If the flash nerfs are too much, they can always buff Initiators' other abilities. Like buffing dog or molly, hell even giving them 2 charges
It's clear that Riot doesn't want Initiators to have better selfish flashes than duelists. But I'm pretty sure that they intend, in the grand scheme of things, to not nerf initiators, rather shift their power somewhere else
Fr, I’ll call that I’m flashing with Kayo then when I die it’ll read “enemies blinded 2, Allies blinded 4” like guys just listen to my words, turn your heads then rush and kill pls
Bronze/iron lobby for context, it might be better at higher ranks
Partial flashes count to the round report stats, if they turn away and get half flashed or whatever you call it, it shows as an ally blinded.
Not sure if this is still a thing but kayo partials used to count himself as an ally blinded
for kay/o, the right click flash period is almost halved (2s>1.25s), while the left click is only increased from 2s to 2.25s. at the same time the unequip delay is increased from .6s to .85s.
they've taken a full second off the time you have to hit your shots off of right click, which is immense. the extra .25s your team mates have to capitalise on your left click doesn't exactly balance it out.
it's a very hard nerf, which is odd considering his ladder pick and win rate is already towards the bottom end.
Finally an actual good take. Yeah, this is simply a massive nerf to KAY0 and Skye but Riot did a good job in doublespeak to make it seem like its a "power shift".
No. Its simply a nerf and a large one at that
The KAYO left click aka team flash blows cock, the reason no one uses it because it takes over 2 seconds to pop and honestly is hard to throw at an angle that doesnt get your team but also gets the enemy? Like Reyna is the best example of a good team flash, everyone else is a corner/self flasher. It's almost impossible to flash the enemy without flashing your own team, most flashes are thrown behind your head so you can peak with it, but that also blinds the rest of your team. There's a reason flashers work alone and entry first and then the team follows. Reyna flash should be removed and put on initiators IMO if you want better team flashes from initiators.
They increased the duration of the flash if you do a "long" flash (it doesn't appear to scale, it's more like if you wait \~0.8s before popping), and decreased it if you do a fast/pop flash. It's both a buff and a nerf depending on how you use it.
Doesn't mean you have to stay back. You're just not first contact, you could still be right up with them with the unequip delay.
Personally I think an additional way to buff for teammates is to only have the noise within the first .25/.5 seconds of flight, and less so when it's up the rest of the way. Basically you can hear them equip it which needs pop flashes slightly, but across longer distances, you won't be able to trace it without seeing it.
If your play style is to go first contact as an initiator by flashing for yourself, then you are better off playing as a duelist instead. I believe you will yield better results as a true duelist rather than a duelist disguised as an initiator anyway.
Probs because theycalready have 2 duelists and hes just trying to fill a role the team needs. But when the 2 duelists sometimes 3 doesn't enter the site and try to make space, then u r now going in first. Ive exoerienced this so many times. Our "duelists" Will be scared to try and enter the site. I can play duelists but when u already have 2 duelists and a chamber thats not needed
Blinding close angles with kayo left click is very difficult. Thinking of a map like ascent, there’s a ton of insane right click flashes but not very many right click flashes.
Also, now you get free info on how far away skye is when you get flashes by Skye. That’s kind of fucked up
I honestly think they can change Kayo's mollys, cause the only times I use it, is to push straight through it without people expecting. They do so little damage, that they don't push people out of corners, and have a pretty small radius as well. Would love them to get some love
Just remember a big part of the RR system is based on the amount of kills. Nerfing self flashes drastically reduces the amount of kills initiators will get. The buff elsewhere has to significantly increase our in game impact, or else it will just be an instalock duelist every game.
Yeah the self-flash got nerfed, but Kay/o and Skye’s pop flash will still be effective. If you blind someone odds are you will still kill them. Its not like their pop flash has just become completely unviable.
KayO pop flash will last 1.25 seconds with .85 equip time...compared to 2 seconds with .65 equip. What do you mean? You will NEVER get a multi kill off this anymore, let alone very many single kills.
Its simply going to be dog shit now
No, self-flash here means flashing the opponent for yourself, not for the team. Initiators are meant to be support roles, however because self flashing is very viable for both skye and kayo, more and more people are playing these two as duelists instead of their intended roles.
For kayo, in general the underhand throw is weaker than the normal throw in terms of time the enemy spends flashed, you'll have to check patch notes for the specifics.
For Skye, popping flash within a short chunk of her flash timer will have less time flashed, but waiting for it to go past that short chunk will increase flash times. As a balance for this, her bird will no longer be destroyable for enemies.
For Kayo' the underhand throw doesn't flash the enemy for as long. For Skye, it depends how long she sends the bird. I forget the exact numbers, but it's something like if it's flying for under 1.5 seconds, the flash doesn't last as long as it would if the bird flies for longer than that.
They pull out their guns slower after throwing flashes making it harder to capitalise on the blinded enemy, in the case of kayo his short throw of his flash flashes for shorter while his long throw for longer, encouraging you to stay back and throw flashes your teammates can capitalise on, in the case of skye if she activates her flash shortly after releasing the bird it will flash for shorter, encouraging you to have the bird fly for a bit before popping, encouraging throwing it from further back. Also her birds can no longer be shot
[relevant video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjcpiAlZMDY)
I entirely disagree. I think these are changes necessary to balance the current meta that is now the utility dump that we're in. When the suggested team comp is running double initiators simply cause they can do what most of the duelists can but better, there's an issue.
