Posted by Steve
Wednesday, October 19, 2022 7:43 PM
For a good amount of players, Harbor's inclusion within the roster was done with one express purpose: to shake up the controller meta by challenging Viper's dominance on her best maps—Breeze and Icebox.
Unfortunately, I don't think this will be how it plays out given the way Harbor's kit works.
Let's consider Viper's game plan on Breeze, for example. Typically, the defending team relies on Viper's strong defensive capabilites to delay a push on her site with limited need for backup from her teammates. If she's playing B site, her orb and molly alone are enough to delay the attackers for a valuable amount of time. Her wall becomes a back up plan. She can use it to take control of mid for her team to rotate semi-safely or save it for retake on A. Whatever happens, she'll be able to use her kit to ensure control of whatever area of the map she needs to be in control of.
But with Harbor, this same gameplan is going to be impossible.
It wasn't obvious from his trailer, but Harbor's orb is not only destructible, but very weak. If he tries to use his orb like viper would, the attackers won't be delayed for any valuable amount of time, since they can quickly destroy it as a team and rush in, and he has no molly like viper does to further delay. If a Harbor player considers this and uses his wall instead, that's also not great. His wall lasts for a very short amount of time, and a wall is much easier for attackers to walk through than an orb smoke. It also slows rather than damages, which is one of the reasons viper's wall works as a defensive smoke in some cases (players who have been around for a while can remember how bad Viper was before her wall did instant damage). Furthermore, if he uses his wall as his main site smoke, he won't be able to get control of any other part of the map, like viper would be able to do.
In fact, his abilities not being permanent like Viper's means he has to be very close to where his utility is used. Astra, Brimstone, and Omen can all use their smokes from long ranges, while Viper has to deploy her smokes nearby, but makes up for it by having permanent utility she could activate from any range. Harbor's abilities have to be deployed near him, BUT he doesn't have the permanent use like viper that makes up for that lack of range, meaning he has worse global pressence than every other controller in the game. With his area denial AND map control being much weaker than viper's, it's going to be very difficult for him to challenge Viper's place on her best maps.
If he sees play at all, it will probably be as a secondary controller (map control is just too important) to Brim or Astra on Bind and Pearl, where one controller's lack of map control can be made up for by having a second controller, and controller characters can use utility synergy to bolster their defense.
References
- https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/y7e9dh/harbor_is_not_going_to_do_what_he_was_designed_to/
- https://reddit.com/y7e9dh
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