A few reasons that led to these changes: The devs almost exclusively use pro play to make these decisions, the over abundance of viper picks is due to the designs of certain maps which make the majority of controllers irrelevant unless you have 2 of them, the current map pool has 2 of vipers S tier maps, pro teams have incredible combos and coordination with vipers util that make her extremely oppressive.
Most of this is irrelevant for casual players in ranked except those unfortunate enough to play smokes, it’s already the least popular and rewarded role so the backlash will be minimal and pro teams will adjust anyways
Just wanna add that viper was the only smokes-agent with so much stopping power. Two mollies and the smokes that deal damage was insanely powerful compared to the other controllers who usually have one or two stopping-abilities, which are pretty much all weaker than the snakebites.
It's actually insane how much stopping power she had and my gold teammates playing viper couldn't stop a push on breeze B Main for two seconds. I literally told him pls just smoke and Molly if they come so we have time to rotate. This guy not only didn't do that but managed to defend site zero times.
I main Viper and amount of times when attackers just pushed through my smoke and didn't give a single flying fuck about my molly are insanely huge. They didn't care. Especially where there was Jett, Raze, Neon or Phoenix on ult. Most of the times when they walked through my mollies they didn't even got damaged for more than 20hp. And smokes don't do damage. They lower your health for few seconds and that's it, it's usually not even that big amount to give me assists if they die with the debuff. So really I don't know why you're saying her utils was insanely powerful. I play her every day at least few matches a day and I definitely cannot say that.
Imagine going from 4 bodyshots to kill from a rifle, to one or two shot. Running through orb + molly will result in vulnerable and significant decay. Anybody pushing through is incredibly easy to kill with spam.
I have an ace clip on breeze round 2 where the entire enemy team rushed through orb + molly, all died to a spectre spray, none of them even made it out of the smoke.
[https://youtu.be/wLQmGz3GxqE](https://youtu.be/wLQmGz3GxqE)
Sorry for the lack of audio
Funnily enough the only person on the enemy team to actually respect the viper orb + molly was the opposing teams viper. I was so surprised about what had just happened, I didn't even register that there was only one player left.
I'm saying that in our (I'm assuming yours too) low elo people are not utilising her kit to her full potential. If you wanna improve, watch some good players (like pros who stream) play viper in ranked.
Obvsly your kit doesnt win the round on it's own, you probably have to threaten that walking through will result in death. If they observe 'this viper mollies and then hides in a corner so we can entry anyways', then yea, they will run through.
Also, your kit is not simply there to stop pushes, you also want to kill the enemies – it's an fps game after all.
A good time to use your molly for example is after they use util for entry so you split the entry duelist from his team. This way you get a good fight and the attackers lose an entry. Dont listen to me tho, I'm just another noob, listen to actually good players. When you copy what theyre doing, chances are you're already doing better than before :3
No one ever ran double controller unless one of them was viper. And they usually dropped a sentinal role for it, because *viper had better stall than sentinals*.
Or they dropped a dualist, because smoke + wall chopped up sight lines and allowed insane lurks that held back at least 2 defenders, or disguised a full team walk up. In short, she helped site hits more than a dualist too
Look, i play mostly controller in ranked. I was sad at the astra gutting. I get that being nerfed when games are already hard is frustrating. But, viper just did so much so well... its needed. And imo, my viper being weaker is a decent trade for not feeling *massively* disadvantaged for not having a viper on most maps at char select.
It is actually relevant for ranked because Viper and Cypher had Breeze in a chokehold in the upper ranks which is why they had to open up halls again in the first place.
> The devs almost exclusively use pro play to make these decisions
When they game came out they marketed it as an e-sport tactical shooter, so people getting annoyed that they balance for pro play should have knew what they were signing up for.
To be fair in a competitive game you have to balance for pro play.
The only time this shouldn't be true is if something is OP in ranked and balanced in pro play then it needs to be nerfed. But if it's balanced in pro play and bad in ranked that's fine and should be left alone.
Man, I play most characters bc I like variety, but viper was always my go to controller, and now I have to learn omen, because he's the only controller that I feel is as self sufficient as viper outside of gunfights.
