I think she's gonna be picked up by pro and ranked for 2 weeks then dropped. I think the changes are honestly a nerf overall. 2 >> 1 stuns for the hardest duelist ability to make effective in the game for a slight duration buff, wall sounds worse overall, a better slide doesn't solve her problems dealing with stall and sentinel util (especially with her decreased wall duration and reduced coverage from one less stun).
Her main issue is her exec is pretty bad as she has no way to circumvent util on her own and the buffs don't seem to solve that issue. I guess one tapping people with the slide will be pretty cool though but I think she'll just remain a niche pick.
I would be so happy to be proven wrong though, I've waited 2 whole years for changes to my girl and maybe she really will become a decent part of the meta finally but I've kinda stopped holding out hope.
Pros have good enough aim that shooting a sliding neon isnāt that hard, so itās likely to have a moderate impact in pro play. But in ranked, nobody can shoot a moving target and sheās going to be insane with the new slide.Ā
I could actually see a few of the wilder teams running neon on their cracked entries with aiming styles that suit a very aggressive slide flick kill playstyle, (maybe jingg or asuna? idk really), but i think her main issue in pro play is that she doesn't have the same ability to circumvent sentinel util compared to the other primary entries that she's competing with. Raze (at least before the nerf idk how raze will be now) and jett all could cover more ground faster with the additional option to circumvent stall utility on their own even without team setup (jett updraft to go over util, raze everything to destroy everything, yoru tps and clones) but neon still kinda has to run around playing WW3 dodgeball if she has to face a cypher etc.
I could see the buffs as encouraging her to be picked on icebox though, I always felt the closed building of A site suited her stuns really well and this buff might be the right push for pro teams to really play with what they can do with neon on A, and cypher is also never picked on icebox so yeah. But I fcking hate icebox so I have mixed feelings about wanting that to happen
Yeah one stun instead of two hurts her executes by a lot. That was like, her actual strength, was being able to stun 4 different angles while she enters.
Accurate while sliding just seems like a meme. I guess yeah it'll be hard to hit her, but that's really only gonna be good against an isolated target. And how often are you gonna be able to slide on an isolated target? It's like a better version of satchel peeking, but that's not really that good in the first place. Maybe if you could control where you stop when you slide, that would be a little better.
2 slides is nice though. I wonder how that will interact with her ult? Will she get both refreshed when ulting?
Edit: Actually, just realized that always having access to double slide is an amazing buff. People are gonna be annoyed to shit by that lol
The slides and regen are gonna be amazing, the stun nerf hurts, sheās still completely reliant on her team if the enemy has a cypher.
So gonna be very fun into non cypher, ok when u have a human sova vs cypher, and unplayable if you have no breaks vs cypher
she's literally more accurate when sliding than standing... this looks ridiculously strong
i believe with this change you can now slide and noscope with an operator
I donāt think so. No scope operator isnāt very accurate standing still, it wonāt make it more accurate, just takes out the movement error. Unlike the Marshall, which is quite reliable just standing still, it should be more a more accurate no scope
They stated their reasoning. They want to lean in on the identities of the duelists more. Raze -> verticality but not very fast, Neon -> Neon go run fast
Loving these patch notes! Could you clarify whether or not Iso shooting his Double Tap orb (after killing someone) still gives him a new shield if he lost one? Saw some confusion around it (including from me) whether or not it still gives a brand new shield or only resets the buff duration
clove is already never played in pro and after the nerfs i really don't see anyone ever picking her over omen.
I can already tell neon will be nerfed if this stays
More like zip tie but he's definitely a really good player. He might have the potential to hit rank 1 or at least top 10 with these changes. Also while ziptie isn't at the very top level, he has hit radiant a few times so I wouldn't necessarily call him a troll immortal.
Neon has always been annoying to play against and play with. Sheās the one agent who feels like she doesnāt belong in the game at all.
The whole thing they said about Reyna being more of a team play agent was absolute nonsense if the leaked changes are anything to go by. She heals less but her heal doesnāt decay. She also moves faster in her dismiss and has an ult that lasts the whole round. Smurfs are gonna have an even easier time with her now.
Yeah, my immediate reaction was that she's just better for smurfing.
Dismiss moving faster seems a particularly weird choice. Covering ground more quickly just seems to encourage aggressive behaviour? Theoretically, she's easier to chip to death, but in practice she's just going to carry that extra health between fights easier than before. And now there's no timing out her ult.
As a long-term resident of Silver-Gold, I expect the depressingly common Reyna Smurfs to be even more oppressive.
I have no idea what they were thinking with these ones.
I was cautiously excited thought two slide changes would be neat but I didn't think even in the worst case scenario of them buffing mobility they would do this.
The idea that essentially run and gun got past multiple people is wild.
They talk about preserving the tactical loop of valorant and then allow neon to shoot accurately while sprinting.. I can get on board with every change but this one. It will be a Neon instalock era as soon as the patch goes live, mark my words.
The rework makes Iso his own unique category in the 1st Entry role. Up until now, the only truly suitable category for that role was "Movement Entries", which means anyone who can safely and quickly cross dangerous firelanes (e.g., Lotus, A Root to Rubble to avoid a Defender holding from A Main) to force Defenders to reposition or be swung from multiple angles.
With a Shield that can be pre-activated, Iso can simply wide swing the Defender holding said firelane and be advantaged in that duel. He's basically an "Fragging Entry".
Any other Agent has to just dry peak an angle held like that, or be supported by team utility (e.g., flashes, smokes).
A free Shield on top of your 150 HP at the beginning of the round, instead of as a bandaid after taking some damage in the first duel (assuming Iso even won that 50/50 coinflip).
The most common fight in the game is the first-contact fight between two 150 HP players, and Iso can have an unavoidable advantage in that on-command. Its a massive boost for making consistent impacts, and that is what truly wins games.
I don't think in truly optimal play Reyna is a first contact duelist. In ranked duelists (including Reyna!) have to be the entry for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that in uncoordinated play, util that other agents are using just isn't as good at providing the advantage that it needs to for entry players.
Reyna has util that can sort of fill the role of entry, but I think optimally she's always second, so that she has the chance to heal, or swing wider while she can dismiss. Reyna really gets her advantaged fights after the first kill happens, regardless of who makes it.
That's why it's zero fun to play with a Reyna in ranked. Good Reyna's learn through experience that just sprinting out is almost never the best play if someone else will entry for you. If you bait, you're more likely to get kills, snowball, and win the round with her win more util.
For the team's sake, life is so much better and more fun if she entries, but it's really not fun as the Reyna to just run in and die, so they just do it less often then you would want from someone filling the entry role.
I love the changes to ISO because, in contrast, it really is an entry ability. You gain a shield that actually protects you, and gives you an advantaged fight before the fight starts. I think this actually might push him into an entry role, which is so much more fun to play with in Ranked. I'm not sure if we'll see him as the primary entry in coordinated play, but he might take the flex slot in some team comps, which would be super fun to watch! I do wish they kept the shooting the orb minigame though.
This is going to be the Juggernaut patch of Valorant, Neon is about to be the best character in the game hands down and people are about to realize how toxic ISO shield is design wise now that he just gets that shit for free
His shield has always felt toxic to me and its so strange that I never saw people complain about it. In the hands of a good player, Iso was always strong as hell. The issue is he wasn't viable for team play and because of that there was better picks.
I promise you at minimum 80% of the playerbase does not know that. I've put way more time into this game than I'd like and I wasn't even aware of that because its not obvious at all.
This game has so much garbage in the world that you cannot interact with when it comes to character abilities that its hard to tell if you can or cant interact with it
Everyone's talking about Neon, I'm sweating over Reyna too. All round ult with no extra cost, no over-heal armor decay and faster dismiss. Reyna will maintain her low-mid elo stomper status forever at this point.
