Riot revealed Valorant’s 30th agent during the Masters Santiago grand finals on March 15, and he’s not what anyone expected from the Controller role.
Miks is a Croatian, music-themed agent whose kit revolves around sound and rhythm. On paper he’s a Controller — he has smokes, he blocks sightlines, he does Controller things. In practice, he’s the first agent in the role who can heal teammates, buff their combat effectiveness, and zone enemies with crowd control, all in the same round. He launches tomorrow with Patch 12.05.
The Kit
Waveform (E) — Signature Ability. Standard smoke deployment with a map targeter. Two charges on a cooldown. Each smoke is hollow inside, lasts 16 seconds, and can be placed at longer ranges than most Controllers get. Nothing revolutionary here — this is his bread-and-butter vision denial. The longer range is the interesting detail. It suggests Miks can anchor a site from further back than Omen or Brimstone, which opens up positioning options during executes.
M-Pulse (C). This is the ability that’s going to dominate the conversation. M-Pulse is a throwable device with two modes — toggle with alt-fire before throwing. In Concuss mode, it sends out sound waves that disorient enemies caught in the radius. In Healing mode, it restores health to allies in the area. Some early reports suggest it may heal through walls, though that hasn’t been officially confirmed yet.
A single ability that can either disrupt a site hold or top off your teammates between trades is a lot of flexibility for a Controller to have. It turns Miks into a secondary support without sacrificing his primary smoke role.
Harmonize (Q). Target an ally and fire to activate a Combat Stim on both yourself and the targeted player. Alt-fire applies the stim to yourself only. Here’s the key: the buff lasts about 8 seconds but refreshes every time either player gets a kill. That means during a clean execute where your team is chaining kills, the stim can theoretically stay active for the entire push.
This is designed for coordinated play. Duo queueing with a Duelist and keeping them combat-stimmed through a multi-kill entry is going to feel oppressive. In uncoordinated solo queue, where kills are scattered and trades are sloppy, Harmonize will be much weaker. That’s probably intentional — Riot has been designing toward rewarding team play, and Harmonize is the most explicit “play with your team” ability they’ve shipped.
Bassquake (X) — Ultimate. Miks charges up and unleashes a forward-traveling wave of sonic energy. Enemies caught in the path get knocked back, deafened, and slowed. It’s an execute ultimate — use it to blow defenders off a site, displace AWPers from angles, or create chaos for your team to push through.
The knockback is the headline. Valorant doesn’t have many abilities that physically move enemy players. Bassquake forces repositioning in a game where holding a pixel-perfect angle is often the difference between winning and losing a round.
What This Means for the Meta
The obvious comparison is Sage, but it’s not quite right. Sage is a Sentinel whose identity is built around healing and resurrection. Miks doesn’t replace that — his healing is one mode of one ability, not his primary function. He’s closer to a Brimstone who traded raw fragging utility for team support.
The real question is what Miks does to team composition flexibility. Right now, running a Controller and a Sentinel leaves two slots for Duelists and Initiators. If Miks can cover enough of the Sentinel’s healing role with M-Pulse, teams might experiment with dropping the Sentinel entirely in favor of a more aggressive third damage dealer. That trade-off — less resurrection and wall utility in exchange for combat stims and crowd control — is the kind of comp decision that makes the meta interesting.
Patch 12.05 also brings significant nerfs to Yoru (Gatecrash duration halved from 30s to 15s, Blindside reduced to one charge), Clove (Ruse after death drops from 14s to 6s, Meddle radius shrinks from 6m to 4m), and a rework to Skye’s flash as a rechargeable signature ability. Lotus and Fracture return to the competitive map pool while Abyss and Corrode rotate out. There’s also a new game mode called Knockout — same maps as Team Deathmatch but focused on team trading.
Masters Santiago
The reveal happened during a dominant grand final. Nongshim RedForce swept Paper Rex 3-0 to win Masters Santiago — the first team to come up through Ascension and win a Masters event in their debut year. Lee “Dambi” Hyuk-kyu took tournament MVP. The maps weren’t close: 13-11, 13-4, 13-3.
It’s a fitting backdrop for Miks. RedForce won by playing as a unit, and Miks is an agent designed to reward exactly that.
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