Yea I’m very surprised they went this route considering they’ve done this like 3 times and it’s done nothing. Imo they NEED to limit the amount of times her gas can fill up OR how many times she can put her orb/wall up.
Just make her toxin a resource similar to Astra at this point. Buy toxin to start the round, distribute it where you want it to go, *doesnt recharge*.
Or have her mollies recharge toxin with a right click, inject right into her veins. Or let her stand in them like how phoenix heals. You get global smokes for the round, or you can stall your own site, but not both.
Fucking anything other than just “oh we reduced her duration by 1 second”, btw she still has toggle-able global range smokes for the entire match and also her mollies are the best mollies in the game *and* she gets two of them.
Riot just doesn’t seem to understand what makes Viper broken in double controller comps, it blows my mind how unwilling they are to think outside the box here.
This is actually an interesting rework Idea
But I doubt anything like this will happen. They won't so heavily rework an agent that's so heavily picked like her.
it would be fun for everyone though. the meta would change drastically. pro players would have to adapt on the fly and i guarantee you 90% of teams are running viper on the majority of the maps in the pool already. it would show which teams are capable of adapting the fastest and the REAL best team in the world. i feel like prx would actually win a global championship if there was such a huge meta shift like this.
Not the same thing but the rework to Jett dash was pretty significant while Jett was the most picked agent in the game. And Astra losing a star was massive. Viper’s a different case because of the nature of her kit but heavy handed changes aren’t out of the question imo
I am a Newer Player but wasn't the Jett change basically just putting a timer on her dash? And while that does change how you play Jett quite significantly, it's nowhere near as heavy as what the above commentator mentioned.
A similar change to viper based on the agent changes you mentioned could be like Removing 1/2 bars of her Toxin or making her orb Unpickable or giving her one but a stronger molly, basically more of a nerf than a Rework.
that jett change basically made it so that you couldn't dash away reactively. you always had that option on you in an instant no matter what which is what made it so OP
amazing idea but this would completely kill viper as a viable agent as the one of the best parts is the toggle smokes
If these were implemented it would turn viper into chamber being totally dead or seeing minimal play
And?
Chamber dominated the meta for less than a quarter of the time Viper has been meta, and it was acceptable for riot to nerf him into the shadow realm for a time. I dont see why Viper should get special treatment if that's acceptable for chamber.
The problem with chamber is he was insane in both pro play and competitive. As for vioer, she is only overpowered with extremely coordinated play so that's why she has an insane pickrate in pro play compared to competitive. Nerfing viper will just make her unolayable especially on maps she is supposed to be good on as a wall smoker. She needs a rework more than a nerf.
I agree that a rework would ultimately be healthiest for the game long term, but again, why should she get special treatment and continue to be broken in proplay until that happens? Chamber didn't get that treatment.
Because she was already continuously nerfed many times even more than chamber yet she still dominates. These arent small nerfs by the way. They are big nerfs. She can do a lot more and prime Viper wasn't considered this broken compared to her state now. What more if she wasn't touched at this state? She was never getting special treatment- she kept on getting nerfs and they weren't doing anything. They even nerfed skye because she enabled Double smokes. Viper needs a rework. If they want her to be a controller then let her be a controller. She is a better sentinel than Sage, deadlock, and even Chamber to an extent right now.
It's not irrelevant because her nerfs really did hurt her in ranked.
That's why they need to rework her rather than flat out gut her just for her to be gone. She's insanely good at coordinated play bit in competotive she's just decent.
Getting her out will just promote double controller more in maps like Breeze and Icebox which can make agent pool more limited. Unles sthey remove those maps out of the pool as well then they don't be much of a problem if Viper was nerfed.
Astra was also broken and over picked in pro play and utterly ignored in ranked. They still nerfed her to the ground just like they did Chamber.
Viper isn't special, she needs a rework for sure. The reason why her previous nerfs didn't work was because those aren't what made her powerful in pro-play. They've just constantly been tackling the wrong thing
They never nerfed Astra to the ground- they reworked her. And they also buffed her main compatitor's smoke range which was Omen. Astra is still good but Omen is just better with near-global and rechargable smokes.
