As a five-vs-five shooter revolving around planting or defusing the spike, Valorant takes a significant amount of time to master since you not only have to learn different angles but also every agent’s ability. This is mainly because it’s important to know what’s being thrown at you and how to avoid it.
Even after you learn every agent, there will be new additions every few months, with Waylay being the perfect example. She’s quite a fast-paced character, but if you know how to use her properly, you can run around the enemy team without getting shot a single time.
Waylay’s Role In Valorant
Every agent in Valorant gets one out of the four main roles: Duelist, Sentinel, Controller, and Initiator. Some agents belong to one role but can have some abilities from the other, just like Clove having a free heal even though she’s a Controller. Waylay, however, isn’t one of these types of characters.
She’s a Duelist, and all her abilities synergize with each other to fit her into this role. Duelists are meant to take the first entry to the site and create space for the team either by killing enemies or marking their locations. However, it’s important to know when you should enter as your team needs to follow-up on it.
If you enter without letting your team know, you might get a kill but will likely get defeated in vain since your team won’t make use of the created space.
Waylay’s Abilities, Explained
Even though Valorant is an aim-heavy game where you can kill people with a single shot from multiple guns, a lot of it also comes down to how you use your abilities, especially in high ranks where everyone has aim. In these scenarios, it’s important to use your utility to distract or disrupt the angles held by enemies and take a better duel.
Waylay’s abilities are perfect at doing that:
|
Ability Name |
Type |
Description |
|---|---|---|
|
Refract |
Basic |
You get the charge for this ability for free at the start of every round. When used, this places a bright circle on the ground much like Phoenix’s Ultimate and shows a receding bar on your screen. As long as this bar is up, you can press this ability again to quickly go back to the circle. You’re invulnerable while teleporting, but you don’t gain back any lost health during this. |
|
Saturate |
Buyable |
Pressing this ability throws a projectile in the direction that can bounce off walls. If this projectile touches the ground or after a bit of flight, it automatically explodes in an AoE. Enemies or allies caught within this area get the hindered effect, which heavily slows their movement and fire rate. However, their aim doesn’t get moved so they can still defeat you with good aim if they hit the first bullet. |
|
Lightspeed |
Buyable |
This ability can be used in two ways. If you press the left click, you’ll perform two dashes in the directions you’re looking, and the right click will let you dash once. The first dash from this ability can be done to raise your height by looking up. However, the second one only goes in a horizontal line and cannot have any elevation to it. |
|
Convergent Path |
Ultimate |
With enough Ultimate points, you can trigger Waylay’s Ultimate to create an afterimage and a giant AoE in front. This AoE charges for a couple seconds and then hinders any enemy or ally caught within while increasing Waylay’s speed. It’s perfect to be used in small choke points. However, if you use it in an open area, the enemies will easily be able to walk out of it. |
There’s a bit of a delay after you activate Convergent Path where you can still change its direction.
This means that if you move your screen until the afterimage is created, you might mess up your Ultimate’s placement.
The general idea with Waylay is to throw a Saturate projectile in corners where you suspect an enemy and then quickly follow up with her Lightspeed to make it harder for them to directly aim at you. You can place your Refract before doing all this so that you can take an exit after getting the first kill if there’s another enemy around.
On sites like Ascent with low buildings, you can also use your double dash to go above them and directly fall on B site to give an unexpected angle to the enemies.
Best Team Members For Waylay
Much like other Duelist characters, Waylay works especially well with Initiators as they can create extra space for her entry by either revealing enemy location or stunning them so that they can’t instantly shoot her. This makes characters like Breach, Sova, and Tejo great teammates for her.
Apart from that, she has decent synergy with the following characters:
|
Gekko |
Gekko has a special flash that can be shot by enemies, but it also shows a projectile going in an enemy’s direction. This lets you know exactly where to expect the enemies while you’re dashing into the site as Waylay while also blinding them. |
|---|---|
|
Reyna |
Ideally, you’d want to have an entry Duelist and a support Duelist on your team, and Reyna is the perfect candidate for the latter with Waylay. She can throw her Leer high up on the site, which either makes the enemies hide or shoot it. If they hide, you can dash in with Waylay and get time to settle down before you get a peek from the enemies. Alternatively, if they shoot it, you’ll know where the enemies are and they mostly won’t be able to aim back at you in time. |
|
Tejo |
Other than his stun, one of the best reasons for Tejo’s synergy with Waylay is both their Ultimates. If you know there are a bunch of enemies in a choke point, you can first slow them with Waylay’s Ultimate and then instantly kill them with Tejo’s. |
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