All Valorant agent classes serve a purpose in the meta. Controllers aren't anything different, being a really important asset to team composition. Knowing how to play a Controller agent isn't an easy job, and that's why you're here.
Every time you play competitive Valorant, you'll need to have a Controller agent in your team. They are agents best capable of holding control over sites and enemies. So if you want to main a Controller agent, now's the best time because today, we'll take a look at how to play Controllers in Valorant!
Valorant Controllers Agents Overview
There are 4 Controller agents in Valorant. Although their abilities may vary a bit, all Controller agents share the same gameplay style: smoking off and blocking enemy vision. You can check out each individual Controller agent here:
These agents' importance is so big that you can notice their presence even with Valorant pros. Their tactics and strategies are universally the same, be it for attacking or defending. So let's see how you should attack and defend with Controllers.
How To Attack With Controllers In Valorant
The main purpose of Controllers when attacking is to smoke off enemy openings and angles properly. These angles are positions where the enemies are camping and waiting to pick off easy kills while you're attacking. If they are smoked off, their vision is ruined, and they have to reposition to improper angles where you can either get easy control of the site with your teammates. A perfect example for a smoke when attacking would be placing it on Heaven in Haven.
Every Controller agent has some kind of smoke, so the rules of smoking apply to all of them. The above Brimstone smoke is an awesome setup for attacking. Using Viper's Poison Cloud ability for smoking may be a bit harder though since you can't select the exact position like with the other Controllers. This brings the point of lineups: if you plan on playing Controllers with Brimstone and Viper, learn your post-plant lineups. This can bring you easy round wins from far away, making it difficult for enemies to defuse the spike.
How To Defend With Controllers In Valorant
Defending with Controllers is essentially the same strategy as attacking, without the difficulty of lineups. Once you hear the enemies attack, place your smokes on the openings and doors from where they can enter the site. This way, the enemies will have 0 information on where you are located. By the time they try to enter and find you, you'll have already killed them with your perfect aim.
If there are boxes that present off-angles and high places, you can teleport there with Omen to catch the enemy team entering the site off guard. And if you're a beginner with Brimstone's molly and Viper's Snake Bite abilities, you can throw them in the smoke to stall the enemy team until your team arrives at the site for a fair fight. And if they try to push your mollies, they'll arrive in front of you with half their health down. It's all about stalling the enemies while defending with a Controller.
Valorant Controllers Tips & Tricks
Smoking and lineups are what you should remember about Controllers. But here are some Controller tips and tricks that'll help you out to understand this agent class:
- Do your math on Smoke setups: sadly, playing Controllers means doing your math on the most important angles to smoke. Learning these smoke placements is a top priority before you enter competitive with a Controller. One great tip is when you place smokes when defending, don't place them to pop out of the opening, but place them more inwards, so the enemies won't be able to peak from the left or right of the smoke
- Learn the essential post-plant Lineups: continuing the previous trend of math, you'll also have to learn the essential post-plant lineups. These can be game savers once you know how to utilize them to their full extent
- Always cooperate with your team: the Duelist should be the first one to charge onto the site. Cooperating with your team and placing the smokes to close off angles before you rush the site is really important in playing a Controller
- Stay safe, don't rush to die first: to place the smokes for your team, you need to be alive. Don't make the mistake of thinking you're the Duelist, rush to the site, get killed, and not smoke off the site with your abilities
Are you ready to help your team achieve victory as a Controller? If so, then this guide should be enough to set you straight on how to play Controller agents. So if you hit some good smokes and clips, you should visit our Discord server and share those plays with us!