Is Chamber the most important agent at Valorant Masters?
Riot GamesChamber players are coming into Valorant Masters with some of the highest impact in the game, but some players and coaches don’t think the agent is all that important in the professional meta and the tournament.
Chamber is Valorant’s second newest agent and has not been seen on the international stage until Valorant Champions Tour Stage 1 Masters: Reykjavík.
Chamber players from around the world are coming into the event with some incredible statistics as well. DRX’s Yu ‘BuZz’ Byung-chul has some of the best numbers on Chamber, coming into the event with a 1.50 K/D ratio and a 1.34 first kill to death ratio with the agent.
Joining BuZz as a Chamber master in Iceland include OpTic Gaming’s Jaccob ‘yay’ Whiteaker, Team Liquid’s Elias ‘Jamppi’ Olkkonen and The Guard’s Michael ‘neT’ Bernet. Chamber has also been played on every map at Valorant Masters – with Xerxia as the only team not to pick the Deadeye.
What the pros think of Chamber at Valorant Masters
Riot GamesProfessional players and coaches seem to be split on the agent and its importance in the VCT meta. Chamber isn’t worth picking if teams are leaving other, or better, agent picks on the table, KRÜ Esports’ Angelo ‘keznit’ Mori said.
“Chamber is broken, but I don’t think you have to sacrifice so much for so little because he only has an operator and a pocket Sheriff,” he said.
“It really depends on the ability of every single player. I don’t believe that it’s such an important character in order to sacrifice everything for.”
For Ninjas in Pyjamas Duelist Alexandre ‘xand’ Zizi, teams don’t need a dedicated Chamber player to compete at the highest level since “they can still have other agents that are as strong as Chamber.”
But the strongest voice of opposition for Chamber was Fnatic head coach Jacob ‘mini’ Harris. In a Masters post-match press conference, the British coach called the agent “flashy” and not as strong as people probably think.
“I think it’s really good if you really think about it, but it seems like a lot of teams right now are defaulting to it just because it’s a flashy agent that can get a free kill and dash away kind of thing but I don’t think it’s that necessary to be quite honest,” mini said. “I think it’s almost quite lazy sometimes the way some people are playing it.”
Riot GamesThe most measured response to Chamber at VALORANT Masters was from Paper Rex’s coach Alexandre ‘alecks’ Salle, who said that Chamber fills a need for many teams in the current meta.
Teams with multiple great aimers or individual talent that are shoved into a square hole with support or flex agents can use Chamber as another Duelist, according to alecks.
“It’s basically a second Duelist and all these teams, they have a really good Duelist already and then there’s a second dude that is like forced to like not play Jett because they’re behind some crazy guy,” alecks said. “This guy’s just gonna play Chamber”
Alecks pointed toward DRX as an example of this since BuZz previously played Jett for the team while flex player Goo ‘Rb’ Sang-min was relegated to Sova and Sage. Now, BuZz can play Chamber and get the same impact while Rb can run around as Jett and play aggressive. Another example is OpTic, with yay on Chamber Victor ‘Victor’ Wong has been freed up to play more Duelists like Neon and Raze.
As VALORANT Masters continues to play out, Chamber and the meta may evolve more to the point were the agent is either a crutch for teams, or a focal point of the meta.