Valorant’s newest playable character Tejo completely shook the game’s meta the day he released. His official in-game launch date was January 8th, 2025, and little to nothing was known about his abilities until the day of. However, this left players eagerly pushing the limits of his kit for days on end, and soon enough, the Valorant community was torn between varying opinions on his kit. However, objectively, most of the playerbase can collectively agree on one fact: Tejo completely redefines the role of initiator.

One of Valorant’s game designers, Ryan Cousart, described the intended impact of implementing a character like Tejo. Tejo is an Initiator; an initiator’s role within the game is to, well, initiate contact with the enemy team, and typically, this is accomplished by finding and/or assisting the first kill of the round. This can be accomplished by clearing possible angles of attack one by one. However, Tejo takes a novel approach to this, which Cousart describes as “more top-down.” Unlike other initiators, Tejo’s utility emphasizes a trade-off of improved precision in exchange for smaller area impact. His missile ability demonstrates this; he can precisely send a ballistic projectile to any spot on the map using a minimap for placement, which pushes players to strategize with controlling space in mind.

Tejo is a masterfully designed character. While I do believe a couple of abilities will be experiencing reworks in the near future for balancing purposes, I’m incredibly excited with the direction they chose to take with his kit!