The free-to-play popular FPS game, Valorant, is continuing to receive constant content updates. In the previous act, a new duelist agent, Yoru, was announced. The trend seems to be continuing with this upcoming update as there appears to be a new agent for players to play as, as well as some tweaks to the new competitive ranking system.
The most exciting part of Episode Two, Act Two as mentioned above, is the new agent that is arriving, Astra. Astra joins the current three controllers: Brimstone, Omen, and Viper. She comes from Ghana and is able to control the cosmos by placing stars on the map.
For her C ability, she is able to create a gravity well that pulls any characters in a nearby area towards the center before it explodes, leaving the opposing team vulnerable.
Her Q ability allows Astra to activate a star with something called a Nova Pulse which concusses players in the nearby vicinity.
Her E attack transforms her star into a smoke, similar to Omen and Brimstone’s ability.
Her F ability allows her to throw a star to place a fake smoke for a couple of seconds. Finally, Astra’s ult, her Q ability, is a little more confusing. The first half of her ult allows her to access the Astral Form where she can place stars and can later be changed into Gravity Wells, Smokes, or Nova Pulses. The second half, called Cosmic Divide, allows Astra to create a wall between two points which blocks bullets and dampens audio.
Some other changes that will be coming are some more reworking on the competitive ranking system. Soon, players at the lower end of the rankings, in the Iron, Bronze, and Silver brackets, can play ranked matches together. However, at the top the range has decreased tremendously; only Immortal players can match with Radiant. The attached picture above gives more details pertaining to this change. Also ranking up will become more challenging and all current Radiant players will be bumped down to Immortal at the start of Act 2. New players will also have to only play one placement match to determine their ranking instead of the current five.
This update will be live on March 2, and if you currently do not own Valorant, it is free to download and available on PC.