26 Agents, 14 With Pro Reference Crosshairs: Ordering Your First Mastery Grind

"So which agent do I grind first?" is about to become the most-asked question on every VALORANT forum — and for once, "Jett" is not automatically the right answer.

Patch 13.06 lands on September 23 with the Agent Mastery system: every agent gets a personal progression track, split into an Act-level that accumulates while you play them through the act and lifetime points that never reset, with agent-themed rewards at checkpoints along the way. Riot has been careful to present it as a progression and cosmetic layer, not a power system — mastery will not make your smokes last longer — but it does attach a new cost to agent-hopping: the agent you play owns levels you can only earn by owning minutes on that agent. That turns "who do I main" into "who do I want on the record," and our database is weirdly good at answering the second question.

First, the grind-cost math: 26 agents, uneven roles

Our agents database tracks the full roster as 13.06 arrives: 26 agents, distributed 8 duelists, 6 sentinels, 6 controllers, 6 initiators. Because mastery is strictly per-agent, the role you main decides how diluted your playtime gets. A duelist player shares their hours across an eight-deep pool — switching metas mid-Act means starting a fresh track at zero — while controller, sentinel and initiator mains compete for attention in pools of six. If you like having answers across the roster, the wide duelist bench is the expensive place to be a generalist, and the specialist roles are where one track compounds visibly by Champions time.

Where our own data should point you

Here is the stat only this site can give you: of the 26 agent pages in our database, only 14 currently ship with at least one featured pro crosshair (15 reference codes in total). Coverage is dramatically uneven by role — initiators sit at 5 of 6 covered (Sova, Breach, KAY/O, Fade, Gekko), while duelists are just 3 of 8 (Jett, Raze, Reyna), and twelve agents including Sage, Clove, Brimstone and Neon have no copyable pro setup on their page yet. The practical read: if your first mastery grind lands on one of the 14 covered agents, our Omen page style of reference — real pro crosshair values linked to real rosters — means your Act is documented by examples you can actually copy.

Pick one of the other twelve and you are the reference.

A four-step order for choosing your first track

Grind your honest current main first — mastery tracks reward minutes, and the patch 13.06 playtime rework already points Kingdom Credit drops at agent playtime too. Two systems, one habit.

Pick one meta-safe second: the covered-initiator cluster exists because initiator-heavy metas keep those five names queued even when your duelist pick gets contested.

Budget before you commit: if the per-agent gear economy is confusing, our gear-rework explainer breaks down the same 13.06 playtime plumbing from the credit side.

Keep one flex agent untracked. A mastery economy that pushes you to lock five names is the same instalock-shaped habit the 13.05 punishment rules exist to police. Grind with your head out of the checklist.

The honest summary: Agent Mastery adds a reason to commit, not a reason to sweat. Spend the first act of it where the data says your minutes will double-dip — a covered agent, a stable role pool, a plan that survives being flexed. Everything about those rewards Riot has kept deliberately cosmetic, and if the Champions-window hype cycle does anything useful for your grind, it is reminding you which agents actually get played when it counts.

Sources: The Click mastery explainer ; FreeGameTips on Act levels and lifetime points ; 16score's 13.06 roundup ; role counts and crosshair-coverage figures from the site' own agents database, counted September 17, 2026.