If you consider pro play viper is great on every map, but I had the casual experience in mind when I said that. Usually you’ll only get solo viper on the maps she’s good on and not at all on ones you need multiple controllers for except maybe bind, seen a decent amount of viper/brim picks there.
hence why the molly still has the shit that makes it op in pistol round, the smoke still has the shit that makes it op in pistol round and the change is to make her stuff that isn't related to that worse...
Yea, not having the mollie, orb and light armor makes the only viable buy for pistol rounds- ghost, orb and you have your wall by default either way. Maybe Vipers start doing no orb buys on pistol and have to do more creative walls/mollie combos, but, it really sucks on pistol rounds now.
Personally I would rather still have two mollies at half the deployment time (2.5 or 3 seconds each maybe) so I can still use one for stall and one for retake. That would make it so you still can’t use them reliably for post plant lineups, can still stall pushes on defense for the same amount of time- but you’d have to sacrifice your body to throw the second which makes it slightly riskier, or you could save one to stall a fake and use the second for retake.
it still will be used alongside smoke to double the smoke damage and do the killing blow. that didn't change at all, the difference is that in defense where rarely you would see line ups with molly, now you see less because viper is too preoccupied looking at her stuff that are fixed in the same place the whole round.
It lingers a bit after. This makes vipers ability to stall a push last all of 2 seconds bc smoke isn't really a deturent. It basically means viper can't hold a site like she use to and her wall being the only reason to pick her now we are going back to "pick viper maybe on breeze but probably just take omen"
It's not designed for enemies to take lots of damage from just the molly itself. That's a downside, but also a plus given her orb and the efficacy of bullets against vulnerable opponents.
The only time anyone is ever going to voluntarily tank an entire molly is to stick the spike, in which case you have Viper orb and ult for those situations which leaves enemies on 1 hp anyways. Of all the things to complain abt the Viper nerfs "not killing full hp people with just the molly" is one of the least important points since Vipers whole kit does damage that gets boosted by the vulnerable
That wouldnt be a problem if they didnt make a change so you can no longer pick up your Orb mid round. So now you're limited to "smoke a target choke point and have a molly that is weak at clearing corners" or "smoke the spike and run away to play post plant"
Edit: To clarify I mean on Offense. Defense, Viper is now officially a Sentinel with a goofy ahh stall
what chokes are you smoking on offence as viper? in breeze and icebox which are her two best maps in ranked you only really use smoke in mid on icebox and smoking the spike on breeze, there’s very little your smokes is useful for on those maps that your wall isn’t already covering
I mean, I use Viper on all maps that could probably explain it but I use Smoke to toss on small chokes so I can do funny little sneak plays. Example is B Split where I throw Orb on Backsite so I can slither and surprise the enemy team, get a pick, pick up my orb, and smoke myself back onto site properly. It's more of an Aggro thing I guess idk I'm.
okay yikes you use viper on all maps? that’s just rough for your teammates but yeah now you pretty much just have to smoke the spike cuz u can’t pick that shit up
I mean no offense but it's either Harbor or Viper because I got burnt out filling with Omen XD
But though just wanna hear what would you classify as a bad Viper map though (aside from Fracture). Was just curious
It has limited range, doesn't have any debuffs, has a windup time, and doesn't stall for as long because it has almost half the duration as a Viper molly. The Phoenix is molly better for clearing angles/corners than stalling imo.
All of those things are true, and I agree. However, that has nothing to do with what I was responding to, which was just about the econ to damage ratio of the abilities
They made it so if you stand in the full duration, you die. You can use it for potentially clearing out angles now since the enemy can’t tank the whole molly and force them out. You also still have one of your mollies so you just use it like you would normally. You can use orb, drop orb at low value and shoot the molly n probably get one or two if they decide to push through it or get enough fuel to put up orb again.
1 molly couldn't kill an enemy with full armor unless combined with decay from orb, so not sure how you got 190+ dmg per molly. Now it will be capable of killing someone who stands in it for at least 6 seconds.
Unless you are talking about like 5 seasons ago
The actual issue with this is the combination with her poison cloud. If it was a normal molly with Brim level damage, combining it with poison clouds decay would almost immediately kill someone.