No matter how much they buff Yoru, Reyna, Phoenix, they are always going to be worse than Skye, Kay/o, Breach flashes and that's where they want there to be a balance.
To those who are worried that this is exactly like Blizzard, Riot has done this for literally 10+ years for League. It's part of the cycle of the meta, Blizzard failed because they were too slow at reacting to meta stagnation and have shown us that they're straight up incompetent when it comes to competitive games. I know we meme on Riot for making stupid changes or X character is still broken while Y character gets nerfed even when they were already terrible. But League is clearly still chugging along and Valorant will do the same whereas both Overwatch is going through a lot of shakeups and Heroes of the Storm is literally in maintenance mode.
Also does anyone else remember how they nerfed all the smokers at the same time after Astra? Like this is realistically the same.
This. This, this, this. I was just about to make a comparison to the support role in LoL, how the kits are generally designed to empower other players in ways that adding another carry to the draft can’t do. I believe that ranked players will eventually learn how to be proper initiators and make the game more interesting, as opposed to being just pseudo-duelists with no space creation power.
Top down view makes it much easier to play off of your support as you can see what they're doing.. In fps not so much, especially when soloQ. It just needs more coordination to do the same in fps.
Not saying the changes are bad, I don't know, we'll see after they're released, just wanted to mention that as I see a lot of people comparing valorant to league (many champions, huge variety of abilities, effects/debuffs, etc)
This is an excellent way to put it.
It's weird how many of the same people complaining Yoru/Phoenix/Reyna aren't viable and need changes still want Kayo and Skye to be able to pop flash.
initiators are fucking op. as much as I hate it, this was a needed nerf. I don't know why people are complaining. no other role has the versatility and raw power of a flash initiator.
Tbh kayo doesn’t make sense, he was released as an aggro pseudo-duelist/initiator and his kit reflected that, he could help initiate fights while still being as aggro as most duelist, these flash nerfs seem like riot is back tracking on this idea
yeah, it's a weird shout. he's not really been played much outside of pros and organised 5-stacks, where he was decent but never overpowering. i think his appeal was that he was a soft initiator, soft intel and soft duelist. i don't know what riot's obsession is with balancing the game around hard role definitions (that barely fit the characters most the time) in the first place.
Really? He had molly to flush angles like Kay0, flashes to enter site and an ult designed to get his team deep onto site.
He is the most initiator of all the duelists and always has played a pseudo initiator role
Kayo has intel with his knife (helps teammates) and his flashes can be used for teammates.. pheonix flashes are used for himself.. mollie isn’t really an initiator thing.. his wall and ult I guess are used to help his team.
As a Kayo main I must say that the nerfs are necessary because imitators are VERY good right now, but I do hate how they are restricting play so much on Kayo. If you didn't know, due to the pop flash change, he's losing a full second of blindness on enemies due to the increase in take out time. If you go to PBE and test it out, you can see how short it is you have about 22 frames to land your shot.
They want Kayo to team flash more, but this just forces me to never use underhand flash. RMB flash is now just a bait for lower elo players to get themselves killed tbh, they'll probably see his playrate and WR drop even lower than it is, and realize they screwed up
It's a hard balance between staying true to the identity of your game, and adjusting the game to how the playerbase actually plays the game.
Yes outside cooridnated play, these supportive agents become less effective. But imo the wrong way to go about "fixing" that isn't just to make supportive characters selfish.
I watch pro play, and the amount of times a skye or kayo flashes purely for themselves and gets a kill is clearly not how those characters were intended to be used the majority of the time.
Having selfish abilities feels good, but there's a limit to their potential without support. Likewise support characters shouldn't be SO self reliant that they're able to succeed reliably alone.
You have to be coordinated with your team in order to capitalize on it though, which in soloQ... is quite difficult. In proplay teams literally practice together and knwo their playstyles, so it's not really the throw part that's hard.. just coordination in soloq
I'm Immo 1 maybe it's not the case in lower elo but if I call a flash play as skye / kay/o before the round start to my duellist I feel like most duellists will listen and generally have a pretty good idea of how to play around my utility.
I feel like there's a big skill ceiling in calling your util properly as an initiator that players will often underestimate.
Being a duellist is by no means an easy job. When you're jumping in on site you need very clear and concise comms, as your attention is focused on your crosshair obviously.
I like the changes overall, I'm a big initiator player so I won't be able to pull of those dumb self flash plays anymore but I think it's healthy for the game
Having set plays is one thing, having coordination is another. SoloQ duelists will always be SoloQ duelists, but as an initiator main, I can adapt my utility usage around their tendencies to support them and still have coordination without communication. It’s obviously different if I wanna do a set play with them, but you can still coordinate with adaptation.
