How To Play Harbor in Valorant

Riot’s Competitive first-person shooter Valorant has grown massively since it was first released in 2020. Since the original 12 agents, there are now 18 unique agents of the Valorant protocol that you can choose to play. As of writing, the latest agent to be introduced to the game is the Controller Harbor. This guide will explain Harbor’s abilities and role, and provide tips to efficiently use Harbor in your games.

Harbor’s Abilities

High Tide (E)

EQUIP a wall of water. FIRE to send the water forward along the ground. HOLD FIRE to guide the water in the direction of your crosshair, passing through the world, spawning a wall along the water’s path. ALT FIRE while bending to stop the water early. Players hit are SLOWED.

Harbor’s signature ability “HIGH TIDE” is your longest obstructing ability, allowing you to cover any site with a long wall. Holding the fire button will allow you to curve the wall in the direction of your crosshair. The wall will last 14 seconds, and the ability can be used again after 40 seconds.

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Cove (Q)

EQUIP a sphere of shielding water. FIRE to throw. ALT FIRE to underhand throw. Upon impacting the ground, spawn a destructible water shield that blocks bullets.

Cove looks like any other smoke in the game, but it actually acts as a shield, covering you from incoming bullets.

Cascade (C)

EQUIP a wave of water. FIRE to send the wave rolling forward and through walls. RE- USE to stop the wave. Players hit are SLOWED.

Cascade allows for some creative plans as you can slow players through walls using these rolling waves.

Reckoning (X)

EQUIP the full power of your Artifact. FIRE to summon a geyser pool on the ground. Enemy players in the area are targeted by successive geyser strikes. Players caught within a strike are CONCUSSED.

Harbor’s ultimate ability RECKONING is great at giving your team the advantage before taking fights. His ultimate can affect a wide range despite the area not being directly in your vision.

Harbor’s Role

Harbor is a Controller agent. Controllers are basically agents who are able to block off certain areas of the map to set up teammates in offense or help defend against an attack.

Harbor’s skill set allows for very useful smoke setups. If you pick Harbor, your main role in the team is to use your abilities to support whatever side you’re on. When on the attacking side, your abilities can best be used to allow your teammates entry into a site. They can also be used to hold off a retake attempt when the spike has been planted. When on the defending side, your abilities are best used to stall enemy attacks to allow your teammates time to rotate. The abilities are also extremely useful when attempting to retake a site, as you are essentially playing the role of attackers during this.

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But this is just a general overview and guide of what you’re supposed to do as Harbor. Here are more specific tips to ensure you can maximize Harbor’s abilities to improve your chances of winning.

Tips

Synergize With Teammates

Your skills work very well with several other agents. One thing you should always think about when playing Harbor is how you can effectively use your ability together with a teammate’s ability. An example of this is using your Q skill Cove together with Sage’s Wall when trying to protect a spike defuse. With both Cove and the wall covering the spike, it will take the enemies several bullets before they can try and stop the defuse.

Other skills that synergize are Reyna’s Leer and Harbor’s Cascade, as the rolling wave can be used to hide an incoming Leer, while at the same time slowing any opponents the waves may touch. This would allow for an advantageous peek by you or one of your teammates.

Your Ultimate Reveals Locations

Your ultimate can help your team in several ways. Apart from the concussing geyser strikes, Harbor’s ultimate gives you important info about opponents’ locations as long as they are within the ultimate. With this information, you can plan and decide your next move, whether it is an attack, a retake, or a rush.

Make Sure to Hold and Drag Your Wall

Harbor’s E skill High Tide is a very powerful smoke ability, one of the best in the game. This is because of both your ability to hold and drag it to curve it in any direction and its ability to go through walls. This allows for an easily placed single wall to block off several entrances and spots in a site, giving your team an advantageous entry into the site and an easier attempt at taking control of it.

Cascade’s Use

Don’t be fooled by Cascade’s slow debuff as it only lasts a second after an enemy touches it. Though the slow is still useful, Cascade is mainly useful as a smoke. Cascade shoots out a rolling wave that can pass through walls which you can stop at any point. Because of that, at basically any point in the map you can send out a small wall to cover a specific point while staying in a safe location. You can launch many strategic waves, though they are just short waves, sometimes they are good enough to get you through to a certain area in a map.

Ability Tips

High Tide (E)

• Use it in a line like Viper’s Toxic Screen to Cover several parts of a map, like splitting Breeze’s A site in half.
• Curving it to cover several choke points with different elevations, like in B site of Pearl and in Fracture.
• The wall will only rise once the orb has stopped traveling. Remember this when trying to wall off an area, you can release your fire button and the orb will continue to travel its full length unless you stop it earlier.

Cove (Q)

• Using this smoke to quickly pass through a chokepoint is viable as enemies will not be able to spray through the smoke unless they deplete its 500hp fast enough.
• The smoke’s bullet shield will last 14 seconds, and the smoke will last 15
  seconds. However the shield and smoke can be broken at any time if shot at until its 500hp is depleted.
• Once the shield is broken, the smoke will disappear as well after one second.
• Only projectiles can pass through the shield such as Sova’s Shock Darts.

Reckoning (X)

• The ultimate can only be sent near ahead of Harbor and not across the map.
• The ability will slowly move forward after used
• Three geyser strikes will be sent per person still caught inside the ultimate.

Where To Use Harbor

Harbor can be used efficiently in any map, but some maps will have better geometry that fits Harbor’s skills better. This shouldn’t stop you from experimenting and exploring the perfect use of his skills on any map, as his abilities are very versatile, allowing for curving, bending, and stopping moving waves at any point. Add to the fact that he has the sole Bullet Shield Smoke in the game and you have a controller that could be used effectively on basically any map in the game.

Currently, players have noticed that Harbor’s abilities work really well on the maps fracture and pearl.

How to Get Better at Harbor

One way to get better at Harbor is to practice. Practice with many different agents, on many different maps, with friends, and with randoms. Practicing several scenarios will improve your game knowledge as Harbor as you are able to adapt and take on different circumstances using your knowledge of what you can and cannot do with your abilities. When you feel comfortable with Harbor, you can bring him into your competitive games and help yourself rise the ranked ladder.