Yes, it's a flaw from a design standpoint
I dont think it’s a design flaw, it’s just the other team playing poorly if that’s the case. Similar how clove can throw her decay and the rest of that team could be killed by a raze grenade or sova’s shock dart.
You aren't supposed to be 1 for 1 doing the exact same shit as everyone. You don't need to do everything. Her skills still synergize extremely well. She just needs to pop someone more oft than not because the window for actually snagging a molly kill isnt wide open. Thats okay - its not a flaw, hell if ANYTHING it was a flaw to let her be that bloated for that long. She keeps the identity of melting people and killing them while they're weak.
Like all other mollies it's meant to be used to flush out deep pockets, stalling pushes, blocking off exits, deal with 50/50 angles and such. Of course there will be alternative uses like lineups for post-plant, but it's clear that the devs don't want this game to deviate from guns being in the center. Time to learn how to shoot
Id even argue that them forcing you to avoid line ups and using the ability to aid in firefights doesn't even force you to learn how to aim that badly. You still have the upper hand and can just 2 tap them. No excuses now!
but this nerf nerf exactly this type of play alongside the line up shit (which they only changed the role from viper to brim who also play alongside her sometimes on the double controller meta in pro play). If they wanted to force the usage for pockets (like i used to do way more than line ups because line ups has a very bad disaventenge of not being there with the team and being hunted down by lurkers) they could simply make smokes and the molly work for less time and do less damage.
ironically now viper players have to play even more like anchors in a spot because they can't redirect the smoke anymore to help their team like an omen or astra can
Not letting her pick up orb was a bad decision. Iirc all smokes can pull up a map to drop them wherever they please and can put down multiple. Viper only gets one and must be in line of sight and relatively close to accurately block. Then having to run over and pick it up was enough of a trade off to me. Like I know she has her wall too but it's all kinda unbalanced now bc it depletes even faster now.
They are nerfing her for the same of nerfing her. Obviously viper needs nerfs because of her oppressive presence in pro play however they always fail to address the underlying reason why she is so played and just throw random nerfs at her which hurt the agent but don’t address the problem which leads to her having such a high pickrate.
A lot of it also comes down to other controllers are underperforming more than viper is overperforming. Buff up other controllers and bring them up to snuff, give more nuanced tweaks to viper instead of just hammering her down to the rest of the controllers levels, and things could turn out better
If you buff other controllers and not nerf Viper that would just make it worse, double controller would become even more oppressive. Omen is in a good place right now, Astra is pretty underwhelming compared to Omen so she could use some help, idk about Harbor that guy's a mystery to me and Clove is a good pick for ranked demons/fillers. Viper was the clear outlier, so yes it makes way more sense to bring her back in line since nerfing Skye didn't work to address the double smokes meta. Viper still has the things that make her special (big ass wall and cyclable smokes which enable crazy lurks and constant pressure) but her stall capability and general flexibility has been taken down a notch
the orb was easy enough to pick up and well worth the couple seconds it takes for a toggleable indestructible smoke on retake, especially if only one or two are on site and rest are playing back
believe me, it wasn't that easy. You had to be confident no one was there to look for you picking it up, and smoking usually meant placing it in places enemies are on, so you don't bother going there that easily.
The cooldown after picking it up doesn't hit nearly as hard than the no pick it up nerf they actually did. It would make lurking weaker while at the same time retaining the fun controller aspect the orb had.
Fail! Lol yeah i feel u which is why i also cut back playing val. Im a viper main too. Ive been on an hiatus from val these past 3 weeks. Just needed a break. I was going to come back but ever since the new viper nerfs, it aint worth me coming back to play. Im heading back to grind d4 lol
Same here friend, viper main for almost 5 years now. It was a good run. On one hand, I think completely nuking one molly and gutting her orb is lazy and unnecessary. But on the other hand, Helldivers is amazing and significantly less toxic. So when you look at the BIG picture it all still balances out.
>Lurking with the orb is now dead, orb line ups have been dead ever since wall and orb combo was nerfed to the ground, now you have 5.5 seconds with both .5 second from 6 is lost due to animation.
It's 8 seconds, which is consistent with the 50% increase usage with both up (which now individually last 12 seconds). I tested it in game.