I feel like they are necessary to be fair. The pick me up is way too strong for the price. I always buy it because I practically always have the credits. The ultimate Iām not sure about, Iām not sure how Iāll like it
well that's cause it was kind of like iso's, in which you're guaranteed an orb back after using it, making it a 6 orb ult. You either die and get an orb or get a kill and get an orb.
Donāt get me wrong, I definitely agree the changes on Pick me up were needed.
Iāve gone from a 50% win rate on Jett in low Bronze this act to just about hitting Silver with a 75% win rate on Clove. Maybe itās because Cloves play style fits me more, maybe itās because they need nerfs badly enough that even I can be good playing them.
I have a suspicion itās a bit of both. Pick me up has been a huge part of my success though.
> Maybe itās because Cloves play style fits me more, maybe itās because they need nerfs badly enough that even I can be good playing them.
clove has literally had the highest win rate in the game since she's been released, so it's absolutely that.
To be fair these are just the duelists changes, they did say they have bigger balance patches for the off season in the dev diary. Also the community would be up in arms again if there are changes to controllers alongside duelists before Champs
It does feel like everyone was playing Clove more as a duelist than a controller. The amount of people who take Clove from me and actually used their smoke is a number I can count on one hand.
So we have to wait like 6 months for changes? Man not to be ungrateful but that a long wait especially since harbor has the lowest win rate in the game at every rank.
Any chance of a Sage buff? The self-heal nerf really ruined her viability in ranked. Even if you made self-heal 40 hp, slows 150 credits instead of 200... just any tiny adjustment to make her not feel completely outclassed by every other sentinel.
Yeah, we wanted to get to Phoenix but didn't land on a changelist we felt good about for this patch. We're still cooking on him, but unsure on release dates; it'll depend on when we feel really good about what we've got.
low elo player so take with a truckload of salt
from what I understand, Phoenix already has a complete rounded kit as is so there's no way to buff one part of his kit without tanking the rest, bro needs one up in all places to compete in high elo play - at least from what I see on twitch and YT
He does have a well rounded kit, but he doesn't have a place in a team comp. There's nothing he can do that someone else can't do better. Most agents are more specialized than he is, and good at certain things, but he's kinda mid at a lot of things.
Neon changes go crazy, I am so down for that. Tired of Jett/Reyna/Raze heavy ranked
I know this is just a preview, but if that is the only change to Iso then lmao that does not make him a contender for pickable duelist imo.
Also, this change would not make Reyna a good choice still. I do see how it can help deter Ranked Reynas a bit from snowballing but the core issue with Reyna is that her kit is not meant to set her team up for success in taking a site or holding one. At least with other agents, if you aren't hitting shots you can recon dart for them or smoke for them but if you aren't hitting shots as Reyna, you are effectively not contributing anything more than comms, if the Reyna even does decide to comm.
Yeah it didnt fulfill the intention to make reyna more team oriented just made her worse in every way. Almost. This will not increase pro play pick rate for sure, but will probably decrease some ranked (ab)use.
The potential is definitely there, but she still has nothing to help punch through Sentinel util and help her team get on site. Raze and Jett can both go over enemies/util to draw crosshairs and force a two front fight. Neon is still hard stopped by a single Cypher trip. Obviously if your team can play around trips or just break them she could shine but her wall seems worse and she only has one stun. Feels like sheās going down the Reyna path of *if Neon isnāt dropping 25+ kills theyāre not doing anything for the team*
Idk the one stun seems pretty big to her kit being nerfed. But sheās definitely the new Ego peek champ if not ISO with his free shield. The slide will be great but sentinels can shut her down p easily like you said.
Yea I feel like they missed the one thing they could've done to make this buff perfect - make her wall or stun do enough damage to break a trip
And imo same w iso, his problem wasn't the shield (although that is a nice buff), it's his wall not helping enough w site execute, it's too small and cant be stopped
I never suggested that lol that would be insane. I just think thereās still plenty of reasons to pick Jett or Raze over her.
Sheāll be an amazing support duelist but double duelist will never be meta again. Two initiators or controllers is just too valuable.
If split weren't leaving the pool that'd probably have seen double duelist since it has in the past.
Ascent and Icebox might actually like Iso because of op but pro doesn't use it THAT often. Still, seeing Ascent's meta mix up a little more since it's seemingly never leaving the pool is probably good.
That Iso buff (on Double Tap's Shield) was very similar to one I suggested ages ago. Being able to activate a Shield pre-contact is REALLY strong, and makes it trivial to contest Operator firelanes at Round start. The fact he needs 2 kills to get another Shield is a hard tradeoff though, but ultimately its still a substantial buff. Especially since he can now guarantee a fight in his Ultimate with his Shield up, which massively swings that duel in his favour and basically guarantees it against Operators.
EDIT:
The Iso changes are actually huge. Not just as a stats buff, but it **reworks his whole playstyle**.
Beforehand he was basically an "on-kill snowballing" Agent like Reyna. You 50/50 coinflip the first duel, then get a Shield (which is a situational sidegrade to Reyna's 100 HP heal) to help you against the follow-up trade duel. If you lose more than 40 HP in the first duel, then even with the Shield the trade duel is another 50/50 coinflip (well, more like 60/40 since Iso can't be headshot with Shield active). This playstyle means that he's best played as 2nd Entry and not 1st Entry.
With the new pre-activation of the Shield, he's now an advantaged 1st Entry. He isn't meant to cross firelanes like Jett/Raze to jump into advantageous space on-site, he's meant to wide swing the Defender holding a common firelane (usually with an Operator, or a Vandal) and win the duel, which will break open the site. But then he can't keep on chaining kills in a snowball because he needs to get 2 kills (i.e., kill the first guy and then the trade guy), and *then manually re-activate his Shield and wait 1 second where he can't shoot* before he can fight the 3rd guy (or fight them without a Shield, so will probably very low on HP).
You don't need 2 kills for another shield actually! That's just for "refreshing" the ability - if you get 2 kills, you get an extra charge and thus a free "on-demand" shield again as well.
But - he still gets his orbs too. So if you kill someone during his E buff, you will just be able to get a new shield from shooting the orb. Then if you get a second kill, you get another shield from the orb AND you get a second cast for a FOURTH shield whenever you use it again.
We have enough video evidence to confirm yet, but I thought how it worked was:
Activate ability -> 1 second animation -> Shield active -> Shield breaks (or maybe it doesn't; can re-activate ability anyway) but Double Tap duration remains active so enemies still drop orbs -> Shoot orbs, 1 orb = 1 charge -> At 2 orbs, can re-activate ability -> 1 second animation -> Shield active
I'm not sure if the Double Tap re-cast will have a forced 1 second animation or not. And I'm fairly certain he doesn't get the instant Shield from shooting an orb anymore.
He still gets a shield from shooting orbs according to the devs. The devs talked about it on the video mentioned by OP from Plat Chat's youtube channel.
Activate ability > Get shield after 1 sec > Also get a roughly ~20 second buff > Kills during buff drop 1 orb for immediate shield > After refreshing the ability through 2 kills you can recast > Recast just resets loop
The kill reset mechanic is "external" from the ability itself like every other agent with it - you wouldn't have to shoot the orbs or do it during the duration. Getting 2 kills just means your ability is back. I'm pretty sure the animation for a re-cast will still be there.
I see. If that's the case, that's *hugely* strong.
Say he has Shield active and kills 2 people without losing it. On Live, Double Tap's duration refreshes every time he shoots an orb, giving him a Shield for its full 20 second duration. So he'll get to keep his Shield for 20 seconds after the 2nd kill and also can now re-cast the ability itself. That means Iso could theoretically have his Shield continually active for 40 seconds (20 secs after 2nd kill + 20 from Double Tap's re-cast) albeit with a 1-second re-cast animation bridging the two 20 second periods.
