Vyse: Adapt or Die

Duelists, meet Vyse—the liquid metal thorn in your side, and the newest Radiant on the VALORANT roster. 

Vyse is a Sentinel whose kit is designed to make her a pain in the ass for anyone who isn’t careful about entering her domain plant site. Her main stopping power comes from the Radianite-infused metal alloy flowing through her. Vyse manipulates this metal into pieces of utility carefully designed to outsmart her opponents. And she uses her utility to turn choke points into traps and reckless predators into prey.

“If we go back to earlier this year, Clove was a response to how people were playing Controllers in Competitive queue. And expanding on that thought, Vyse is a response to how players are currently playing the game from a space-taking perspective—namely, Duelists,” reveals Agent team lead, John “Riot MEMEMEMEME” Goscicki. “Basically she’s the answer to the five-stack who unga-bunga stomps onto a site.”

How exactly does Vyse stop these overly-aggressive entry fraggers? It’s simple, really.

Isolate, debilitate, dominate.

Shear

“Vyse’s wall was actually the first thing we knew we wanted for her kit,” says Vyse’s Agent designer, Kevin Meier. “We actually thought about her as a spider watching her web. She’s not trying to stop you from coming through a choke-point like Sage does with her wall. She wants to let you in so she can pounce on you after.”

The last thing you see after you step into Vyse’s site.

But in order for that gameplay loop to work, she needs to be able to isolate her prey. While most placeable utility can be destroyed by shooting it, Shear is indestructible. But because of this, its duration is much shorter compared to something like Sage’s or Deadlock’s barriers.

“Vyse is somebody who tries to proactively close her own loop with utility and gunplay, whereas other Sentinels are more sneaky. Ultimately, the 1-2 combo we see working well for Vyse is her wall followed by her flash,” Kevin explains. “‘Hey, we separated the players now, but you still need to capitalize on that and kill them.’ So that’s where her flash came from.”

Arc Rose

“Sentinels really excel when they have individual tools that provide a lot of versatility in how you think about them, both as solo abilities and how you’re combining them together,” Kevin says. 

One thing that’s really unique to Vyse as a Sentinel is her flash. No other Sentinel on the roster has a flash, and no other Agent in the game has a flash like hers. Arc Rose is a flash that can be placed somewhere on the map and detonated by Vyse when she chooses, and a Sentinel with a flash is something the team is excited about in regards to how she might shake up team compositions.

Raze jumps onto site to be met with a carefully placed Arc Rose right in her face.

“A flash that’s placed pre-round has a lot of strength in setups and is meant to debuff players coming into her domain. It’s another defensive tool in her kit that synergizes well with coordinated team play,” adds Kevin.

And it lends itself so perfectly to Vyse’s metal plant thematic.

An up-close look at Vyse’s Arc Rose concept art.

“On top of that, there’s a level of elegance and care that comes with setting everything up pre-round that resembles (in a weird way) the tending of a garden,” says Riot MEMEMEMEME smiling. “The flash could have just been a spotlight. But that’s not as fun. What about the idea of being blinded by watching a flower bloom?”

Razorvine

Speaking of blooming—in a much more painful way—Vyse also has a launchable ability that lands on the ground and turns invisible…until activated. When activated, her Razorvine spreads into a large metal nest of Razorvine that slows and damages enemies when they move. It also makes a lot of noise. 

Basically, barbed wire isn’t inherently dangerous unless you try walking through a nest of it sitting on the ground. So if you find yourself in some Razorvine, stand still and get ready to duel the Vyse who’s likely waiting to swing you.

Phoenix must have been moving in Razorvine. Ouch. At least Reyna got the memo.

“In playtesting we’ve seen some folks place her Razorvine at the front of a choke point with her wall and activate it as soon as the wall goes up,” Kevin reveals. “But we’ve also seen some fun combos in playtesting where you can launch your Razorvine aggressively into a lane to try and get the audio cue. Then you can either follow up on that as they try to move out, or just try to stall them out for a bit.”

Steel Garden

Vyse’s ultimate, Steel Garden, is by far her most unique ability. While her flash, wall, and Razorvine are fresh new takes on existing ability types, Steel Garden is something entirely new to VALORANT.

Steel Garden sprawls across A site on Sunset while a carefully placed Arc Rose detonates on the A elbow wall.

“With Vyse’s ultimate, we wanted to create a gunplay advantage for Vyse and her team,” Kevin explains. “She creates a jam state where players have their primary weapon locked away for a duration. You can use your pistol or your abilities, but it still creates that gun advantage, or also neutralizes the gun advantage if your team is on a low-buy round and your Vyse has an ultimate ready.”

Sova’s Vandal jammed up by Steel Garden.

Steel Garden will undoubtedly have some economic impacts for teams playing with or against a Vyse. Pistol round heroes, it’s your time to shine.

Game Recognize Game

“Vyse’s abilities are behavioral responses to how people are now playing VALORANT in ways that are outside the original tactical loops,” Riot MEMEMEMEME shares. “We’re now at a point where we get to make Agents that are in response to the evolution of the game and to things we never even imagined when we were developing the core game.”

So gamers, take a bow. Your ability to keep innovating on the battlefield empowers the VALORANT dev team to respond in-kind. Vyse’s design aims to fulfill a gameplay niche that’s new to VALORANT in 2024. But she’s by no means a silver bullet to the Duelist meta. There’s still plenty of opportunity for counterplay.

“Her biggest weakness compared to a lot of the meta Sentinels right now is that she doesn’t have much direct lane watch. Cypher has cam and multiple trips and KJ can watch multiple lanes with her turret and her Alarm Bot,” Kevin says. “So I think in larger maps or maps with three plant sites, she’ll probably struggle. But maps with tighter corridors where you’ll be able to reliably lock players out and don’t need as much flank watch, I think she’ll excel in those.”

Finishing Touches

When you start to uncover some of the voicemails in the game left by Vyse, it becomes clear that she’s no dummy. While a lot of her backstory is still being uncovered, we do know that she’s got quite the brain between those antennas.

“You want to feel smart when you’re playing Vyse—like you can predict what the enemy is going to do four steps ahead, and you can prepare for that with the abilities you lay down,” says Conor fizzNchips Sheehy, lead narrative writer for Vyse. “We also knew we wanted a darker character for Vyse as a contrast to the Agents like Clove and Gekko we’ve been releasing. So we spent some of our monster bucks on her.”

The idea of a female monster is one that resonated quickly with Vyse’s concept artist Konstantin “uRude” Maystrenko, and 3D artist Rosa “Red2Blue” Lee. And it also allowed them a little bit of freedom when designing an important aspect in a competitive shooter like VALORANT—her silhouette.

“One of the biggest parts of designing an Agent is designing a unique silhouette so you know who you’re looking at from a distance. And with every new Agent release it gets harder and harder to find new ways to push the silhouette and make them unique. For Vyse, her antennas are her signature,” explains uRude. “Along with the flowers and roses integrated into her design. Roses give some depth to her shoulder pads. And if you look at her pants, the shape of the pattern is actually the liquid metal thorns.”

Even Vyse’s concept art is threatening.

“We also wanted to push the theme of her thorns forward. So if you look at her from the front, the antennas on her helmet are very sharp and almost thorn-like, but we also wanted to make her look a little demonic and unnatural, and we felt like the antennas also looked a bit like horns,” adds Red2Blue.

“But to some people, they could appear to be almost like cat ears and I’m sure we’ll see some really cute fan art of her,” uRude smiles.

But until then, be careful. This rose has thorns that kill.