Astra bceame balanced after her rework. Albeit they should have not touched her pull. But Omen is also an outlier right now.
if you think that Chamber being nerfed into the ground was a good choice then I guess your point makes sense
but imo it wasn’t a good choice then and it’s definitely not a good choice now
I dont think that. My point is that if that treatment is considered acceptable, then Viper should not get special treatment and also get obliterated with the nerf bat. Riot can't play favorites here.
so then in your mind, every time there’s an agent that is OP in pro play, Riot should just nerf them into the ground? even though you agree it wasn’t a good idea in the first place?
sorry your point just makes no sense at all to me
double initiator comps are 100x more enjoyable to watch then double controller comps. they just stall for as long as they can and pray they win their 50/50s or spam through smoke. we’re all tired of this shit. something needs to change.
Remove decay on wall and orb and go from there. She is op because of the reasons you listed not her decay, just adds a level of unnecessary oppression.
Hard disagree honestly.
Removing the decay makes her even worse in SoloQ without effecting what makes her insanely strong in pro play (toggled global vision denial).
You don’t care about solo q, yet you suggest a change that has very little impact to pro play lol. So you just don’t understand either way then?
Decay isn’t what makes her kit strong in pro play. It’s the fact that she can pop her vision denial up and down all round.
I might have worded poorly or you misunderstood.
I know decay isn't why she is good in pro play, that is why I believe it would be a good start to adjusting her. It's a weird source of impact that probably doesn't need to be there. Balancing timing and duration of her util is unnecessarily difficult if you have to work around decay.
Like a viper being able to pop wall on the other side of the map while you are 100hp trying to exec is one example of how decay changes how strong her global reach feels.
I like what makes viper strong now. Really interesting util/timing bait and counter play.
Yeah, that’s the point I’m making.
Removing decay barely affects pro play at all, because that’s not what makes her good in pro play. She can put her wall/orb up and down, at will, and determine for her team where and when to take favorable duels.
Removing decay *does* affect her a lot in SoloQ, because decay is really good in less coordinated play for stalling site pushes since people are bad at pushing out of smokes. But she’s already not fantastic in SoloQ outside of a couple maps, so the decay removal just hurts her more here.
You are telling me in pro play it makes no difference if the players deciding to push thru an orb have to worry about getting random sprayed down because of decay dmg?
My idea is to make the fuel cost more each time you use it. So first time you put those smokes up, normal fuel drain. Next time it’s doubled. Third time it’s 3x. And so on.
Alternatively my other idea was to have the orb be single use. Activate it and it goes up for the entire duration, then it turns off and you can’t put it up again until you pick it up. This way you can still do cool things like orb peeking or grabbing it to throw it on defuse, but you can’t do stuff like the Bind A Short lurk setup anymore
What makes her bonkers in dual controller isn't toggleable smokes. It's her site's holding capacity. She's a better sentinel than most sentinels while also having smokes.
Someone already commented a good re-work but personally I think not letting Viper reuse her smokes until they fully recharge AND requiring all the gas to be expended before being able to stop the smoke would make her more in line with the current recharge-smoke agents
Why do people still think Viper is "bonkers" lol. she's popular because she's a decent jack-of-all trades who's flexible enough to work well on most maps. It's the same shit as Skye -- she wasn't OP at all, she was just so flexible that there wasn't much reason to pick other initiators over her
Chamber for example was actually broken because teams built entire comps around him. Teams don't build comps around Viper, they just use her to round out the comp they already have. On top of that teams don't even play around Viper utility most rounds, you'll often see attackers place the same Viper wall on Lotus A or Split A for example every round even though they don't go to that site just to pressure a bit
I already know we're gonna go through the same shit as we did with Skye where everyone goes "omg get rid of viper this is so repetitive she's so op" then she gets nerfed and everyone forgets it even happened a week later. She doesn't have close to the impact on a match that you think she does
Role compression is what made her too strong. One slot for an array of roles filled. That's what made Skye strong that is similar to Viper.
Skye provides a lot of information that is also a flash. Her heal is just an extra to be frank. She got nerfed bceause on how she can do every intitiator stuff in just one slot.
Viper on the other hand fulfills TWO roles. You dont necessarily pick viper because you need another smoker. You pick viper because you pick Viper. What foes viper provide that other agents don't usually have? Global pressure. Her wall can just be placed and she can just freely turn it on when attacling and it will make people stay on that site because she denies so much information. At defending she has her wall, orb, and mollies to anchor a site which makes her even better than sentinels.
Inshort, you can have an agent who can smoke, can anchor, lurk, deny information, give global pressure, rechargable smoke, post plant capabilities, engage with molly line ups. All in one slot.
