Astra Valorant Agent Guide

Astra Valorant Agent is somewhat difficult to play but super fun and rewarding once you get her down. We’ll be going over her full kit as well as practical tips and play styles that you need to implement in your gameplay. Valorant Astra is the fourth controller and arguably the most difficult one. Since she’s is controller, you have to do smokes. When your team sites you smoke the angles, when your enemies attack sites you smoke the other angles. You must know the economy system in Valorant, if not then do check our Valorant Economy Guide.

How to play astra valorant

A Bit like Reyna Valorant Agent, Astra has a shared resource pool. She doesn’t heal and dismiss obviously but she does have 4 stars that she can use for whatever she decides most fit. Her C ability is her gravity well or commonly referred to as her suck. Her Q is a stunt and her E ability is smoke that’s Hollow a bit like Omen’s. To master other powerful agents in Valorant check our Valorant deadlock agent guide, Valorant agent gekko, harbor Valorant agent guide, neon Valorant map guide, Valorant agent fade guide.
Astra Valorant has an extra ability, using F where she takes back a star. Doing this, pops a smoke like she used her E ability but instead, it only lasts a second and doesn’t use a charge. This is particularly useful for quickly Crossing short angles or surprising your opponents with a fake smoke.
In order for her to use any of her non-pool ability she first has to play stars. To do this simply press X, your Ultimate button after pressing it Astra starts to meditate at which point she’s so focused she can’t hear any of her surroundings. This allows her to fly over the map and play stars anywhere she likes regardless of range. Once the stars are down, she can turn them into one of the four aforementioned abilities.

Astra’s Role in Valorant

Astra Valorant is a controller, meaning she could fit the same role as Omen and Brimstone where she throws smokes, stays alive, walks in behind her team, and spam utility to stop the Post Plant. That’s exactly what she does, with a ton more capabilities that also give her the option to lurk, watch flanks, solo hold a Bombsite, and solo execute a full site take.
Everyone thinks that Valorant Astra is a mix between Omen and Killjoy, or Viper and Killjoy, which gives Astra that unique spot in the Team Composition Meta. For a long time, Valorant’s shot career teams have been experimenting with no Sentinel comps, or double smoke comps, to try and amp up the attacker’s side of their team, because Valorant is a naturally defender-sided game and Astra can fill both of those roles.
Unlike Viper, Astra isn’t just the middle ground between a controller and a sentinel where you’re accepting tradeoff by playing her. Astra excels at both of these roles at the same time, and to be as effective as possible on Astra, you have to play like you’re filling both of these roles.

Astra’s Role on the Defensive Side

On Defense, your entire goal is to stay alive, spam your utility, and anchor your bombsite whenever everyone else rotates, locking down that bombsite for the entire game. When the enemy team commits to a site, fully reposition your utility to help with the retake, which is a very quick reposition.

Astra’s Role on Attacker Side

On Attacker’s side, your main goal is to stay alive, you’re the only player that get your team on the site, and the player that stops the enemy from retaking, and if your team doesn’t have another smoker or Sentinel, then you staying alive to recharge and reusing your utility is vital to the round.
So, bait your teammates, that’s what they get for instalocking Jett anyway. And try to be the third person on the bombsites. Let the entry flagger and second man flash through, and sit slightly behind them, clearing any angle you think they might have not cleared, but be ready to fire at anyone who peaks unexpectedly, and playing anti flash as much as possible.

Gravity Well (C Ability)

Pressing C, on your stars, transforms them into a small circle which players are pulled to the center of. The force isn’t too strong, players can escape and run out of it, especially with their knives out but it’s safe to say that it is super annoying to fight in the middle of. Besides, you can’t exactly be sneaky in it either as you have to run to escape it, and shifting will not work.
Astra’s gravity well lasts for 2.75 seconds and if you’re still in it by the time it ends then you’re vulnerable for 5 seconds so you take double damage. This makes her suck super useful and versatile. When you’re attacking sites, you can use them in common angles so enemies will be displaced.
Potentially vulnerable as well as having a hard time fighting through. But you can also save it to move players off to diffuse or place it in front of a defensive smoke to add an extra element of difficulty for enemies pushing through.

Gravity Well in Ascent Map

A common Astra play is to Anchor a Site by using two stars on the main entrance. Take for example the Valorant Ascent Map A-Site. You can play there as Astra is putting one star in the middle on Main and one more bit towards the Site. This way you could silently jump spot backside. Smoke when you see the enemy and if you feel a lot of pressure or realize that players are about to run out then you simply hit the C button and enemies will be very least slowed down and best case be kept in place and vulnerable.

