Cypher is all about detecting the enemy. His camera can spot you sneaking down an area, his cage can tell him when you’re pushing into an area, and his trapwire will snag you and buy Cypher enough time to escape through the back door of your mom’s house.

Spycam: “Smile! You’re on camera.” Cypher can place a camera on any vertical service with some kind of Flex Seal sorcery. He can use the camera to ‘tag’ people and reveal them periodically through walls until they take it out. The best place to put a camera is based on the three Hs: High, Hidden, Hilarious. Put your camera somewhere high to maximize the camera’s visual area. Put your camera somewhere hidden to prevent enemies from shooting it immediately. And if you can’t get either of these, put it somewhere hilarious, because stupid ideas sometimes turn out to be the best ideas. By following the three Hs, you can tag the same player 5 times before they find your camera, and you get to laugh as they swivel their heads everywhere.

Cyber cage: This ability does not have nearly as much info-gathering power as the rest of Cypher’s kit, but no decent Cypher can go without it. Apparently it used to slow enemies in the closed beta, but it doesn’t anymore, and the damage report hasn’t changed to reflect that, which I’m sure confused more people than just me. What it does do is it gives Cypher a brief moment of space to move freely and alerts him if enemies are pushing through it anyways. And when you stand in it, 🎵you’re surrounded by familiar faces.🎵

Trapwire: Cypher possesses the ability to make any narrow passage feel like it’s from a heist movie. Enemies have to duck under, dive over, or disable the trapwire or risk activating the “YES HELLO IM OVER HERE AND INCAPACITATED COME AND SHOOT ME” alarm. If you want almost guaranteed info, put the trapwire at chest level, because then the enemy can’t sneak past it and must shoot it or expend a movement ability. However, if you want to beat the shit out of some poor, incautious fellow, put the trapwire in some sneaky, low spot and hide around the corner so that they have to either jump over it and announce their presence or get snagged and look down (not at you) to shoot it.

Neural theft: Cypher takes advantage of his rampant necrophilia to reveal the locations of the rest of the living enemy team. This allows your team to quickly adapt their strategy accordingly. Make sure you’re actually paying attention to your ult when you use it because one of my friends used it with two enemies left, killed one of them, and apparently hadn’t seen that the last one was afk and had to be told.

Moral of the story: Enjoy your hobbies, even if they’re stalking and necrophilia.