The closed beta for Riot Games' upcoming online multiplayer shooterValorantis live and is already extremely popular. In the past several days,Valorant’s Twitch viewershiphas climbed to around 1.6 million. That’s a record claimed only by two other games,FortniteandLeague of Legends. Capitalizing on the audience, Riot is already revealing upcoming new content forValorantin the form of new agent Raze.
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The kit for Raze is really impressive and is certain to be popular with aggressive, offense-focusedValorantplayers. Like other agents, She has four abilities. Boom Bot is a small deployable robot that will focus on an enemy and explode if it reaches them. Blast Pack is like C4, in that it can be stuck to walls and then remotely detonated. Paint Shells is a cluster grenade that explodes into smaller grenades after thrown. Finally, Raze’s ultimate ability grants her a rocket launcher that fires an explosive that does massive damage in a wide area.
Astactical shooter playerscan already tell, Raze is designed to take on enemies without looking them in the eye. Her explosives allow her to create area-of-effect damage, so she doesn’t have to peek quite as far around corners. But at heart, she’s a duelist. She doesn’t provide support abilities or game knowledge. She provides damage. If she’s not killing enemies, her kit isn’t being used fully.
This isn’t the first time Raze has been shown, technically.Raze’s visuals and the names of her abilities leakedover the past weekend. The latest news confirms exactly what her abilities do and that she’s playable.
Raze is certain to be just the first of many agents coming toValorantover the coming months and years. Her addition toValorant’s roster brings the total Agents in-game to 10, with two more said to be coming between now and the game’s expected launch this summer. AndValorantagentsare certain to be just a part of Riot’s plans for future content. There’s clearly a bright future forValorantand Raze debuting on the game’s closed beta launch day should be remembered as the start of it all.
