Introducing VALORANT’s Latest Agent: Harbor

VALORANT’s newest agent has been announced. Read more about his toolkit and release date here.

Introducing VALORANT’s Latest Agent: Harbor

VALORANT agent 21 is officially here! Coming six months after the release of the last agent, Fade, the latest addition to the agent lineup is a controller named “Harbor.” Like every new agent Riot Games adds to VALORANT, Harbor has a unique ethic background. The previous 20 agents all hail from different regions across the globe; Fade originates from Turkey, Chamber from France, and Neon from the Philippines. Varun Batra, Harbor’s birth name is from India.

Although not much more is known about his backstory, Harbor fits into the VALORANT storyline in a different way than usual. As opposed to having gained powers through Radianite, the resource centric to VALORANT’s storyline, Harbor’s powers come from an ancient artifact he found in India.

King of The Seas

The rune-encrusted bracelet Harbor possesses allows him to conjure and manipulate ocean waves. His entire kit revolves around using water and waves in different ways, mostly to obstruct vision. As a controller, Harbor’s utility comes in his ability to create space for his team by taking space from his enemies. Like VALORANT’s other agents, Harbor’s kit consists of three abilities and one ultimate ability.

High Tide (E)

Harbor’s signature ability, the ability he receives for free every round, is called High Tide. The in-game description of this ability is as follows:

Equip a wall of water. Fire to send the water forward along the ground. Hold fire to guide the water in the direction of your crosshair, passing through the world and spawning a wall along the water’s path. Alt fire while bending to stop the water early. Players hit are slowed.

Similar to how Phoenix’s wall and Jetts smokes work, High Tide’s shape can be manipulated. Unlike Phoenix’s wall however, High Tide is much more flexible and can even be bent to form a complete circle. The wall will stay up for a total of 15 seconds and is on cooldown for an additional 25 seconds after this.

Cove (Q)

Harbor’s second ability is Cove. The in-game description of this ability is as follows:

Equip a sphere of shielding water. Fire to throw. Alt fire to underhand throw. Upon impacting the ground, spawn a water shield that blocks bullets.

Cove behaves similarly to Jett’s smokes. The only caveat being that Cove is a projectile, meaning it can be both lobbed and tossed based on user input. In essence, Cove is a stronger smoke ability. It both obstructs enemy vision and blocks users inside from outside gunfire. It does not, however, block enemy abilities. This means that things like Raze’s grenade and Sova’s arrows can penetrate Cove and hit enemies inside.

Cascade (C)

Harbor’s final basic ability is Cascade. The in-game description of this ability is as follows:

Equip a wave of water. Fire to send the wave rolling forward and through walls. Re-use to stop the wave. Players hit are slowed.

Cascade appears to be Harbor’s most oppressive ability. As opposed to other controllers like Viper and Brimstone, Harbor can be used to aggressively take control of chokes using Cascade. While the other elements of his kit are mostly used to hold large amounts of space for an extended period of time (enough to plant the bomb), Cascade is a much more aggresive option for taking smaller chokes for a shorter period of time.

Reckoning (X)

Harbor’s ultimate ability is Reckoning. The in-game description of this ability is as follows:

Equip the full power of your Artifact. Fire to summon a geyser pool on the ground. Enemy players in the area are targeted by successive geyser strikes. Players caught within a strike are concussed.

Similar to KAY-O’s ultimate, Reckoning requires enemies to be present in order to have an effect. The ability, which is roughly the size of Haven B site, shrinks over time, but summons geyser bursts after a short delay in the position of enemy players. While there is ample time for the players to exit the radius of these bursts, the bursts will still go off even if there are no players in them. While the bursts might not hit a target, they will provide valuable information through audio cues at the location of their ascent.

Harbor will be released on October 18th alongside Episode 5 Act III.