Valorant's new agent, Killjoy, is coming next week

Update: After letting the cat out of the bag a bit early, Riot has now officially unveiled Valorant's next agent: Killjoy. We already knew about all of her abilities from the leak, which you can read below, but now you can see them in action in the trailer.

Killjoy's deal is that she's a German genius with robot buddies and a penchant for invention. She can toss out nanoswarm grenades, send her explosive Alarmbot to chase enemies, plonk down a turret and trap players with her Lockdown device. 

You'll be able to start infuriating people with her inventions soon, as Killjoy is coming on August 4. 

Original story: Thanks to someone at Riot tripping and pressing a big red button, we have our first official look at Valorant's next agent: the turret-toting Killjoy. An introductory page written from Killjoy's perspective was briefly live on Riot's website with full explanations of their abilities.

The article also had embedded Youtube videos that would presumably show the abilities in action, but only briefly available to watch before the page went down. Thankfully, Valorant data miner floxay went ahead and reposted the video showing off each ability on Twitter.

In order of appearance, here's every ability and its description on the now-removed Killjoy introduction page:

• Alarmbot (C) - Equip and deploy a bot that hunts down enemies who dare to get in range. When my killer robot friend reaches its target, boom goes the idiot. Alarmbot not only deals damage, it temporarily leaves affected targets vulnerable to double damage from all sources. Hold equip if you want to recall your deployed bot.
• Turret (Q) - Sometimes it's good to plant some roots. Deploy a turret that fires at enemies within its 180-degree cone. Hold equip to recall the deployed turret. With my turret, I can hold an area pretty well myself while the others cover the angles I can't.
• Nanoswarm (E) - OK check this out. Throw the grenade. When it lands, it goes quiet. Then, activate the Nanoswarm to deploy a damaging swarm of nanobots and catch the enemy crying. I love this trick!
• Lockdown (Ultimate) - You’ll have to adjust your timing for the windup, but once you get this device going, it detains all enemies caught in its radius for about 8 seconds. Yeah, enemies can destroy it—except I built plenty more.

Those are some drastically different abilities than what we've seen so far in Valorant. As Riot continues to diverge from the modest toolkit of CS:GO, it'll be interesting to see if a TF2-style auto turret will create more opportunities to score kills with abilities instead of traditional gunplay. Assuming the example videos are using standard health amounts, the turret doesn't appear to do much damage. But it's easy to see how it'll be useful as a proximity alarm that can also weaken enemies in their next fight.

The other outliers here are the Alarmbot and Lockdown ultimate. I like the idea of the Alarmbot as a trap that can get you killed, but only when timed alongside someone peeking and dealing double damage. Its fairness will depend on how long the double damage effect lasts and how easy it is to spot the Alarmbot before it leaps on you.

Lockdown is fascinating because of the scenarios in which it will force enemies to push into Killjoy with a huge disadvantage. We can see that those under its effects move much slower, but I'm curious to see if it also has any Breach-like effects on accuracy or fire rate. Nanoswarm appears to basically work like a remote-detonated Molotov, which isn't as flashy as a turret, but potentially potent against a coordinated push through a bottleneck like Haven's Long A. If it's cloaked as well as Cypher's cyber cages, I think we're in for some very disruptive abilities from Killjoy.

Killjoy will presumably drop when Act 2 of Valorant begins, which is likely very soon. Riot hasn't given an exact date, but with the battle pass ending on August 4, next week is looking like a good bet.