ValorantAgent BuffsRiot admits VALORANT Sentinels are “suffering” and says the team is working on changes to fix the role.
Riot Games has acknowledged that Sentinel agents are underperforming in VALORANT and the team is working on fixes. Image credit: Riot Games
Riot Games has officially admitted that Sentinels in VALORANT are struggling and says changes are on the way. Find out why the role feels weak right now and what the VALORANT devs can possibly do to buff the Sentinel role.
Riot’s comment came during an online discussion where a player raised concerns about the new agent Hush. The Reddit user said Hush is another dive-oriented duelist and pointed out that most Sentinels, except Chamber, look weak because of their low pick rates across maps.
A staff member listed as a co-host, going by penguinVALORANT, said they generally agree that Sentinels are “suffering a little bit” and that the team is actively working on some changes in this area. The reply, however, did not say what those changes will be or when they will arrive.
Both Riot staff and many players see Sentinels as underperforming mainly because of their very low pick rates outside of Chamber. The current meta is also very aggressive, with duelists leading the charts.
The addition of Hush has made this worse which means players now have to deal with yet another mobile entry fragger, and traditional Sentinel tools struggle against that style. Generally, these agents rely on setups, traps, and passive information, which are easy to break against fast executes.
Past changes have also played a part, as some earlier VALORANT patches reduced the impact of a few abilities and made them less restrictive on gunplay. This left the role feeling less rewarding and harder to use well.
Many VALORANT players believe that traditional Sentinels like Cypher, Killjoy, Deadlock, and Vyse are weak or unfun in ranked and this is especially true when teammates instalock duelists and Controllers.
This is why players on Reddit never stop demanding buffs for Sentinels. In other words, they want the role to punish sloppy pushes more effectively and hold sites more reliably. In fact, some players who main these agents even say they have switched roles because the utility no longer feels impactful enough.
Ranked data from patch 13.10 in Platinum and above shows a more mixed picture than simple weakness.
The data suggests that sentinels perform well when someone actually plays them, especially on defense but the role as a whole sees limited use because it feels less reliable and less fun against the prevailing aggressive style.
In the most recent patch, Riot has already made small cooldown reductions on destroyed utility for Killjoy, Cypher, and Vyse as early steps toward a fix, and further adjustments are expected. To raise Sentinel pick rates without upsetting the meta, developers could make utility feel more impactful and rewarding in solo queue, where coordination is limited and aggressive duelists currently dominate site takes.
The core issue isn’t raw power, since several agents already post strong win rates. It’s perception, and that’s not the players’ fault. We’ve observed that many Sentinel players, especially below Platinum, struggle to find effective combinations for their defensive setups, which opponents then crack with ease. Buffing the timings or damage rates of these abilities could bring the Sentinel role back to life.
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