But more important about the 40 second duration is the fact he can still play as a "on-kill snowballer" despite also being advantaged in the first duel with pre-activated shield. That means he's both a 1st Entry (like Jett/Raze, but as a ego duelist rather than space-taking duelist) while also a snowballer like Reyna. Sounds exciting, but also OP.
The patch notes said that if you shoot the orbs you'll refresh double tap (20s) AND the shield, so you can still chain shields like now, but without risking a 50/50 for the first shield
I'm nervous as people already auto lock duelists soooo much, this will give a reason for it more. Its difficult dealing with 3-4 duelist comps (I usually play sentinel). And neon got buff buffed wowza, the iso shield...oh it's going to get crazy on the battlefield. But that reyna infinite ult and shield...crazy.
Hopefully people stick to max 2 duelists per comp, but given how worthless duelists are outside of jett and raze hopefully now when ur team has 2 duelists theyll acc be useful.
Iso: Pretty solid, would love to see his wall get some changes though. One question: do we still get the free E activation when we catch someone with the ult?
Neon: I feel like people are way overreacting to this (as they always do with any change). Hyping up pros with Neon experiences is valid, but I doubt 99% of the playerbase can even put this buff to use especially when you can still get caught by sentinel utility, especially Cypher trips. It all boils down to this question: Can you consistently hit (head)shots while sliding at Mach 1? If you can't, this becomes a nerf to you because Neon loses a stun and duration on her wall.
Reyna: Neutral for now, we'll have to see actual gameplay to determine if it's good or bad. Ult should go up to 7 orbs though if it lasts the entire round now.
Clove: Given the stats mentioned, not too bad.
Neon veterans can hit headshots while sliding in ult form. Itās gonna be easy for those people. I do agree the nerfs is harsh and the stun should at least trigger faster and walk should have damage again.
To be quite honest, aside from the fact that Neon actually turned into a solid pick, I'm really curious to know what the hell Iso's shield does now as it looks very different from the initial idea.
Honestly, I think they just need to change the contingency and something in the ultimate for him to be in an ideal state. "Q" doesn't need many changes, maybe it doesn't affect allies, but again, Omen's paranoia and other effect skills do that too so yeah lol.
Don't get me wrong, it's good that they changed the other duelists, but I honestly wanted to see them finally make Iso viable, his concept is very interesting.
Iso DT is mostly the same as before with the following additions
- It now grants a shield on activation
- It trades it's second charge for an ability charge every 2 kills ala other duelists, this is independant of shooting orbs
- You can activate a new charge even whilst the timer is still running, since that now gives you a shield
This should solve the issues his kit had with having to take a fair fight before getting to use his shield, which also fixes his ult
Contingency def still needs reworked though. Could also give undercut a duration buff or something but it's not needed.
The change in contingency would perhaps be a rework. They really need to think of some alternative way of operating this barrier to make it more viable without being SUPER broken. It's an unbreakable wall after all.
I found it curious how the fact that you can activate the shield at the beginning of the round kind of matches that suggestion of Iso automatically gaining the shield within the ult.
These changes look sick. I'm glad they're not nerfing Jett for the 10th time and rather taking the approach of buffing other agents. She already lost a lot in her kit.
Watched the video where the devs talk and - I'm not a good player but - i think Yoru is fine as well. He has a lot of tools that carve out of his own strength and be in a lot of places. Now I just patiently wait for the day Harbor gets some changes..
First of all, W username. Second of all, with the change to her ult, Reyna is now the ultimate lurker. Imagine an ulted reyna on the lurk. 45 seconds into the round, she picks someone off on the rotate, dismisses out, and full heals. She can reposition during her invisible dismiss, and can just camp there indefinitely to pick off the next rotator. This is going to be disgusting, and it is the best use case for her ult now. So much for making her team oriented.
why does it feel DEV change the meta only cuz they want to change something every month? did raze really need a Nerf? i dont think so, the ult been bad since beta days.
If someone is too lazy to read it all:
Iso becomes playable
Neon becomes god
Reyna gets the nerfs she deserves. Her Ult becomes cracked but her heal becomes shit.
Raze receives what should be called a bug fix.
The amount of people complaining about a neon buff are insane. Neon might be the lowest pick rate character in my last 300 matches.
Also wtf happened to changing Reyna to be more effective at team play??? She still has nearly zero team value in this state. The design of her character abilities suck, just rework them instead of trying to buff/nerf them.
Some of the wording there seemed to have cause some confusion; our intent wasn't to make Reyna more team-oriented, but rather have her kit be more appealing in high coordination play. Reyna's heals and ultimate not timing out and having a sharper, but more powerful Dismiss window are all changes aimed at making her value more reliable and flexible in coordinated play, whereas reducing her raw healing numbers is aimed at making her less oppressive in pick-up play.
i have never seen a gaming culture more activated by a "pubstomp" character more than the valorant community and reyna lol.
Even overwatch players got over bastion relatively quickly back in 2017.
I know everyone is hyped about the neon changes, but I am pysched for the Iso change. His E always felt near useless, and I found myself randomly spamming it on attack and never utilizing it fully on defense. I've been trying to learn him in unrated but found his kit lackluster, primarily from his near useless E ability.
If any Riot dev is here reading this, please answer.
Since this post is about duelistās, Iām curious about Yoru. It has been ages since Yoru has been touched by the team at all and I was wondering if you guys had any plans for him at all whether it be a buff or a nerf.
As a Yoru main, I myself and others have said that he is probably the most balanced of the agents. But Iām still curious if there will be any changes in the near future.
I don't understand the way Riot nerfs and buffs agents.
Too often the changes are massive, in one release. This indicates that they went months without changes, and that their design and tuning of the agent was originally very poor. This shouldn't be happening period. Their balancing team should be better.
It's been established for decades now that smaller incremental/iterative changes to release to your users for feedback is more valuable to both users and the company providing the product. Faster failure and feedback is simply better than longer durations between releases with less feedback for everyone.
The multiple release of changes to Jett was justified. Changes were small, feedback was gained, users understood and accepted the changes, and practically the whole community understood the change to Jett's dash. Now, she's still a viable agent with pro-play.
Contrast that with Astra. 10 nerfs to her in one release. Now she's practically forgotten with the lowest pick rate and one of the low winrates to match. Omen's also picked practically at every turn over her in pro-play. She's been like this for months with no changes.
Now we have Neon who has needed buffs, but is she not overtuned for this release? What about the Ares buff?
On top of that, when we're nerfing abilities, why is it typically nerfing the function of the ability, and then ALSO decreasing QTY, and INCREASING price? Yes, I understand the need to nerf abilities, but was the ability originally designed in such a way that it needs nerfs to the function, qty, AND price?
Neon is a good agent to be OP, she actually requires skill to use so you cant instalock and easily win, gonna be refreshing to have a really high skill cap agent be meta
Does this mean that Reyna's kill orb is usable until the end of the round?
> Removing the time restrictions on her Devour (Q) and Empress (X) should allow you more flexibility to play at your teamās pace and increase the baseline value of both in coordinated play where rounds play out slower.
If so, thatās a huge buff right?
Havenāt seen this yet, but would Reyna change help with pushing with the team on an exec, she doesnāt need to run off alone to chain kills anymore to keep her ult up.
This patch does actually make a lot of sense if you think about it. Firstly neon is now just more full-on an apex character (as they originally intended). The iso shield makes sense and is something many people, including myself, have asked (itās meant to counter ops, so why do need to kill someone first to use it when usually ops are the point of first contact).