Gravity Well Cooldown

If you use gravity well correctly, Astra can be just as oppressive as a Cypher, Viper, or Killjoy. So, she’s certainly a force to be reckoned with on the defensive side. One thing I do want to quickly point out though is that the cooldown on these abilities is long. Astra has certainly enjoyed her time as an overpowered must-pick agent so to stop her from being broken forever, they really had to Nerf her hard.
She’s absolutely playable but her star cost has increased to 150 per. While only getting one for free and on her cooldown, both her Suck and Stun were up to 45 seconds. Her smoke cooldown admittedly isn’t so bad at 25 seconds as well as two charges but also Her dissipate has the same 25-second cooldown until you replace the star. Because of these cooldowns, you have to be mindful about how you use your stars.

Use Gravity Pull for Post Plant

If you use Gravity Well to help in taking site, you probably will not have it to pull the opponents off the diffuse. By the way quick tip that you can see a lot of Astra’s misuse. When you want to use your Gravity Pull or Suck as Post Plant Utility, you got to be very precise about how you place it.
Make sure to place the star at the very edge of the max diffuse range, furthest away from the star. If you place it too far from the spike, enemies will be able to diffuse at the edge of the diffuse Circle without getting affected by the Suck. If you place it too far in the middle, you’ll hit your opponents with a Suck but will not pull them off the diffuse. Make sure to practice this with a friend or perhaps in some swift plays.

Nova Pulse (Q Ability)

Her second ability with that same 45-second cooldown is her Stun. Officially named Nova Pulse. Her stun is her most likely to use situational ability. She can activate it with any of her other stars at which, point a short 1.25 seconds animation plays after which it’ll stun any players inside of it for 4 seconds.
Stun is always Useful for this ability in particular, you should have a good goal in mind since you can use four abilities in each round and you want to get the most value out of each of them. One way you can use this stun is kind of the same idea as with the pull, where you use it on common enemy positions as your team pushes Sites.
This is probably the best way in most scenarios and as long as you effectively time it with your teammates peaks then it can really have a massive effect. Using Valorant Astra’s stun in this kind of way makes it so that your team has fewer angles to worry about, which in return can really help the Site hit.
In A-Site in Ascent, there are two common spots to smoke on the door in Heaven but then also using a Suck on side box, making it difficult to Peak our team for any enemies playing there as well as stun back so that anyone going for a timing is heavily discouraged and debuffed.

Combining Astra’s C ability and Q Ability

Some players also like to combine Suck with the stun on the same place. Players are sucked into the spot and are then also stunned because they can’t escape quickly. These two abilities work really together. Valorant Astra’s gravity pull slows the escape and since the stun slows the players, they’re then perfectly centered in the middle of the Suck and unable to move and they also get hit with the vulnerable at the end of the duration.
This type of strategy is very effective in large areas like Pearl B Long. Here you can plant for a long sit behind the pillar on the ramp and use both Suck and Astra’s Q ability as soon as the enemies tap spikes. This will perfectly Center the enemies on your Suck, making them easy targets even through smokes.

Keynotes

Try to do this only when time is already very low and the suck itself is round insurance or maybe you’re in a 1v1 and you only need to get one kill to win. Doing both is more than often not a bit overkill and spacing the two abilities out makes more sense. Just be careful though, a stun doesn’t stop the diffuse so after you concuss, you will still have to swing.

Nebula Ability (E Ability)

For her smokes, there’s not a whole lot to be said as Valorant Astra uses her smokes just like the rest of her utility. She needs to have a star down and by pressing the E button this becomes a smoke.
Astra’s smokes are hollow, like Omen’s and they are also quite short at 14.5 seconds, Omen in comparison has 15, and Brimstone a bit over 19 seconds. The biggest advantage is that she can use her smokes across the map. Brimstone is of course very limited in his map presence but even Omen has a hard time getting impact on the opposite side of big maps like Haven and Lotus.
Astra on the other hand does not have that issue, even from the back of the C platform she can quickly place a smoke over on A long if she needs to. This makes it so that as long as you’re aware, you can really help your team with your stars of course in the form of smokes but also with Astra’s Suck and Stuns.

