At the Valorant Masters Madrid tournament, Riot Games unveiled Clove, the new Valorant agent who has the ability to come back from the dead.
Clove is the 25th Valorant agent, and after weeks of teasing their abilities have finally been revealed. As a controller, Clove is focused on disrupting enemies and providing utility for their team, but can also be a very valuable and lethal agent thanks to their unique ultimate. They will launch as part of the next Valorant patch on March 26.
Clove’s E ability is Ruse, which is a fairly basic smoke that is very similar to Brimstone’s. Hitting E will bring up a small window, which does not block the entirety of the screen, showing a top-down view of the area of the map you are in. From there you can select where you want to drop the smoke, which will block vision like any other. Interestingly, you can also use this while you are dead, which should make Clove a little more useful than they may seem on paper!
Clove’s Q ability is Meddle, a grenade-like throwable that inflicts decay on all enemies hit by it. Of all the abilities it seems like the least impactful and one that you’ll probably forget to use a lot of the time.
Clove’s C ability is Pick-Me-Up, which is again not all that interesting and is very similar to Reyna’s kit. When you kill an enemy, you can absorb their life essence to gain haste and a temporary health buff.
Then there is Clove’s ultimate, and this is where things get interesting. When you die and have your ultimate ready to go, you can quickly cast it to come back to life for a short time. If you manage to get a kill or damaging assist in this resurrection period then you will be fully back to life as if you never died. However, if you don’t get, or help with, a kill then it’s back to the grave once the resurrection timer runs out.
It’s clear that Clove can still be useful if they get taken down, be it by coming back with their ultimate and getting extra health when they do through their C ability, or with the smokes that can be placed after death. That should make them a great entry fragger, as the risk of dying is greatly reduced.
“Optimal Clove gameplay is about playing with fire, you need to take risks and trade your own life for the greater good to remove enemy utility from the round by killing opponents to have success,” said Dan Hardison, agent gameplay designer on Valorant. “They’re unlike other controllers in that their raw execute utility should be weaker on average, but their ability to contribute post-death means that you should almost always fight to the death rather than cower from your opponents. Sometimes it’s correct for Clove to run in and die as long as they’re traded by an ally – 1 for 1s are advantageous for them if their life is traded for a non-Clove opponent! You have to be willing to die for the squad to play Clove.”
