VALORANT Cypher Guide: Best Abilities and Tactics

Who Is Cypher?

Cypher is a VALORANT agent who spies for his team. He tracks down where enemies are and traps them. He relies on his abilities to catch his enemies off guard.

Cypher's Abilities

Spycam

You can use the Spycam ability to keep an eye on enemies and areas. With this ability, Cypher can place a camera at a targeted location and spot the position of any player in the game.

Cyber Cage

When you use Cypher's Cyber Cage ability, you set up a cage that blocks the enemies' vision and makes their job harder. This ability slows down enemies who pass through the area you set it up in.

Trapwire

With this Cypher ability, you set up a hidden tripwire for enemies. This wire ties itself to enemies who walk in front of it, shaking and revealing them. When it goes off, it also causes temporary blindness on enemies.

Neural Theft

With Neural Theft, you can use a dead body to reveal the location of all living enemy players.

Best Spycam Placements

• Once placed, your Spycam will stay there until it's destroyed, until you retrieve it, or until the end of the round. There's no timer tied to this ability.
• The key to success with Spycam is avoiding being too predictable. Don't place your cameras in the same spots every time.
• When an enemy destroys your Spycam (which can be done with a single shot from any weapon), the cooldown before deploying another camera is longer than if you retrieve the camera yourself.
• You don't need line of sight to retrieve your camera, but you do need to be within a certain distance.
• Another key to success with Spycam is using the minimap. Even if you're not looking at your Spycam, enemies caught by the camera will appear on the minimap within the camera's field of view.
• Firing a tracking dart the moment your camera spots an enemy isn't always a good idea. If your camera is in a strong position and the enemy hasn't noticed it, it's better to stay quiet and keep the camera's position to yourself so you can keep using it.

Best Trapwire Tactics

• As with Spycam, the biggest mistake you can make when using Trapwire is being predictable.
• There's a maximum distance to how far a single Trapwire can stretch. You can't create a very long tripwire that covers the whole map.
• You can place a Trapwire on a horizontal surface as well as on walls. In most cases, placing tripwires on walls is better, but sometimes vertical tripwires can be useful too.
• Unless you're facing inexperienced players, your chances of stunning an enemy with a trap you've set go down. But knowing where your enemy is will still give you an advantage.
• When placing a Trapwire, your goal is to position it so an enemy can't fully pass through without breaking or triggering the trap.
• Don't place a Trapwire low enough that an enemy can jump over it. And likewise, don't place it high enough that they can duck under it.

Best Cyber Cage Tactics

• Once activated, it lasts about 7 seconds.
• Rather than affecting everyone inside the cage as you might expect, the slow effect specifically happens on contact with an enemy touching the cage.
• You can throw a Cyber Cage onto a Trapwire and activate it the moment you hear the Trapwire trigger.
• You don't need line of sight or to be within a certain distance to activate a Cyber Cage. If you want, you can activate a Cyber Cage from the other side of the map.
• It's usually a good idea to activate the Cyber Cage right after throwing it, so you can quickly hide or end an engagement.

Best Neural Theft Tactics

• You can only use it on a fresh body.
• Keep in mind that Neural Theft doesn't activate instantly. There's about a 2-second cast time before enemy positions are revealed.
• Cypher's ability doesn't give his team exact information about where enemies are; it only shows a snapshot of where enemies were at the moment the ability was activated.