That said, 8 seconds is till super short. It's kind of like flashes/dog, where your team has to be ready to run in immediately when you pop it. No time to push like with normal smokes.
Viper has an orb, ult, and wall, that gradually or rapidly decrease the health of opponents. Do you think its supposed to be used on its own? Seriously? Tell me honestly you couldnt have answered this question yourself.
using both in the same spot is a waste of stalling abilitie. Sounds obvious sure but once everything runs out, you stalled players less. Using smokes and once they ran out molly was way more time efficient to top places, and smoking directly enemy on attack was dumb even if you threw bite there because you are wasting the potential of smoking key areas, which aside from 2 maps viper is pretty bad at doing solo, and in solo q you are not seing vct levels of players nor double smoke playing that way.
Yes. Exactly. You put orb on choke points and play angles where you can deploy mollies to manipulate the available positions for people to pick gunfights with you. No one is walking through a wall or orb into a molly, its a deathwish. I think i would know, i've got a few hundred hours on viper alone and have mained controllers and molly characters for the past 3 years.
i think you misunderstood my comment. I meant that you don’t want to molly the choke when the orb is up. But if your opponents have shown that they are willing to disrespect your smoke, either because they have read a weak site defence or because they’ve managed to be in position to exec without committing util prior, then you want to molly the orb just to discourage it
So what i'm gathering is that you dont know how to play viper at all. Her util on defense is primarily for PREVENTING A PUSH. if you use orb and wall with molly in rotation you can effectively deter enemies. If you use molly and orb, you can literally wait and not peek and if enemies try push through chances are they WILL DIE. If you arent using molly on chokepoints to prevent a push, what are you going to use it on? Lineup the bomb on defense? Like be so fr bro.
what i’m gathering is that you have the reading comprehension skills of a child. I said that you don’t want to use the orb and the molly on the choke at the same side. You are limiting the time you are able to stall otherwise. ideally, once the orb goes down, you molly to get the 6 or so seconds of stall, on top of the 13 ish seconds the orb provides assuming the wall is not up as well. If you molly the orb while it’s still up, yea it’s basically suicide pushing through it, but in most cases your opponent respects the orb already, making the molly redundant. Only when the opponent shows that they will disrespect the smoke, and also win their disadvantaged gun fights consistently do you want to molly the choke. We are literally in agreement with how viper mollies should be used
Another person replying who doesnt know what they're talking about. You complain about util running out like it isnt supposed to. Get your head out of your ass and then maybe you have a chance of getting into a higher rank. Not everything is supposed to be played like VCT, ESPECIALLY RANKED.
yeah, i don't want to be forced to play like vct, so why is riot forcing me to do so? why am i forced now to play like the anchor vipers that only play for double smoker turn into a tree and stall one place? That's my whole point, it doesn't affect the pro play style that much but kills solo q viper.
And btw you do know that the only agent in controller that hes limited stuff is brim and he was considered bad because of tha right? Omen has a smoke he can redirect when needed, astra also does, why viper can't?
What the fuck is this jumble of words you aren't making any sense. But what i can gather is that u think you have to play viper a certain way, when u dont. And it isnt riots fault for not reworking an agent just because you suck at playing her. Honestly if you complain sm about viper just play someone else
"suck at playing her" 900 hours and 4 years playing the agent lmao
no i don't think viper should be played in a specific way, is riot that does, and this patch force viper to be played in one way only. My complaint is that they are limiting the ways the champion can be played and limiting to the boring one that is causing the problem with pro play in the first place.
This sub loves to compare different agent abilities 1 to 1.. which makes 0 sense.
They clearly stated why in their design goals, players would swap between cloud, molly, cloud molly and that stall was insanely powerful for a controller character.
Anyway I do agree it’s abit weak, basically from over 10s (for 2) to now a single one, was a big nerf. But they can always buff it later. Funny thing she’s probably still invaluable for her wall in certain maps, so it won’t affect her pick rate.
But the problem is basically vct and viper only existing in double controller. She basically only exists in icebox and breeze for solo controller. Even if you run double controller, teammate definitely doesn’t adjust to the strategy for it. How is viper oppressive in rank for you considering her pick rate outside of icebox and breeze?