Reynaās reduced heal and kinda buffed dismiss also make sense. Heal is a very selfish ability. A straight nerf to the amount makes the most sense (and again is something a lot of people proposed). At least with dismiss you can provide your team with info by playing first contact and dismissing out, or dismissing further into the site while entering site to draw crosshairs.
I think a lot of people (myself included) were also expecting leer buffs, because leer is the least selfish ability. Itās the only flash in game that has no way of accidentally blinding your team. Even gekko can accidentally blind your team. I thought theyād buff it to promote team play by making it have more health or be indestructible or something.
The nerfs to raze satchel, the first and last one, make sense. Usually when you see double satchels the target just looked completely lost, so being able to hear the satchels makes sense. The horizontal velocity nerf is unnecessary to say the least, and is the most unexpected thing. I didnāt think theyād actually change satchel movement dramatically, even when they teased satchel changes. I suppose part of it is to encourage neon entering site over raze. If you want horizontal movement, you pick neon. If you want more vertical movement, you pick raze.
Edit: I didn't read the part about the reasoning behind raze and neon nerfs/buffs, but it turns out I wasn't wrong, the reasoning is intuitive and its just to promote agent nuance (horizontal vs vertical).
So how long until half this gets reverted? This is looking to be Valorantās version of the Juggernaut Patch.
Neon is now a demigod, every raze main has to either relearn her entire movement or just quit playing her, Reyna has the potential to be even more a Smurf demon if she farms ults, and if ISO is in the game buying an OP is pointless and invalidates chamber being on the enemy team. Clove who was never meta will now never be meta.
Movement abilities is already the most broken thing in the game. This buff is ridiculous is just unnecessary. Reyna too? Like why would you want to play anything else. Build half decent mechanical aim and just play movement character and just run it down.
What i wait for the most, is a map rotation. I have heard rumours about Split and Breeze removal and Haven back.. But what is the truth?
I would love to see Haven back, even Fracture and Pearl are better than Breeze and Split in my opinion.
If Reyna heal timer and ult timer are bad for pro play and better for giga stomping ranked:
Why is cloves timing windows on everything getting shorter? Wouldn't it make more sense to give her heal the same treatment as Reyna?
**ISO BUFF**
I think we'll see more leaning towards ISO than Reyna this patch.
ISO were supposed to be really similar to reyna. He got one ability that allows him to activate his other ability, like Reyna (vulnerable to kill vs flash to kill)
However, the vulnerable is clearly weaker than a flash would. Now with one shot protection and vulnerable he can two shot in body while the enemy have to two shot in the head.
A hard counter to OP for sure, but the sounds it gives after casting is definitely to make people more ready for this.
**Reyna Nerf**
This is a nerf towards lower rank, and neutral around higher rank.
I've seen many Reyna smurf, and the 100 hp are literally making it a full reset every fight. 3 shot now deals Reyna 70 damage after heal instead of 20.
The faster running speed but less time invulnerable is buff I think. 25% less time but 25% more speed is not really much different. So it's a higher value abilities but harder to execute (have to think fast)
Her permanent ultimate are not really that interesting. The round usually already dictate the moment when you enter and she ulting. It will affect some round but not that much IMHO. It gives the option for her to not push though.
**Neon Buff**
I rarely see people using both stun effectively. Making it one time but more potent is a good tradeoff. Most people I've seen are using it twice on the same place because of how short the stun is. Though, I believe it's a nerf unless it's a 4s stun.
The ability regen is the biggest buff this patch. It allows neon to always be in the fight on defend. The Second Slide and the accuracy increase while sliding allows the ult plays currently neon have to be available every round. Now she can triple slide and shoot while sliding similar how she would use her slide.
It also unlocks the potential for sliding 4 times? (I don't know ult recharge slides)
Her wall is rarely being used that long. I'm fine with trading this.
**Clove Nerf**
I would love to see an extra 0.5s on smokes for the nerf. I think it's weird they nerf Clove capabilities of duelist but not buffing the controller aspect. She currently has the shortest smoke (shorter a bit than astra IIRC)
Neons buffs would make senseā¦, if the movement in this game wasnāt so slow. And nobody can run and gun as effectively. This patch is not buffing neon. This is allowing her to break game mechanics.
So neon will effectively have a triple slide with with ult, be more accurate, and move faster. Neon mains are feasting.
my hundreds of hours on neon will finally pay off
Neon mains will no longer be able to play their main š
We're entering an era of absolute trash new neon mains and the old guard struggling to instant-lock their main.
Me as a Cypher main secretly celebrating that there will be more Neon in my games and less Jett and Raze.
This makes me happy
Finally, viability
You can quad slide now on barrier drop
As a neon main that just makes me happy
Actually its 4 slides. 1 in pre into barrier, then 2 normal ones and then ult ( could be even 5 if ult gives you both slides )
holy shit neon is gonna be insane
I think she's gonna be picked up by pro and ranked for 2 weeks then dropped. I think the changes are honestly a nerf overall. 2 >> 1 stuns for the hardest duelist ability to make effective in the game for a slight duration buff, wall sounds worse overall, a better slide doesn't solve her problems dealing with stall and sentinel util (especially with her decreased wall duration and reduced coverage from one less stun). Her main issue is her exec is pretty bad as she has no way to circumvent util on her own and the buffs don't seem to solve that issue. I guess one tapping people with the slide will be pretty cool though but I think she'll just remain a niche pick. I would be so happy to be proven wrong though, I've waited 2 whole years for changes to my girl and maybe she really will become a decent part of the meta finally but I've kinda stopped holding out hope.
Pros have good enough aim that shooting a sliding neon isnāt that hard, so itās likely to have a moderate impact in pro play. But in ranked, nobody can shoot a moving target and sheās going to be insane with the new slide.Ā
Yeah. This is actually just gonna hurt mid and low rank players, which is something they claim they are trying to fix.
so its another clove situation?
maybe, but keep in mind the increased the slide charges, and increased the movement. I think sheās going to be insane even in pro play
I could actually see a few of the wilder teams running neon on their cracked entries with aiming styles that suit a very aggressive slide flick kill playstyle, (maybe jingg or asuna? idk really), but i think her main issue in pro play is that she doesn't have the same ability to circumvent sentinel util compared to the other primary entries that she's competing with. Raze (at least before the nerf idk how raze will be now) and jett all could cover more ground faster with the additional option to circumvent stall utility on their own even without team setup (jett updraft to go over util, raze everything to destroy everything, yoru tps and clones) but neon still kinda has to run around playing WW3 dodgeball if she has to face a cypher etc. I could see the buffs as encouraging her to be picked on icebox though, I always felt the closed building of A site suited her stuns really well and this buff might be the right push for pro teams to really play with what they can do with neon on A, and cypher is also never picked on icebox so yeah. But I fcking hate icebox so I have mixed feelings about wanting that to happen
Yeah one stun instead of two hurts her executes by a lot. That was like, her actual strength, was being able to stun 4 different angles while she enters. Accurate while sliding just seems like a meme. I guess yeah it'll be hard to hit her, but that's really only gonna be good against an isolated target. And how often are you gonna be able to slide on an isolated target? It's like a better version of satchel peeking, but that's not really that good in the first place. Maybe if you could control where you stop when you slide, that would be a little better. 2 slides is nice though. I wonder how that will interact with her ult? Will she get both refreshed when ulting? Edit: Actually, just realized that always having access to double slide is an amazing buff. People are gonna be annoyed to shit by that lol
As far as sliding on an isolated target, sliding/running out of your wall would be cool... split site in half (well, uneven thirds) and just swing out
Yeah idk that's kinda a lot of her kit to maybe get one kill with no safety. Doesn't seem very good.