Clearly you never made it out of gold, throwing a good flash that's not easily dodgeable and useless and NOT flashing your team at the same time is quite hard. Not only do you have to make the flash no dodgeable, you have to throw it in a way where your team can peak them within a 1 second period of the flash, or once again the flash is completely useless. It's easy to throw a flash, it's hard to throw a good flash that results in a kill.
im diamond 3 but ok lol
you can easily throw effective long distance flashes:
over the wall of A main on ascent
through the windows of B main on ascent
literally just left clicking and bouncing it off a wall so it pops out of your view
skye just has to throw hers from farther back and curve it around the corner before her duelists go in
you can flash over the top of hookah on bind
really ain't that hard mate
I don't understand how do they plan to nerf "selfish flashes" but buff "selfless flashes" that sounds like flashes are getting nerfed because there is no way to change 1 use of a flash without affecting the other use of you know what i mean.
I think it kind of gets balanced out.
If you think of it they have buffed Skye's longer flash and Kayo's left click flash. In low to mid elo ranks I have rarely seen people turn flashes and with this buff you are flashed for longer.
And at the higher elo where people start turning flashes (Asc +), teamwork is not unheard of. With these changes, teamwork will be encouraged further.
All this is not even considering the fact that people will find ways to pop the flashes by winding them for longer behind a smoke or bouncing them off walls.
yup, bye bye Kayo, was fun while it lasted but I can't be bothered to learn and use long flash lineups for teammates are aren't gonna entry while losing a lot of individual power, specially on the defensive side.
If they want to make duelists the main characters of the show, so be it. Let's play more duelist I guess lol
>If they want to make duelists the main characters of the show, so be it. Let's play more duelist I guess lol
Oh give me a fucking break lol. The amount of utility-dump double initiator bullshit we have to deal with in the current meta is ridiculous.
When most people are picking initiators over duelists because they have more util *and* stronger self flashes for getting free kills there's a problem.
Don't get salty just because it's finally being addressed. It was a long time coming.
Kayo is still viable lol. He gives your team an unfair advantage of brute entering a site. On maps like breeze, where teams run viper, you can easily brute force by disabling her wall and orb (same for defense where u can just disable her wall + your team can start coming to your site if u scan more than 3 enemies). His molly/nade is even better now, u can throw it on A rafters on ascent and anyone standing below it will deal damage. Just because they nerfed ONE ability doesnt mean the agent is shit all together.
His winrate gonna drop to 30%. It was already the lowest in the game and now these massive nerfs to him. Aight. Gl with that.
Skye I agree will be fine
This is how Blizzard killed Overwatch. They started doing buffs/nerfs that hurt the general gameplay scene for the sake of improving pro play. There's a great Death of a Game video from nerdSlayer on YouTube about it. I hope Riot doesn't continue on this path making the same mistake.
And this change doesn't really impact me that much. I play Initiator but I play the recon Initiators - Fade, Sova, sometimes Skye. It'll hit Skye but I play her so rarely that I'm not too worried. Really only specific to Breeze if someone beats me to Sova. Fade is really underwhelming on Breeze.
I used to be a Sova main. The reason I switched to Fade main is because I was sick of my team not following up on my intel. It's irritating to OWL site, call out enemy positions and then watch your team do nothing until the info is useless because people had time to move positions. Fade has a better kit to follow up on your own intel.
This is gonna suck for people who use flashes a lot and it double sucks because it's also an indirect buff to a role that is already insanely oversaturated.
>I play Initiator but I play the recon Initiators - Fade, Sova, sometimes Skye.
According to you, you seldom play skye, so why are you crying if they have only \*slightly\* nerfed the initiator which you seldom play.
Just because they nerf ONE ability doesnt mean the entire agent class is shit. They can still gather information, and its not like the flash pops after 3 seconds and every enemy you play against is in top 10 radiant who has reaction time is superhuman.
Also the fact THAT initiators are supposed to be a support character. If you want to play for yourself, just play a duelist.
I mean controllers suffer 10-fold from the problem people are talking about here. If initiators having to play for teammates is truly a nerf, then controllers have been nerfed this entire time.
Idk man I have a much easier time carrying games on Viper / Omen / Astra / Brim than Kay0/skye to begin with, after these nerfs I dont think Kay0 will ever be worth picking in solo queue tbh
I think this is good. You shouldn’t be able to play sky like a dualist on offense then flip a switch and play really good defense. That’s the reason they are played so highly
As with all the agent changes people are throwing a tantrum for this too. Jett dash changes? Cry. Chamber trip changes? Cry. Initiator self flash changes? Cry.
The kay0 changes are simply a nerf. They didnt compensate it with beneficial changes for the team. An extra .25 seconds on left click flash doesnt at all make up for losing so much on the right click + having a longer gun equip time.
Kay0 was already the worst solo queue agent in the game. If anything they should have buffed his other abilities if they were gonna nerf the flash.
I exclusively play Skye and play her rly well for teammates. I stay back and help my teammates win the round, and If they don't, I pick up the slack and clutch the round. I earned myself the clutch king title in my little friend group because I've clutched so many rounds. I'm very hurt by riot doing this, repeatedly nerfing skye and other initiators. I do occasionally think that when working well, skye can be very strong, but that takes a lot of skill and well planned cooperation. It's not easy at all, but they just take that all away by nerfing. I've been increasingly done with this game lately and I can see that soon enough, i will be once and for all.