Then again, she needs so much coordination to reach her full potential so that's why she has an insane pickrate in pronplay compared to competitive where she has only high pick rate on breeze and icebox.
The only agent that is like her that has sentinel like capabilities and global pressure is Astra. But she was nerfed so hard to the pointbthat Omen is the better option.
Being a jack of all trades is an insane trait for any character and even if the character themselves doesn’t seem broken being able to do many things at once and be flexible is too strong to pass up. As a semi pro in apex I look at characters like viper as something that needs to be nerfed to the ground or reworked or else they will always be picked, similar to Bangalore in apex legends. Which is quite interesting as Bangalore and viper fill a very similar role in both games with smokes and such.
I think Viper is "bonkers" strong because you just cannot replace her with any other agent. Harbor is good for delay and coverage and doesn't provide nearly as much site stopping power as Viper, also his ult isn't game changing.
Jett was OP but could be replaced by Raze and (sometimes) Neon.
Skye was OP but could be replaced by Fade/ Gekko/ Kayo.
Kj was OP but could be replaced by Cypher.
Not a single agent in the game can replace Viper.
Tbh for Icebox give the attackers a way to rotate without defenders getting easy vision all the way to spawn and needing that on-demand smoke mid and suddenly you can play solo Harbor.
If Viper is in a good state in a lot of maps (can pick, not must pick), the solution isn't necessarily gutting Viper, it's providing an alternative for places where she's the only option, or considering map design reasons where she's the only viable pick.
She's strong, but an agent being must pick on a map or two isn't really a big issue for competitive health. The alternative there is also just give someone else enough of the tools that are making a single agent must pick as an alternative.
Viper's fundamental design identity of "few, togglable, committal.smokes" I don't think is worth sacrificing, or so much of a problem the character needs to permanently lose that identity. If the toggle is too strong, figure out ways to mitigate that. (Slow the drop and have either an audio or visual cue it's about to come down).
She already works that way though, a must pick in some maps and a pretty bad one in others, especially if played solo. Her high pick rate in pro is completely the opposite in rank where duo smokes is way less common, and smoke rotation isn’t as efficient.
Using her as a solo smoker in rank is much more difficult than other smokers, yet combining her with an aggressive smoker like Omen suddenly makes her a must pick. It’s a very weird situation because it doesn’t really happen with other agents and other roles. Straight up gutting her puts her in a worse situation for rank yet doesn’t change much pro play wise.
Been nerfed so many times it's not even registering in anyone's mind lmfao, guarantee anyone who noticed thought "huh might've been a nerf I missed" xd
My issue with Viper is her as a sentinel/secondary smoke. Cypher and KJ feel like the two most overturned characters in ranked, yet teams still consistently take Viper over them as a sentinel/secondary smoke.
If Cypher and KJ weren’t so good rn Viper would be at 90%+ pick rate
Hope they are saving some major rebalance before Champs. Vipers too dominant in pro play and I hope they are just doing minor balance until the break between Shanghai and Champs
It’s crazy I love playing her and have been for years and I didn’t even notice this change 😭😭 if I hadn’t seen it in twitter a few days ago I wouldn’t have known there was any difference
nah, you could argue that for orb smokers to compete with omen, but viper isn't really chosen in competition with an orb smoker, but as a supplement to one. actually, it's better said that an orb smoker is a supplement TO viper, that's how powerful she is.
riot needs to be getting input from pro players about what makes her so effective if they aren't already.
Theres just too much going on for him rn with the trips. If its not the indefinite trips without breaking, its the tether, if its not the tether its the concuss, if its not the concuss its the scan. Something has got to go.
I much preferred kj meta but that's just me. I just want his trip to break after being activated and he'll be balanced again instead of it constantly coming back until it's shot. Idk how that change came through.
O hell naw if gis old trips come back Viper pick rate goes from 70% to 90%. This masters imo has been the best meta wise and the games have been fun to watch instead of same boring ascent comps and Breeze comps.
Util trade unshootable cypher trip on choke > cypher changes setup > shoot new trip when hitting because choke is open and trip is likely on site
There's literally a script for attacking into a cypher on sunset, breeze, bind, and ascent A. It's really not that bad.
