Out of all the metas that have stretched across the seasons of competitive VALORANT, one of the longest ones revolved around the release and immediate strength of one agent. While labelled a Sentinel, Chamber’s Duelist-like abilities changed the game forever, and even after large nerfs, he’s starting to creep back into ranked and pro games.
Chamber, after getting nerfed into the ground, is starting to get picked more across all aspects of VALORANT. He went from an instant pick to nonexistent at agent select over a year, from 2022 to 2023. But now, at the VCT Americas Last Chance Qualifier, fans are starting to see what the best of the best look like on the new version of Chamber. That’s also leading him to get picked more online, with his pick rate moving up and up over the last couple of acts.
To start, Chamber’s changes were needed back when he was key to the pro meta of VALORANT. His Tour de Force was too good, his kit was too cheap, and players quickly mastered him across multiple ranks. Even some small tweaks to his kit didn’t prevent him from staying meta for around a year, leading to pro players rising to the top as Chamber mains. Some of the best examples of this are Cryocells and yay, two Jett mains who were very skilled with the Operator and translated it easily over to Chamber.
Then, Chamber truly got nerfed at the end of 2022. His utility became less flexible, more expensive, and other Sentinels got stronger. His pick rate tanked to bottom five in ranked play, while disappearing almost entirely from pro play. 2023 began with no Chamber in sight, and the regular season remained that way, asides from less than a handful of times.
Related: All Chamber updates: History of changes made to Chamber in VALORANT
Yet, toward the end of the 2023 season, some players started to pick up the agent once again. Instead of running him as a Sentinel/Duelist hybrid like he was in 2022, Sentinel mains picked up the agent to cover long angles and make sites on maps like Split and Bind hard to enter, especially if a Tour de Force is guarding it. Some key teams have shown their skills on Chamber in the Americas LCQ, including KRÜ Esports, MIBR, and 100 Thieves.
KRÜ Esports are the ones getting the best value out of him, with Santiago “Daveeys” Ruiz using the agent to help beat FURIA, Leviatán, and even Cloud9. Using the agent as a long-range specialist who can gain information like Cypher, instead of like a Jett with a get-out-of-jail-free card, has proven to be useful for them, leading them to the grand finals. Other regions are still tentative on him, but Chamber currently has a 17-percent pick rate in the Americas LCQ, more than agents like Harbor, Cypher, or Breach.
As for online play, when players see pros start using an agent again, they usually like to follow suit. Across all ranks, according to valorbuff.com, Chamber has a 23.9-percent pick rate in Patch 5.07. If you broaden that scope to the last three months, that percentage dips to 16.6.
Seeing a chamber once in four games is not rare, especially not as rare as early 2023, post-nerfs. It might not be the same Chamber fear that Riot admitted was breaking the game, but you’ll see the dapper Frenchman more on stream and online.