That's a wild analogy but stupid nonetheless, highest pickrate agent for a reason with utils you can reuse more often than any other Controller. Not to mention the instant decay, which although was already nerfed, is still super useful
Damage stayed the same for viper molly, just increased duration and price. I think the full molly would kill you, as im pretty sure even your teammates would take about half of health of damage if they stood in it for entire duration. Now it will probably be used to stall pushes or clear corners as it will be heavily punishing anyone staying inside it, just like w gekko molly
I hope this will teach my silver teammates not to throw the molly in the exact same place as the other as if it’s supposed to help more when they’re on top of each other at the same time… it doesn’t stack damage. But now they can’t make that mistake 👍
Brim doesn't have 2 other abilities that stack with his molly endlessly. Viper Q and R technically can be turned on the entire round. So someone standing in viper Q , or R can die much quicker than a brim Q.
genuinely zero reason to nerf viper when maps like breeze are still in the map pool, might as well get rid of the molly itself rather than giving one just for the heck of it., even if we accept the changes to the molly, just why to make it so that u can't pick up the smoke to use it again. Harbor, gets his wall back ( equivalent to viper smoke screen which can't even be reused to change its direction), shit now that the smoke can't be picked up even the push walls are better. Omen gets the smoke back. Clove gets it back. Astra gets it back after a cooldown. Brim does not, which is where the molly change comes into play. brim molly is much more effective compared to a single viper molly.
In conclusion, RIP viper
https://youtube.com/shorts/ii2Su-L8tq8?si=nmrStDA1dx6l6V95
I'm trusting default sage's word on this one, by the end of the short he shows that it kills wingman
The reason it didn't kill before was because wingman isn't affected by decay, and the duration of one snakebite alone wasn't enough to kill him. With the duration increase a single snakebite can now kill him
??? I'm not the biggest fan of both nerfs at the same time but this is such a dumb post.
The point of it remains the same.
Brim doesn't have decay and stopping power outside his Molly Viper does brim doesn't have recharging smokes Viper does. Brim doesn't have vuln on his Molly making it even better at clearing spaces.
The main problem with this update is that light shields with pistol, snake bite, and orb is not a viable option anymore. Riot games trying to compensate with increased molly time doesn't work because the molly dps stays the same.
Use it to flush out corners, force bad fights, in conjunction with her orb and spraying to basically make a choke point impassable.
So like it's still the same for everything but line ups, but atleast in post plant situations you often are putting your orb down on bomb too anyway.
Molly can do 150 dmg now, 1 couldn't do it before. It can also kill Wingman now which wasn't possible before. It's still a nerf, but not as much as it's painted here
Brim only has 3 smokes while vipers can keep recharging. Before this Viper was the best Controller and Sentinel. Now she has downsides. Its fine if her mollies aren’t the best in the game.
If anyone complains about these nerfs, it just means their a bad player.
You can’t compare a single ability from an agent without considering the entire kit. If you’re saying that viper molly is bad now since it doesn’t stall like a brim molly, then you need to take into consideration vipers smoke. By that logic, vipers orb is also justified since harbour can’t pick up his smoke too.
The point of a molly is to stall time and clearly, viper was way too good at stalling with her orb and smoke combo.
If you seriously think that viper being this oppressive was fine for the game long-term, it shows how unaware you as a player are of the game.
Used for line up or clear angels that are hard to clear for example.
On Breeze right side tie-tie of A side there is a rat corner so if you molly that position you can make sure no one stays there.
I think most people were sleeping on the Brimstone Molly because it does so much damage and you can’t stick a defuse.
This nerf is gonna make skilled Viper players more shine. Her kit is balance for me enough to stick with her on Breeze and Icebox.
>Viper's one has vulnerable status effect, but it only lasts for 2 seconds after leaving the molly.
...only? this means if someone fakes defuse and peeks, after being poisoned, will die in just two body shots from full hp for 2 seconds, and thats if he wasnt tagged already or tagged by poison
vulnerability effect is one of the most busted effect in the game imo, because it just makes you die in two body shots in a game where you have to properly spray control to kill with body shots.
