Initial fan response to VALORANT‘s newest agent, Clove, appears to be mostly positive, although players are complaining about the character reusing abilities from other agents.
Clove is a Scottish, non-binary Controller-type agent who can resurrect themselves. They were formally unveiled on March 24 during the final day of VCT Masters Madrid. VALORANT pros like Tenz found Clove to be “different” and “cool” after an early glimpse, and so far, they seem like a hit among casual players too ahead of their addition to the game.
On Reddit, Splaram said Clove was “extremely close to the perfect agent for myself that I envisioned in my head,” while sebaba001 complimented Clove’s more aggressive playstyle, saying it’s “kinda nice to see an aggressive smokes to challenge the Omen supremacy.” In a separate thread, SPACE_SHAMAN said the “Clove hype is real” thanks to their “amazing abilities,” which Straight_Matter_169 clearly agrees with: “We eating good because of the self-heal, self-revive, and even the post-mortem smokes. Some people are saying that the abilities are not enough to help with kills but as controller mains, THIS is the best out of everything we had.”
Some fans also think Clove will become popular among professional players once they’re added to VALORANT. GrrrNom expects Clove to be “instantly picked up by teams in VCT” due to their abilities, with the only thing holding them back being “hesitancy from the teams to experiment with a new agent.” Another user, vlntly_peaceful, thinks Clove will prove popular with Tenz in particular, saying “Riot couldn’t have made a better agent for Tenz if they tried.”
There have apparently been complaints, though, of Clove reusing abilities from other agents, with Reyna and Iso being common points of comparison. Fans like Succmyspace were quick to counter these comments, arguing how every character in VALORANT has access to the same guns anyway and that “it’s interesting to have an agent that has certain abilities that other agents have. Maybe your team needs smokes but doesn’t have a healer, some people might want to pick Clove.”
FadeofWolf concurs, saying “In VALORANT there’s abilities and different ‘roles’ but at the end of the day its a tactical shooter where gunplay and strategy is the core game.” Portante24 and Spedrayes argued how Riot reusing abilities helps VALORANT avoid an issue Overwatch 2 has, where every character needs to be wholly unique and thus leads to “abilities you cannot balance around” and “bloated kits.”
Such criticisms must be something of a minority, since we checked the comments under Clove’s gameplay reveal trailer on YouTube, and they’re almost entirely positive. Admittedly, the trailer has about 3,400 dislikes at the time of writing, but they’re dwarfed by the 75,000 likes. There has been a bit of backlash toward Clove’s gender identity, but many VALORANT fans defended Clove’s status as a non-binary character too.