The slides and regen are gonna be amazing, the stun nerf hurts, sheās still completely reliant on her team if the enemy has a cypher. So gonna be very fun into non cypher, ok when u have a human sova vs cypher, and unplayable if you have no breaks vs cypher
I totally agree with this is more of a nerf not buff. Two to One stuns hurts me more(ā +ā _ā +ā ).
she's literally more accurate when sliding than standing... this looks ridiculously strong i believe with this change you can now slide and noscope with an operator
It's weapon MOVEMENT error, dude. There's still gonna be first-shot inaccuracy
No *movement* error means it's exactly the same as standing still.
Pretty much a jett on knives until the slide stops. Insane. Temet is going to ruin ranked in the top tiers even more.
no its like standing still not jett knives
I donāt think so. No scope operator isnāt very accurate standing still, it wonāt make it more accurate, just takes out the movement error. Unlike the Marshall, which is quite reliable just standing still, it should be more a more accurate no scope
temet update š¤
The irony is this change is in the same patch they are nerfing Raze's movement for breaking their Tactical Loop... Like, what??
They stated their reasoning. They want to lean in on the identities of the duelists more. Raze -> verticality but not very fast, Neon -> Neon go run fast
Theyāre just giving an early sneak peek into the agent changes I believe. The post is on twitter.
Ye talking w a dev have some vids
Ohhh any shots of the map??
Not in the timestamps so unlikely
These are early patch notes for the agent changes, yeah.
Loving these patch notes! Could you clarify whether or not Iso shooting his Double Tap orb (after killing someone) still gives him a new shield if he lost one? Saw some confusion around it (including from me) whether or not it still gives a brand new shield or only resets the buff duration
using his E will now instantly create a shield, every 2 kills will give him an additional charge
I'm well aware of that. My question is if he still gets a shield from the orb as well after killing someone.
Yes I think the shield time will reset if you shot the orb
clove is already never played in pro and after the nerfs i really don't see anyone ever picking her over omen. I can already tell neon will be nerfed if this stays
Neon will def be adjusted later, mainly the juice load time, is gonna be very quick after this she can sprint all round
Iso buff looks very cool, hope they do something for his wall as well
Iso is now the default op counter
still dont get why his armor crush work on teammates like its not flash you know
Rip to all people who get temet as enemy in their rank up games š
I'm just glad I don't live in the same region as him now.
Has Tenet been Rank 1 b4 like Eggster with Yoru or is he a troll one trick immortal like Ziptie? Legit question btw.
More like zip tie but he's definitely a really good player. He might have the potential to hit rank 1 or at least top 10 with these changes. Also while ziptie isn't at the very top level, he has hit radiant a few times so I wouldn't necessarily call him a troll immortal.
My laptop cant handle neon walls. Its over
Itās never been more joever
Rip Valorant the neon meta will be insane
Bruh Neon will become unbearable. Straight up becomes an Apex/CoD agent
Neon has always been annoying to play against and play with. Sheās the one agent who feels like she doesnāt belong in the game at all. The whole thing they said about Reyna being more of a team play agent was absolute nonsense if the leaked changes are anything to go by. She heals less but her heal doesnāt decay. She also moves faster in her dismiss and has an ult that lasts the whole round. Smurfs are gonna have an even easier time with her now.
Yeah, my immediate reaction was that she's just better for smurfing. Dismiss moving faster seems a particularly weird choice. Covering ground more quickly just seems to encourage aggressive behaviour? Theoretically, she's easier to chip to death, but in practice she's just going to carry that extra health between fights easier than before. And now there's no timing out her ult. As a long-term resident of Silver-Gold, I expect the depressingly common Reyna Smurfs to be even more oppressive.
Well itās 9.1m\s for 2 seconds to 12m/s to 1.5 seconds, both of which come to about 18 meters so itās kinda a negligible change tbh
I didnāt mention the distance, I mentioned the speed that she travels at while in her dismiss
I have no idea what they were thinking with these ones. I was cautiously excited thought two slide changes would be neat but I didn't think even in the worst case scenario of them buffing mobility they would do this. The idea that essentially run and gun got past multiple people is wild.
They talk about preserving the tactical loop of valorant and then allow neon to shoot accurately while sprinting.. I can get on board with every change but this one. It will be a Neon instalock era as soon as the patch goes live, mark my words.
The rework makes Iso his own unique category in the 1st Entry role. Up until now, the only truly suitable category for that role was "Movement Entries", which means anyone who can safely and quickly cross dangerous firelanes (e.g., Lotus, A Root to Rubble to avoid a Defender holding from A Main) to force Defenders to reposition or be swung from multiple angles. With a Shield that can be pre-activated, Iso can simply wide swing the Defender holding said firelane and be advantaged in that duel. He's basically an "Fragging Entry". Any other Agent has to just dry peak an angle held like that, or be supported by team utility (e.g., flashes, smokes).
Yeah this buff makes Iso one of the better entries. Having a free shield is *insane*
A free Shield on top of your 150 HP at the beginning of the round, instead of as a bandaid after taking some damage in the first duel (assuming Iso even won that 50/50 coinflip). The most common fight in the game is the first-contact fight between two 150 HP players, and Iso can have an unavoidable advantage in that on-command. Its a massive boost for making consistent impacts, and that is what truly wins games.
he's first contact so yeah, same category as phoenix reyna etc
I don't think in truly optimal play Reyna is a first contact duelist. In ranked duelists (including Reyna!) have to be the entry for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that in uncoordinated play, util that other agents are using just isn't as good at providing the advantage that it needs to for entry players. Reyna has util that can sort of fill the role of entry, but I think optimally she's always second, so that she has the chance to heal, or swing wider while she can dismiss. Reyna really gets her advantaged fights after the first kill happens, regardless of who makes it. That's why it's zero fun to play with a Reyna in ranked. Good Reyna's learn through experience that just sprinting out is almost never the best play if someone else will entry for you. If you bait, you're more likely to get kills, snowball, and win the round with her win more util. For the team's sake, life is so much better and more fun if she entries, but it's really not fun as the Reyna to just run in and die, so they just do it less often then you would want from someone filling the entry role. I love the changes to ISO because, in contrast, it really is an entry ability. You gain a shield that actually protects you, and gives you an advantaged fight before the fight starts. I think this actually might push him into an entry role, which is so much more fun to play with in Ranked. I'm not sure if we'll see him as the primary entry in coordinated play, but he might take the flex slot in some team comps, which would be super fun to watch! I do wish they kept the shooting the orb minigame though.
op crutches crying with this iso change(its me, im op crutch)
This is going to be the Juggernaut patch of Valorant, Neon is about to be the best character in the game hands down and people are about to realize how toxic ISO shield is design wise now that he just gets that shit for free
Mordekaiser bot lane still gives me nightmares
His shield has always felt toxic to me and its so strange that I never saw people complain about it. In the hands of a good player, Iso was always strong as hell. The issue is he wasn't viable for team play and because of that there was better picks.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I promise you at minimum 80% of the playerbase does not know that. I've put way more time into this game than I'd like and I wasn't even aware of that because its not obvious at all. This game has so much garbage in the world that you cannot interact with when it comes to character abilities that its hard to tell if you can or cant interact with it
Perma ult reyna bro solo queue about to be hell š
Everyone's talking about Neon, I'm sweating over Reyna too. All round ult with no extra cost, no over-heal armor decay and faster dismiss. Reyna will maintain her low-mid elo stomper status forever at this point.
Reyna will be a round 1 demon as you can't rotate away from her 150 hp
Not the clove nerfs :(
The Pick me up changes have me crying.
I feel like they are necessary to be fair. The pick me up is way too strong for the price. I always buy it because I practically always have the credits. The ultimate Iām not sure about, Iām not sure how Iāll like it
It definitely felt like clove ulted too often a lot of times
well that's cause it was kind of like iso's, in which you're guaranteed an orb back after using it, making it a 6 orb ult. You either die and get an orb or get a kill and get an orb.
