Valorant: adjusting against ultimate threat
It feels like the gears are collectively beginning to turn somewhat with regards to, at least in a basic sense, players at both low and high levels getting a grasp on how to get the most out of ults on at least an individual basis.
Of course, there’s a funny thing about ults: the real value-add, particularly for high-level play, tends not to be in how quickly you can pull the most out of an individual ult (or even how quickly you can start stringing them together on a team-wide basis). Instead, it’s how quickly you can learn to play against it, or at least the threat of it.
Valorant is very transparent when it comes to ults (in a way that League and other games aren’t without more advanced knowledge); both ult availability and the progress to it for allies and enemies are shown pretty plainly on the scoreboard, after all. Hence: you can know for sure at the start of a round whether an ult is available or imminent (generally I’ll treat 5/6 or 6/7 as imminent; since it’s based on kills and ult orbs, 4/6 or 5/7 can come into play pretty quickly, but for now my instinct is that you don’t change too much pre-round for it since it usually only comes after multiple kills being traded anyway).
The amount you can do, or should do, to plan around an enemy ult being up varies significantly from ult to ult, but there’s usually some adjustments you can make; based on what I’ve seen in pro and individual play so far, I’ve written up some early thoughts on each agent so far.
For those looking for the snappy little table or cheat sheet that’s been in some previous articles: yes, there is one. It’s at the very bottom of the piece, under ‘Conclusion’. I would still urge you do at least give the article a quick once-over before going straight to it, because there tends to be a lot of context that said sheet can’t really get across on its own.
Anyway…
BREACH
a) Four corners — take advantage of ult blindspots.
b) Full aggression on retakes.
The big thing with Breach ult is the shape — longer than it is fat, essentially triangular with a relatively modest width on the first wave in particular, and starting about 5 or so metres in front of him. In terms of either entry or anti-entry play, that means two things:
1) It’s essentially a half-site play; if he tries to do much more with it, there’s a risk that he hits no-one.
2) There are going to be some potential blindspots —particularly, a lot of tight corners facing the main entry point (think stacked boxes on Split B for instance). There are going to be cases where this doesn’t work, but there are going to be more where it does.
Hence, the little phrase to remember here is “four corners”, because you likely want to be positioning yourself towards the four corners of any given site — no remotely central positions, just ones extremely far back or extremely up close. My view is that you far more often want to be further forward than back — remember that a team using Breach ult has to generally push full-sprint to make proper use of it, so they don’t have the luxury of time with checking corners thoroughly and the like. On the other hand, even if they do hit you, they may struggle to get to many of the furthest-back positions before it wears off, so it can go both ways, but the key is spacing.
BRIMSTONE
a) Always have a safe escape — minimise possibility of any sort of pincer.
b) Most sniper spots are fine, a few aren’t.
First off, just don’t be stupid. If you crowd into a spot narrow enough for Brimstone to cover the entire place, then, yes, you’re going to die, so don’t ever be in one of those corridors for more than a few seconds. Of course, there…aren’t THAT many spots that fit that description straight-up, with even most Heaven spots having enough escape time (Haven A Heaven, Bind A Apartments, Bind Short TP do come to mind as bad spots) if you don’t completely nail the ult on top of the guy.
So, that asides, the biggest thing is to make sure that there’s someone playing further behind than normal on offensive pushes, and to play around back/spawn rotation options on defence. In a situation where it, again, isn’t just blindingly obvious where Brimstone can ult, you’re looking to avoid the possibility of him putting you in a no-win situation (where you can only go one direction to get out of the blast radius, and that direction is actually or at least potentially into a hail of bullets). Remember: something as simple as a Sage ice ball could cut this off from the back if you’re not careful, so you need to be extra vigilant.
At its most boiled-down: consider the position you’re trying to get to, and what happens if you go forward/backwards, and consider what happens if you go left/right. If the answer on at least one of both is “I run into a literal wall”, you don’t want to be there with Brimstone ult as a threat. Force him to make the prediction play.
CYPHER
a) Avoid taking edge positions.
b) Don’t push on defence.
c) Spread out on offence.
Cypher ult is a little hard to specifically plan against (and variable in terms of how well opponents really take advantage of the information presented to them), given it’s mostly useful later in the rounds (where enemies can be completely pinned off the information being given).
Defensively, the best you can do is not take ‘edge’ positions — positions right at the very edge of maps where rotations off are extremely slow and/or can quickly become unsafe (generally due to a mix of both distance and vertical barriers etc.); some that come to mind here are Bind A Heaven, Haven C Plat/Site, and Split B Back. If offensive Cypher gets an ult off in an otherwise fairly calm situation, you need to at least have the threat of rotating 3 onto either site quickly.
