Game sense and gunplay will go a long way on defense, especially when your main tools are designed to give you advantages in duels. If you’re going to find any sort of success with Phoenix on defense, it’s going to be through your ability to rely on your fundamentals.

Playing Phoenix on defense is a challenge in of itself thanks to the character’s lack of defensive-oriented abilities. Whereas other skirmishers on the roster are designed with both offense and defense in mind, Phoenix’s kit relies heavily on the prospect of engaging and finding picks when pushing. Not only will abilities like Curveball and Hot Hands give him an advantage in terms of positioning, but they give his teammates opportunities to capitalize on offensive engagements. Perhaps what makes Phoenix so strong is his ability to change the tempo of a skirmish within seconds. A good Phoenix player can shift the dynamic of a round with a quick flashbang and wall combo to obscure the vision of the enemy team and give his own time a sense of cover, as well. Phoenix’s strengths mainly come from his ability to engage at a rapid pace and change the tone of a given round. In this guide, we’ll go over the ins and outs of Phoenix’s kit, what makes him particularly strong in the current meta, and how you can utilize the hottest agent in the game to blaze a path to victory. The fate of a Phoenix player’s performance relies entirely in their own hands, making him one of the most excitable agents in VALORANT with one of the highest skill caps in the game. Although he’s easy enough to learn, Phoenix might just be one of the hardest characters on the VALORANT roster to master. Perhaps what makes Phoenix so viable is the fact that most of his kit relies on logic and fundamentals. Still, his unpredictability and general fluidity in the meta has made him stand out as a versatile pick over the course of the last few months on both the ranked ladder and in competitive play. The agent made an early case as one of the strongest characters on the roster when the game first launched a few months back, and since then, has had trouble finding his own place in the ranks of the VALORANT roster.

However, if there’s one character that has truly stuck out head and shoulders above the rest of the cast in terms of intrigue, versatility, and overall strength and prowess during VALORANT’s lifespan, it’s Phoenix. Engagers, controllers, smokers, and info-gatherers alike have all settled into their respective spots on the game’s tier list after nearly nine months of sample size. As VALORANT has evolved over the course of the last few months, the game’s meta has reached a point where certain agents are fitting into a tried-and-true groove.

Phoenix valorant