How Do You Best Use Killjoy? Team Envy Shows You How
Killjoy has been sought after in the VALORANT community, but not many professional teams have been using the game’s newest agent. That is, not until recently. With Team Envy’s break out performance during North America’s most recent VALORANT tournament, Pop Flash, there was a staggering amount of Killjoy featured. It’s time to suit up and take a deep dive into how one of the best professional VALORANT teams are using the game’s newest agent at the highest level of play. Grab your Alarm Bots, your patience, and your favourite turret skin - it is time to let Team Envy show us how to use Killjoy.
Click to enlargeOn Attack
On the face of it, Killjoy doesn't have much to do in the majority of your team's attacking rounds. The best-case scenario is to try and deny lurkers as best you can with your Alarm Bot and Turret. Think of Killjoy as a Cypher who bought the extended warranty on your gadgets, the fact you can recall them means you really can 'set it and forget it'. If you can, follow Team Envy's footsteps and slow down your play with Killjoy, let her utility have the chance to give you information and play off of that, especially if you're also running another sentinel. Your Nano Swarm, as you might have guessed, is best used to clear tight corner and cubbies, as the nanobots can pierce through walls. As well, Nano Swarm becomes super effective once the spike has been planted, and the sides have, theoretically, have swapped and the defenders now have to attempt to disarm the spike.
For example, when we look at their Haven attacks, Envy often looks like they've backed themselves into a corner picking two sentinels - Cypher and Killjoy. However, don't let that presumption fool you. They can play an incredibly strong post-plant setup, but the difficulty is getting the spike safely onto a site. Two Omen smokes limit the angles you can shut down. Jett is primarily in the back wielding the Operator, so she can't assist as a secondary smoke agent. Omen and Phoenix have their flashbangs respectively, but the big absence here is the lack of offensive information gaining tools. That said, they find ways to overcome this.
Envy does a great job playing two attacking styles, and they will often slowly approach a site before faking the execute. This baits out some utility, which makes attacking sites slightly more manageable, and these fakes could pull an early rotation from the defence. From that position, Envy, due to their composition, is forced to take very direct engagements, and doesn't have the utility to take map control and attack from different angles.
Take for example round eight in the Team Envy vs Sentinels in the Pop Flash grand finals. Killjoy here plays one of the side angles to deny the defending team to encircle the slow tempo attack from Team Envy. Adam "aKis" Kisseberth plays patiently to ensure that no one is going to push up through mid and try to capture mid-window, while Abdo "c4Lypso" Agha holds double-doors. As the push rotates back around, they link with their team, and they all attack C Site as a unit.
Round nineteen against Cloud9 in the lower bracket finals showcases a strong example of Team Envy’s cerebral play on Ascent, and their very direct executes. Using Killjoy’s ultimate, Lockdown, aKis does a great job at shutting down most angles on B Site due to taking up a position in B Lobby. Not only does Ascent lend itself to being able to defend sites, but it also gives Lockdown a strong offensive utility. That said, this isn’t a one-dimensional team; if Envy does find some picks as they approach the site, they often do call an audible, and pull their flanks to attack the site.
On Defense
Defensive rounds are where Killjoy shines. Just like her sentinel counterpart, Cypher, Killjoy’s traps and gadgets become much more useful when you don’t have to move them constantly. If we assume the attacking team has to make a move, that gives stationary tools like Alarm Bot and Turret a high chance of finding value. That said, it isn’t about sitting with your tiny replica of the Home Alone set, the idea here should be to defend other positions on the map and allow your gadgets to feed you information. This opens up two pretty familiarly strategies if you’re familiar at all with Cypher. You can place your traps and solo-hold any given site. This makes it difficult for the attacking team to commit to your half of the map, due to how many traps they’ll have to push through, or you can give someone your traps to play off of - something Team Envy used quite a lot in their Haven setups.
For example, throughout their series in the lower bracket at Pop Flash, Team Envy had a brilliant set alarm bot position for their Phoenix at A Long on Haven. They featured two different setups, one where aKis would still commit both his grenades to the Alarm Bot and place it more in the choke leading into A, and one properly setup for A Long. However, both spots can and were played similarly. These Alarm Bot placings obviously alert the Killjoy and her team if they are tripped; however, what Envy does is hide their Phoenix player, Jake "kaboose" McDonald, in a shallow angle. This gives him ample time to flash the unsuspecting enemies who attempt to push that direction, netting the team both kills and information. However, it isn't just where you place your gadgets that can net you information - sometimes it can be when you place them that matters most.
Let’s review not where, but when aKis decides to place his Alarm Bot during map one against Dignitas. Throughout the series as a whole, aKis locks down shower for Team Envy’s A Site defence, but as the round starts and the barrier is lifted, he goes that little extra mile and places his traps ahead of where he could during the spawn setup phase. This nuance is important. Not only are you gaining a little extra space between the enemy and the site you’re defending, but you also gain the opportunity to show your hand. If we watch the mini-map here, we do see the enemy Brimstone float suspiciously right outside the range of both the Nano Swarm grenades and the Alarm Bot. Now, on the other hand, you might just see this in your ranked games and shoot these traps straight away. The problem with that is that you’ve effectively alerted the defence straight away. In coordinated play, this could call an early rotation to bolster A side as your attack is preparing to push A Short. Hypotheticals aside, at the very least, this makes one person accounted for on the map.
As we mentioned earlier, Killjoy comes alive with a sense of patience and attempting to abuse every ounce of information you can sneak out of your opponents. Attacking can be painful, but with some coordination and a sizeable repertoire of set molly spots, you can make her work pretty well. When it comes to defence, Team Envy showcases why she might be a go-to pick from now on. They are one of the best teams in the world at abusing the amount of information they can obtain with her. Will we continue to see Killjoy played at the degree we saw at Pop Flash? It’s difficult to say, but if teams continue to take the idea’s and structure that teams like Team Envy have built then anything is possible.
Images via Riot Games
