Mandatory players talk about Harbor

Riot Games has revealed the new Valorant Agent, Harbor, and allowed us to try him on a test server. After playing a few games with him, we asked the Mandatory team what they thought of this controller who can manipulate the tides. Here are the first impressions of HyP, TheBigFiz and CREA^.

Harbor, an Agent that falls through?

Unfortunately, while everyone notes that Harbor is extremely stylish and well animated, charisma isn't everything. Riot Games introduced Harbor to compete with Viper, but as it stands he doesn't seem to compete with any controller.

The ability Cascade is " the worst spell in the game " according to HyP. While blocking vision and being able to move forward can be useful in rare situations, the short life of the ability does not make it very viable as a defence to control an entrance.

The Cove also suffers from major problems for HyP.

The idea is cool, the dome can be interesting in many situations. But it's too complicated to place. Either you put it in front of you, or you have to have a precise line-up. But then you can't react in the same way as with the other smokers, who can throw their smoke where they want.

And most importantly, it can be destroyed very quickly, which prevents situations where you're really going to be able to block a space for a long time. So the idea is cool, but it's hard to know in what situation it's really strong. What is certain is that it will not have the same use as all the smokes we have at the moment.

HyP, captain of the Mandatory team

Only the ultimate, Reckoning, seems to find favour with our players. Although it is not as strong as the Breach or Fade ultimate, it gives valuable information on the location of enemies and creates chaos by forcing them to move.

Harbor should not make waves

As for his viability, it is still difficult to gauge the character's full potential. The current meta does not seem to favour Harbor.

Our co-coach CREA^ believes that the character can find a place in Attack, but especially in a retake situation. The cascade allows you to force good zones and the cove can make the difference during a defuse. " His High Tide can bring new strategy and create exotic rush paths", he notes.

But what really handicaps Harbor is the current meta. It's hard to see who he could replace among the established compositions. In a Valorant where Chamber is king, you would have to sacrifice a Duelist to play Harbor as a second Controller. If Chamber were to nerf, the meta and compositions could change and the play style of Valorant with them.

What is certain is that, as it stands, the Agent functions relatively poorly in Defence, especially when his abilities are only in place for such a short time. TheBigFiz finds that " his anti-rush is very weak in defence. " Attackers only have to stall for a few seconds until the tide goes out, and it's as if Harbor never intervened. His slowdowns are no match for Viper's more corrosive and persistent poisons.

And this may well be the major problem with Harbor, which seems to be repeating the mistakes of Viper at the launch of Valorant. The Poisoner remained the least played Agent for almost a year, due to the low impact of her walls and smokes. It took a lot of buffs and re-imagining of her poison gauges to make her viable. So when Harbor arrives with a more or less similar kit, but even less impactful, it's not surprising to find that he lacks a little je-ne-sais-quoi.

That said, we clearly haven't played with the character enough to make a definitive statement. Perhaps some players will succeed in revealing Harbor's unexpected potential. We can't wait to see what you do with him.