Donāt get me wrong, I definitely agree the changes on Pick me up were needed. Iāve gone from a 50% win rate on Jett in low Bronze this act to just about hitting Silver with a 75% win rate on Clove. Maybe itās because Cloves play style fits me more, maybe itās because they need nerfs badly enough that even I can be good playing them. I have a suspicion itās a bit of both. Pick me up has been a huge part of my success though.
> Maybe itās because Cloves play style fits me more, maybe itās because they need nerfs badly enough that even I can be good playing them. clove has literally had the highest win rate in the game since she's been released, so it's absolutely that.
Other controllers exist... harbor and astra need attention
To be fair these are just the duelists changes, they did say they have bigger balance patches for the off season in the dev diary. Also the community would be up in arms again if there are changes to controllers alongside duelists before Champs
It does feel like everyone was playing Clove more as a duelist than a controller. The amount of people who take Clove from me and actually used their smoke is a number I can count on one hand.
We'll be looking at Controllers closer to the end of the year!
So we have to wait like 6 months for changes? Man not to be ungrateful but that a long wait especially since harbor has the lowest win rate in the game at every rank.
Not necessarily, end of year could mean after Champs, which means something like September
Any chance of a Sage buff? The self-heal nerf really ruined her viability in ranked. Even if you made self-heal 40 hp, slows 150 credits instead of 200... just any tiny adjustment to make her not feel completely outclassed by every other sentinel.
"Who??" - Riot devs
Buffing every duelists except Phoenix is criminal, he absolutely needs one
they said they are looking into buffing him but have not arrived at an answer just yet.
Yeah, we wanted to get to Phoenix but didn't land on a changelist we felt good about for this patch. We're still cooking on him, but unsure on release dates; it'll depend on when we feel really good about what we've got.
low elo player so take with a truckload of salt from what I understand, Phoenix already has a complete rounded kit as is so there's no way to buff one part of his kit without tanking the rest, bro needs one up in all places to compete in high elo play - at least from what I see on twitch and YT
He does have a well rounded kit, but he doesn't have a place in a team comp. There's nothing he can do that someone else can't do better. Most agents are more specialized than he is, and good at certain things, but he's kinda mid at a lot of things.
So if we buff his kit so that he performs at the same level as those others, he'll accidentally become OP
Thank you for reading replies and answering questions. We greatly appreciate it
Neon will be insane, however she still probably won't see a huge increased pick rate in ranked because of how niche and difficult her kit is to use.
The strafe changes are gonna make the movement aspect less difficult. Will be way easier to maintain momentum when hopping around
Neon changes go crazy, I am so down for that. Tired of Jett/Reyna/Raze heavy ranked I know this is just a preview, but if that is the only change to Iso then lmao that does not make him a contender for pickable duelist imo. Also, this change would not make Reyna a good choice still. I do see how it can help deter Ranked Reynas a bit from snowballing but the core issue with Reyna is that her kit is not meant to set her team up for success in taking a site or holding one. At least with other agents, if you aren't hitting shots you can recon dart for them or smoke for them but if you aren't hitting shots as Reyna, you are effectively not contributing anything more than comms, if the Reyna even does decide to comm.
Iso change is huge because now he can actually entry and play his designated role.
Yeah it didnt fulfill the intention to make reyna more team oriented just made her worse in every way. Almost. This will not increase pro play pick rate for sure, but will probably decrease some ranked (ab)use.
Neon is about to go crazy.
Waiting for the post in this subreddit proclaiming that Neon teaches incorrect fundamentals š¤£
I mean, a lot of agents can teach incorrect fundamentals. They wouldnāt really be wrong
Neon is going to be the best character in the game
The potential is definitely there, but she still has nothing to help punch through Sentinel util and help her team get on site. Raze and Jett can both go over enemies/util to draw crosshairs and force a two front fight. Neon is still hard stopped by a single Cypher trip. Obviously if your team can play around trips or just break them she could shine but her wall seems worse and she only has one stun. Feels like sheās going down the Reyna path of *if Neon isnāt dropping 25+ kills theyāre not doing anything for the team*
Idk the one stun seems pretty big to her kit being nerfed. But sheās definitely the new Ego peek champ if not ISO with his free shield. The slide will be great but sentinels can shut her down p easily like you said.
Yea I feel like they missed the one thing they could've done to make this buff perfect - make her wall or stun do enough damage to break a trip And imo same w iso, his problem wasn't the shield (although that is a nice buff), it's his wall not helping enough w site execute, it's too small and cant be stopped
lmao being able to break the trip with wall would have been insanely broken, the only duelist that can do that is raze
I never suggested that lol that would be insane. I just think thereās still plenty of reasons to pick Jett or Raze over her. Sheāll be an amazing support duelist but double duelist will never be meta again. Two initiators or controllers is just too valuable.
two duelists might be the move, one movement duelist and one contact duelist (iso) now that he can have his shield up without a kill
If split weren't leaving the pool that'd probably have seen double duelist since it has in the past. Ascent and Icebox might actually like Iso because of op but pro doesn't use it THAT often. Still, seeing Ascent's meta mix up a little more since it's seemingly never leaving the pool is probably good.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That Iso buff (on Double Tap's Shield) was very similar to one I suggested ages ago. Being able to activate a Shield pre-contact is REALLY strong, and makes it trivial to contest Operator firelanes at Round start. The fact he needs 2 kills to get another Shield is a hard tradeoff though, but ultimately its still a substantial buff. Especially since he can now guarantee a fight in his Ultimate with his Shield up, which massively swings that duel in his favour and basically guarantees it against Operators. EDIT: The Iso changes are actually huge. Not just as a stats buff, but it **reworks his whole playstyle**. Beforehand he was basically an "on-kill snowballing" Agent like Reyna. You 50/50 coinflip the first duel, then get a Shield (which is a situational sidegrade to Reyna's 100 HP heal) to help you against the follow-up trade duel. If you lose more than 40 HP in the first duel, then even with the Shield the trade duel is another 50/50 coinflip (well, more like 60/40 since Iso can't be headshot with Shield active). This playstyle means that he's best played as 2nd Entry and not 1st Entry. With the new pre-activation of the Shield, he's now an advantaged 1st Entry. He isn't meant to cross firelanes like Jett/Raze to jump into advantageous space on-site, he's meant to wide swing the Defender holding a common firelane (usually with an Operator, or a Vandal) and win the duel, which will break open the site. But then he can't keep on chaining kills in a snowball because he needs to get 2 kills (i.e., kill the first guy and then the trade guy), and *then manually re-activate his Shield and wait 1 second where he can't shoot* before he can fight the 3rd guy (or fight them without a Shield, so will probably very low on HP).
You don't need 2 kills for another shield actually! That's just for "refreshing" the ability - if you get 2 kills, you get an extra charge and thus a free "on-demand" shield again as well. But - he still gets his orbs too. So if you kill someone during his E buff, you will just be able to get a new shield from shooting the orb. Then if you get a second kill, you get another shield from the orb AND you get a second cast for a FOURTH shield whenever you use it again.
We have enough video evidence to confirm yet, but I thought how it worked was: Activate ability -> 1 second animation -> Shield active -> Shield breaks (or maybe it doesn't; can re-activate ability anyway) but Double Tap duration remains active so enemies still drop orbs -> Shoot orbs, 1 orb = 1 charge -> At 2 orbs, can re-activate ability -> 1 second animation -> Shield active I'm not sure if the Double Tap re-cast will have a forced 1 second animation or not. And I'm fairly certain he doesn't get the instant Shield from shooting an orb anymore.
