Clove – All You Need To Know About VALORANT’s New Agent
VALORANT’s newest agent combines aggressiveness with a more tactical side. Clove is an agent whose role is to support the team on the backline, but their kit also allows them to take command in front of the battlefield. They are also the first non-binary agent in the game, which adds a lot of diversity to the current agent lineup.
Clove, from Scotland, is the 25th agent and the newest controller on VALORANT’s agent roster. While the last two agent releases (check: Iso Overview) were quite unsatisfactory to say the least, Clove’s Kit has the potential to flip the meta for controller players.
Abilities
It seems like Riot Games considered other controllers’ weaknesses when designing Clove’s Kit. Controllers are often seen in the backlines or used for lurking. Setting up smokes and other utilities also requires team coordination. This makes the controller a more support-focused role, which most people don’t enjoy playing.
Clove’s kit bridges the gap between solo and team play quite well. You are still going to need to communicate on smokes but their other abilities can be used for both solo and team plays. Plus, their kit is quite easy to pick up for beginners (check: Tips for Beginners in VALORANT).
At first glance, Clove’s kit looks a lot like the kit of a duelist. In fact, if you substitute the smokes for a blinding ability, Clove would even be a good duelist pick. This goes to show that Clove has quite an aggressive kit. We’ll go over Clove’s abilities below, but you can also check out VALORANT’s official gameplay trailer on YouTube to see their abilities in action if you’re more of a visual learner.
Meddle (Q)
You equip a fragment of immortality essence and throw it at enemies. After 2 seconds, it explodes, causing the enemies caught inside to decay (i.e. lose 90 HP for a short time).
Decay isn’t a new buff in VALORANT; Viper’s smokes have the same effect. This throwable decay could be used to drive enemies out of corners, for example.
Ruse (E)
These are the smokes of Clove, and you get two of them. They work exactly like Brimstone smokes.
You can select where you want to deploy the smokes on a mini-screen of the map. You are limited to a small radius, meaning you can only smoke around the area you are in.
The kicker here is that you can use this ability even if you die., though you can still only smoke in a radius around where you died.
Pick Me Up (C)
After getting a kill or an assist, Clove can instantly heal for 100HP and get a 15% speed boost. It’s similar to Reyna’s Devour in that sense. However, it’s a temporary heal, and you will return to your original HP after 11 seconds.
Not Dead Yet (Ultimate)
If you die as Clove, you can use your Ultimate to get back in the game. After resurrecting, you must either kill or assist to stay alive. You also get 2 seconds of invulnerability after resurrecting.
Clove Abilities- Summary
To sum it up, Clove’s kit is really strong when used aggressively. Pick Me Up and Meddle can be used to get kills and escape quickly. Gone will be the days when controllers are always on the backside, setting up smokes for their team. Clove’s kit allows you to be on the frontline while supporting your team with smokes. You don’t even have to fear dying, since you can smoke even after death.
Clove’s Place in Ranked
For a while, controllers were the least favorite role in ranked. Playing on the backlines and supporting the team isn’t what most people have in mind when they boot up a first-person shooter, after all.
Duelists or Initiators were by far the preferred classes of most people you’d encounter in a random ranked lobby.
Even if you do like playing controller, there’s the aspect of communication. In most ranked lobbies, there isn’t a lot of it. You are mostly observing your team and playing off of that, since communication between random people who get matched together for one match is limited at best. That’s why agents like Harbor and Astra are rarely seen in ranked matches. It’s hard to play a controller without communication since most controllers cannot make plays on their own.
Clove kind of fixes both problems. Firstly, their Pick Me Up allows you to play aggressively and get value out of your aggressive plays. The lack of communication in VALORANT can’t be fixed with an agent, but Pick Me Up allows for enough sustainability for you to play well alone.
Reyna is the most picked agent in ranked, and one of the main reasons is that you can play her quite well without much coordination. Since Clove shares a similar ability to heal after a kill like Reyna, it won’t be a surprise to see them become one of the top-picked VALORANT agents in Ranked.
Finally, the ability to smoke even after death makes Clove a lot better than the other controllers. This makes it so that the Clove player doesn’t have to be playing overly conservative and can join in on the action a bit more.
Overall, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of players maining Clove and we suspect you will be seeing Clove a lot in ranked.
Is Clove Going to Be Meta?
The simple answer is ‘yes’. The biggest reasons are Clove’s ability to smoke even after death and their survivability. With the current two-controller meta, it won’t be surprising to see Clove being used as a second controller or even as a second fragger.
Clove does not have enough smoking utility to become the primary smoker in a pro-team competition; that role will still be reserved for Viper. However, they would make a brilliant second smoker.
Clove in VALORANT – The Final Verdict
To sum it all up, Clove bridges the gap between aggressiveness and tactics. Their versatile kit allows players with different playstyles to perform well with them. Clove’s future in the ranked and pro scene looks quite promising as well. Their current kit is quite overpowered, so expect a nerf sooner or later. With that said, we definitely recommend trying Clove for yourself and see if you like them.
