Abilities

**Abilities** are tools that are available to be used by agents in addition to the weapons that they carry. Each ability in *VALORANT* is unique, though some share similarities. All agents have three types of abilities; basic, signature, and ultimate.

## Summary

All agents have a unique set of abilities designed to give them more tactical opportunities and assist their gunplay. Many abilities have to be equipped to be used, causing the agent to go through an equip animation for a short amount of time before they can cast the ability, though some can be cast instantly. Abilities are only audible to enemies after they are cast; nearby enemies cannot hear when you are equipping abilities.

Players are prevented from using abilities if they are suppressed. Some abilities can affect both enemies and allies. Such abilities that damage allies deal 1/3 damage, while abilities that has debuff effects affect allies fully.

In most Plant/Defuse modes, most abilities have a cost to obtain and use (through credits or ult points), though some are given for free. In Spike Rush and Replication, all basic and signature abilities are refreshed every round. In Team Deathmatch, all basic and signature abilities are set on a cooldown, while ultimate abilties use a percentage bar depending on kills and ultimate orbs. Individual agents' ability usage are disabled on Deathmatch, Escalation and Snowball Fight.

## Types

There are four types of abilities in *VALORANT*:

### Passive

*List of Passives*
Agent passives are additional effects that some specific agents have. Whilst most of these interact with agents' standard abilities, these effects are often utilized by multiple of an agent's abilities instead of being a passive effect that is only part of an individual ability. Many passives do not require any active interaction from the player to be activated or applied, but there are some passive effects that do require the player to activate them with a specific hotkey.

Passives can be effects that are:

1. Constantly available to be used without any cost:
	* Astra's Astral Form
	* Jett's Drift
	* Passive resource generation
		+ Neon's Energy
		+ Viper's Fuel
2. Activated or applied as an additional effect on top of the primary function of an action (abilities or kills):
	* Fade's Terror Trail
	* Gekko's Globules
	* Phoenix's Heating Up
	* Reyna's Soul Harvest
	* Viper's Toxin

### Basic

*List of Basic abilities*
Basic abilities are abilities that most agents have to purchase using credits to be able to use. Most agents have two basic abilities, though there are agents with one or three basic abilities.

### Signature

*List of Signature abilities*
Signature abilities are abilities that agents are guaranteed to be able to use every round. Each agent has at least one signature ability that will give them one free charge for them to use.

Some agents may be able to increase the amount of charges they have of their signature ability by buying more with credits, but any regenerated charges from cooldowns will not be kept for the next round and they will restart with their one free charge. Charges that do not get used and did not get regenerated will be carried over to the next round, however a new charge will not be added. Signature abilities that don't offer the option to buy more charges have other ways to allow the player to use that ability more than once in a round, such as cooldowns or enemy kill targets.

### Ultimate

*List of Ultimate abilities*
Ultimate abilities are the strongest in the game. To use an ultimate, players must acquire ultimate points. These are earned by killing enemies, dying, capturing ultimate orbs, and completing a spike plant or defuse.

Once a player has earned enough ult points, they can use them up to cast their ultimate. Upon doing so, all players will hear a global voice line alerting them to that specific agent using their ultimate. The voice line heard is different for allies and enemies:

## Functions

Whilst each ability in *VALORANT* is unique, some share similar functions. These allow them to be sorted into the following classes and sub-classes:

* **Barrier**: Barriers prevents agents from being able to move through them.
* **Blind**: Blinds are used to limit an agent's vision.
	+ **Flash**: Flashes completely remove all vision.
	+ **Nearsight**: Nearsights afflict enemies with a short, maximum vision radius as well as deafening them.
* **Crowd Control**: Crowd Control tools affect an enemy's capability to move on the map.
	+ **Banish**: Banish abilities remove the affected agents from the map.
	+ **Concuss**: Concuss abilities reduce movement speed and fire rate, decrease bullet accuracy, prevent use of scopes or ADS, and affect a player's vision.
	+ **Detain**: Detains severely reduce movement speed, massively decreases jump height and force the enemy to unequip all their weapons and abilities.
	+ **Displacement**: Displacements physically move enemies out of position by force and against their will.
	+ **Slow**: Slows reduce an enemy's movement speed.
	+ **Tether**: Tethers prevent an enemy from moving beyond a specific location.
* **Decoy**: Decoys are used to distract an enemy and draw their attention away from where the real threat is.
* **Deterrent**: Deterrents are used to flush enemies out of certain positions by threatening to kill them if they attempt to stay in that location.
	+ **Molotov**: Molotovs deal damage over time in a small area-of-effect on the ground of the location they detonate in.
* **Empowerment**: These increase an agent's power by buffing them in some way.
	+ **Weapon Equip**: Grants the agent a new weapon for them to use.
* **Intel**: Intel tools give information on the whereabouts of enemies.
	+ **Autonomous deployable**: Autonomous deployables operate on their own without any further input from the player.
	+ **Controlled deployable**: Controlled deployables must be controlled by the player to operate.
* **Mobility**: Mobility tools abilities give agents a way to traverse the map beyond just running and walking.
	+ **Dash**: Dashes allow the user to move in a certain direction at greatly increased speed.
	+ **Intangibility**: These allow the user to be immune to damage. They can also grant invisibility in some circumstances, hiding them from enemy sight.
	+ **Teleport**: Teleports allow the user to blink to a location without having to walk or run between their start and end position.
* **Resource Bar**: Abilities that use resource bars require enough of their resource to be available in order to be cast.
* **Setup**: These abilities provide setup that the agent will use for casting some of their other abilities.
* **Sustain**: Sustain tools allow agents to withstand and counteract damage being dealt to them while remaining active on the battlefield.
	+ **Heal**: Heals restore health to the target.
	+ **Invulnerability**: These make the affected agent immune to all sources of damage.
	+ **Revive**: Revives allow an agent to continue fighting even after taking lethal damage.
* **Vision Blocker**: Vision blockers block line of sight, allowing allies to carry out actions behind or inside the blocking object without giving visual info to the enemy.
	+ **Smoke**: Smokes are spherical vision blockers.
	+ **Wall**: Walls are linear/rectangular vision blockers.

