Valorant, the tried by Astra
Valorant
Over the past weekend Riot finally lifted the veil on a new champion ready to take to the arenas of Valorant. It is a practice now widespread like wildfire and in these times of change seeing massive communication based almost exclusively on the press, youtubers and streamers, skipping a more institutional announcement has become the norm. Indeed, if you think about it, letting the players communicate new content through their enthusiasm, their skills and their easy talking, surely creates from the zero minute that chemistry with the public capable of triggering the spark of passion, difficult to reach. with mere press releases or hunchbacked chatter. So the social networks are filled, the discussions are populated and in no time at all the product in question reaches everyone's lips: a market that feeds itself, useful for players and even more useful for those who find a complex title on their hands and quite elitist like Valorant, a shooter hard for the masses to digest due to a steep learning curve and an above average match requirement. But what if the new content, Agent Astra, turns out to be capable at a fleeting first glance of destroying the meta?A new agent faces Valorant
We have always seen Valorant as a highly competitive oriented title, with Agents undoubtedly fun to play and very complex to master but also equipped with skill sets extremely simple as far as functionality is concerned. The reading of all the skills has always been immediate and it only took a moment to understand what Sage's ice wall, Jett's aerial shots or Viper's miasma did. With the latest agents Riot wanted to experience something new and already with Yoru the limit was raised further, playing with sounds and disorienting the opponents but above all thanks to the possibility of moving between different dimensions, complex action but still manageable on the battlefield. Astra, this is the name of the new agent, completely changes the game system by putting in the hands of this Controller the ability to manage the map in a global way regardless of his position. Instead of a simple Ultimate, Astra has a passive ability that allows her to change shape and ascend to get a schematic view of the arena. From this moment on he can decide to place stars on the playing field, up to five to be precise, re-enter his body to activate the aforementioned even without any line of sight to obtain the most disparate effects during the match.Valorant: A phenomenal skill kit accompanies the new agent The biggest advantage is that Astra has several tricks up its sleeve and can freely choose how to activate the stars: it can create gravitational force fields that attract Enemies, making them vulnerable among other things, can stun opponents much like Breach's Blast Blast in terms of effect and duration, and can also generate smoke bombs lasting fifteen seconds to detonate on command. Three skills that alone, with an obvious excellent knowledge of the maps, make Astra very dangerous and impoverish the kits of the other agents but she is the Supreme, at least at first sight, to leave us amazed. From her astral form, Astra can choose anywhere on the map and create an immense wall capable of splitting the two parts completely. This barrier not only completely obscures the view but is capable of blocking bullets and muffling the noise coming from the other side by about 90% and frankly feels like a tremendously broken skill for the type of game.
Now , obviously these are only very first impressions and it will be necessary to evaluate the impact in the competitive field, but at first sight the imbalance seems quite evident. We will have to see the use that the pros will make of it and, above all, verify how the five stars available or their cost (currently only 200 credits) will then be managed over the next few months.
Valorant: Astra is a Ghanaian fighter The fifth Strategist agent added to the Riot roster is therefore really excellent, even without damage skills, but in addition to the mere gameplay Astra has also managed to impress us for its aesthetics, its conception and everything that rotates around its appearance. The purple neon colors with yellow tints, ready to remember the nebulae, are often recalled in her skills but also her sinuous movements immediately strike. As original as it is, the idea of the barrier is inspired by that of Overwatch's Symmetra and is a parallel that immediately emerges even when you observe the hands from the first-person view, with one free limb and one instead protected by tribal armor. golden, exactly like the cybernetic armor of the Overwatch hero. The roots, however, differ greatly and if Blizzard had focused on an Indian personality, Riot instead focuses on a Ghanaian girl supported by the cultural current of afrofuturism, a challenging social issue with great depth.
We are extremely curious. to be able to play Astra more thoroughly on the official servers and to thoroughly test its capabilities. Riot may have exaggerated too much with this Agent as in this first appearance of her the devastating effect on game strategies seems to be evident. The only negative side of having to abandon her body to place stars may still not be enough to put her at a disadvantage, especially in slow and more reasoned situations where the two teams play waiting. The idea is good and the character also in short, we cross our fingers for the balance.
