Gab Hernandez 
Riot Game has finally revealed the abilities and release date for the new Valorant agent Clove.
Although League of Legends remains Riot Games’ biggest franchise, Valorant is quickly catching up. Whether it’s the millions of players Valorant has garnered since its launch or the fast-growing esports scene has surpassed League of Legends in some markets, Valorant has cemented itself as Riot’s next big property.
Like League of Legends, new character releases are the go-to method of keeping players engaged consuming fresh new content. Although data miners spoiled the Agent 25 surprise a week earlier, Valorant fans can finally see Clove in action with a special music video and a gameplay trailer.
Release date details for Valorant agent Clove
Clove will be added to Valorant on March 26, 2024.
Agent Clove is the immortal ghost of a Scottish hooligan. Her trailer shows her dying in the middle of a firefight due to reckless actions, but death doesn’t seem to slow her down. She jumps around a strange, ethereal plane between the living and the dead. Interestingly, butterflies are a constant motif for the character, an animal associated with death in several cultures.
At the end of the trailer, Clove returns from the dead, seemingly ready for round two. Whether Clove gets more lore down the line remains to be seen, but it certainly implies a lot about the nature of the afterlife for Valorant’s setting. It’s also a different slant to the established supernatural powers of the Valorant universe, which have generally been more science fiction-focused than fantasy.
Clove abilities revealed
Agent Clove is a Controller who specializes in enemy disruption through high-risk strategies.
As with most agents, she has three core abilities:
- Ruse– Projects a top-down battlefield map that allows Clove to spawn vision-obscuring clouds even while dead, within an AOE of her body
- Meddle– Sends a projectile that explodes after a delay, causing the decay debuff
- Pick-Me-Up– Allows Clove to steal the life force of a fallen foe, granting increased speed and health
Finally, Clove’s ultimate allows players to resurrect themselves for a short time. If she notches a kill or assist during this window, Clove will remain alive. If she fails to accomplish either condition, she dies for real once the timer runs out.
These abilities incentivize Clove players to play a risky style and disrupt the enemy as much as possible. Theoretically, skilled players could stay in the heat of battle indefinitely as long as they have their ultimate charge before dying. While there’s a high skill and coordination ceiling there, it’s also something that will allow less-skilled controller players to be impactful, even after they run in alone and die at the start of a round.