Some abilities may be completely unique and therefore do not fit into any of these functions. Such abilities are classed as Niche.

## Lore

The abilities used by agents in-game also make appearances within the lore of *VALORANT*. However, whilst gameplay must take balancing into account, the lore is not tied down by these restrictions and so more "realistic" depictions (in the context of the *VALORANT* universe) can be shown within the lore, meaning there can be some differences between how abilities operate in-game and in-universe. Gameplay does not have to be accurate to how abilities would realistically work within the lore, and lore does not have to be accurate to how abilities are required to work in-game.

For example, in the case of in-universe depictions not needing to accurately reflect gameplay functionality, Killjoy's Turret must remain in one place when it is deployed in-game with just basic 'detect and engage' programming. Away from the restrictions of gameplay balancing in the lore however, the turret can be seen running alongside Killjoy and understanding and reacting to directive hand gestures. Not being restricted to the exact functionality of abilities in-game allows the lore to show these depictions that make much more sense from a narrative perspective.

For the reverse case of gameplay not needing to adhere to how abilities would realistically work within the lore meanwhile, Brimstone's Sky Smokes and Orbital Strike are deployed from an orbital satellite, so from a narrative perspective targeting areas inside buildings would only cause his utility to be blocked by the roofs of these buildings instead (temporarily however in assumedly most cases for Orbital Strike until the laser cuts through, or if the roof material is weak enough for a Sky Smoke to break through on impact). In-game however, it is necessary for these abilities to immediately affect these target areas without any disruption by any terrain above, even if from a narrative perspective this would either be unrealistic or completely impossible. The needs of gameplay balancing will always come first over lore accuracy when designing in-game abilities, even if within the lore such functionality or decision making would make no sense at all.

Agents also aren't restricted to just having the abilities that they have in-game within the lore, such as with Neon who has been seen to also have the ability to release a large electrical pulse from her body when in Overdrive.

### Appearances in lore

* Astra
* Breach
* Brimstone
* Chamber
* Cypher
* Deadlock
* Fade
* Gekko
* Harbor
* Jett
* KAY/O
* Killjoy
* Neon
* Omen
* Phoenix
* Raze
* Reyna
* Sage
* Skye
* Sova
* Viper
* Yoru

Astral Form

* Aftershock (Audio only)

IncendiaryIncendiary Launcher

* Rendezvous (Audio only)
* Tour De Force (Audio only)

TrapwireSpycam displayNeural TheftNeural Theft reveal

GravNetGravNet grenadeSonic SensorAnnihilationAnnihilation's nanowire accelerator

* Prowler (Audio only)
* Ability to see nightmare-visions (Mentioned only)

ProwlerSeizeSeize tethersSeize tethers overwhelming a victimFade's Nightmare tendrils, summoned from her own hands, overwhelming a victim

GlobulesMoshWingmanDizzyDizzy's blinding plasma blastsThrashGlobule-Thrash enters Gekko's carrier

CascadeCoveHigh TideSetting up a High Tide wallReckoningHarbor's water walls are also able to block gunfire

DriftCloudburstUpdraftTailwindBlade Storm

* NULL/cmd (Audio only)

FRAG/mentZERO/pointNULL/cmd Build Up

TurretLockdownA bot created by Killjoy, used to access computer systems through keyboard inputs hands-freeA bot created by Killjoy, used to cut through surfacesBots created by Killjoy, the one on the right being used to download information from terminals

High Gear SlideOverdriveNeon's body releases a large electricity pulse

Shrouded StepShrouded Step channelParanoiaThe effects of Paranoia on a victimDark CoverDark Cover in transitFrom the ShadowsFrom the Shadows shadeAn additional form of teleportation used by Omen

Heating UpBlazeCurveballHot HandsRun it BackRun it Back Disintegration on deathRun it Back RevivalPhoenix uses his powers to super heat a Radi-Core

Boom BotBlast PackPaint ShellsPaint Shells GrenadeShowstopperShowstopper rocket

LeerDevourDismiss

Barrier OrbSage fabricates a wall orbA damaged wallSlow OrbSlow fieldHealing Orb

* Regrowth (Audio only)
* Seekers (Audio only)

TrailblazerGuiding LightHawk Trinket

Owl DroneShock BoltRecon BoltRecon Bolt revealHunter's FuryHunter's Fury windupHunter's Fury blast

Snake BiteSnake Bite canister and launcherPoison CloudToxic Screen

GatecrashGatecrash TetherDimensional DriftDimensional Drift Return
## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Istanbul Mission Log
2. ↑ From the Archives: The Sting Audio Logs
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 5.12 Audio Log