VALORANT Guide to play Viper: Tips, tricks and abilities

Thinking of making Viper your new main agent? This is all you need to know to play with the toxic American controller.

Viper is one of Valorant’s most complicated Agents. She has smoke that can block vision, toxic pools that damage players, a wall that can cut bomb sites in half, and a massive death pit that can lock down a whole bomb site. All these abilities are strong, but she can only use them a limited amount, giving her more to pay attention to than any other character in Valorant.

Also read: The Ultimate Viper Lineup: Take a look at the only viper lineup you’ll ever need to learn for all maps

Tips to keep in mind with Viper’s abilities

GENERAL TIP FOR PLAYING VIPER:

• Always keep an eye on your fuel gauge. If it runs empty you won’t be able to use your Poison Cloud or Toxic Screen abilities.

ABILITY: SNAKEBITE

Fire a projectile that explodes into a pool of damaging acid.

Tips:

• This ability isn’t the most damaging, but it can soften up targets if they’re moving through a door or hallway.
• This can be an excellent way to check corners of the map. If you think someone might be lurking behind a box or at a sharp angle, toss this down and force them out.
• You can also learn some neat lineups to control post plant situations and delay the enemy from defusing.

ABILITY: POISON CLOUD

Throw a gas emitter that you can reactivate to create a poisonous smoke cloud at the cost of fuel. The emitter can be picked up and thrown again after a short cool down.

Tips:

• This is one of the weaker smoke screen abilities, so it’s best not to use it to block basic angles when your team has other options.
• It is an outstanding ability for briefly hiding an area from view in the middle of open ground. You can place this on the bomb, or at a particularly active choke point, then flip it on to damage and confuse unsuspecting enemies.

SIGNATURE ABILITY: TOXIC SCREEN

Deploy a long line of gas emitters that you can reactivate to create a tall wall of toxic gas at the cost of fuel.

Tips:

• This ability can go across a huge section of the map, ignoring things like walls. You can see a preview of where it will go on the map.
• Be careful using this early when you’re on Attack. Deploying it can be a dead give-away for which bomb site you and your team are attacking. Because of that, Toxic Screen can also be a great misdirection ability.

ULTIMATE ABILITY: VIPER’S PIT

Emit a massive toxic cloud in a large area that lasts as long as Viper stays inside the cloud. Enemies inside the cloud are highlighted to Viper.

Tip:

• This ability does damage to everyone inside except the Viper who placed it. That means enemies take damage, but allies do too.
• Viper can step out of her Pit without it going down. As soon as she does a timer appears, if she re-enters the Pit before the timer reaches zero it stays up, if she doesn’t then it goes down.
• While shotguns aren’t normally the best weapons in Valorant, this ability gives Viper special synergy with the up-close-and-personal guns. If you know you’re going to set the Viper Pit up in a particular round, grab a shotgun and run around inside, shooting people point blank and saving some Credits in the process.

Also read: Fnatic Valorant Roster: Braveaf joins Fnatic to complete their valorant roster going into VCT 2022