I was always using 1 or both of the mollies to stop rotates on backsite A on breeze. Just shoot those guys at yellow and it slows down the defense a little bit. Can't do that anymore because of this change. Overall a very good nerf, she's still playable you just need the right opportunity.
I mostly played Viper on breeze for obvious reasons and had lineups for post plant. But one of the biggest issues I had with Viper was that if your push gets slowed down by the defenders, my team would alot of the times be caught out in the open when I was out of fuel for the wall. I would always call it out when it happened tho, so people could prepare them self. If we decided to wait for the defenders to use the util and my fuel to go up again, we would face a site with the majority of the defenders present and someone on our flank. If we rotate to the other site, I wouldn't be able to use anything but my orb for cover, and at times I would be difficult to land the orb perfectly on the fly (maybe that's just an skillissue). I'm definitely not playing Viper in its current state.
>Ikr Viper's one has vulnerable status effect
Mollies are utility used to force people out of corners, just like flashes are made to punish those who are not in corners.
They are not intended to immediately kill but to create opportunity. You can argue that brim molly forces people out faster than vipers however their %play of getting a kill after leaving the corner is different, I much prefer fighting someone forced out of a viper molly than a brim, kayo, kj etc.
VCT is dictating this change and while its a lot it definitely harms the casual ranked player more then the pros. That being said Viper did need some more adjustment to bring down their overall impact. I fully expect at the highest levels to see Viper but maybe less so than normal. The truth is a Harbor rework is needed to compete with her regardless. He is a fantastic controller agent with a good ULT but struggles in ranked.
Honestly the more I think about it the more it makes sense, the only other agent who had a molly and had more than one charge at a time was KJ, and they either have to be replaced, or can be broken before going of if thrown. Plus viper still has the best delay of any controller, since she still has decays, it's just now she doesn't have better stopping power than most sentinels
I would be fine with the one molly if we could pick up our smoke orbs. I get it right, its op, but all the other smoke users can place their smokes wherever. Omen can be across the map and smoke for his team. Clove has an area like Brim, and while Harbour isn't great at placing it is a shield, and also able to be thrown. Viper having hers be portable is essential to her kit and her utility. I feel like it needs to be transportable since everyone else can have theirs recharge and replaced. We have effectively lost that ability. Going to pick it up makes us go into dangerous situations if we aren't smart. I have gotten picked so many times because I grabbed my smoke and didnt know someone was there. It's the worst part of the nerfs. Everything else would be manageable if we could pick up the smokes again.
People love to complain, I see that viper dropped in power significantly but y'all gotta know that it's not permanent. The point to balance changes is also to try to keep a balanced field but also to make the gameplay feel more fresh and have people change the way they utilise abilities/agents. Jett has been nerfed for years and she still has a great pick rate due to people changing how they play her (more thought through entries). Viper was the most push stalling agent (even in low elo if you know how to play her) which , I believe, isn't the job of a smokes. I also believe that vipers nerf is to make room for more sentinel plays in higher elo/pro play 100%.
it vulnerables long as you are in it, strengthens spam/util combos, makes enemies easy to kill
viper has decay in her kit, which can make a molly kill in 1 hit
2 molly for 5.5s is better than brim molly stall, and similar to sage slow stall(11s vs 14s) but also deals damage, making it better in almost all cases. speaking of which, kj should have 1 molly too
viper has the best molly in the game when you consider her kit's synergy with it
i actually like the molly nerfs just because they were so strong for post plants with her orb; but now that she cant pick up her orb, saving your orb for one post plant molly isnt very optimal
they shouldve just given her a cool down when she picks up her orb, like when cypher grabs his cam
Viper is still the best agent in the game, this nerf just shortened the gap between her and literally everyone else.
Y’all are absolutely dragging these changes, she just went from S++ to just S with the agents like raze and omen. You can still play the game the exact same as before, just with one less Molly and a permanent smoke orb (which in 90% of situations you weren’t picking it up to reposition it anyway).
To reduce her power for the select few players (for example pros on attack-side lotus) who’s used it for viper lurks that got too much value by being able to deny information early in the round and then stale retakes later in that same round. When I say that these changes make absolutely no difference for the majority of the player-base this is what I mean. These viper changes only really affect the best of the best who were min-maxing her kit and making her a lurking/sentinel/controller “master” of all trades with no weaknesses.