Offensively, I probably wouldn’t rush/push too hard against a Cypher ult team; the very worst thing that can happen is to have a body get isolated and the enemy team being able to use that to push far forward on you enough to cut off your spawn rotations. Play slowly, and you’ll probably want to be more spread than usual; make sure you have a presence cross-map (and make sure that solo player doesn’t do anything stupid).
JETT
a) Take positions with ceilings/limited sky visibility
b) Very conservative with peeking and long sight lines.
The unique part of Jett ult is pretty simple: she can one-shot you with knives with essentially perfect accuracy out of her jump (as opposed to the usual, where you’re not likely to hit the backside of a barn door even with something like a SMG spray).
There is clearly a threat from her just running at you, but ultimately, if she does that, I don’t think much changes in terms of the general dynamic; she has an advantage on you in the duel (and anyone who has a weapon that might struggle to one-shot her should probably be worried) but given she either has to get a clean head shot, or dump everything and hope three of the five knives go into your chest and legs, I wouldn’t change things dramatically for that eventuality. There may be an argument for going tighter than usual on defense (since there isn’t an actual expiry on her ult once she starts using it outside of round’s end or her using all the daggers unlike a lot of agents, so she can keep running towards the rest of your team after winning a 1v1) but I’m not 100% convinced of it.
The big threat is her using her vertical advantage to essentially bypass the angle that you’re peering at and get you from above before you can reposition your crosshair; with that in mind, the general advice would be to not take defensive positions where that could even be a concern (and, offensively, to try to get into said positions as quickly as possible on any sort of entry etc.)
OMEN
a) Don’t buy new snipers, and make sure existing ones can deal with him 1v1 (Heavy Shields, pistol buy).
b) Aggressive positions on defence, conservative on offence.
c) Position for sound cues near your spawn if possible.
Every Omen pretty much tries to do one of three things with his ult:
1) He ults your spawn in order to create maximum confusion and uncertainty (because unless you have someone deep on defence, you don’t know where he’ll then peel out from)
2) He ults a little bit behind a sniper (far enough that it can’t be interrupted without completely giving up their defensive position) and takes the 1v1 duel.
3) He holds it and does a cross-map ult after your team does an entry or starts getting pushed (generally in order to take a spot that you couldn’t get to safely otherwise — some overlap with 2) here).
Omen ult can be very, very dangerous as a result. If you’re a defending team, I would usually take it being up at round’s start as a cue to go aggressive if possible; bear in mind that the effect of Omen ult is practically that you can now be assailed from an angle you’re not watching at any possible position, so you just don’t ever want to be alone and with your back showing towards your own spawn in any way.
I would tend to say that for an attacking team, you probably want to play it slower than normal. It’s a lot harder to force entry off a single pick (if it’s not on the Omen himself, and Omen shouldn’t be putting himself in a position to give up that pick in this scenario), and the more ears you have near your spawn, the less capacity is there to be surprised by him ulting in. Don’t just idle someone on spawn (unless the Omen’s a complete idiot and tries to take the same ult 0 seconds in every time), but have at least one far enough back that he’s already got rifles on his sight lines out of spawn once he teleports.
PHOENIX
a) Be ready to wait it out — conservative positions on both offence and defence.
b) Even MORE conservative positions on bomb defences etc.
Remember: the key feature of Phoenix ult is that he snaps back to it after the duration (and can do nothing to stop that happening). Later in rounds, it ends up becoming a potent tool for winning small duels (particularly given the full heal), but early in rounds, it’s pretty much just an information-gathering tool unless you let it be otherwise by trying to duel the ulted Phoenix.
The temptation is to try to one-tap him so he gets nothing at all out of it, but the risk-reward here is absolutely not in your favour here; don’t do it unless it’s completely obvious that you can get away with it (and that’s basically not happening). If you have to run with knife out to stop him closing the full distance, go ahead and do it. This will possibly give other members of his team enough time to take some ground moving forward that they could otherwise not, but it shouldn’t allow them to get a full entry in most situations, so just position in such a way that you can defend against that incursion.
Special mention for Phoenix ult against a planted bomb. Remember: he will snap back after 10 seconds (and then spend a couple more seconds dusting off his lapels). He almost always cannot complete a defuse while ulted. Run as far back as possible.
RAZE
a) Spread out.
b) Don’t rely on long sight lines.
c) Tunnels positions are even worse than usual.
This is probably the simplest one of all. Raze ult can make for spectacular plays, and you don’t have much response time; if you’ve taken a step forward, nobody except maybe Jett is going to be able to dodge it. Bear in mind, however: she can’t unsheath her proverbial sword here (fuse lasts 10 seconds), and if you take two steps to the side and back, she’s going to struggle to get it close enough to you to kill you most of the time.
