Valorant: Agent guide – Phoenix tips and tricks

Hot damn.
Valorant Phoenix guide - tips and tricks

Phoenix was the first agent introduced by Riot Games in its series of Valorant character videos. He’s a British agent with flair, style, and a jacket that is beyond cool. With a snap of his fingers, Phoenix can sow confusion among his enemies and win his team a round. His abilities may be straightforward, but they offer plenty of opportunities for creative plays. This Valorant agent guide will give you some tips and tricks you can do with Phoenix to style on your opponents.

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According to the Valorant roles, Phoenix is a duelist. These are aggressive agents who like to take the fight to the enemy. This might make you think Phoenix will be good on attack and poor on defense. But this isn’t the case at all. As you’ll see from the Phoenix tips and tricks to come, he’s excellent at catching enemies unaware – even on defense.

Phoenix

Embrace the flames – Hot Hands

One of the most important things to know about Phoenix is that his Signature ability, Hot Hands, and his fiery wall, Blaze, will heal him if he stands in them. If you trade shots with an opponent and take some damage, get behind cover and throw Hot Hands on the ground to recover some health. Just be careful where you cast it because it will damage your teammates.

Phoenix’s Hot Hands is also a good ability to flush enemies out of cover. It won’t kill an enemy on full health and you won’t hear it burning them. But, as with Sova’s Shock Bolt, it often causes enemies to panic and run out from their hiding spot.

Don’t look into the light — Curveball

Phoenix’s Curveball is his most useful ability and, if executed well, can score you some easy kills. Phoenix will click his fingers before summoning the ball to curve, but only your allies can hear it. So, you don’t need to worry about pre-casting the ability to prevent giving away your position.

When throwing Phoenix’s Curveball, get into the habit of aiming above the heads of your enemies. This will often cause them to look up (or down to avoid it). If the enemy looks up and gets blinded, they have very little hope of getting you in their crosshairs as you come around the corner. And that will significantly lower your chances of getting blindly sprayed down.

Phoenix High Curveball

Speaking of getting blindly sprayed down, you should always wide peek when following up Curveball. If your enemy has good crosshair placement and is disciplined enough to ignore the Curveball flying in above their head, they could spray you down if you only step a little bit out of cover. So, rather take a big wide step, moving beyond where your enemy is aiming, and open fire.

Curveball is typically used to breach a bomb site. However, you can also use it to cover your retreat. Don’t be afraid to throw it as enemies are rushing towards you if you need to make a quick retreat. Your life is worth more than 200 Creds.

As I mentioned above, Phoenix is known as an attacking agent in Valorant. However, you can use his Curveball to surprise your opponent with an aggressive defense. Set up close to a corner you expect your enemies to approach. Get your Curveball ready and hold it for as long as you think it takes them to walk silently towards you. Just before they arrive, throw the Curveball and peek. Change up your position and do this in different locations to keep catching enemies off guard.

Phoenix Aggressive Defense

Firewall — Blaze

The best tip for Phoenix’s fiery wall, Blaze, is to make sure you look over objects like boxes and walls when casting it. If you are looking at the object, Blaze will only travel up to it. If you look over the object, Blaze will continue beyond the object. This is excellent for creating a temporary wall in front of your opponents without having to leave cover.

Blaze can be curved while it moves outwards. If you turn rapidly while it’s casting, you can create a pocket of space hidden from view – almost a full circle. You can use this trick to surround the bomb while you try to defuse it or fake defusing it. You can also use this to cordon off a space on a bomb site for you to get a safe plant down out sight.

Valorant Phoenix Blaze Ability

Phoenix rises again – Run it Back (Ultimate)

Phoenix’s Ultimate ability, Run it Back, gives you 10 seconds to make bold plays without the risk of death. But make sure you cast it in a safe location because you’ll be vulnerable for a couple of seconds while you are reborn from the flames.

Run it Back is an excellent way to get information and potentially take down some enemies without losing your life. But don’t let this go to your head and run in guns blazing. You’ll just waste it and gather little to no information. A good tip is to use Phoenix’s Run it Back to peek with one of your allies. You take point and peek first. If you are killed while your Ultimate is active, your teammate can trade a kill for free.

No Valorant Phoenix guide would be complete without the old teleporter fake. This is one of my favorite tricks to pull with Phoenix. Cast Run it Back just before going through a teleporter. Doing this will trick your enemies into thinking you have teleported across the map. Which you have, but only until you respawn. It’s an excellent way to gather intel and play mind games with your opponents.

Phoenix Run It Back Teleporter Trick

Ignore the terrible opening spray. I lulled them into a false sense of security.

The last Phoenix tip in this Valorant guide is to remember that when you respawn using Run it Back, you get full health, but you don’t get any armor back. So, in a round where you intend to use Run it Back, you might want to consider saving some Creds and only purchasing Light armor.

That’s a wrap on our Valorant Phoenix guide. I hope you learned something to help you improve with the flashy agent. We have plenty of other Valorant guides for you to check out. You can learn how to get the most out of Sova, find out some essential beginner tips to help you improve, and discover gameplay mechanics not covered in the tutorial.


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Author
Logan Broadley
Logan is an enthusiastic player of games (sometimes too enthusiastic according to his wife at 2 AM), and a video game reviewer, esports writer and gaming news writer. Originally from South Africa, he started out as a writer in advertising agencies, but has since moved on to a much higher calling: video games.