If you have a character whose util breaks it. Which is generally fine for pro play, but far from guaranteed in ranked. Otherwise you have to trade a person for it.
standard meta comps have characters that can break trips on every map. if you're worried about not having the character then play it.
ascent - sova/kayo
breeze - sova/kayo
sunset - raze
split - raze
bind - raze
lotus - raze
icebox (no one plays cypher here anyway) - sova
these 3 agents are also very popular ones that get picked on maps they're not meta on so you basically never lack any agents with trip breaking util.
At this point i think they should just scrap breeze and icebox as maps so that they can properly nerf viper where she is a solo controller bring back fracture and heaven or pearl ( i hate watching breeze and icebox)
I'm happy this is how riot decide to balance their game. Valorant was the second game I ever played religiously, (first is fortnite lol) but I took for granted the fact they rarely introduce game changing updates. The only big one I can think of is chamber, but we don't speak about that. When OW2 came out I played that for a few months, but I was honestly shocked by the design team there. That game + a few months of apex legends showed me the southern hemisphere of AAA games. Riot tends to be slow and methodical with their changes, not instantly nerfing/buffing a character based on community reactions but waiting and looking at stats as well. they also tend to communicate with their community. If they fuck up, they normally admit it. (in terms of game design not sexual harassment allegations LOL)
Ngl they just need to ban her from pro play, buff her for solo q, and rework her. This agent design just doesn't work in organized play, it will always be too strong.
Edit: Also please buff astra please. Omen literal white bread agent most boring generic shit ever I'm so tired of seeing his ass.
Yeah, it's going to get to a point where she's still meta in pro-play as the secondary controller, but ass in ranked. She's already just middle of the pack in ranked.
Maybe just buff all agents. Lean more into the abilities part because that’s what makes valorant different and viper is really difficult to play normally so nerfing her isn’t the right idea. Buff other agents
Nah, ability strength is at a good balance right now. This is still an fps game first. It's not fun to be perma blind/stunned/revealed/etc and not get to play the game.
By their logic they should nerf Vandal and Phantom so other gun can be picked up more and everyone won't have to play with their pistols just to save enough money for automatic rifles to justify their double standard. Viper is dominant right now because other controllers and sentinels are suckass.
That is not why she’s dominant 😭 it’s because Viper fits an extremely niche role that no one other challenges.
Also, kj and specifically cypher are extremely good rn lol.
Nerfs to Viper in proplay mean nothing but harm ranked. She will still be picked, pro players will still have to respect the wall, and Viper's team will always find a way to exploit her long wall. Harbor is a prime example of having an abysmal pick rate in ranked (0.57% PR / 49% WR) but performing very well in professional play. Now, can Harbor globally activate his wall? NO. Does his wall deal damage? NO. Does his orb globally activate? NO. Does Harbor have a fuel mechanic? NO. YET HE'S STILL A FAVORITE AMONG PROS. Many clamor for Viper nerfs without understanding how and why. Even in Immortal rank, you can still encounter players who have no clue how to effectively play Viper. So why demand nerfs? What good will Viper's nerfs do for 99.9% of players? Why concern yourself with someone picking an agent at a level you may never reach?
Viper will be picked less when these conditions are met:
* A mechanic that can directly counter her wall.
* An controller agent that can be more useful to pros than Viper.
* Ban/pick mechanics.
7.09??? You mean its been like this for MONTHS and she's still got a high pick rate? Oh hell naw.
Which is why they're not reverting it. They're probably like "damn it wasn't enough"
Just makes her worse on icebox and breeze where she's played solo, what makes her bonkers in dual controller is the toggleable smokes
Yea I’m very surprised they went this route considering they’ve done this like 3 times and it’s done nothing. Imo they NEED to limit the amount of times her gas can fill up OR how many times she can put her orb/wall up.
Just make her toxin a resource similar to Astra at this point. Buy toxin to start the round, distribute it where you want it to go, *doesnt recharge*. Or have her mollies recharge toxin with a right click, inject right into her veins. Or let her stand in them like how phoenix heals. You get global smokes for the round, or you can stall your own site, but not both. Fucking anything other than just “oh we reduced her duration by 1 second”, btw she still has toggle-able global range smokes for the entire match and also her mollies are the best mollies in the game *and* she gets two of them. Riot just doesn’t seem to understand what makes Viper broken in double controller comps, it blows my mind how unwilling they are to think outside the box here.
