Everyone wants to frag out in a first-person shooting game. Even if your crosshair is permanently pointed down at the floor as you run in circles trying to figure out where you're being shot from, the satisfaction of completing an ace or pulling off a split-second clutch with a pistol is what drives people to play FPS games in the first place.
In VALORANT, all the game's agents can pop off and put up 30 kills -- shoutout to all the self-healing Sage players who always first-buy the Operator -- but the Duelists are more often than not the true carries of their team. VALORANT's closed beta featured a trio of Duelists -- Raze, Phoenix and Jett -- that expanded to a quartet after the game's official launch with the addition of the Mexican vampire Reyna.
If you're going to pick a Duelist and try to carry your team, the question is: Which Duelist should you play? Although all four when played to their full potential can carry even the worst team to a win, each has a specific playstyle. If you're playing Reyna as you would Raze, for example, then the results might not be so pretty unless you're blessed with god-like aim.
Read more: How powerful is Reyna? | VALORANT agent tier list
Should you pick up Reyna? Raze? Phoenix? Jett? Maybe realize you should just stick to Brimstone? Here is the lowdown on VALORANT's carries.
Reyna
Playstyle: Divide and conquer
The newest agent in VALORANT, Reyna is already causing headaches, with some players putting up 40-plus-kill games when facing off with lower-level opponents. The self-proclaimed Empress is truly the queen of splitting a team up, using her soul-sucking abilities on opponents to heal herself or give herself a few seconds to scout the danger around her without the fear of getting deleted from the map.
Reyna is strongest when she can outduel her opponent and start scooping up souls like candy and ice skating around the enemy team with her invulnerability, healing and flash. Things start going sideways for Reyna players when they think their kit allows them to face two or more opponents at once. This usually leads to an overconfident Reyna that gets eliminated immediately. Though it's tempting to try to face a full team by yourself as Reyna, the optimal way to pilot the vampiress is to take small skirmishes and snowball them into dominating rounds that make the enemy Sage rage-quit after typing "so broken" in the chat.
Play Reyna if: You're confident in one-on-one gun duels. Are you the type of person who doesn't flinch when you see an opposing player jump out from a deep corner and can take out the enemy without sweating? If that's you, pick Reyna. She rewards players who can win 50/50 battles and can chain those together for a multikill round.
Don't play Reyna if: You like to throw out her flash, run into an unscouted area and start shooting wildly hoping to get a prayer of a kill to start snowballing into a dominant round. Please, I implore you, if you aren't confident in one-on-one gun duels, put Reyna down and look elsewhere.
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Jett
Playstyle: Mobility-focused
There will come a time in your VALORANT career when you want to play Jett. You watched a few clips of Brandon "Aceu" Winn or Tyson "TenZ" Ngo playing her, dicing enemies up with knives whilst soaring in the air, and you want to feel and look as cool as those guys do playing the agent. There's no shame in that, but let me be the bad guy here and give you the truth: You don't have the mechanics or split-second decision-making needed to play Jett. Even though you sometimes get a lucky kill here or there that looks good on social media, realize that your friends hate playing with you. Stop it. Stop playing Jett. You're not skilled enough to play Jett. Stop lying to yourself and pivot before you waste hours of everyone's time.
Jett was created to either produce beautiful plays or disastrous ones. Her greatest strength, as if it wasn't obvious by just looking at her kit, is her speed and mobility. She can fling herself up from the ground to find angles no other agent can in the game, dash in the blink of an eye away from or into a fight and has an ultimate ability that can create a win out of nowhere even in a low-economy round. The wind assassin rewards players who have above-average mechanics and can utilize all of her abilities without trying to button-mash them together hoping that they hit the right combination and trip into a kill or two.
Play Jett if: You're really good at playing piano, have an IQ over 130 or a high rank in StarCraft. Jett needs precise mechanics and a dash of smarts to make her work, so only try to make her your main Duelist if you have those two traits in spades.