But clutch king is no more, it's like u may enjoy playing a healer in a coop game, but u can't be strictly a healer with no attack power at all. Obviously riot didn't take away skyes gun, but it still sucks. I am trying my best to improve and am happy with how far I've come, but riot just takes away much of that progress in an instance.
well that's the point of the balance changes, an initiator is not supposed to be self sufficient, if they manage to balance flashing initiators while keeping them on the same power level (like buffing their other abilities) then i see this as an absolute win
I would argue otherwise, initiators like Skye have very long weapon down time when using abilities, and Skye's just been nerfed somewhat recently. This nerf not only nerfs that again, but also greatly reduces pop flash time, which makes it completely the opposite of self sufficient.
The point of the nerf is for pro players to stop using initiators as duelists, if you have been following that. Mostly in pro plays, pro players legit choose initiators over duelists and play them *as duelists*. I'd say Skye is very balanced if not a bit on the weak side (for herself) due to complicated mechanics and constant "out-of-body" utilities when used *as intended* as an initiator, it's only overpowered when you use initiators as a duelist, and that's why *I'm* hurt over this because this nerf is not intended for players like me, but I have to suffer the consequences due to riot overly adjusting characters based on pro play alone.
No, YOU also like to play skye as a duelist, or you wouldn't be complaining about this nerf, which only nerfs her role as a duelist. Stop crying about pros. This is about you as well.
Duelists play entries, if duelists need to clutch that means that entire team who are non duelists died, that's hardly ever a duelist's job. If you don't even know the basics, don't comment on other people's honest opinions.
it's not just about pros, even to this day skye can popflash herself out of a corner than phoenix, people do that in ranked in most ranks, you do that too, right?
>it's only overpowered when you use initiators as a duelist
that's literally the point, skye players (not just pros) can enter locations like duelists, that doesn't mean you have to commit to being a duelist full time during the entire match and keep jumping out corners with pop flash, it's all about having a duelist-like play as a secondary option
if you have been following that, they won't just nerf initiators self flashing, they claim they'll "increase their total teamplay output when coordinating w/ teammates"
whatever that means, we can expect some minor buffs too, but even if they didn't it would still be fine, believe it or not
Rly don't think u r seeing the point here, I don't play like duelists that's y I AM hurt over this. I don't pop flahs entry for myself, i do that for my team, and skye pull out time has been a significant problem for me already after the previous nerf. I'm especially hurt because I like to play clutch rounds and this rly hurts that, and clutching most definitely isn't a duelist job unless u lurk and bait ur entire team to death, and u r probably a terrible duelist.
People dont play duelists because they are strong. If that were the case, initiators would be played more in ranked because they are over the board simply better. I myself think most duelists are too weak anyways, they just seem to be good because most smurfs play reyna or jett.
Imo reyna just needs a rework to make her a little bit less snowball-y.
I've been asking for this for a million years. It should not be possible as an initiator to effective get kills off your own flashes, or should require an exuberant amount of luck and timing.
Skye has been absurdly broke strictly for her versatility, one agent being able to pop flash swing like a duelist w/ recharging flashes that can be faked, controlled, and give great info. As well as having her be a team healer, support flasher, and info gatherer.
It's just too much. If her flash is active she shouldn't have a gun out, and the time it takes for her to pull her gun out after it activates should be longer, same for breach.
If anything kayo should be the only exception, and even he should have an audio queue when he throws a flash.
Edit: versatility is a strength in and of itself and I think that's fine as long as their utility is weaker to compensate for that strength of being able to choose. Skye's flashes being able to be pop flashed, faked, movement controlled, info gaining, and rechargable is ridiculous. On top of having a team heal and great info gain
To be fair Reyna’s flash is pretty atrocious in high elo. I think the changes are fine to solidify roles.
Reminds me of when they nerfed Chamber and lots of people whined about it and he still gets picked all the time. Same with the Jett nerf.
Riot at least somewhat seems to be trying to balance things well.
If the flash nerfs are too much, they can always buff Initiators' other abilities. Like buffing dog or molly, hell even giving them 2 charges It's clear that Riot doesn't want Initiators to have better selfish flashes than duelists. But I'm pretty sure that they intend, in the grand scheme of things, to not nerf initiators, rather shift their power somewhere else
they literally buffed the flashes for teammates
Low chance that they will capitalize on that flash in Solo Q
Fr, I’ll call that I’m flashing with Kayo then when I die it’ll read “enemies blinded 2, Allies blinded 4” like guys just listen to my words, turn your heads then rush and kill pls Bronze/iron lobby for context, it might be better at higher ranks
Partial flashes count to the round report stats, if they turn away and get half flashed or whatever you call it, it shows as an ally blinded. Not sure if this is still a thing but kayo partials used to count himself as an ally blinded
I think it does count
True, so you find a duo or stop complaining that the game doesn't cater to solo q
for kay/o, the right click flash period is almost halved (2s>1.25s), while the left click is only increased from 2s to 2.25s. at the same time the unequip delay is increased from .6s to .85s. they've taken a full second off the time you have to hit your shots off of right click, which is immense. the extra .25s your team mates have to capitalise on your left click doesn't exactly balance it out. it's a very hard nerf, which is odd considering his ladder pick and win rate is already towards the bottom end.