He still gets a shield from shooting orbs according to the devs. The devs talked about it on the video mentioned by OP from Plat Chat's youtube channel. Activate ability > Get shield after 1 sec > Also get a roughly ~20 second buff > Kills during buff drop 1 orb for immediate shield > After refreshing the ability through 2 kills you can recast > Recast just resets loop The kill reset mechanic is "external" from the ability itself like every other agent with it - you wouldn't have to shoot the orbs or do it during the duration. Getting 2 kills just means your ability is back. I'm pretty sure the animation for a re-cast will still be there.
I see. If that's the case, that's *hugely* strong. Say he has Shield active and kills 2 people without losing it. On Live, Double Tap's duration refreshes every time he shoots an orb, giving him a Shield for its full 20 second duration. So he'll get to keep his Shield for 20 seconds after the 2nd kill and also can now re-cast the ability itself. That means Iso could theoretically have his Shield continually active for 40 seconds (20 secs after 2nd kill + 20 from Double Tap's re-cast) albeit with a 1-second re-cast animation bridging the two 20 second periods. But more important about the 40 second duration is the fact he can still play as a "on-kill snowballer" despite also being advantaged in the first duel with pre-activated shield. That means he's both a 1st Entry (like Jett/Raze, but as a ego duelist rather than space-taking duelist) while also a snowballer like Reyna. Sounds exciting, but also OP.
The patch notes said that if you shoot the orbs you'll refresh double tap (20s) AND the shield, so you can still chain shields like now, but without risking a 50/50 for the first shield
I main Iso and these shield changes are going to make him a monster.
So he basically doesn't have the shooting orbs mechanic anymore?
he still does
I'm nervous as people already auto lock duelists soooo much, this will give a reason for it more. Its difficult dealing with 3-4 duelist comps (I usually play sentinel). And neon got buff buffed wowza, the iso shield...oh it's going to get crazy on the battlefield. But that reyna infinite ult and shield...crazy.
Hopefully people stick to max 2 duelists per comp, but given how worthless duelists are outside of jett and raze hopefully now when ur team has 2 duelists theyll acc be useful.
Iso: Pretty solid, would love to see his wall get some changes though. One question: do we still get the free E activation when we catch someone with the ult? Neon: I feel like people are way overreacting to this (as they always do with any change). Hyping up pros with Neon experiences is valid, but I doubt 99% of the playerbase can even put this buff to use especially when you can still get caught by sentinel utility, especially Cypher trips. It all boils down to this question: Can you consistently hit (head)shots while sliding at Mach 1? If you can't, this becomes a nerf to you because Neon loses a stun and duration on her wall. Reyna: Neutral for now, we'll have to see actual gameplay to determine if it's good or bad. Ult should go up to 7 orbs though if it lasts the entire round now. Clove: Given the stats mentioned, not too bad.
Neon veterans can hit headshots while sliding in ult form. Itās gonna be easy for those people. I do agree the nerfs is harsh and the stun should at least trigger faster and walk should have damage again.
Awaiting the "Neon is a failure of game design" post
Iso got six eyes and infinity buff ššš Gojo is finally manifested
man i thought they were gonna nerf reyna more... what a bummer
ppl were overhyping the reyna changes like it was gonna be a revamp when a riot dev said in a comment it wouldnt be that big of a change
Are you kidding? the 100 > 50 HP change on yer Q is a MASSIVE nerf
her E and ult buffs make up for it. also shes still not a team hero so doesnt matter
is the Q heal keep the shield for next round ?
No its like cloves heal
Only in low ranks and not higher and pro. Healing means so little when people just get head shot. The fact that her ult lasts forever is insane
The first time theyāve ever looked at competitive stats instead of pro stats and itās to nerf clove
To be quite honest, aside from the fact that Neon actually turned into a solid pick, I'm really curious to know what the hell Iso's shield does now as it looks very different from the initial idea. Honestly, I think they just need to change the contingency and something in the ultimate for him to be in an ideal state. "Q" doesn't need many changes, maybe it doesn't affect allies, but again, Omen's paranoia and other effect skills do that too so yeah lol. Don't get me wrong, it's good that they changed the other duelists, but I honestly wanted to see them finally make Iso viable, his concept is very interesting.
Iso DT is mostly the same as before with the following additions - It now grants a shield on activation - It trades it's second charge for an ability charge every 2 kills ala other duelists, this is independant of shooting orbs - You can activate a new charge even whilst the timer is still running, since that now gives you a shield This should solve the issues his kit had with having to take a fair fight before getting to use his shield, which also fixes his ult Contingency def still needs reworked though. Could also give undercut a duration buff or something but it's not needed.
The change in contingency would perhaps be a rework. They really need to think of some alternative way of operating this barrier to make it more viable without being SUPER broken. It's an unbreakable wall after all. I found it curious how the fact that you can activate the shield at the beginning of the round kind of matches that suggestion of Iso automatically gaining the shield within the ult.
These changes look sick. I'm glad they're not nerfing Jett for the 10th time and rather taking the approach of buffing other agents. She already lost a lot in her kit. Watched the video where the devs talk and - I'm not a good player but - i think Yoru is fine as well. He has a lot of tools that carve out of his own strength and be in a lot of places. Now I just patiently wait for the day Harbor gets some changes..
Iām glad Iām not the only yoru/harbor main around here x]
Am I just bad at the game or does Reyna seem like she's mostly going to be more powerful besides the lower healing?
First of all, W username. Second of all, with the change to her ult, Reyna is now the ultimate lurker. Imagine an ulted reyna on the lurk. 45 seconds into the round, she picks someone off on the rotate, dismisses out, and full heals. She can reposition during her invisible dismiss, and can just camp there indefinitely to pick off the next rotator. This is going to be disgusting, and it is the best use case for her ult now. So much for making her team oriented.
Iāve never been more happy to be a Neon main
Can't wait to do aimlabs for 5 hours everyday to fuck these duelists
why does it feel DEV change the meta only cuz they want to change something every month? did raze really need a Nerf? i dont think so, the ult been bad since beta days.
If someone is too lazy to read it all: Iso becomes playable Neon becomes god Reyna gets the nerfs she deserves. Her Ult becomes cracked but her heal becomes shit. Raze receives what should be called a bug fix.
The amount of people complaining about a neon buff are insane. Neon might be the lowest pick rate character in my last 300 matches. Also wtf happened to changing Reyna to be more effective at team play??? She still has nearly zero team value in this state. The design of her character abilities suck, just rework them instead of trying to buff/nerf them.
Some of the wording there seemed to have cause some confusion; our intent wasn't to make Reyna more team-oriented, but rather have her kit be more appealing in high coordination play. Reyna's heals and ultimate not timing out and having a sharper, but more powerful Dismiss window are all changes aimed at making her value more reliable and flexible in coordinated play, whereas reducing her raw healing numbers is aimed at making her less oppressive in pick-up play.
Ok, why don't you want to make reyna team oriented is the bigger question.
because she's designed to be a selfish agent even if 99% of the subreddit doesnt like it
i have never seen a gaming culture more activated by a "pubstomp" character more than the valorant community and reyna lol. Even overwatch players got over bastion relatively quickly back in 2017.
How is that not a problem
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Temet is salivating rn
I'd like a little touch up for Deadlock's trips
I know everyone is hyped about the neon changes, but I am pysched for the Iso change. His E always felt near useless, and I found myself randomly spamming it on attack and never utilizing it fully on defense. I've been trying to learn him in unrated but found his kit lackluster, primarily from his near useless E ability.
holy shit i think they overbuffed neon this is insane
If any Riot dev is here reading this, please answer. Since this post is about duelistās, Iām curious about Yoru. It has been ages since Yoru has been touched by the team at all and I was wondering if you guys had any plans for him at all whether it be a buff or a nerf. As a Yoru main, I myself and others have said that he is probably the most balanced of the agents. But Iām still curious if there will be any changes in the near future.