Dissipate (F Ability)

What is perhaps more interesting is her F ability, her Dissipates. Here Astra Valorant takes back a star that was already placed so that it becomes smoke for a second and then dissipates. This can be simply taking back stars that you placed on accident or if you want to use them for something else but can get a lot more creative with them as well.
As soon as you call back a star, you don’t immediately get it back but you have to wait 25 Seconds and it’s novel since it doesn’t consume a charge. This makes it very useful for crossing small areas or even countering operators.
Pearl belongs to the ramp is probably the place where this type of smoke is used most commonly. Since crossing the ramp is commonly held with an operator, smart Astra players will place the smoke on the corner so that they can see safely across the ramp in the one-second window that some are up.
Others take this a step further and use this fake smoke even on rounds no one is going B so that way the defenders aren’t completely sure whether players can be behind the ramp. You can even use the Dissipate in positions where enemies normally expect smokes to be in order to try to catch a timing.
Enemies see smokes go up and expect them to be solid for roughly 15 Seconds only to catch them with the surprise half a second later. It can be a really good play that has the potential to offer you a lot of success.

Astral Form

The next ability of the Astra Valorant agent is Astral form. It’s the basis for all of her utility. For this ability simply activate the ability to enter Astral form, where you can place stars with your primary fire, and you can then reactivate those stars later and transform them into Nova Pulses, Nebula, or Gravity Well, and her other abilities.

You can also recall these stars at any time and only need 8 Seconds before you can replace those stars. But this Astral form is the key to making Astra so good at solo holding a bombsite because when the enemy commits to another bombsite, she can pick up all of her utility, and 8 seconds later have a full lineup of utility on the other bombsite to help with the retake.
Another thing to keep in mind for Astra is that the only thing that keeps you from being able to spam abilities is the number of stars you have, and the cooldown of your abilities. Instead of having to buy the different abilities, you always have them available, but you have to buy each star for 200 credits, and you get 2 for free each round.

Ultimate (Cosmic Divide)

Valorant Astra also has an effect of Ultimate. In her case, the Cosmic divide comes in at seven ultimate points. The way you activate your ultimate is by pressing the “X” button and right click followed by selecting the two points where you want her ultimate to go, then see a massive indestructible wall appear that is bulletproof and has sound dampening effects.

Abilities go straight through but since bullets don’t. It can be seen as a bulletproof Viper wall, this allows you to go for certain strategies, a very simple Viper wall wouldn’t permit. On Pearl For example one of Astra’s best maps, she can use a very strong wall.
Doing the same wall with Viper wouldn’t work, you just get spammed when you go to plan on the box but with Astra, it works perfectly as your team can go back to the long, and as long as the enemies don’t have an Astra wall themselves, it will be incredibly hard to retake. Her ultimate is a great tool to go for specific set play and in the same way, can also be super useful in a retake but it’s not always a straightforward ultimate to use.
Using it reactively in the mid-round is very difficult and since rounds can develop very fast, the wall you used just 10 seconds ago to help your team, might become the lifeline the enemy team needs to come out on top. Be careful to use it, the bulletproof wall will always favor one team but if you misplace it, that could very well be the enemies.

Extra Tips to Play Valorant Astra

The following tips will help you dominate the Valoant Map.
⦁ First of all, when you’re defense or even on attack for that matter, be careful in your position.
⦁ The complete lack of sound when you’re placing your stars is seriously no joke.
⦁ Never go into Astral form in the open.
⦁ Don’t stay in it longer than you need to and always be mindful where your enemies could be.
⦁ As a Defender, it’s usually a pretty good rule of thumb to be positioned in an area where you’re naturally quite passive. This also allow you to play reactively with your smoke and suck but it also means that if you need to meditate for a second or five, since your teammate is screaming crying for help, begging for a smoke you will not be in a dangerous position where you can be punished.
Astra is definitely one of the most unique and fun agents in the game and to be perfectly honest her difficulty is kind of over exaggerated. Just have some fun playing the Valorant Astra, get familiar with your Astral form and you’ll quickly see yourself fluently placing utility all over the map as fast as you team needs you to.

Conclusion

Astra’s smoke gets put on a 14 second cooldown, while smokes actually last 15 seconds, and both charges can be on cooldown at the same time. So, after 15 seconds you will have both charges back. Use her all of her abilities correctly to turn the victory on your side and punish the enemy whoever try to cross Astra’s abilities. Combine the Valorant Astra’s abilities with other agents like Viper to make the ability more powerful and effective. Play the Astra on maps like Pearl as she will shine more in this map.

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