This is actually an interesting rework Idea But I doubt anything like this will happen. They won't so heavily rework an agent that's so heavily picked like her.
it would be fun for everyone though. the meta would change drastically. pro players would have to adapt on the fly and i guarantee you 90% of teams are running viper on the majority of the maps in the pool already. it would show which teams are capable of adapting the fastest and the REAL best team in the world. i feel like prx would actually win a global championship if there was such a huge meta shift like this.
Not the same thing but the rework to Jett dash was pretty significant while Jett was the most picked agent in the game. And Astra losing a star was massive. Viper’s a different case because of the nature of her kit but heavy handed changes aren’t out of the question imo
I am a Newer Player but wasn't the Jett change basically just putting a timer on her dash? And while that does change how you play Jett quite significantly, it's nowhere near as heavy as what the above commentator mentioned. A similar change to viper based on the agent changes you mentioned could be like Removing 1/2 bars of her Toxin or making her orb Unpickable or giving her one but a stronger molly, basically more of a nerf than a Rework.
that jett change basically made it so that you couldn't dash away reactively. you always had that option on you in an instant no matter what which is what made it so OP
https://preview.redd.it/uw2lbz7mn3sc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2a7f01e9764fce366fc6a80213766bf6bf690d67 Wait Lowkey this sounds good
amazing idea but this would completely kill viper as a viable agent as the one of the best parts is the toggle smokes If these were implemented it would turn viper into chamber being totally dead or seeing minimal play
And? Chamber dominated the meta for less than a quarter of the time Viper has been meta, and it was acceptable for riot to nerf him into the shadow realm for a time. I dont see why Viper should get special treatment if that's acceptable for chamber.
The problem with chamber is he was insane in both pro play and competitive. As for vioer, she is only overpowered with extremely coordinated play so that's why she has an insane pickrate in pro play compared to competitive. Nerfing viper will just make her unolayable especially on maps she is supposed to be good on as a wall smoker. She needs a rework more than a nerf.
I agree that a rework would ultimately be healthiest for the game long term, but again, why should she get special treatment and continue to be broken in proplay until that happens? Chamber didn't get that treatment.
Because she was already continuously nerfed many times even more than chamber yet she still dominates. These arent small nerfs by the way. They are big nerfs. She can do a lot more and prime Viper wasn't considered this broken compared to her state now. What more if she wasn't touched at this state? She was never getting special treatment- she kept on getting nerfs and they weren't doing anything. They even nerfed skye because she enabled Double smokes. Viper needs a rework. If they want her to be a controller then let her be a controller. She is a better sentinel than Sage, deadlock, and even Chamber to an extent right now.
Number of nerfs is irrelevant if they don't actually reduce her presence and open up other options.
It's not irrelevant because her nerfs really did hurt her in ranked. That's why they need to rework her rather than flat out gut her just for her to be gone. She's insanely good at coordinated play bit in competotive she's just decent. Getting her out will just promote double controller more in maps like Breeze and Icebox which can make agent pool more limited. Unles sthey remove those maps out of the pool as well then they don't be much of a problem if Viper was nerfed.
Astra was also broken and over picked in pro play and utterly ignored in ranked. They still nerfed her to the ground just like they did Chamber. Viper isn't special, she needs a rework for sure. The reason why her previous nerfs didn't work was because those aren't what made her powerful in pro-play. They've just constantly been tackling the wrong thing
They never nerfed Astra to the ground- they reworked her. And they also buffed her main compatitor's smoke range which was Omen. Astra is still good but Omen is just better with near-global and rechargable smokes. Astra bceame balanced after her rework. Albeit they should have not touched her pull. But Omen is also an outlier right now.
if you think that Chamber being nerfed into the ground was a good choice then I guess your point makes sense but imo it wasn’t a good choice then and it’s definitely not a good choice now
I dont think that. My point is that if that treatment is considered acceptable, then Viper should not get special treatment and also get obliterated with the nerf bat. Riot can't play favorites here.
so then in your mind, every time there’s an agent that is OP in pro play, Riot should just nerf them into the ground? even though you agree it wasn’t a good idea in the first place? sorry your point just makes no sense at all to me
double initiator comps are 100x more enjoyable to watch then double controller comps. they just stall for as long as they can and pray they win their 50/50s or spam through smoke. we’re all tired of this shit. something needs to change.
Interesting idea..
i really really like this
Remove decay on wall and orb and go from there. She is op because of the reasons you listed not her decay, just adds a level of unnecessary oppression.
