Sideshow calls Iso ultimate “genuinely powerful” upon release

Valorant caster and analyst Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson shared his thoughts on the new agent Iso following his official release.

Iso is the first duelist to be added to Valorant in over a year and has unique abilities such as blocking bullets, gaining shields and pulling enemies into a one versus one situation. Despite his unique playstyle some members of the community were concerned with the viability of playing him at a competitive level.

One professional player, meL even suggested that Iso may be left with a 0% pick rate due to his lack of solid mechanics. MeL was not the only one to bring up these concerns, as they were echoed by content creators and Sentinels’ own head coach.

On the most recent episode of analyst run show Plat Chat, Sideshow took the time to share his own feelings on Iso after playing him. Others on the show also praised his certain mechanics but were not convinced by his stability in the long term.

Iso leaves Valorant analysts with mixed feelings

Sideshow was accompanied by casters Bren, Mimi and Balla on the show which lasted over an hour. Along the way the team talked about the Sentinels Showmatch, recent roster moves and of course – Iso.

“He’s better than I thought at the beginning,” said Sideshow. “The fact that you have two Vulnerables you can shoot out whenever you like is actually pretty powerful, and the ultimate is genuinely powerful on the attack site. It wins you rounds; it’s like KAY/O knifing the sentinel player except it’s almost guaranteed if you have any info on where they are because it’s got such a big radius.”

While Sideshow sang Iso’s praises for being able to get teammates on site, Bren brought up some of the negatives that he experienced while playing the agent. Although not all of the comments he had were negative.

“I’ve just been ulting [Cypher], putting him in the Gulag, and telling my team to go in while all his traps are disabled,” said Bren.

Bren then went on to speak on Iso’s shielding ability, which appears after Iso eliminates an enemy. But Bren pointed out that the shield is hit and miss with how much damage it actually blocks. From a few points of damage from a Raze grenade to a full-blown operator shot, Bren claims the inconsistency makes the ability hard to evaluate.

Iso has only been on live servers since October 31 when Episode 7 Act 3 was released. Riot Games are no strangers to adjusting the abilities of agents which leave Iso open for tweaking in the future. But for the time being players will have to discover the best way to utilize him in ranked.