How to Play Harbor in Valorant: All Abilities, Tips, & Tricks

Six months after the launch of Fade, Valorant finally has a new Agent. He’s called Harbor, and he’s a water-bending controller from India who is looking to shake up the meta with some unique abilities. Twinfinite had the opportunity to check out the Agent in early access over the past few days, and so here we’re sharing everything there is to know about Harbor: how to play him and use his abilities, what maps his utility is best for, and all the tricks we’ve learned so far.

Is Harbor Playable? Answered

Harbor will be playable following the launch of Patch 5.08, which is scheduled to go live after servers are taken down for a brief period of time. The exact time Harbor will become playable depends on which region you are playing Valorant. If you’ve read our Valorant server guide, you’ll know that the generic times that Valorant is down for maintenance during an update day is as follows:

Asia Pacific: 14:00 PDT
Brazil: 06:00 PDT
Europe: 20:00 PDT
Korea: 14:00 PDT
Latin America: 06:00 PDT
North America: 06:00 PDT

Note that for European and Asian players, Harbor will not be playable until Oct. 19.

How to Unlock Harbor in Valorant

As is always the case with new Valorant Agents, Harbor is unlocked after reaching Tier 5 of his Agent contract. This can take some time to unlock –around 10 competitive games–, but you can speed up the process by ticking off daily and weekly challenges to earn larger amounts of XP.

Of course, you can also buy Harbor’s contract tiers for 200 VP each ($2), which would mean unlocking him from the very beginning of his contract will cost you around $10. Our advice is to just play the game, though. If you’re short on time, try playing Spike Rush since you can knock off daily/weekly challenges quickly in that particular game mode.

All Harbor Abilities & Ultimate Explained

As we’ve explained in our overview of all things Harbor, the new Agent’s abilities are water-themed, and they’re intended to fill the controller role. Here’s how they work:

• High Tide (E) EQUIP a wall of water. FIRE to send the water forward along the ground. HOLD FIRE to guide the water in the direction of your crosshair, passing through the world, spawning a wall along the water’s path. ALT FIRE while bending to stop the water early. Players hit are SLOWED
• Cove (Q) EQUIP a sphere of shielding water. FIRE to throw. ALT FIRE to underhand throw. Upon impacting the ground, spawn a water shield that blocks bullets.
• Cascade (C) EQUIP a wave of water. FIRE to send the wave rolling forward and through walls. RE-USE to stop the wave from moving further. Players hit are SLOWED.
• Reckoning (X) EQUIP the full power of your Artifact. FIRE to summon a geyser pool on the ground. Enemy players in the area are targeted by successive geyser strikes. Players caught within a strike are CONCUSSED.

Is Harbor Easy to Play? Answered

The short answer is yes, Harbor is pretty simple to play. He is quite a fluid Agent, which was presumably a design goal for the Riot team that ties in with the water theme of his utility. All of his kit can be deployed very quickly and without stopping your own movement, as is the case with other controllers like Brimstone and Omen.

Harbor’s water wall, called High Tide, is his signature ability, and it is deployed in a similar way to Phoenix’s wall, with players able to control its direction. It’s much easier to handle, though, and it goes a lot further and lasts much longer. You simply hold E, then control the direction. The length of the wall allows you to get pretty creative curving it around objects or in particular directions — though you can actually deploy it through walls as well (like a Viper Toxin Cloud).

The other elements of Harbor’s kit include his Cascade (C) ability, which throws a high wall of water forward at roughly running pace. You can actually stop this by pressing C again, using it to block off lines of site when it reaches a certain point. It’s a great entry tool, and it can also be used as an aggressive retake ability too.

Harbor’s Cove (Q) ability is the bullet-proof shield, which has garnered a lot of attention for understandable reasons. It can be thrown either with a left-click or a shorter, underarm right-click throw. It’s actually not especially powerful considering it can be very quickly destroyed by enemies, but it is certainly easy to use and deploy.

Finally, Harbor’s ult, Reckoning, is a giant AoE stun. After it is deployed, it moves slowly across a large flooded area indicated on the minimap. Any enemy players caught in the ult are susceptible to plumes of water that stun after a brief wind up. There’s no real learning curve to worry about here — simply deploy it at the right moment, either to initiate a site entry or retake.

Harbor Tips & Tricks

We’ll be fleshing this section out over the coming days, but so far we have a few best practices and top tips that anybody playing Harbor should know.

• Harbor’s High Tide (E) ability can create double walls, circular walls, and S walls. Use this ability not only to block vision but also to create multiple layers that will slow enemies who attempt to pass through it.
• Harbor’s Cascade (C) ability lasts for around 5 seconds, but only once it has stopped (either by itself or after pressing C again). It actually travels forward for about 5 seconds as well, meaning that to get maximum value you should always deploy it from far away. Using Cascade and then instantly stopping it reduces how long it will stay up for.
• The Cove (Q) bulletproof shield is actually quite weak since it can be very quickly broken. When it is being used against you, always destroy it instantly. When using it yourself, don’t rely on it as a shield. It is best combined with utility, like a Sage Wall, or you can quickly deploy it when entering site for a Phoenix/Skye/Kayo to flash out of.
• Harbor’s ultimate is pretty decent, but enemies can actually quite easily avoid the stun if they have the space to peek out from wherever they are posted up. Be very careful pursuing enemies who you believe to be stunned because they might actually not be at all.

Best Harbor Gameplay to Learn the Agent

Twinfinite has produced a gameplay video from our time with Harbor in early access. You can check out footage below, which is played from my perspective. I am an Immortal player, and the other players in the server are all Ascendant/Immortal/Radiant creators. Below you can see me using the double wall technique, various Cove lineups, and other little gameplay tricks mentioned above.

Best Valorant Maps to Play Harbor

Harbor’s kit definitely works best on some maps than others. Pearl is probably his absolute best map, which is perhaps unsurprising given that he was very likely to have been developed alongside the new map. The unusual entrance to B main, and the multiple angles on A site, can all be easily smoked off using his High Tide ability. You can create all sorts of crazy paths toward site if you learn how to control this ability properly, and the Cascade (C) ability is brilliant for entering B. Also, Cove (Q) bubble is actually very good for protecting teammates as they plant in exposed locations, too.

But Pearl isn’t Harbor’s only good map. Below we’ll rank how he performs on each map based on our experience so far:

1. Pearl – this map feels tailor-made for Habor
2. Breeze – there are so many opportunities to get creative with Harbor’s wall on Breeze
3. Icebox – any map that is good for Viper is generally good for Harbor too
4. Haven – B site can be covered by a single curved Harbor wall, and C is easy to enter with Cascade
5. Bind – Harbor probably needs a second controller alongside him on Bind
6. Ascent – Ascent is still an Omen/Astra map that we don’t see Harbor being useful on

That does it for everything there is to know about Harbor: how to play him and use his abilities, what maps his utility is best for, and all the tricks we’ve learned so far. For more on Valorant and Harbor, search Twinfinite or check out the related coverage listed below.