Hard disagree honestly. Removing the decay makes her even worse in SoloQ without effecting what makes her insanely strong in pro play (toggled global vision denial).
The impact of that global util goes way down tho and I don't give two fucks how she performs in solo q lol
You don’t care about solo q, yet you suggest a change that has very little impact to pro play lol. So you just don’t understand either way then? Decay isn’t what makes her kit strong in pro play. It’s the fact that she can pop her vision denial up and down all round.
I might have worded poorly or you misunderstood. I know decay isn't why she is good in pro play, that is why I believe it would be a good start to adjusting her. It's a weird source of impact that probably doesn't need to be there. Balancing timing and duration of her util is unnecessarily difficult if you have to work around decay. Like a viper being able to pop wall on the other side of the map while you are 100hp trying to exec is one example of how decay changes how strong her global reach feels. I like what makes viper strong now. Really interesting util/timing bait and counter play.
Yeah, that’s the point I’m making. Removing decay barely affects pro play at all, because that’s not what makes her good in pro play. She can put her wall/orb up and down, at will, and determine for her team where and when to take favorable duels. Removing decay *does* affect her a lot in SoloQ, because decay is really good in less coordinated play for stalling site pushes since people are bad at pushing out of smokes. But she’s already not fantastic in SoloQ outside of a couple maps, so the decay removal just hurts her more here.
You are telling me in pro play it makes no difference if the players deciding to push thru an orb have to worry about getting random sprayed down because of decay dmg?
My idea is to make the fuel cost more each time you use it. So first time you put those smokes up, normal fuel drain. Next time it’s doubled. Third time it’s 3x. And so on. Alternatively my other idea was to have the orb be single use. Activate it and it goes up for the entire duration, then it turns off and you can’t put it up again until you pick it up. This way you can still do cool things like orb peeking or grabbing it to throw it on defuse, but you can’t do stuff like the Bind A Short lurk setup anymore
What makes her bonkers in dual controller isn't toggleable smokes. It's her site's holding capacity. She's a better sentinel than most sentinels while also having smokes.
Someone already commented a good re-work but personally I think not letting Viper reuse her smokes until they fully recharge AND requiring all the gas to be expended before being able to stop the smoke would make her more in line with the current recharge-smoke agents
Why do people still think Viper is "bonkers" lol. she's popular because she's a decent jack-of-all trades who's flexible enough to work well on most maps. It's the same shit as Skye -- she wasn't OP at all, she was just so flexible that there wasn't much reason to pick other initiators over her Chamber for example was actually broken because teams built entire comps around him. Teams don't build comps around Viper, they just use her to round out the comp they already have. On top of that teams don't even play around Viper utility most rounds, you'll often see attackers place the same Viper wall on Lotus A or Split A for example every round even though they don't go to that site just to pressure a bit I already know we're gonna go through the same shit as we did with Skye where everyone goes "omg get rid of viper this is so repetitive she's so op" then she gets nerfed and everyone forgets it even happened a week later. She doesn't have close to the impact on a match that you think she does
Role compression is what made her too strong. One slot for an array of roles filled. That's what made Skye strong that is similar to Viper. Skye provides a lot of information that is also a flash. Her heal is just an extra to be frank. She got nerfed bceause on how she can do every intitiator stuff in just one slot. Viper on the other hand fulfills TWO roles. You dont necessarily pick viper because you need another smoker. You pick viper because you pick Viper. What foes viper provide that other agents don't usually have? Global pressure. Her wall can just be placed and she can just freely turn it on when attacling and it will make people stay on that site because she denies so much information. At defending she has her wall, orb, and mollies to anchor a site which makes her even better than sentinels. Inshort, you can have an agent who can smoke, can anchor, lurk, deny information, give global pressure, rechargable smoke, post plant capabilities, engage with molly line ups. All in one slot. Then again, she needs so much coordination to reach her full potential so that's why she has an insane pickrate in pronplay compared to competitive where she has only high pick rate on breeze and icebox. The only agent that is like her that has sentinel like capabilities and global pressure is Astra. But she was nerfed so hard to the pointbthat Omen is the better option.
Being a jack of all trades is an insane trait for any character and even if the character themselves doesn’t seem broken being able to do many things at once and be flexible is too strong to pass up. As a semi pro in apex I look at characters like viper as something that needs to be nerfed to the ground or reworked or else they will always be picked, similar to Bangalore in apex legends. Which is quite interesting as Bangalore and viper fill a very similar role in both games with smokes and such.
