Cypher been having a problem lately because of his lack of usage in the pro scene and in general his utility is just kind of weak. I'm a cypher main so it hurts to see my boy being done dirty like this like c'mon RIOT his wife died and now you want him to be a bottom tier agent smh.

There are two and maybe a third reason (I know of) that makes Cypher weak.

1. You probably all know this, anything can break his tripwires. Boombots, nades, mollies, dogs, seekers, satchels, you name it... Cypher would make literally the worst security company. I'd rather sage wall of my entire house during the purge than have that rat make a set up outside my house. In general all of his utility is easy to counter.
2. There aren't actually that many good tripwire options. The hidden trips that actually manage to catch people often get pre-fired when the walls drop. There's a few trips are difficult to break. But only few. Like this,

If only you could trip like this on every entrance.

3. He couldn't slow down an attacker push to save his life. Cages --> you just flash out of.Camera --> wtf pinging an enemy not gonna stop them. And most of the good cameras forCypher are super passive only give good info for when they're on site. Trips --> You already know.

Here's the thing,

Cypher isn't supposed to be like Killjoy, Sage or Chamber. You don't force attackers off through sheer Util like Killjoy and Sage do. Cyphers is sneakier and uses traps to defend sites. Its not even really defending. You just kill any intruders You let them walk (preferably run) onto site unsuspecting of the tripwires awaiting them. Swing on them as they get tagged and cage yourself off to hide and reposition. Tap onto your cam that situated above everybody's heads to spot the nearest attacker pushing into you trying to trade his mates and watch as he walks into your crosshair placement to die. That's how Cypher is supposed to play. Like the opposite of Chamber --> very passive instead of aggressive.

However this isn't a strength for Cypher. Currently, playing passively (even on defense!) is not meta. That's why you see Chamber diffing every sentinel in the game right now. Being able to get picks and to get the numbers advantage is infinitely more valuable than holding off attackers. This also simultaneously allows defenders to take more space. To me this fact is unchangeable. A passive playstyle is always out-shadowed by an aggressive playstyle. That's not the problem. The problem is that out of all the Sentinel agents, Cypher is the MOST passive agent in the game. You can't slow pushes so you resort to traps and info gathering to support retakes. Wait didn't I mention. HIS TRIPS ARE ALWAYS BROKEN. He's basically on site alone sometimes. So that's that.

So I was wondering if they could buff cyphers trip a little by allowing them to be more flexible. Instead of placing one end of the trip and having the other end of the trip land in the opposite direction, Cypher players can choose INDIVIDUALLY where EACH END of the trip lands, allowing them to place trips in a bigger variety of places and in more directions.

While positioning the trip (like you normally would) you right click instead of left click. What this does is it locks only ONE end of the trip to the wall. After your done, aim and click at the spot you want to place the SECOND end of the trip. If you don't wanna do this you can just left click immediately to insta-trip like normally.

This'll make it harder for enemies to counter and for Cyphers they can make the trips much more hidden, like this one on A site of ascent since the trip doesn't need to shoot adjacent from where you placed it.

See how the first end of the trip is adjacent to the trip while the second end of the trip faces in a different direction [to the wire]. The angled end allows the trip to be placed behind the gate rather than in it.

I feel like this suits the idea of tripwire more. Being hidden allows it to be more of a trap than a pure info gathering tool. Imagine this. You're trying to prank your friends by making a trip wire made of glad-wrap so that you can film them running into it and blackmail them. Anyways, If you tape the wrap on the sides of a hallway, they'll probably see it because they can see the both ends of it. If you put it behind a door however, they won't notice it as easily since the ends are concealed. Hidden --> Trap.

Neon Mains

There are a few problems with this. They might be too hard to counter since the flexibility of trips may allow players to easily adjust the shape of the trip to avoid being broken by util while still being able seal off an area, just a bit differently. If RIOT really wanted to nerf the flexibility of the trip alone they could limit the trip wire to rotating only up to up to a certain angle so you can only bend them so far before it just doesn't turn anymore. However, mixing up trips is good, since it can stop annoying prefires every round. Removing flexibility will also will stop Cypher from placing trips like this one in Hookah [the top one],

​

You will walk into this if you are running it down Hookah with your squad.

-meaning Cypher cant really place trips which are hard to spot. This defeats the purpose of trap oriented traps which I feel should be Cyphers strength. I think they should instead make cypher trips louder. That way, Cyphers passive playstyle will really shine when he can punish mindlessly aggressive players, pushing sites unaware of his trips, but reward the attackers who push site slowly in response to Cypher and methodically spot and break each tripwires one by one instead of shock darting it from spawn at the start of the round. This is playstyle to me is like the complete opposite for Chamber, where pushing off a Chamber off as early as possible is significantly advantageous to slowly pushing him. So Cypher still has a counter. Its just not as easy to do. Which is fine, given that Cypher is one of the more difficult agents to master and play well, he at least deserves an equally challenging counter in terms of difficult and strategy and especially since no other agent is countered as easily through prefires and Sova lineups.

My only problem with this is the ability to place trips on any location and on any angle. I can see this angling ability allowing trip wires to potentially cover more than one chokepoint on certain sites. Its fine if chambers trips can also do the same, but Cypher has two trip wires, so... We might need to do something about that.

Anyways, I hope you guys like this idea. I honestly don't mind if you think this might be too strong or game breaking (this is just something I came up with a while ago. Any constructive feedback/criticisms I would greatly appreciate) but so I feel like this is a great idea for fixing Cyphers main issue, being countered easily, and hopefully making Cyphers trap plays more viable when, in the current meta, passive playstyles are kind of weak.

[I also wonder if making Cypher's cam's placement range go further. So if you were able to place it far away enough it could work like a weaker Sova dart (Not tremendously far like Sova dart, but a little further than it is right now to achieve that affect). I could easily be wrong about this so let me know about this idea as well if you'd like].