Best Sentinels Agents In Valorant | Ranked Worst to Best

Whether you’ve seen crazy Killjoy ultimates in professional play or just fancy boosting your teammates with a Sage wall, this guide will rank all four of the Valorant sentinel class agents, so you can be the most effective trap setter, wall placer and spycam security guard out there!

Best Sentinels in Valorant

Sage

Sage will always be a mainstay in Valorant, and although she is often overlooked by players for some of the newer agents, you can never go wrong with a defensive wall blocking off A Long on Haven.

In fact, this is exactly what Sage excels at- blocking off entrances and exits in crucial areas of the map. Her whole kit can be used offensively and defensively with relative ease, combining a Slow Orb (Q) with Breach’s Fault Line (E) can lead to a deadly combo to catch your opponents off guard.

The large AOE of this ability and the slow is often enough to deter an enemy from proceeding in that direction, instead forcing them to find another way around- which a good Sage player would already have blocked off with their Barrier Orb (C). Obviously, a Healing Orb (E) and a Resurrection (X) are always welcome on any team, after all, who doesn’t love being alive and healthy!

Sage’s downfalls however, come from her simplistic skill level and her shallow learning curve, after all, there is a reason that Sage is available from day one on a new account. Wall placements tend to get repetitive and along with slow orb can sometimes prohibit movement of your own team around the map.

Overall, whilst effective and always a solid choice of agent, the other Sentinels just have a lot more to offer.

Cypher

Coming in with the bronze medal is Cypher. Cypher is an agent who needs to be playing at the back, setting up tripwires and watching his cameras, but when played well, Cypher is an essential for any team.

Cypher can be one of the best intel gathering agents in the game if played correctly and intel is communicated well to teammates. With his Spycam (E), he can watch entrances onto site, when both attacking and defending to call out to his teammates who aren’t planting or defusing the spike where the enemy agents will show up. His Trapwires (C), can be used in conjunction with this to cover entrances and alert Cypher when an enemy walks through.

This is where Cypher struggles. Anything apart from this. Cypher is best utilised when gathering intel and not fighting or planting/defusing. This is due to his lack of offensive abilities, meaning players will more often than not have to rely on their gun skills alone to beat an agent.

Cypher is also significantly more complicated to play than Sage, especially as he revolves around constantly checking his cameras and listening out for tripwire audio cues. Enemies also tend to destroy his spycams and traps immediately when they are found so sometimes his potential power is negated heavily.

The reason Cypher is ranked higher than Sage, is due to the fact that, although he has a steeper learning curve, when used in a good, communicating team, by a competent Cypher player, he can do so much more.

Chamber

Second place goes to Chamber, who is an all-round positive addition to any team roster. Chamber excels at helping his team in small ways, but has some arguably lacklustre flexibility in his kit. Chamber’s Headhunter (Q) gives him a heavy pistol and although this is usable on save rounds, as he can buy a teammate a pistol, it is an ability which wouldn’t go astray on a Duelist.

Chamber easily has enough damage to keep up with most Duelists. This is similar to his ultimate, Tour De Force (X). The slow field is great, but the one-shot sniper anywhere on the body is the real shocker of the ability.

Chamber’s Rendezvous (E) has two teleport anchors which can teleport players between the two, which can be very useful for holding multiple angles at one time, but in a game where so many agents have movement abilities, this just seems to be useless in a lot of situations. His Trademark (C), is designed to block entrances, but just seems weaker than a lot of other zoning abilities.

Overall, Chamber is a Sentinel who acts like a Duelist. His zoning and lock down abilities are easily overlooked but he makes up for this in his damage output. However, if you want zoning and to block entrances, choose Sage or Killjoy and if you want damage and 1v1 potential, choose a Duelist.

Killjoy

Potentially the most obvious placement in this list, Killjoy excels in competitive and non-competitive play. She is the perfect distraction and perfect zoning agent. Whilst enemies are shooting at her Alarmbots and turrets, your team are shooting them.

A good killjoy will place her Alarmbots (Q) in places that are exceedingly awkward for enemies to shoot without exposing themselves or taking damage from the Alarmbot itself. This is the same for her Turrets (E), which provide for a hefty distraction. This is a similar case with Cypher’s Trapwires and Spycams, with the difference being that Killjoy’s Alarmbots and Turrets cannot be ignored if a player wants to keep their health.

Her Nanoswarm grenades (C) can damage the whole enemy team at once if placed and timed right, which can be combined with Sage’s Slow Orb to keep the damage ticking. Her ultimate ability, Lockdown (X), is the biggest zoning tool in the game, forcing the enemy to retreat out of the area or be detained. Due to its large range, it can be placed somewhere hard for the enemies to destroy, forcing a guaranteed reaction.

Killjoy’s weakness is her incredibly steep skill curve, as similarly to Cypher, she has no direct offensive abilities to help her in a 1v1. A bad Killjoy can easily be the worst player in the game, with incorrectly placed Alarmbots and turrets being completely useless- negating her main source of ability damage.

What are Sentinels?

Sentinels are your trap placers, your intel gatherers, and more often than not, the agents on your team that will stop you getting five-man flanked. Valorant currently has four Sentinels filling up its roster; Sage, Cypher, Killjoy and Chamber.

Sentinel players have to be quite smart and composed- this means if you are a Jett main, you’ll have no Tailwind (E) - so no peeking! Now this is not to say that you can’t transition to other classes, but you may need to change your playstyle as more often than not, as a Sentinel, you will find yourself playing alone.

Sentinels are crucial in Valorant because of this, as the game revolves so heavily around select areas on the map, any agent who can scout out or trap the enemy is going to be a sure-fire hit. Sentinels can be effective regardless of whether you are attacking or defending, as there will always be a flank to watch. 

If you’re planning on making the move to Sentinels, choose wisely and based on your skill level. If you’ve just started Valorant, you probably will struggle picking up Killjoy, so maybe try Sage instead then move up to the more complicated Sentinels. The main thing is to realise that you need to completely adapt your playstyle with Sentinels, as few have offensive abilities to assist them in a 1v1 against other agent classes.