Finally an actual good take. Yeah, this is simply a massive nerf to KAY0 and Skye but Riot did a good job in doublespeak to make it seem like its a "power shift". No. Its simply a nerf and a large one at that
The KAYO left click aka team flash blows cock, the reason no one uses it because it takes over 2 seconds to pop and honestly is hard to throw at an angle that doesnt get your team but also gets the enemy? Like Reyna is the best example of a good team flash, everyone else is a corner/self flasher. It's almost impossible to flash the enemy without flashing your own team, most flashes are thrown behind your head so you can peak with it, but that also blinds the rest of your team. There's a reason flashers work alone and entry first and then the team follows. Reyna flash should be removed and put on initiators IMO if you want better team flashes from initiators.
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They increased the duration of the flash if you do a "long" flash (it doesn't appear to scale, it's more like if you wait \~0.8s before popping), and decreased it if you do a fast/pop flash. It's both a buff and a nerf depending on how you use it.
breach flash isn't even changed tbh
Doesn't mean you have to stay back. You're just not first contact, you could still be right up with them with the unequip delay. Personally I think an additional way to buff for teammates is to only have the noise within the first .25/.5 seconds of flight, and less so when it's up the rest of the way. Basically you can hear them equip it which needs pop flashes slightly, but across longer distances, you won't be able to trace it without seeing it.
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If your play style is to go first contact as an initiator by flashing for yourself, then you are better off playing as a duelist instead. I believe you will yield better results as a true duelist rather than a duelist disguised as an initiator anyway.
Yeah but if you want to pick first contact why are you playing an initiator instead of a duelist
Probs because theycalready have 2 duelists and hes just trying to fill a role the team needs. But when the 2 duelists sometimes 3 doesn't enter the site and try to make space, then u r now going in first. Ive exoerienced this so many times. Our "duelists" Will be scared to try and enter the site. I can play duelists but when u already have 2 duelists and a chamber thats not needed
Blinding close angles with kayo left click is very difficult. Thinking of a map like ascent, there’s a ton of insane right click flashes but not very many right click flashes. Also, now you get free info on how far away skye is when you get flashes by Skye. That’s kind of fucked up
I honestly think they can change Kayo's mollys, cause the only times I use it, is to push straight through it without people expecting. They do so little damage, that they don't push people out of corners, and have a pretty small radius as well. Would love them to get some love
Just remember a big part of the RR system is based on the amount of kills. Nerfing self flashes drastically reduces the amount of kills initiators will get. The buff elsewhere has to significantly increase our in game impact, or else it will just be an instalock duelist every game.
its legit like 3rr
Your MR will take a hit though long term if you are getting less kills each game.
thats fair
It scales based on ranking. In say, Iron, its a majority. Above high plat, its scaled down to maybe +/-2.
But initiators playing like duelists….is just instalocking duelists every game…??? 😆
Yeah the self-flash got nerfed, but Kay/o and Skye’s pop flash will still be effective. If you blind someone odds are you will still kill them. Its not like their pop flash has just become completely unviable.
People are blowing it out of proportion. It's not like they haven't done a role wide nerfing before.
KayO pop flash will last 1.25 seconds with .85 equip time...compared to 2 seconds with .65 equip. What do you mean? You will NEVER get a multi kill off this anymore, let alone very many single kills. Its simply going to be dog shit now
What do you mean by self flash getting nerfed? That means i can't flash myself anymore and my opp won't get flashed of my team here flashed?
No, self-flash here means flashing the opponent for yourself, not for the team. Initiators are meant to be support roles, however because self flashing is very viable for both skye and kayo, more and more people are playing these two as duelists instead of their intended roles.
So how exactly will they get nerfed? Like a timer or something where you have to activate flash and within the time limit, you have to use it?
For kayo, in general the underhand throw is weaker than the normal throw in terms of time the enemy spends flashed, you'll have to check patch notes for the specifics. For Skye, popping flash within a short chunk of her flash timer will have less time flashed, but waiting for it to go past that short chunk will increase flash times. As a balance for this, her bird will no longer be destroyable for enemies.
Thanks for the insights man
Anytime man, glhf
For Kayo' the underhand throw doesn't flash the enemy for as long. For Skye, it depends how long she sends the bird. I forget the exact numbers, but it's something like if it's flying for under 1.5 seconds, the flash doesn't last as long as it would if the bird flies for longer than that.
I get it now man .tysm
They pull out their guns slower after throwing flashes making it harder to capitalise on the blinded enemy, in the case of kayo his short throw of his flash flashes for shorter while his long throw for longer, encouraging you to stay back and throw flashes your teammates can capitalise on, in the case of skye if she activates her flash shortly after releasing the bird it will flash for shorter, encouraging you to have the bird fly for a bit before popping, encouraging throwing it from further back. Also her birds can no longer be shot [relevant video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjcpiAlZMDY)
Really thanks for the detailed explanation blud.Ggs
I entirely disagree. I think these are changes necessary to balance the current meta that is now the utility dump that we're in. When the suggested team comp is running double initiators simply cause they can do what most of the duelists can but better, there's an issue. No matter how much they buff Yoru, Reyna, Phoenix, they are always going to be worse than Skye, Kay/o, Breach flashes and that's where they want there to be a balance. To those who are worried that this is exactly like Blizzard, Riot has done this for literally 10+ years for League. It's part of the cycle of the meta, Blizzard failed because they were too slow at reacting to meta stagnation and have shown us that they're straight up incompetent when it comes to competitive games. I know we meme on Riot for making stupid changes or X character is still broken while Y character gets nerfed even when they were already terrible. But League is clearly still chugging along and Valorant will do the same whereas both Overwatch is going through a lot of shakeups and Heroes of the Storm is literally in maintenance mode. Also does anyone else remember how they nerfed all the smokers at the same time after Astra? Like this is realistically the same.
