Brimstone, the Maryland Firefighter is probably one of the more popular "smokers" in Valorant. Smoking in Valorant is important, and hence learning Brimstone should be at the top of your Agent List.
Brimstone is an American Controller that had some ups and downs with the recent patches. He went from a troll pick to a top-notch Smoker to a somewhat weaker pick with the recent nerfs. Apart from his Signature Smokes, the most important thing about Brim is his Stim Beacon allowing you to outburst your opponents. If you're interested in playing Brimstone, you are probably into strategy, controlling the flow, and helping your team push the first defensive lines.
Brimstone Abilities Explained
C Ability: Stim Beacon (Cost: 200 Credits, Charges: 1)
Credits: © Riot Games
Stim Beacon is a mechanical warfare tool that applies RapidFire buff to all affected allies in its Area of Effect. Stim Beacon is Brimstone's first Ability and the one that got Riot's attention with the March nerfs. The Ability initially had two charges and cost half of the current price.
It lasts for 12s and gives you and your allies:
- 10% Equip Speed
- 15% Fire Rate
- 10% Reload Speed
- 10% Recovery Speed
- 15% Speed boost
If you're familiar with Agent Reyna, you would know that she has similar buffs with her Ultimate Ability. Explained shortly, while affected by RapidFire, you're a beast, and all of your attributes are buffed. Given these buffs, knowing when and where to place it is crucial. While the round goes on, you will have multiple skirmishes with the enemy team.
Choosing which of these duels to buff with your Beacon depends on:
- Your teammates being nearby
- The importance of the part of the map that you are pushing or defending
- How fast do you need to occupy an area
- or Simply getting out of a particular skirmish
Since you are probably confused about some of the buffs, we will explain the more important ones. 15% Fire Rate means that, for example, if you fire ten rounds of bullets for a certain amount of time, with RapidFire, you will fire 11.5 shots. Equip Speed buff means that while changing weapons, the equip time per weapon will be 10% faster. The Recovery Speed means that you will recover from certain debuffs from enemy or ally agents 10% more quickly than usual.
BRIMSTONE WITH THE STIMMY BE LIKE #VALORANT pic.twitter.com/NPRgPNBZuY
— DoctorFreeze (@_Doctor_Freeze_) March 4, 2022
The last thing we will add about this Ability is the weapon usage and which one to opt out of to get the full benefit from the Beacon. Given the Fire Rate and Reload speed, the first weapon to think about naturally is the Vandal. Brim mains love to abuse the Vandal with the Stim Beacon. If you're not a fan of Vandal, your second option would be Phantom or Operator.
If you're a Vandal Main, check out our gallery above presenting the five best Vandal cosmetics in Valorant.
Q Ability: Incendiary (Cost: 250: Credits, Charges: 1)
Credits: © Riot Games
Compared to the Stim Beacon, Incendiary isn't so complicated in terms of its use. If you've played other FPS games similar to Valorant, like CS:GO or CoD, you are probably familiar with the term Molly or Molotov. The Incendiary is a Molotov-like grenade that can bounce four times against surfaces in total before bursting out on the ground. When thrown, you will usually hear Brim himself scream "MOLLY!" to alert his teammates about the ongoing fire caused by the Incendiary.
Once it detonates, it creates a lingering fire zone that damages EVERYONE caught in it. This means that you, your allies, or the enemies can take damage once they are caught by it. It does 60 damage per second and lasts for 7 seconds.
E Ability: Sky Smoke ( Signature Ability, Cost: 100 Credits, Charges: 3)
Credits: © Riot Games
Sky Smoke is Liam's Signature Ability, but also the Ability that everyone loves him for. Brimstone is a specialist when it comes to War Technology, just so that he has a mechanical tablet on his left hand from which he can call Smokes to drop from the Sky for a location of his choice. Once you click your Ability hotkey, Brim will switch to his tablet and allow you to select which circle-like areas you want to smoke on the map.
