VALORANT Agent Harbor Reveal: All Abilities Explained
Harbor is the newest VALORANT agent (number 21) who is coming with Episode 5 Act 3.
A Controller from India who possesses a rare artifact, Harbor offers water-based abilities that are mostly based around blocking sight lines.
Harbor’s abilities display aspects from other agents as well as some new and unique mechanics.
Let’s dive into how his abilities work and how good we think he might be.
Harbor’s Abilities
Cascade (C)
Effect: 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.
What you need to know:
- The wave can be sent through walls, and sent while behind cover.
- If Chamber continues to be meta, this ability will be a great counter to him as it allows multiple people to take ground with the cover of the wall while Chamber can set up in front of other controllers’ static vision blocking utility.
- This ability is great for clearing angles systematically by walking with it down a lane and clearing the angles to the left and right.
- This ability can be shot through, so it can be combined with Fade or Sova to kill enemies through it.
- Defensively this can be used to slow a push and block off choke points.
Cove (Q)
Effect: 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.
What you need to know:
- The shield lasts 14 seconds, and there is a 1 second period at the end in which the shield is down, but the vision blocking water is still up.
- The shield has 500 hitpoints, and can be destroyed. If the shield is destroyed, only the water will remain for 1 second, and then disappear. This happens no matter how much time is left on the ability.
- This ability can be used a multitude of ways, as a traditional sight blocking smoke (lineups will most likely be needed), a way to block crossfires, and as cover to plant and defuse the spike safely.
- No hitscan bullets nor abilities (Neon, Chamber, and Jett Ultimates) cannot pass through, but projectiles can pass through such as Shock Darts and snake bites.
- This smoke can also be used to set your own team up for pop flashes without running the risk of the enemy team spamming the smoke your team is in.
High Tide (E)
Effect: 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, spawning a wall along the water’s path. Alt Fire while bending to stop the water early. Players hit are Slowed.
What you need to know:
- The wall lasts 14 seconds and recharges every 40 seconds.
- This ability can be sent through walls, is activated on the highest wall it passes through like Viper’s Toxic Screen, and curved like Phoenix’s Blaze wall ability.
- Being able to curve this wall allows it to have more versatility than Viper’s Toxic Screen. For Example, on Icebox A site Viper typically uses a Toxic Screen along Screen to the left of site.
- Harbor can use High Tide along Screen to the left and curve it to block off Rafters and the door to CT.
- Being able to curve the wall also allows you to create little pockets for yourself and teammates to hide in. Use this to your advantage, and be careful of defenders who may try to do the same when Harbor uses a wall offensively with gaps in it.
Reckoning (X)
Effect: 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.
What you need to know:
- A total of 3 geyser strikes can be sent per person in the ultimate’s range.
- The ultimate is always sent a few meters in front of Harbor, and cannot be sent across the map.
- The geyser strikes can be seen and have an audio indicator, this gives your team information where an enemy is.
- The geyser strikes can be dodged if a player is running, so concussing an enemy is not guaranteed.
- This ult is roughly the area of many of the sites in the game, and can be used to easily take or retake an entire site, giving information and concussing an enemies defending.
First Impressions
Harbor comes at a great time in which Chamber is dominating the game. He has many tools to systematically and safely take ground while blocking sightlines from an Operator. His sight line blocking utility has more flexibility than Viper’s, and he may eat into her pick rate on some maps such as Breeze and Icebox where curving the wall and having it recharge offers advantages over Viper.
Not only does the wall offer more flexibility, but Cascade can let your team scale on to sites where Chamber commonly sets up his Rendezvous in front of a Toxic Screen. Cove is a rather controversial ability as it blocks bullets, but the ability having hitpoints puts it in check.
The utility of this ability will be similar to a Sage wall in being able to safely plant, or sneaking in a defuse. This is another reason why he may be a very good pick on Icebox, as getting the spike down on the bomb sites is rather diffciult, and many post plants on B site involve the attackers playing B main and yellow to spam the player defusing the spike in a smoke.
Harbor’s Reckoning ultimate offers Killjoy Lockdown-esque range, Breach Ultimate effects, and information gathering.This is a very strong ult that can get a site for free on smaller maps.
He comes with his downsides too. The first thing to note is his minimal stopping power on defense, arguably the least of all of the Controllers. All his kit offers is a slight slow from his Cascade and High Tide which is weaker than Sage’s slow. Viper, who is a direct comparison to Harbor, can stall much better than Harbor with the decay from her abilities as well as her Snake Bites.
The other major issue with Harbor is that he does not have global smokes that can be placed from long ranges like other Controllers. This lack of range and inability to smoke various places on the map may limit his ability to be the primary Controller on a team, especially on maps with many lanes such as Haven.
Be sure to check back in on Harbor’s release for more information on the agent such as synergies, map strategies, lineups, and agent-specific tips and tricks.
For more agent ability info, lineups, and more, head to our VALORANT agents portal.