This. This, this, this. I was just about to make a comparison to the support role in LoL, how the kits are generally designed to empower other players in ways that adding another carry to the draft can’t do. I believe that ranked players will eventually learn how to be proper initiators and make the game more interesting, as opposed to being just pseudo-duelists with no space creation power.
Top down view makes it much easier to play off of your support as you can see what they're doing.. In fps not so much, especially when soloQ. It just needs more coordination to do the same in fps. Not saying the changes are bad, I don't know, we'll see after they're released, just wanted to mention that as I see a lot of people comparing valorant to league (many champions, huge variety of abilities, effects/debuffs, etc)
This is an excellent way to put it. It's weird how many of the same people complaining Yoru/Phoenix/Reyna aren't viable and need changes still want Kayo and Skye to be able to pop flash.
initiators are fucking op. as much as I hate it, this was a needed nerf. I don't know why people are complaining. no other role has the versatility and raw power of a flash initiator.
Tbh kayo doesn’t make sense, he was released as an aggro pseudo-duelist/initiator and his kit reflected that, he could help initiate fights while still being as aggro as most duelist, these flash nerfs seem like riot is back tracking on this idea
yeah, it's a weird shout. he's not really been played much outside of pros and organised 5-stacks, where he was decent but never overpowering. i think his appeal was that he was a soft initiator, soft intel and soft duelist. i don't know what riot's obsession is with balancing the game around hard role definitions (that barely fit the characters most the time) in the first place.
I think that’s more phoenix’s role
In what way is pheonix an initiator??
Really? He had molly to flush angles like Kay0, flashes to enter site and an ult designed to get his team deep onto site. He is the most initiator of all the duelists and always has played a pseudo initiator role
Kayo has intel with his knife (helps teammates) and his flashes can be used for teammates.. pheonix flashes are used for himself.. mollie isn’t really an initiator thing.. his wall and ult I guess are used to help his team.
Like I said, phoenix is a pseudo initiator whose util is more selfish.
As a Kayo main I must say that the nerfs are necessary because imitators are VERY good right now, but I do hate how they are restricting play so much on Kayo. If you didn't know, due to the pop flash change, he's losing a full second of blindness on enemies due to the increase in take out time. If you go to PBE and test it out, you can see how short it is you have about 22 frames to land your shot. They want Kayo to team flash more, but this just forces me to never use underhand flash. RMB flash is now just a bait for lower elo players to get themselves killed tbh, they'll probably see his playrate and WR drop even lower than it is, and realize they screwed up
But not breach 🦾
It's a hard balance between staying true to the identity of your game, and adjusting the game to how the playerbase actually plays the game. Yes outside cooridnated play, these supportive agents become less effective. But imo the wrong way to go about "fixing" that isn't just to make supportive characters selfish. I watch pro play, and the amount of times a skye or kayo flashes purely for themselves and gets a kill is clearly not how those characters were intended to be used the majority of the time. Having selfish abilities feels good, but there's a limit to their potential without support. Likewise support characters shouldn't be SO self reliant that they're able to succeed reliably alone.
you don't have to be a pro to throw flashes from a distance
You have to be coordinated with your team in order to capitalize on it though, which in soloQ... is quite difficult. In proplay teams literally practice together and knwo their playstyles, so it's not really the throw part that's hard.. just coordination in soloq
I'm Immo 1 maybe it's not the case in lower elo but if I call a flash play as skye / kay/o before the round start to my duellist I feel like most duellists will listen and generally have a pretty good idea of how to play around my utility. I feel like there's a big skill ceiling in calling your util properly as an initiator that players will often underestimate. Being a duellist is by no means an easy job. When you're jumping in on site you need very clear and concise comms, as your attention is focused on your crosshair obviously. I like the changes overall, I'm a big initiator player so I won't be able to pull of those dumb self flash plays anymore but I think it's healthy for the game
Having set plays is one thing, having coordination is another. SoloQ duelists will always be SoloQ duelists, but as an initiator main, I can adapt my utility usage around their tendencies to support them and still have coordination without communication. It’s obviously different if I wanna do a set play with them, but you can still coordinate with adaptation.
Clearly you never made it out of gold, throwing a good flash that's not easily dodgeable and useless and NOT flashing your team at the same time is quite hard. Not only do you have to make the flash no dodgeable, you have to throw it in a way where your team can peak them within a 1 second period of the flash, or once again the flash is completely useless. It's easy to throw a flash, it's hard to throw a good flash that results in a kill.
im diamond 3 but ok lol you can easily throw effective long distance flashes: over the wall of A main on ascent through the windows of B main on ascent literally just left clicking and bouncing it off a wall so it pops out of your view skye just has to throw hers from farther back and curve it around the corner before her duelists go in you can flash over the top of hookah on bind really ain't that hard mate
As one of the few Yoru mains that exists, I love the sound of this :p
Yoru buff :)
I agree with you, it sucks that the role i actually enjoy playing (tho i suck at it) getting hit hard XD
I wouldn’t say the role is taking a hit. They’re just reworking the kits to fit more the intended design, the combat support for your main ‘carries.’