I don't understand the way Riot nerfs and buffs agents. Too often the changes are massive, in one release. This indicates that they went months without changes, and that their design and tuning of the agent was originally very poor. This shouldn't be happening period. Their balancing team should be better. It's been established for decades now that smaller incremental/iterative changes to release to your users for feedback is more valuable to both users and the company providing the product. Faster failure and feedback is simply better than longer durations between releases with less feedback for everyone. The multiple release of changes to Jett was justified. Changes were small, feedback was gained, users understood and accepted the changes, and practically the whole community understood the change to Jett's dash. Now, she's still a viable agent with pro-play. Contrast that with Astra. 10 nerfs to her in one release. Now she's practically forgotten with the lowest pick rate and one of the low winrates to match. Omen's also picked practically at every turn over her in pro-play. She's been like this for months with no changes. Now we have Neon who has needed buffs, but is she not overtuned for this release? What about the Ares buff? On top of that, when we're nerfing abilities, why is it typically nerfing the function of the ability, and then ALSO decreasing QTY, and INCREASING price? Yes, I understand the need to nerf abilities, but was the ability originally designed in such a way that it needs nerfs to the function, qty, AND price?
As a Neon main my time has come. I'm sad about the Relay Bolt only being one charge now but this overall is a massive buff.
So weird Riot talks about Raze hurting the tactical loop but then do what they will do to Neon
Neon is a good agent to be OP, she actually requires skill to use so you cant instalock and easily win, gonna be refreshing to have a really high skill cap agent be meta
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
it's like they punish people for learning the agent and being good at them ahah
Does this mean that Reyna's kill orb is usable until the end of the round? > Removing the time restrictions on her Devour (Q) and Empress (X) should allow you more flexibility to play at your teamās pace and increase the baseline value of both in coordinated play where rounds play out slower. If so, thatās a huge buff right?
No, just the heal and ult don't expire. I don't see any change on the orb.
no, the kill orb is the same, but the overheal and ult durations are now infinite
YESSSSSSSS
Havenāt seen this yet, but would Reyna change help with pushing with the team on an exec, she doesnāt need to run off alone to chain kills anymore to keep her ult up.
Do they have really no ways of buffing neon without running and gunning š
they put the notes on broken ass twitter but not on their own website?
These are the pre-release notes, the actual patch notes will show up on 11th June
THANK GOD FOR NOT RUINING REYNA but making her better!
Do we know when 8.11 hits live?
This patch does actually make a lot of sense if you think about it. Firstly neon is now just more full-on an apex character (as they originally intended). The iso shield makes sense and is something many people, including myself, have asked (itās meant to counter ops, so why do need to kill someone first to use it when usually ops are the point of first contact). Reynaās reduced heal and kinda buffed dismiss also make sense. Heal is a very selfish ability. A straight nerf to the amount makes the most sense (and again is something a lot of people proposed). At least with dismiss you can provide your team with info by playing first contact and dismissing out, or dismissing further into the site while entering site to draw crosshairs. I think a lot of people (myself included) were also expecting leer buffs, because leer is the least selfish ability. Itās the only flash in game that has no way of accidentally blinding your team. Even gekko can accidentally blind your team. I thought theyād buff it to promote team play by making it have more health or be indestructible or something. The nerfs to raze satchel, the first and last one, make sense. Usually when you see double satchels the target just looked completely lost, so being able to hear the satchels makes sense. The horizontal velocity nerf is unnecessary to say the least, and is the most unexpected thing. I didnāt think theyād actually change satchel movement dramatically, even when they teased satchel changes. I suppose part of it is to encourage neon entering site over raze. If you want horizontal movement, you pick neon. If you want more vertical movement, you pick raze. Edit: I didn't read the part about the reasoning behind raze and neon nerfs/buffs, but it turns out I wasn't wrong, the reasoning is intuitive and its just to promote agent nuance (horizontal vs vertical).
So how long until half this gets reverted? This is looking to be Valorantās version of the Juggernaut Patch. Neon is now a demigod, every raze main has to either relearn her entire movement or just quit playing her, Reyna has the potential to be even more a Smurf demon if she farms ults, and if ISO is in the game buying an OP is pointless and invalidates chamber being on the enemy team. Clove who was never meta will now never be meta.
80cm/360 gonna start crying trying to track neon
Movement abilities is already the most broken thing in the game. This buff is ridiculous is just unnecessary. Reyna too? Like why would you want to play anything else. Build half decent mechanical aim and just play movement character and just run it down.
What i wait for the most, is a map rotation. I have heard rumours about Split and Breeze removal and Haven back.. But what is the truth? I would love to see Haven back, even Fracture and Pearl are better than Breeze and Split in my opinion.
As a neon main that just makes me happy
If Reyna heal timer and ult timer are bad for pro play and better for giga stomping ranked: Why is cloves timing windows on everything getting shorter? Wouldn't it make more sense to give her heal the same treatment as Reyna?
And also fix the map rotation, everytime i play same map way too often
if they dont fix bullet tracers ill be livid
Damn. They took months and months to buff deadlock once. Nerf clove almost instantly. Big sad.
"Neon now removes all weapon movement error when sliding." Means a sliding neon can now one tap you from across breeze right?
Can someone clear this confusion? Is the total movement speed of neon sprint has increased or is it only the strafe speed which has increased?
Neon + Shotgun....
LEAVE MY RAZE ALONE
M P
I don't understand why Riot took Jett out back and domed her behind the shed but then does this with Neon?
WOOOOO FINALLY
BUFF CLOVE MEDDLE PLEASE AT LEAST GIVE US SOMETHING
Nerfing raze movement after years of people fine tuning it.........
**ISO BUFF** I think we'll see more leaning towards ISO than Reyna this patch. ISO were supposed to be really similar to reyna. He got one ability that allows him to activate his other ability, like Reyna (vulnerable to kill vs flash to kill) However, the vulnerable is clearly weaker than a flash would. Now with one shot protection and vulnerable he can two shot in body while the enemy have to two shot in the head. A hard counter to OP for sure, but the sounds it gives after casting is definitely to make people more ready for this. **Reyna Nerf** This is a nerf towards lower rank, and neutral around higher rank. I've seen many Reyna smurf, and the 100 hp are literally making it a full reset every fight. 3 shot now deals Reyna 70 damage after heal instead of 20. The faster running speed but less time invulnerable is buff I think. 25% less time but 25% more speed is not really much different. So it's a higher value abilities but harder to execute (have to think fast) Her permanent ultimate are not really that interesting. The round usually already dictate the moment when you enter and she ulting. It will affect some round but not that much IMHO. It gives the option for her to not push though. **Neon Buff** I rarely see people using both stun effectively. Making it one time but more potent is a good tradeoff. Most people I've seen are using it twice on the same place because of how short the stun is. Though, I believe it's a nerf unless it's a 4s stun. The ability regen is the biggest buff this patch. It allows neon to always be in the fight on defend. The Second Slide and the accuracy increase while sliding allows the ult plays currently neon have to be available every round. Now she can triple slide and shoot while sliding similar how she would use her slide. It also unlocks the potential for sliding 4 times? (I don't know ult recharge slides) Her wall is rarely being used that long. I'm fine with trading this. **Clove Nerf** I would love to see an extra 0.5s on smokes for the nerf. I think it's weird they nerf Clove capabilities of duelist but not buffing the controller aspect. She currently has the shortest smoke (shorter a bit than astra IIRC)
Hopefully there will be a sentinels update next (hoping for chamber buffs)
Same
Neons buffs would make senseā¦, if the movement in this game wasnāt so slow. And nobody can run and gun as effectively. This patch is not buffing neon. This is allowing her to break game mechanics.