Asides from the odd multi-kill on a team cramming a tunnel or running clustered yet single-file into a site, the main use of Raze ult is going to be to take out snipers through smoke. The sound clip should generally give you enough time unless you are in a truly ballsy position (centre of window), but it’s probably the strongest of the anti-sniper ults (Brimstone, Omen, Raze, Sova) in terms of being a genuine deterrent to using one on said round.
SAGE
a) Tend to early aggressive positions on defence, conservative on offence, but…
b) Aggression here has to be full-team: don’t take solo battles anywhere.
c) Work to avoid giving up sightlines on bodies.
For a team defending against a potential Sage ult (rez), treat it like a zombie apocalypse, White Walkers, whatever, scenario. If you just leave the bodies to their own devices, they will get back up and overwhelm you, because it’s a 6v5. If bodies are going to drop, you want to almost treat each of them like a spike drop — move into space over them, keep them at worst barely out of line-of-sight. You don’t necessarily want to outright rush them out of the gate, but you want to play up so that you can rush them if they then give up a pick.
“But Strong,”, I hear you cry, “surely it’s the opposite? Surely you want to play safe on defence (and aggro on offence) and let them try to make the play, because a rez to make a 4v5 a 5v5 is far less impactful than one to turn a 2v2 retake into a 2v3?” You’re not wrong about that, imaginary person, but I would rather take/not take the risk here in order to completely neutralise Sage ult as a real factor mid-round.
Either way, the bigger point here: take as few solo battles as possible. Even if you win the battle, that body’s going to be an extremely easy target for a round-changing Sage ult if something happens (and if you’re just going to cover the body forever to stop that, congratulations, your team is now in an effective 4v4 which frankly isn’t always a huge help).
SOVA
a) Ehh.
b) If doing anything, go light on snipers.
The funny thing about Sova ult: its clear, direct antecedent in inspiration is Hanzo’s ultimate in Overwatch, which became infamous very, very quickly for a) its ability to rip through an entire team and b) its ease of use in doing so (and this in a game which very quickly became played overwhelmingly around ult usage).
In spite of that, maybe a slightly controversial opinion here, but I tend to see Sova ult as the single weakest one in the game right now, both in pug terms and in competitive terms; the small range means that even if tagged, it’s generally just far too easy to reliably dodge just by pulling out a knife and dancing for a little bit. Yes, you will occasionally get the Brimstone-style trap where you rip through three of them. It still doesn’t seem all that common, especially compared to, say, Brimstone ult.
The furthest I’d probably go is for snipers to possibly be more careful than usual about holding positions where they could get pincered (e.g. rifles holding the sight line and then Sova ults the spot you typically dodge in-and-out of) or otherwise punished for even a temporary speed drop.
VIPER
a) Don’t let yourself get in a retake scenario — all or nothing.
b) Save damaging utility as long as possible.
For once, I didn’t use the word ‘aggressive’, because I don’t quite think it gets the point across with going against Viper. The big thing is that you cannot afford to be facing off against her in a scenario where you’re having to retake a site as the defending team (for the attacking team, losing bomb would be the most direct analogue), so allow yourself no quarter here; if the enemy team attacks your site, you can’t withdraw and wait, commit to taking as many down with you as possible. Yes, I know only she can really just sit in the smoke, and it can create odd angles for the rest of her team sometimes, but I would still generally prefer to be 1v1 than 3v3 when retaking against a Viper if those are the only two options.
The one other thing I would say is to save damaging utility as much as possible in that round. Remember: she is pressured to stay pretty close to the centre of her ult, so you have a decent idea on her position, just not line-of-sight to her. Don’t push your luck and assume she won’t pop out of it at all, but you have as decent a read on her position as you’re likely to get.
CONCLUSIONS
Finally, as promised, the table:
Most adjustments that I can see can be briefly summed in one of three ways: positioning (i.e. where everyone starts out on the offensive/defensive default), movement (most usefully in terms of situations where you want to push or stay back), and snipers (this is the trickiest one — I don’t think it’s by any means indefensible to buy an Op or peek in most of the situations where I advise against it, because an Op in the hands of a skilled player can overcome a lot in the way of tactical disadvantages, but at the least, I would take the mentioned ults into account before buys).
The usual caveats apply here — this is going to be an evolving discipline, a lot of this is theoretical or based on relatively underdeveloped play, and a lot of these are potentially going to turn on better use of ults team-wide (e.g. the traditional ‘ult-for-ult’ scenarios in League). Still: even if every sspecific conclusion here ages out as things develop, mitigating ults, while not exactly sexy, is absolutely going to be a big value-add for players and teams medium-term, and it’s important for competitors to stay ahead of the curve on it.
