players with the best aim.
Image credits: Riot Games
Good aim and an effective understanding of every weapon’s distinct recoil pattern are crucial for picking up frags. But matches increasingly feel like puzzles that must be solved, where teams attempt to combine agent abilities for an advantage while preventing the enemy from doing the same. Oftentimes, it feels like the team with the stronger utility just wins, even if the losing team has more mechanically skilled players.
The issue has even become a talking point at the game’s pro level. Consider the 2025 Valorant Masters Bangkok event. G2 Esports is a strong team, but the squad’s effective utilization of Tejo’s abilities played a large role in it seeming like an unstoppable force for much of the tournament until rival T1 eventually managed to solve for it. Compare this to the 2025 Masters Toronto event or the Esports World Cup, where G2 didn’t play nearly as well, and some fans wondered whether the drop in performance was directly because of Tejo’s heavy utility nerf.
This raises a natural question: Should utility and agent abilities be so important that, even at the pro level, buffs and nerfs to individual agents can potentially swing the results of a tournament?
While utility is important in Valorant, the game’s very nature as a hero-based FPS means that players should expect its areas of emphasis to differ from traditional tactical shooters.
Counter-Strike is a traditional tactical shooter with limited utility available to all players, rather than agents with unique abilities. This levels the playing field and makes things more predictable, allowing individual mechanical skills to shine through above all else. Valorant has established itself as a hero-based shooter, and players who download it likely do so with that in mind. Valorant’s unique abilities help it stand out from competitors, and toning them down to better emphasize raw aim and movement could lessen what makes Valorant stand out to begin with.
Image credits: Riot Games
Saying utility is too important is like saying economy management is too important in Valorant. Both are parts of the game that can help players gain an advantage over the enemy team without simply flexing their aim. Knowing how to counter enemy utility while remaining informed about the game’s ongoing meta is a crucial part of Valorant’s gameplay. Many top teams and players win tournaments by pairing coordinated ability play with traditional FPS mechanics, finding a good balance between the two.
If one agent’s utility is too strong, that isn’t necessarily a problem with the game’s abilities as a whole. For example, there was a point in the game when Neon was too strong because of her speed and slides. Riot nerfed Neon to ensure that the game remains balanced. Neon’s individual utility was too strong, but that doesn’t mean other utility was suddenly more important. The onus of keeping players from feeling like agent abilities are too strong is really on Riot’s balance team. If cases like those involving Neon and Tejo can be minimized, players will less often feel powerless against the game’s agent abilities.
Ideally, players should feel comfortable embracing both effective utility usage and mechanical skills as part of Valorant’s DNA, instead of treating the two factors as being in opposition to one another. It’s the unique combination of these attributes that makes Valorant stand apart from other games on the market.
Featured image credits: Riot Games
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