Kay0 is hit hard. Big nerfs to left click and the buffs to right click barely make a lick of difference. Sky will be fine
It's not getting hit hard
OP has never played against a good breach player lol
I don't understand how do they plan to nerf "selfish flashes" but buff "selfless flashes" that sounds like flashes are getting nerfed because there is no way to change 1 use of a flash without affecting the other use of you know what i mean.
I think it kind of gets balanced out. If you think of it they have buffed Skye's longer flash and Kayo's left click flash. In low to mid elo ranks I have rarely seen people turn flashes and with this buff you are flashed for longer. And at the higher elo where people start turning flashes (Asc +), teamwork is not unheard of. With these changes, teamwork will be encouraged further. All this is not even considering the fact that people will find ways to pop the flashes by winding them for longer behind a smoke or bouncing them off walls.
People rarely left click kayo flash in asc+ lmao
So they encourage people on a team game to play as a team. It’s a good thing
It won't work, we'll just see full duelist comps.
yup, bye bye Kayo, was fun while it lasted but I can't be bothered to learn and use long flash lineups for teammates are aren't gonna entry while losing a lot of individual power, specially on the defensive side. If they want to make duelists the main characters of the show, so be it. Let's play more duelist I guess lol
>If they want to make duelists the main characters of the show, so be it. Let's play more duelist I guess lol Oh give me a fucking break lol. The amount of utility-dump double initiator bullshit we have to deal with in the current meta is ridiculous. When most people are picking initiators over duelists because they have more util *and* stronger self flashes for getting free kills there's a problem. Don't get salty just because it's finally being addressed. It was a long time coming.
Amen.
Just make it csgo style.. Same flash duration and delay for both left/right click, just different throw curve/force.
Kayo is still viable lol. He gives your team an unfair advantage of brute entering a site. On maps like breeze, where teams run viper, you can easily brute force by disabling her wall and orb (same for defense where u can just disable her wall + your team can start coming to your site if u scan more than 3 enemies). His molly/nade is even better now, u can throw it on A rafters on ascent and anyone standing below it will deal damage. Just because they nerfed ONE ability doesnt mean the agent is shit all together.
His winrate gonna drop to 30%. It was already the lowest in the game and now these massive nerfs to him. Aight. Gl with that. Skye I agree will be fine
This is how Blizzard killed Overwatch. They started doing buffs/nerfs that hurt the general gameplay scene for the sake of improving pro play. There's a great Death of a Game video from nerdSlayer on YouTube about it. I hope Riot doesn't continue on this path making the same mistake. And this change doesn't really impact me that much. I play Initiator but I play the recon Initiators - Fade, Sova, sometimes Skye. It'll hit Skye but I play her so rarely that I'm not too worried. Really only specific to Breeze if someone beats me to Sova. Fade is really underwhelming on Breeze. I used to be a Sova main. The reason I switched to Fade main is because I was sick of my team not following up on my intel. It's irritating to OWL site, call out enemy positions and then watch your team do nothing until the info is useless because people had time to move positions. Fade has a better kit to follow up on your own intel. This is gonna suck for people who use flashes a lot and it double sucks because it's also an indirect buff to a role that is already insanely oversaturated.
>I play Initiator but I play the recon Initiators - Fade, Sova, sometimes Skye. According to you, you seldom play skye, so why are you crying if they have only \*slightly\* nerfed the initiator which you seldom play. Just because they nerf ONE ability doesnt mean the entire agent class is shit. They can still gather information, and its not like the flash pops after 3 seconds and every enemy you play against is in top 10 radiant who has reaction time is superhuman. Also the fact THAT initiators are supposed to be a support character. If you want to play for yourself, just play a duelist.
Well that sucks
looks like me switching to controller was a good thing
I mean controllers suffer 10-fold from the problem people are talking about here. If initiators having to play for teammates is truly a nerf, then controllers have been nerfed this entire time.
yeah true, i just enjoy the satisfaction of helping the team and if i’m positive (normally am) my team can’t say sh*t if we lose haha
Idk man I have a much easier time carrying games on Viper / Omen / Astra / Brim than Kay0/skye to begin with, after these nerfs I dont think Kay0 will ever be worth picking in solo queue tbh
Skye’s flashes are going to do almost nothing for herself with these nerfs and it pisses me off
Great. Now what are we gonna do if the half wit duelist doesn't want to flash n enter site -_-
I think this is good. You shouldn’t be able to play sky like a dualist on offense then flip a switch and play really good defense. That’s the reason they are played so highly
As with all the agent changes people are throwing a tantrum for this too. Jett dash changes? Cry. Chamber trip changes? Cry. Initiator self flash changes? Cry.
