Astra is Valorant's latest addition and a new agent means one thing: A new Valorant Agent Guide. In this Astra Guide, we show you how to play the Ghanaian Cosmical Powerhouse.
No need for a long intro. If you're not familiar with Astra at all, here's our agent reveal:
Now let's get to it. Starting with the foundation to all that is Astra – her Astral Form.
Valorant Astra Guide: Astral Form
Astral Form is as slick as it sounds: You get a bird's eye, top-down view of the map and can roam freely to place your Stars. This is the key to everything, as Stars are what she needs to use her abilities. You see, Astra works differently from the other Valorant agents: You don't buy her abilities flat out like usual. With Astra, you buy her Stars for 200 each – on top of the two Stars she gets at the beginning of every round for free.
Sounds strong? Well... it is. Astra really allows you to get creative and flex on your opponents.
First things first: Once you go into Astral Form, you're not invincible: Your a** is rooted and vulnerable. It's a fair trade-off though because while being Astral you can literally place your Stars anywhere. True controller agent sh*t right there!
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As we mentioned, you need the Stars to then activate your abilities: Nebula, Nova Pulse and Gravity Well.
Astra Abilities: Gravity Well
Gravity Well stays true to its name: You pull suckers into the core of its gravity and anybody that is caught is vulnerable.
Astra Abilities: Nova Pulse
Basically a concussion grenade: Fools get disoriented for five seconds.
Astra Abilities: Nebula
Astra's fancy naming for a smoke grenade. 15 seconds of smoke, so you can do what you must in privacy.
At the start of every round, you have 2 stars, plus whatever stars you bought. As for your abilities, they each cost you a star and have a 10-second cooldown. Meaning if you have the maximum amount of five stars, you can do whatever you want with them: 3 Nebulas and 2 Nova Pulses or 4 Gravity Wells and a Nebula... it's up to you.
As if this wasn't creative and flexible enough, you can even re-place Stars you misplaced. Yup. Astra's got options baby.
Astra Abilities: Ultimate – Cosmic Divide
To use her ultimate, you go into Astral Form and right click to activate Cosmic Divide. You then choose how to place said Cosmic Divide. As the name suggests, Cosmic Divide is a wall. It's infinite and blocks bullets, but not players. Because, you know: Can't nothing stop a player. You dig? (ok, sorry... bye now...)
Valorant Astra Guide: How You Play Her
You don't play her. She's an African queen. Ha. Get it? I referenced my own joke from above and... ah nevermind...
Astra is a controller with huge versatility on offense and defense and brings a lot of variety to how she can be played:
How to Play Astra on Attack
Smoke off defenders, concuss others and gravity well yet another: That's some left in the dark, others dazed and the rest vulnerable – all at once. That's power, baby.
Once the Stars are placed, you can activate them without entering Astral Form, so you can be in the middle of one fight, holding angles with your gun, while bothering defenders elsewhere with your abilities.
Thus, when playing Astra, you gotta have an eye on the map and be in all places at once. If you're a one-track player only focusing on one location, this agent is wasted on you, boo.
How to Play Astra on Defense
You know how your smokes last for 15 seconds and have a 10-second timer, and you can essentially throw 5 Nebulas in a round? Yeah... you can smoke for 75 out of a round's total 100 seconds.
As for the Gravity Well: Combine in with Phoenix' Hot Hands or Viper's poison, and you got yourself an AoE Gravity-Poison-Fire Well. You see how this Ghanaian beast is a problem, right?
Lastly, your ultimate – Cosmic Divide. The wall is infinite and if we need to explain what you can do with an infinite wall, then... how about a simpler game like Candy Crush to get you started?
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