Don't play Jett if: You're 99.3% of the population. Stop it. Stop playing her. Stop ruining my games. If I have to watch another Jett dash straight into the open arms of the enemy team, deleted before she can even pull out her weapon, I might lose my mind.
Raze
Playstyle: Damage dealer
Are you someone who wants to put up more than 10 kills but can't aim straight if your life depended on it? Does your crosshair get confused between the enemy's heads and the ground? Have you ever experienced a round of VALORANT in which you keep jumping up and down to try to avoid getting hit while trying to shoot but keep firing bullets into the sky?
If that's you, but you still want to play a Duelist, meet Raze, the agent who can help you get multiple kills without aiming. That's not to say pro players who aim don't play Raze. They do -- and to great effect -- but that doesn't stop Raze from being the simplest Duelist to play of the four. Every single ability in her kit does damage. She's an overflowing fountain of damage. Raze can be the last agent on her team alive against five opponents, but if she still has all of her kit available, there's a chance she can clutch out the round.
While top pros use her satchels often for mobility, a majority of the player base doesn't have to worry about that. Is the enemy behind a box? Throw a satchel at them. Are you scared that there might be an entire team behind that wall? Simple, throw out your Boom Bot and let it not only scout for you but do massive damage in the right circumstances. Feeling lucky at the start of a round? Catapult a grenade when you spawn and watch as you pick up a double kill without pulling out your gun. If none of that worked, activate your ultimate, the Showstopper, which is a gigantic rocket launcher, and fling it to your heart's content, ready to instantly kill any agent it hits in the right spot.
Play Raze if: You like doing a ton of damage, annoying the enemy team and painting the map with your glorious, totally-earned-and-not-lucky-at-all accomplishments.
Don't play Raze if: You're not someone who utilizes a lot of abilities in a game. Although all agents should utilize their kits, Raze is an agent who really does most of her work through her arsenal of grenades and robotics. You're going to get at least a few lucky kills even if you don't use Raze's kit correctly, but if you can master all she has to offer, even someone with less than ideal aim can be a major benefit to their squad as Raze.
Phoenix
Playstyle: Well rounded
The British operative is truly a jack of all trades, master of none. I know that sounds harsh, but it's true. His flash? It's great when it hits correctly, and Phoenix can swing around in time to pick off enemies, but it isn't as good as Breach's or Reyna's. He has a Molotov that heals him, but Brimstone has him beat due to the gruff commander's pool of deadly fire. His wall? An awesome tactic that can curtain off a section of a site, but then you watch Viper launch her poisonous wall over three buildings and block off half of a site. His ultimate, called Run it Back, lets Phoenix dash into dangerous spots, go for quick kills and scout unknown terrain without the fear of dying because he'll get a second life, but then you look over to Sage resurrecting teammates like it's no problem.
Outside of his ultimate, Phoenix's kit doesn't stand out. Yet, when he uses all of his abilities in correct succession, the cocky Duelist can take over games in a (literal) flash. When choosing Phoenix, you're not forcing yourself into a box like some other agents in the game. Unlike Reyna, who's useless if she isn't getting kills, Phoenix can be an asset to his team even if he isn't lighting up the leaderboard, using his ultimate to scout, his wall to carve out an entry lane for his teammates or his flash to clear an unknown area.
Play Phoenix if: You're not afraid to die. As weird as that sounds in a game in which there are no respawns, when you're Phoenix, entering sites with your flash or popping your ultimate, you need to be a bit reckless. A Phoenix who tries to lurk behind the team and sweep up kills is almost as bad as a Jett player who thinks button-mashing and dashing into a dark area is the way to win the game.
Don't play Phoenix if: You can't consistently hit his Curveball flash. As the name suggests, you have to curve the flash around a corner for it to hit the enemy and not your entire team. I can't count how many times I've seen a Phoenix rush into a room to clear it out with a flash, miss his Curveball and instantly lose the round due to the enemy shooting Phoenix's blinded teammates.