VALORANT: How Do the Pros Play Reyna?

This series is about understanding how the pro’s use every agent, to help you improve your own gameplay. Today we look at Reyna. Now she gets a lot of stick by a lot of people saying that she doesn’t provide a lot of utility and is only good in ranked.

Let’s look at her pick rate from champions

We can see that she saw play on every map apart from Fracture, with her largest uptake by far being on Icebox. She had probably more picks than most people expected so let’s look at this in more detail

How Does She Fit the Meta?

In short, she kind of doesn’t. She’s an aggressive character with very little team-based utility, so what’s going on and why do pros like her. The most simple answer is comfort. Reyna is the biggest enabler of just raw aim and mechanical skill, she’s designed to do dumb things and get away with it.

She can take risks that other agents simply can’t and it’s this flair that draws players to her. While she doesn’t fit the meta, Reyna can still very much play to her own strengths.

This is very much the case on Icebox where two-thirds of teams played meaning she very much is meta here. We see this high pick rate because of the usefulness of dismiss, particularly around the A site, she’s impossible to trade and has a lot of different one-and-done angles she can play (of course, it’s never really one and done with Reyna)

Abilities

LEER: This is Reyna’s flash and in my eyes is slightly underrated. It forces the opponents to make a decision, they either swing to shoot it at a disadvantage, or they have to hide allowing you to close the ground. Reyna is more than fine with both of these outcomes as both just create opportunities for her to succeed. It also has a defensive use as it effectively tanks some of the opponent’s bullets, if you’re trying to escape from a tough spot, this ability has a lot of potential to help

DEVOUR: This is Reyna’s Q and one of her two signature abilities. It has up to 2 charges (can be used on devour or dismiss). Contrary to what some think you don’t need an assist to get a soul orb, you simply have to deal damage to the enemy in the 3 seconds before they die. Devour is Reyna’s healing option and is very strong as it will let her overheal back to 150 health. The most important part of playing Reyna is getting the choice right on whether to devour or dismiss. If you feel safe you should heal and try to reset with a bigger advantage. We see this ability really come into its own on pistol rounds where Reyna is the only agent who can get 150 armour and an upgraded pistol. I can’t stress how strong this is and winning pistol rounds gives you a gigantic advantage in this game.

DISMISS: Dismiss is the counterpart to devour and the second signature ability. Arguably the stronger of the two, this really is Reyna’s key defining feature. Dismiss presents the chance to be untradable if you get a kill which is very very strong at the top level where teams have to rely on efficient trades to close out rounds. I think a key to high-level Reyna play is just how effective good players are with this ability. The most important thing is taking information with this ability. As soon as you dismiss, don’t be afraid to take a jiggle peek to get that last bit of info before you leave, particularly when you have a planned out escape route. This little piece of information can go a long way.

EMPRESS: Finally we have Empress, Reyna’s ultimate. This is without a doubt her worst ability. The key feature is that consuming an orb will allow you to dismiss and heal at the same time (it also makes you invisible and have a higher fire rate, but they’re ultimately not very important). We see this ult used mostly in clutch situations to allow you to isolate the opponents and give you a bigger chance of success. The biggest issue with this is that most other ultimates are used to press and create a significant, round-winning advantage. Reyna’s ult is kind of the opposite, it creates a chance in a near unwinnable round.

Let’s look at her pros and cons at the pro level.

Playing Reyna

Reyna typically fills an aggressive role in the flex position and has to be played as such. Typically you should be the second person in on Reyna to allow for an easy trade on your entering main duelist. This really is the most important thing as Reyna needs to be put in a position to succeed in order to snowball and maintain momentum.

On defence, we typically see a lot of aggression and a lot of one-and-done angles. This is because of Dismiss and she can easily make the most out of these difficult situations.

It’s also worth talking in more detail about Icebox as she is very meta here. This aggression is very common here as on the defender side we see her commonly push A or B main with the support of other agents. This allows for early info into the enemies movements and lets you set up in a very difficult situation to read. She is the aggressive option for teams on Icebox and you have to lean into this on both sides. Reyna brings more pace to the team than the killjoy alternative as she can be ready to trade the entering Jett and support the push with Leer. The A site is her home because of the number of trick angles that she can straight-up abuse.

Players to watch

There are an abundance of really fantastic Reyna players to watch that will really help you level up. My go-to picks are always Asuna, Sheydos, and Scream. For me, Scream has some of the best utility usage on the agent and is normally freer in the maps that he picks her on, but both Asuna and Sheydos have had really outstanding performances giving you a lot to learn from

Conclusion

Overall, Reyna isn’t super meta but I’m not sure she ever can be. She’s designed to be a comfort pick and to enable the best aimers to take riskier, more adventurous fights. A good Reyna at the pro level brings a lot of tenacity to a team and you can never, ever count her out.

TIER: B

DIFFICULTY: ★★☆☆☆

RATING IN PRO PLAY: ★★★☆☆

I also made a TikTok explaining my thoughts about Reyna, feel free to like and follow!