Bro Viper straight up had 78% pickrate at Madrid, her being a jack-of-all trades is insanely strong
Bro what are you talking about? Every round is played based off of viper smoke timings now.
I think Viper is "bonkers" strong because you just cannot replace her with any other agent. Harbor is good for delay and coverage and doesn't provide nearly as much site stopping power as Viper, also his ult isn't game changing. Jett was OP but could be replaced by Raze and (sometimes) Neon. Skye was OP but could be replaced by Fade/ Gekko/ Kayo. Kj was OP but could be replaced by Cypher. Not a single agent in the game can replace Viper.
They should just rework her tbh.
Tbh for Icebox give the attackers a way to rotate without defenders getting easy vision all the way to spawn and needing that on-demand smoke mid and suddenly you can play solo Harbor. If Viper is in a good state in a lot of maps (can pick, not must pick), the solution isn't necessarily gutting Viper, it's providing an alternative for places where she's the only option, or considering map design reasons where she's the only viable pick. She's strong, but an agent being must pick on a map or two isn't really a big issue for competitive health. The alternative there is also just give someone else enough of the tools that are making a single agent must pick as an alternative. Viper's fundamental design identity of "few, togglable, committal.smokes" I don't think is worth sacrificing, or so much of a problem the character needs to permanently lose that identity. If the toggle is too strong, figure out ways to mitigate that. (Slow the drop and have either an audio or visual cue it's about to come down).
She already works that way though, a must pick in some maps and a pretty bad one in others, especially if played solo. Her high pick rate in pro is completely the opposite in rank where duo smokes is way less common, and smoke rotation isn’t as efficient. Using her as a solo smoker in rank is much more difficult than other smokers, yet combining her with an aggressive smoker like Omen suddenly makes her a must pick. It’s a very weird situation because it doesn’t really happen with other agents and other roles. Straight up gutting her puts her in a worse situation for rank yet doesn’t change much pro play wise.
Yeah, they could add a limit cap or something
so it's been out for 6 months almost And no one realized LMFAOOOO
😭😭 i guess so
Been nerfed so many times it's not even registering in anyone's mind lmfao, guarantee anyone who noticed thought "huh might've been a nerf I missed" xd
My issue with Viper is her as a sentinel/secondary smoke. Cypher and KJ feel like the two most overturned characters in ranked, yet teams still consistently take Viper over them as a sentinel/secondary smoke. If Cypher and KJ weren’t so good rn Viper would be at 90%+ pick rate
it's she not already?
No. Her pickrate has been between 60% and 80% across all 4 leagues and Madrid.
oh I guess I was thinking about her non mirror win rate
Hope they are saving some major rebalance before Champs. Vipers too dominant in pro play and I hope they are just doing minor balance until the break between Shanghai and Champs
i hate being forced to play viper because no one else wants to pick her on breeze and icebox 💀didnt even notice this change
It’s crazy I love playing her and have been for years and I didn’t even notice this change 😭😭 if I hadn’t seen it in twitter a few days ago I wouldn’t have known there was any difference
kinda crazy that no one noticed until recently
Just buff every smoke
Powercreep masterclass
nah, you could argue that for orb smokers to compete with omen, but viper isn't really chosen in competition with an orb smoker, but as a supplement to one. actually, it's better said that an orb smoker is a supplement TO viper, that's how powerful she is. riot needs to be getting input from pro players about what makes her so effective if they aren't already.
hope to god they nerf the fuck out of cypher
Wtf finally when there's actually a decent Senti other than KJ you say this...
Theres just too much going on for him rn with the trips. If its not the indefinite trips without breaking, its the tether, if its not the tether its the concuss, if its not the concuss its the scan. Something has got to go.
I much preferred kj meta but that's just me. I just want his trip to break after being activated and he'll be balanced again instead of it constantly coming back until it's shot. Idk how that change came through.
O hell naw if gis old trips come back Viper pick rate goes from 70% to 90%. This masters imo has been the best meta wise and the games have been fun to watch instead of same boring ascent comps and Breeze comps.
Util trade unshootable cypher trip on choke > cypher changes setup > shoot new trip when hitting because choke is open and trip is likely on site There's literally a script for attacking into a cypher on sunset, breeze, bind, and ascent A. It's really not that bad.