On each round start, you will have one charge of Sky Smoke, and you will be able to buy two more charges for 100 credits if you think you will need them. You will initially need to select them and then right-click if you wish to drop the smokes. If you've changed your mind while on the Smoke Map, don't worry, click any other ability or weapon hotkey, and you can exit it.
Ultimate Ability: Orbital Strike (7 Ult Points)
Credits: © Riot Games
We've come to the grand finale. Brim's ultimate, This ability is a lingering orbital strike laser that deal's very high damage per second to everyone caught in the selected circle-like location. To use it, you will have to equip your tactical map just like in Sky Smoke and select the target location where you wish to call the laser upon. The laser has a 2-second preparation time upon launching, lasts for 3 seconds, does 20 damage per tick, and has 6.67 ticks per second.
This is probably one of the better ultimate in Valorant. It's not necessary to make a kill with it, as you can clear a vantage point from the opponents. You can also punish your opponents by casting it on their "usual" camping spots and either cause high damage to them or kills them.
How To Attack With Brimstone?
Brimstone is a Controller, and his job is not to entry frag the sites but to instead support the duelists by smoking key areas and enabling them to succeed in their initial push. You want to focus on Taking and Keeping the sites once conquered and try to stay alive as much as possible.
Once the duelists fall, you are next in the line of fire, so your next duty would be to either clear the skirmish or at least trade kills with the enemies. If you are alone versus an enemy, you should try to never peak or show if your Incendiary is ready. Once you hear that defuse click, throw that Incendiary and make the defender's life a nightmare.
3 sec ace #Valorant #VALORANTbeta pic.twitter.com/Pa0ckIfmEx
— Noak Wallenberg (@NOAKWALLENBERG) April 12, 2020
How To Defend With Brimstone?
Brim isn't known for defending, as his abilities buff his attacker capabilities. Stim Beacon is your go-to tool for early trades and skirmishes, and your Incendiary can either block a tight passage or force the enemies out of planting the spike. Smokes aren't your good side as you want to see and notice the enemies and not hide them, so you should be cautious when dropping the smokes.
The Best Maps For Brimstone
Bind
Before putting our top three maps for Brim, it's crucial to say that there is no bad map for Brim. Brimstone is a controller, and his role enables him to be usable and versatile on every map and site in the game. Bind is a great map for Brimstone, given the opportunities for close-range encounters. B site is where you want to be most of the time as you can Sky Smoke Spawn or Elbow, and as for A, Haven is your most common spot for smoking.
Ascent
Ascent is the second map that Brimstone excels at. Lot's of good smoke opportunities and tight spots that people usually play around. On A, you almost always want to smoke the door leading into Tree, and Haven is a must smoke when attacking. On B, Spawn and Market are the best smokes you can put out.
While defending, something that you should always keep in your mind is that the attackers will always rush from super tight and hard-to-push angles, launching an Orbital Strike there would be devastating. When the enemies push from A long into site, a Molly at the entrance, and your ultimate on the other, may land you an Ace, as we've seen this play happen multiple times in the pro scene. The same situation can occur on B if you spot the enemies pushing from tunnels.
Split
Split is our last take as a Brim-favored map. The good thing about this map is the countless one-ways as we mentioned in the previous maps. These one-ways can be devastating for the opponents as Brim can make their life hard.
The Smokes on A are Heaven and Screens (almost always). On B, Tower and Back are your go-to smoke spots as an attacker. Like the other maps, your "Molly" and Stim Beacon are your Swiss-Knife tools to win rounds. As a Defender, you can occupy an area like Tower on B or Haven/Screens and just abuse the Stim Beacon buffs to outpush your enemies.
YO JUST BECAUSE VIPER GOT NERFED ON VALORANT DOES NOT MEAN YOU GO BRIMSTONE ON ICEBOX AND BREEZE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
— reprive (@reprive_) March 1, 2022
That would be all for this Brimstone guide, we hope that it's going to help you climb the Valorant Ranks, and if you liked this one, and want to check our other Agent Guides, hop over to the Valorfeed Agents Section, where you will find tons more of these!