Valorant made quite the splash when it released in June 2020. It has managed to stay relevant since then, and to solidify its spot among the top dogs, Riot Games is always supplying Valorant players with new fresh content. The game has just entered Episode 2 Act 2. This means a brand new battle pass for players to complete, new skins and, most importantly, a new agent to master.
While there is a big focus on guns and aim in Valorant, each agent's abilities are vital to winning a match. This means that, when a new agent joins the ranks, they can have a major impact on the way the game plays and the balance of each of the agents. This time, Astra is the latest Radiant signing up for duty at the Valorant Protocol, and her abilities are going to take gameplay to a whole new galaxy.
Astra is a space-themed agent from Ghana, and she is able to command the cosmos, flinging stars left and right on the battlefield. She is the master of gravitation and galaxies, and she is all about making life difficult for aggressive players. Astra is quite literally meant to slow things down and set the pace of the game.
Astra is equipped with smokes, slows and stuns, which make her an excellent Controller agent. She would excel in the hands of a defensive player who knows just where to smoke the line of sight of the enemies -- or even stun them upon entering a site.
Her abilities work slightly differently than most other agents'. To use any of Astra's abilities, she must first activate her Astral Form (X), which flings the player up into a birds view of the map. Astra can not gather any intel on enemy players from up here, but she is able to place her stars anywhere she wants. These stars can both be seen and heard by other players, but they can not be destroyed. After placing a star, Astra is able to choose what this star becomes from one of her abilities.
Assigning a star to her C ability "Gravity Well" will cause it to become a gravitational field, pulling anyone close by towards its center. After a short time, it will explode, leaving anyone nearby in a vulnerable state. Her Q ability is called "Nova Pulse." This is a stun and, after charging for a little bit, it concusses all players close by, almost like a Breach stun. Astra can also choose to block the vision of players by making a star combust into a smoke with her E ability, "Nebula." The smoke stays up for a while, but eventually dissipates like Omen's smokes.
If Astra has placed a star in a wrong location, she is able to recall it with her F key, which is her "Dissipate." The star will then create a shorter, false Nebula smoke effect, which will have to recharge before being used again. While a star can be picked up and reused in the same round this way, it can not be saved for the next round and will have to be repurchased.
Her ultimate is also located on the X key. It is called the "Cosmic Divide" and, just like her stars, it is triggered in her Astral form. This will allow Astra to create a tall wall that hinders the field of view, reduces the audio of movements drastically and blocks out enemy bullets. It's a very powerful tool for taking or retaking any point on the map.
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