One of the most disappointing aspects of playing VALORANT is the agent selection. Even though the pool of agents continues to expand, almost everyone instalocks duelists and tells me to play “healer”—and not just any healer, most players specifically ask for Sage.
I thought this was just something my friends and I experienced in our solo queue games, but it’s apparently an issue across the entire VALORANT community. In an Aug. 15 Reddit thread, players said there’s always someone screaming on the microphone for someone else to play healer.
Interestingly, players who ask others to play Sage never pick the agent themselves, at least in my experience. If I dare to play Skye, for example, they’ll curse me because they think we’re still in 2020 and Sage is the best.
“The amount of instalock Reynas I’ve encountered that ask for a healer is bizarre to me,” one player said, adding that if people want a pocket healer so bad to get kills, they probably shouldn’t pick duelists.
“This is the only reason I ever dodge, the moment someone asks for a healer I just instantly ALT-F4,” another player said.
Other than the annoying players who ask for Sage during agent select, another huge red flag for the community is people talking loudly on the microphone. This leads to a lot of players—myself included—to mute the comms during the agent select as there’s always someone trying to be edgy because they didn’t get to pick the agent they wanted.
We’re lucky when that’s the only thing that happens because, in many scenarios, the player who didn’t pick their agent fast enough will simply troll the game from the start or dodge the match.
All that said, I think the best solution at this point is to simply try to play with friends only instead of queuing up solo. Most of these problems have existed since 2020 and it’s nearly impossible for Riot Games to change the culture of the community.
Related: Best agents in VALORANT: Ranked tier list
