Valorant: As Agent design takes inspiration from Dota 2, Riot is set to launch 5 Agents per role

If you were wondering how many Agents Riot Games will be adding to their Valorant roster, the devs have recently given us a specific answer.

When it comes to their complete Agent pool, the Valorant devs have, for now, set their eyes on a number ranging from 50 to 60 as the pick-and-ban phase is not really a thing in the game at the moment because of the limited number of Agents.

Riot will hope to increase the pool considerably and have a drafting system like in their other IP, League of Legends.

With 6 Agents to come every year, it would seem that the Valorant devs will take at least 8 more years to reach their desired target in terms of Agent pool.

Valorant devs aim for 50 to 60 Agents

In a Reddit post made on the 10th of September, one of the Valorant developers- ‘Pwyff’- told players:

“The perfect agent roster balance...honestly I think we'll start to understand how flexible the agent roster is as we inject more in, so I don't think we can say ‘100 is crazy’ or ‘100 is great.’ Personally, I think ~50-60 feels about right ⁠— let's say 5 per role.”

Reaching a goal of 60 or even dreaming of a number like 100 is not going to be a big deal for Riot Games. League of Legends is already sitting at a 150+ champion pool, with a bunch of new champions getting released every year. So it’s very much possible for the Valorant devs to achieve that number within a decade.

However, aside from the ideal Agent pool, what truly interested us about Riot’s take on the Agents is how they go about designing them. According to Pwyff, instead of taking inspiration from the champions in League of Legends, Riot will be looking towards Dota 2 when it comes to their Valorant Agents.

Over the last decade, the two MOBAs have gone their separate ways, even if they had a similar start. Pwyff said:

“Dota 2 is a great example to me because each unit is unique, but drafting at the highest levels is about building the right toolbox (or so I think from my armchair)... If you have a good, winning strategy, you can draft the S-tier hero for that strategy, but if it's banned, you start picking up the A and B-tier heroes who, when put together, can still do that function. If Valorant is more like that, I can see it supporting a much larger ecosystem of agents.”

A larger “ecosystem of Agents” will allow for more playmaking potential and will add a lot of much-needed flexibility to the otherwise ‘set in stone’ Valorant drafts.