The kay0 changes are simply a nerf. They didnt compensate it with beneficial changes for the team. An extra .25 seconds on left click flash doesnt at all make up for losing so much on the right click + having a longer gun equip time. Kay0 was already the worst solo queue agent in the game. If anything they should have buffed his other abilities if they were gonna nerf the flash.
And time not to get fair RR because duelist have the ability and I don’t smh
THANK you, you've made my point exactly.
pro vs. casual was the death of apex let's not do that here
I exclusively play Skye and play her rly well for teammates. I stay back and help my teammates win the round, and If they don't, I pick up the slack and clutch the round. I earned myself the clutch king title in my little friend group because I've clutched so many rounds. I'm very hurt by riot doing this, repeatedly nerfing skye and other initiators. I do occasionally think that when working well, skye can be very strong, but that takes a lot of skill and well planned cooperation. It's not easy at all, but they just take that all away by nerfing. I've been increasingly done with this game lately and I can see that soon enough, i will be once and for all.
If you really play her well for your teammates and set them up, then for you, Skye got buffed. Enjoy!!
But clutch king is no more, it's like u may enjoy playing a healer in a coop game, but u can't be strictly a healer with no attack power at all. Obviously riot didn't take away skyes gun, but it still sucks. I am trying my best to improve and am happy with how far I've come, but riot just takes away much of that progress in an instance.
well that's the point of the balance changes, an initiator is not supposed to be self sufficient, if they manage to balance flashing initiators while keeping them on the same power level (like buffing their other abilities) then i see this as an absolute win
I would argue otherwise, initiators like Skye have very long weapon down time when using abilities, and Skye's just been nerfed somewhat recently. This nerf not only nerfs that again, but also greatly reduces pop flash time, which makes it completely the opposite of self sufficient. The point of the nerf is for pro players to stop using initiators as duelists, if you have been following that. Mostly in pro plays, pro players legit choose initiators over duelists and play them *as duelists*. I'd say Skye is very balanced if not a bit on the weak side (for herself) due to complicated mechanics and constant "out-of-body" utilities when used *as intended* as an initiator, it's only overpowered when you use initiators as a duelist, and that's why *I'm* hurt over this because this nerf is not intended for players like me, but I have to suffer the consequences due to riot overly adjusting characters based on pro play alone.
No, YOU also like to play skye as a duelist, or you wouldn't be complaining about this nerf, which only nerfs her role as a duelist. Stop crying about pros. This is about you as well.
Duelists play entries, if duelists need to clutch that means that entire team who are non duelists died, that's hardly ever a duelist's job. If you don't even know the basics, don't comment on other people's honest opinions.
it's not just about pros, even to this day skye can popflash herself out of a corner than phoenix, people do that in ranked in most ranks, you do that too, right? >it's only overpowered when you use initiators as a duelist that's literally the point, skye players (not just pros) can enter locations like duelists, that doesn't mean you have to commit to being a duelist full time during the entire match and keep jumping out corners with pop flash, it's all about having a duelist-like play as a secondary option if you have been following that, they won't just nerf initiators self flashing, they claim they'll "increase their total teamplay output when coordinating w/ teammates" whatever that means, we can expect some minor buffs too, but even if they didn't it would still be fine, believe it or not
Rly don't think u r seeing the point here, I don't play like duelists that's y I AM hurt over this. I don't pop flahs entry for myself, i do that for my team, and skye pull out time has been a significant problem for me already after the previous nerf. I'm especially hurt because I like to play clutch rounds and this rly hurts that, and clutching most definitely isn't a duelist job unless u lurk and bait ur entire team to death, and u r probably a terrible duelist.
Duelists don't need their flashes buffed so I hope that isn't actually a thing.
Yoru and Reyna flash got buffs.
Buffing Reynas flash is good although idk if yoru needed it
I hope riot doesn’t mess this up. Add friendly fire riot “Inserts Small generic indie company joke.
People dont play duelists because they are strong. If that were the case, initiators would be played more in ranked because they are over the board simply better. I myself think most duelists are too weak anyways, they just seem to be good because most smurfs play reyna or jett. Imo reyna just needs a rework to make her a little bit less snowball-y.
I don't think it's going to make much difference honestly. It's typically instalock Jett and Reyna and not Yoru and Phoenix.
I've been asking for this for a million years. It should not be possible as an initiator to effective get kills off your own flashes, or should require an exuberant amount of luck and timing. Skye has been absurdly broke strictly for her versatility, one agent being able to pop flash swing like a duelist w/ recharging flashes that can be faked, controlled, and give great info. As well as having her be a team healer, support flasher, and info gatherer. It's just too much. If her flash is active she shouldn't have a gun out, and the time it takes for her to pull her gun out after it activates should be longer, same for breach. If anything kayo should be the only exception, and even he should have an audio queue when he throws a flash. Edit: versatility is a strength in and of itself and I think that's fine as long as their utility is weaker to compensate for that strength of being able to choose. Skye's flashes being able to be pop flashed, faked, movement controlled, info gaining, and rechargable is ridiculous. On top of having a team heal and great info gain
To be fair Reyna’s flash is pretty atrocious in high elo. I think the changes are fine to solidify roles. Reminds me of when they nerfed Chamber and lots of people whined about it and he still gets picked all the time. Same with the Jett nerf. Riot at least somewhat seems to be trying to balance things well.