Cypher

Where he comes from

Morocco. Cypher is written as an information broker rather than a soldier, which is unusual in a cast of people who mostly solve problems by shooting them.

What he wants is deliberately unclear. He is inside the Protocol, he is useful to it, and the strong implication is that he is there because it gives him access to something rather than because he believes in the mission. Riot has left that unresolved for years and it works.

What he actually is

Cypher converts a site into a surveillance system, and the important part is that almost none of it stops anybody.

A trapwire holds you for a moment. A cage makes noise. A camera watches. None of these things kill you, and none of them stop you taking the site. What they do is guarantee that everyone on his team knows where you are before you get there, and in a game where deaths come from not knowing something, that is worth more than damage.

What he does in a game

Sentinel. His trapwire stretches between two surfaces, briefly holding anyone who crosses it and then slowing and revealing them unless they shoot it out. His cyber cage is a device he triggers to block vision and to make noise when anyone moves through it. His spycam is a remote camera he can take over and look through, firing a dart that reveals whoever it hits.

His ultimate is used on an enemy corpse and reveals the live positions of the entire enemy team, twice.

Both the trapwire and the camera can be picked back up, which matters more than it sounds. A Cypher who survives a round starts the next one with his full setup still in his pocket.

What it feels like

Cypher is the agent that rewards knowing a map rather than knowing a character. His tools are simple. Where you put them is the entire skill, and the difference between a good and a bad Cypher is measured in metres.

A wire in an obvious place gets shot for free. The same wire ten metres deeper, around a corner, past where people stop checking, wins rounds all game. That is not a mechanical skill and it does not improve with aim training. It improves by paying attention.

Playing against him is about accepting the cost. You will trip something, and the answer is to trip it deliberately, early, and somewhere that tells his team nothing useful. Teams that try to play around a Cypher setup without triggering it end up moving so slowly that the information was irrelevant anyway.

Who should pick him up

Players who talk. Cypher generates more information than any other sentinel and most of its value is destroyed if you do not tell anyone. If you play with your microphone off, you are running roughly a third of the character.

He is also the most punishing agent to play badly. His utility is destructible and predictable, and a Cypher whose wires are always in the same three spots has spent his entire kit on a team that already knows where it is.