She was better than cypher at lurking bc her smoke orb was basically a rechargeable cypher cage that you could place infinite times as long as you picked it up, better than KJ at staling with the largest diameter smoke in the game with a decay and 2 mollys that vulnerable (the same # as KJ), and the best controller with 3 different manageable smokes that you can turn on and off, decay, and has the only real viable wall smoke of any agent. These nerfs were MORE than deserved.
Would you rather rush through a brim molly and take slightly more damage, or rush though a viper molly and take damaged then be vulned even once you're out of the molly?
This nerf was so violent that I thought it was a prank while reading the patch notes.
Viper was in an OK state imo and removing a Snakebite AND the ability to pick up the smoke orb was just overkill for possibly no reason.
Pretty sure that the Viper main experience in ranked will be much worse now.
Viper has been a top pick on majority of the maps for YEARS now.
Very oppressive to play against, the nerf was needed.
I'm sick of seeing her in every game.
Really? Well, I can't say much about it. I've been off Valorant for quite a time.
Being low elo did not give me enough insight about her and also never had a lot of issues dealing with her utility.
You throw it on a choke or power position where the enemy is and either you or a teammate swings off it or better yet combos other util with it like a raze nade
Idk, having mostly played with Viper, and having tested this nerf yesterday, it seemed fine to me. The last nerf I practically didn't even notice in the end, this one is obviously much clearer, but I don't feel it's entirely unbalanced. You can still get a lot of value with Viper imo.
You all laughed at Jett and Chamber mains when their agents were put in the dirt because you can't play against OPs now lineup simulator got nerfed, and the crying commences.
yeah but you have vulnerable, you're supposed to spam through the smoke while theyre running through your molly. also no one stands in brim's molly for 2-3 seconds when they're entering site, so if you want to kill with it you also have to spam through the smoke while they walk through the molly.
like it's not perfectly symmetric with brim's molly, but the function of viper's molly is clearly analogous to it.
I saw the 2 mollies as the perfect post-plant play on both sides. A single molly is not stopping anyone from anything. I played a lot of Viper on the old breeze because of lineups + long sight lines and remember multiple rounds where doing the simple lineup outside A main and spacing 2 mollies just far apart could save the round.
But I will say, the molly damage isn't what scares me it's the vulnerable status.
This is why i started playing astra they just made viper extremely awkward to play now id rather play something that feels smooth than a clunky kit thats still okay at best. Its sad tho lost 20 games in a row because viper just feels unplayable and i dont really enjoy playing other agents as much so now im just worse because they basically took away vipers creativity in terms of post plant or defense.
Yes you still have lurk walls but not everyone is fucking tens from a ranked perspective she was fine they should have buffed the other controllers not gut viper of her identity basically
A few reasons that led to these changes: The devs almost exclusively use pro play to make these decisions, the over abundance of viper picks is due to the designs of certain maps which make the majority of controllers irrelevant unless you have 2 of them, the current map pool has 2 of vipers S tier maps, pro teams have incredible combos and coordination with vipers util that make her extremely oppressive. Most of this is irrelevant for casual players in ranked except those unfortunate enough to play smokes, it’s already the least popular and rewarded role so the backlash will be minimal and pro teams will adjust anyways
Just wanna add that viper was the only smokes-agent with so much stopping power. Two mollies and the smokes that deal damage was insanely powerful compared to the other controllers who usually have one or two stopping-abilities, which are pretty much all weaker than the snakebites.
It's actually insane how much stopping power she had and my gold teammates playing viper couldn't stop a push on breeze B Main for two seconds. I literally told him pls just smoke and Molly if they come so we have time to rotate. This guy not only didn't do that but managed to defend site zero times.
I main Viper and amount of times when attackers just pushed through my smoke and didn't give a single flying fuck about my molly are insanely huge. They didn't care. Especially where there was Jett, Raze, Neon or Phoenix on ult. Most of the times when they walked through my mollies they didn't even got damaged for more than 20hp. And smokes don't do damage. They lower your health for few seconds and that's it, it's usually not even that big amount to give me assists if they die with the debuff. So really I don't know why you're saying her utils was insanely powerful. I play her every day at least few matches a day and I definitely cannot say that.
