Watch Valorant's Omen destroy a team with this one-way smoke

M Alzamora Published 07/02/2021

It’s been a rough start to the year for Omen mains, but if players can master his Dark Cover, there’s a place for the Agent on any team.

Omen has slipped down tier lists ever since Riot Games released Yoru, Valorant’s other shadowy agent, in the game’s huge 2.0 patch. But even after Riot took aim at the game’s most elusive agent, Omen has a special skill that should keep him in the game. And even after a round of changes that included a nerf to his Blink hitbox, Omen is close to an A-tier agent and a Redditor recently showed off how powerful he still is.

Omen is Valorant’s best agent to throw one-way smokes

The one-way smoke is a grenade setup as old as, well, grenade setups. Counter-Strike players have used them for years, with precise throws creating sneaky sightlines that winning rounds. Unsurprisingly, having the ability to see enemies without being seen is a powerful advantage. In Valorant, Omen has that advantage, at least on Ascent.

While Yoru is almost always a better pick than Omen, the new Agent lags behind Valorant’s original ghostly character in one important way. Omen’s classification as a controller means that he can lock down entire areas with his smoke grenades while still retaining the ability to rotate quickly with his ultimate. Yoru has no way to control Valorant’s sprawling maps while Omen is an omnipresent threat. And it turns out that the now-undervalued Omen is the perfect agent for players who want to exploit the one-way smoke.

Omen is a sneaky good pick, provided players use his strengths but what makes the Agent so powerful in this situation?

Dark Cover. One-way smokes are often hard to pull off but players can set up Omen’s smokes down to the pixel, resulting in a throw for every situation. The agent’s ability to create odd angles and distracting cover is unmatched. But how the ability lands on the map is where Dark Cover truly shines, making it the perfect one-way talent. Dark Cover isn’t blocked by players, nor will it ever veer off course after a weird bounce like CSGO’s smoke grenades.

Instead, Omen’s precise targeting combined with Dark Cover’s slow drift from the sky creates a massive advantage for Omen and his team. Players have to drop the smoke in just the right way to get away with it, and they’re still vulnerable to prefires from players who are wise to their tricks. But perform it correctly, and the one-way smoke is the ticket to a Radiant round win.

M Alzamora

About M Alzamora

There are few things that writer M Alzamora loves more in life than Pokemon. And there are even fewer things that she loves more than her favorite Pokemon, Eevee. But M’s appreciation for gaming isn’t just limited to Nintendo’s famous pocket monsters. She’s interested in every type of game across every genre of gaming, and she has the credentials to prove it. M’s work has also been seen on Working Classicists and gaming sites.

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