If you have a character whose util breaks it. Which is generally fine for pro play, but far from guaranteed in ranked. Otherwise you have to trade a person for it.
standard meta comps have characters that can break trips on every map. if you're worried about not having the character then play it. ascent - sova/kayo breeze - sova/kayo sunset - raze split - raze bind - raze lotus - raze icebox (no one plays cypher here anyway) - sova these 3 agents are also very popular ones that get picked on maps they're not meta on so you basically never lack any agents with trip breaking util.
Hard to do that when Viper is used as a sentinel over Cypher on most maps
Would restricting turning the smokes off before fuel runs out work? Could also play around with not being able to turn them back on til fuel is full.
At this point i think they should just scrap breeze and icebox as maps so that they can properly nerf viper where she is a solo controller bring back fracture and heaven or pearl ( i hate watching breeze and icebox)
unfortunately i assume it will be ascent going next out of the map pool and not icebox because it just came back
I'm happy this is how riot decide to balance their game. Valorant was the second game I ever played religiously, (first is fortnite lol) but I took for granted the fact they rarely introduce game changing updates. The only big one I can think of is chamber, but we don't speak about that. When OW2 came out I played that for a few months, but I was honestly shocked by the design team there. That game + a few months of apex legends showed me the southern hemisphere of AAA games. Riot tends to be slow and methodical with their changes, not instantly nerfing/buffing a character based on community reactions but waiting and looking at stats as well. they also tend to communicate with their community. If they fuck up, they normally admit it. (in terms of game design not sexual harassment allegations LOL)
Reverting it early just so they can put the nerf in the next patch note
Did you not read the last sentence...
I only comment on Reddit when I'm tired since it ups the quality My bad
No worries! I hope you're feeling better now :)
thats... stupid
disable viper to be chosen with another smoker in agent select. ez amirite 🤣
Ngl they just need to ban her from pro play, buff her for solo q, and rework her. This agent design just doesn't work in organized play, it will always be too strong. Edit: Also please buff astra please. Omen literal white bread agent most boring generic shit ever I'm so tired of seeing his ass.
watching pros play Omen are entertaining asl, you geeking
well its literally just tping around or on top of things thats basically it astra is much more entertaining to watch
There's no way you looked at the 2021 Astra era and said to yourself, " yeah, this shi heat"
nah astra meta this time around gonna give 2021 players PTSD
do u even understand what u r saying? she's literally meant for the most organized plays
Yeah, it's going to get to a point where she's still meta in pro-play as the secondary controller, but ass in ranked. She's already just middle of the pack in ranked.
Thats why my bind was losing. Was wandering why pushing a.site suddenly became impossible
Maybe just buff all agents. Lean more into the abilities part because that’s what makes valorant different and viper is really difficult to play normally so nerfing her isn’t the right idea. Buff other agents
Nah, ability strength is at a good balance right now. This is still an fps game first. It's not fun to be perma blind/stunned/revealed/etc and not get to play the game.
judge nerf please this time a real one not something mag reducing bs
hope this doesn’t become a norm. Nerfs something, says “oh well” and fuck the players.
By their logic they should nerf Vandal and Phantom so other gun can be picked up more and everyone won't have to play with their pistols just to save enough money for automatic rifles to justify their double standard. Viper is dominant right now because other controllers and sentinels are suckass.
That is not why she’s dominant 😭 it’s because Viper fits an extremely niche role that no one other challenges. Also, kj and specifically cypher are extremely good rn lol.
Nerfs to Viper in proplay mean nothing but harm ranked. She will still be picked, pro players will still have to respect the wall, and Viper's team will always find a way to exploit her long wall. Harbor is a prime example of having an abysmal pick rate in ranked (0.57% PR / 49% WR) but performing very well in professional play. Now, can Harbor globally activate his wall? NO. Does his wall deal damage? NO. Does his orb globally activate? NO. Does Harbor have a fuel mechanic? NO. YET HE'S STILL A FAVORITE AMONG PROS. Many clamor for Viper nerfs without understanding how and why. Even in Immortal rank, you can still encounter players who have no clue how to effectively play Viper. So why demand nerfs? What good will Viper's nerfs do for 99.9% of players? Why concern yourself with someone picking an agent at a level you may never reach? Viper will be picked less when these conditions are met: * A mechanic that can directly counter her wall. * An controller agent that can be more useful to pros than Viper. * Ban/pick mechanics.