Fade Agent Guide
To kick off Valorant's Episode 4: Act III, Riot Games have introduced a new agent to the roster. The nineteenth agent in Valorant is a Turkish bounty-hunter Fade. She operates in the shadows and uses her nightmarish abilities to "hunt targets and reveal their deepest fears—before crushing them in the dark."
Fade: The Fifth Initiator Agent
Fade falls into the initiator class of agents alongside Sova, Breach, Skye, and KAY/O. The main job of initiators is to set up their team to challenge contested areas on the map. They achieve that by gathering information on the enemy's positioning or with some sort of disabling abilities such as stuns and flashes.
Initiators excel at clearing corners and pushing enemies back in order to provide the rest of the team the space to take control of a certain area of the map. It makes them very powerful on the attack, especially when entering a bomb site. However, they usually require good team coordination to make full use of their potential.
Fade Ability Guide
Signature Ability - Haunt: Equip a nightmarish entity. FIRE to throw the orb which will plummet to the ground after a set amount of time. Upon hitting the ground, the orb will turn into a nightmarish entity that will reveal the location of enemies caught in its line of sight. Enemies can destroy this entity. RE-USE the ability to drop the projectile early in-flight.
C - Prowler(250 creds): EQUIP a Prowler. FIRE will send the Prowler out, causing it to travel in a straight line. The Prowler will lock onto any enemies or trails in their frontal vision cone and chase them, nearsighting them if it reaches them. HOLD the FIRE button to steer the Prowler in the direction of your crosshair.
Q - Seize (200 creds): Equip an orb of nightmare ink. FIRE to throw the orb which will plummet to the ground after a set amount of time. Upon hitting the ground, the ink will explode and create a zone in which enemies who are caught in it cannot escape the zone by normal means. RE-USE the ability to drop the projectile early in-flight
Ultimate Ability - Nightfall (7 Ult points): EQUIP the power of Fear. FIRE to send out a wave of nightmare energy that can traverse through walls. The energy creates a trail to the opponent as well as deafens and decays them.
How to Play Fade:
Utilizing Fade's ability to reveal enemies with her trails is the crucial part of her kit. Marking them with her signature ability or ultimate, in combination with her Prowler ability, provides a lot of information so your duelists can have a much easier time rushing into the site and taking the opening frag.
However, Fade is pretty versatile and not limited to just being an info-gathering bot. Her Prowler ability acts as a combination of Skye's Seeker and Omen's Paranoia which can be a great tool for making individual plays, not just to help your Jett get an easy kill.
Fade's Seize ability can be a great tool to block tight chokes and make your enemies "sitting ducks" for your team. Since it is a root and a decay, it has amazing potential to be "combo'd" with stuff like Astra "suck," Raze grenades, Brimstone ultimate, mollys, and other damage abilities in the game to get easy kills.
Her ultimate ability is massive, and it can clear an entire site, similar to Breach. It marks, decays, deafens enemies hit, and blocks their minimap, so you can easily obliterate a whole bomb site. It also makes it great for faking a site take, as your deafened enemies won't be able to hear your rotation.
Team compositions and position in the meta
The first thing that comes to mind when you see Fade's abilities is that there is finally a Sova alternative. Although she does provide a lot of information, her range is much shorter than Sova's. Also, her kit is much more aggressive.
Since Sova is being hit with some big nerfs on this patch, Fade is looking strong to contest his spot in many team compositions. Especially on smaller and less open maps like Bind, Split, or Ascent, as she might struggle on open maps like Breeze. However, her kit can be useful in any team composition, so she could even be played alongside Sova or some other initiator in some cases.
Alongside the introduction of Fade, the new patch brought some impactful changes to very some popular agents like Jett and Sova. It will be interesting to see how will meta develop in the coming days and weeks in both casual and competitive Valorant.
With all the changes coming to Valorant, you don't want to miss our Agent tier list for the new patch. It's coming out on Monday, so stay tuned for more Valorant content on Gamercraft!