Three weeks with VALORANT's new agent Chamber

The French agent Chamber is the latest addition to the VALORANT roster, released on 16 November after being teased for a while.

He is a Sentinel that specialises in guns and relies a lot on the mechanical aim of the player to do well. If you want to read up more about him and his playstyle, we talk about his abilities and how to use the agent effectively in game.

I have been exclusively playing Chamber the past three weeks (unless someone else on my team wants to play or use him), and based on my experience in Platinum to Diamond games, he REALLY does require the player to perform at their absolute best to get the most out of him.

Some days you can really carry your teammates to victory, but there are days where I am missing my shots, and that’s where the downfall begins.

My main role when I play with randoms is to fill, as I am quite confident with my aim. But when given a choice, I am a Skye and KAY/O main, because of their abilities to help teammates push a site and also provide necessary information to win the game.

If I am playing with my friends, I use Yoru. Yes, Yoru, the ‘worst’ agent in the game. But I have found a lot of success with him in climbing in rank, so I think I’m doing pretty good with him. I rarely pick him when I am with randoms, though, because players generally still scoff at a Yoru pick even if they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I have a fascination with trickery and mind games, which is why I love Yoru as a character, but Riot seems to have given up on his current abilities to buff him in any way, and is looking to rework him sometime in the future.

I’ve always had a fascination with Sentinels, but I never clicked with any of them. Killjoy was fun for the first few weeks of her release, when her Alarm Bot never deactivated no matter where you were on the map, while being able to fish out where your enemies were in an instant.

But ever since her nerf, I lost interest, especially when I had to juggle the instances where I needed to rotate to ensure my Alarm Bot or Turret stays up to catch a rotating team.

I have never gotten used to Cypher and his camera/traps, because there is just too much multitasking involved when holding on to a site. The only other Sentinel that I am pretty good with is Sage, and she is quite a simple and effective agent to play once you know what you are doing with her.

Enter Chamber. He has a teleport, a trap gadget that slows, and a pistol that instantly kills if you hit a clean headshot. His Ultimate is a devastating Operator-like sniper rifle that instantly kills if you land a clean shot on the opponent, and it rechambers like lightning.

During the first week of his release, I played him like how I played Yoru on defense. I used his teleport to get out of harm’s way and repositioning.

It worked pretty well at first, since not many people are familiar with the way he plays. Teleporting to weird positions also helped me secure kills and protect the site, especially with his extremely powerful pistol and his useful traps.

I begin to feel the burn a little bit when attempting to retake a site or on offense, though, as he barely has any utility to get in.

If I was the only player alive when I needed to defuse the Spike, I have to rely solely on my aim and my instincts to clutch a round.

And I can tell you, I probably succeeded only three out of 10 times in retaking the site by myself, even if it was just against two other players.

One on ones are much more feasible with him because of his utility, but even then, it isn’t a walk in the park.

There were also times where my Ultimate screwed me over. Although being an extremely strong sniper rifle, Chamber's Ultimate leaves a lingering slow field if you manage to kill an enemy with it. There were a couple of times when I managed to snipe an opponent that was pushing my position while I attempted to get into site, only to have the slow field block my path in.

That said, much like defending a site, defending a planted Spike is also a power trip when playing as Chamber.

His traps are able to scout where the enemies are coming from, his teleport allows for amazing repositioning to take on enemies coming from multiple angles, and his pistol/Ultimate are extremely viable to take down multiple enemies at a go if you hit your shots.

Three weeks in, I am enjoying my time with Chamber. He can be played like a trickster when defending a site, and you also feel extremely useful when you violently cripple your opponents with your kit.

I have discovered a few things to note when playing him:

1. Chamber can teleport to weird and tall places that only a Jett or Raze can get to (and if you do it before the round starts, you can do it for free!)

2. Chamber's teleport doesn’t work if you are on a different height level as the teleport beacon

3. Chamber's traps are a very viable way to catch flankers because it doesn’t have the down time that Killjoy’s Alarm Bot has.

4. Chamber's teleport is not as instant as a Jett dash, though it’s very close. I have gotten killed even after activating my teleport numerous times.

But just like I mentioned earlier, I have to solely rely on my aim and instincts to play him well.

There were days where I felt extremely ‘off’; not hitting my shots, not being alert enough to teleport into safety.

This is enough to make a Chamber pick ‘bad’, because his kit relies so much on the player to hit their shots to be effective, much like Reyna or Jett.

Sometimes, it even felt like I could provide much more utility by playing an agent like Sage, Skye or KAY/O, simply because their abilities are so much more useful in a team situation where I could rely on my teammates to get the frags instead.

Even with good game sense, if you are not using his utility well enough (which relies a lot on aim), you are better off picking a more reliable agent like Killjoy or Cypher if you want to play a Sentinel.

But if you can master your shots, he is definitely one of the stronger Sentinels in the game right now.

Why rely on a turret when you can BE the deadly turret, am I right?

Dominic loves tech and games. When he is not busy being headshotted in VALORANT or watercooling anything he sees, he does some pro wrestling.

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