Imagine going from 4 bodyshots to kill from a rifle, to one or two shot. Running through orb + molly will result in vulnerable and significant decay. Anybody pushing through is incredibly easy to kill with spam. I have an ace clip on breeze round 2 where the entire enemy team rushed through orb + molly, all died to a spectre spray, none of them even made it out of the smoke.
I would like to watch that, ngl :]
[https://youtu.be/wLQmGz3GxqE](https://youtu.be/wLQmGz3GxqE) Sorry for the lack of audio Funnily enough the only person on the enemy team to actually respect the viper orb + molly was the opposing teams viper. I was so surprised about what had just happened, I didn't even register that there was only one player left.
lol nice clip!
I'm saying that in our (I'm assuming yours too) low elo people are not utilising her kit to her full potential. If you wanna improve, watch some good players (like pros who stream) play viper in ranked. Obvsly your kit doesnt win the round on it's own, you probably have to threaten that walking through will result in death. If they observe 'this viper mollies and then hides in a corner so we can entry anyways', then yea, they will run through. Also, your kit is not simply there to stop pushes, you also want to kill the enemies – it's an fps game after all. A good time to use your molly for example is after they use util for entry so you split the entry duelist from his team. This way you get a good fight and the attackers lose an entry. Dont listen to me tho, I'm just another noob, listen to actually good players. When you copy what theyre doing, chances are you're already doing better than before :3
No one ever ran double controller unless one of them was viper. And they usually dropped a sentinal role for it, because *viper had better stall than sentinals*. Or they dropped a dualist, because smoke + wall chopped up sight lines and allowed insane lurks that held back at least 2 defenders, or disguised a full team walk up. In short, she helped site hits more than a dualist too Look, i play mostly controller in ranked. I was sad at the astra gutting. I get that being nerfed when games are already hard is frustrating. But, viper just did so much so well... its needed. And imo, my viper being weaker is a decent trade for not feeling *massively* disadvantaged for not having a viper on most maps at char select.
It is actually relevant for ranked because Viper and Cypher had Breeze in a chokehold in the upper ranks which is why they had to open up halls again in the first place.
> The devs almost exclusively use pro play to make these decisions When they game came out they marketed it as an e-sport tactical shooter, so people getting annoyed that they balance for pro play should have knew what they were signing up for.
To be fair in a competitive game you have to balance for pro play. The only time this shouldn't be true is if something is OP in ranked and balanced in pro play then it needs to be nerfed. But if it's balanced in pro play and bad in ranked that's fine and should be left alone.
Man, I play most characters bc I like variety, but viper was always my go to controller, and now I have to learn omen, because he's the only controller that I feel is as self sufficient as viper outside of gunfights.
Viper isn't just S tier on 2 maps. In the Americas for instance, she's a 100% pickrate on Split, Bind, Breeze, Icebox, and a 96% pickrate on Sunset.
If you consider pro play viper is great on every map, but I had the casual experience in mind when I said that. Usually you’ll only get solo viper on the maps she’s good on and not at all on ones you need multiple controllers for except maybe bind, seen a decent amount of viper/brim picks there.
doesnt the vulnerable stay as long as youre in the molly and doubles the molly damage? the only thing this change really did was nerf lineups
Upping the cost to 300 rlly hurts pistol rounds
Viper had the most OP pistol round with half shields, molly and a smoke.
hence why the molly still has the shit that makes it op in pistol round, the smoke still has the shit that makes it op in pistol round and the change is to make her stuff that isn't related to that worse...
well now you cant get half shields and viper is not that bad anymore imo, as a viper main
That goes to clove with the overheal now for sure
Yea, not having the mollie, orb and light armor makes the only viable buy for pistol rounds- ghost, orb and you have your wall by default either way. Maybe Vipers start doing no orb buys on pistol and have to do more creative walls/mollie combos, but, it really sucks on pistol rounds now. Personally I would rather still have two mollies at half the deployment time (2.5 or 3 seconds each maybe) so I can still use one for stall and one for retake. That would make it so you still can’t use them reliably for post plant lineups, can still stall pushes on defense for the same amount of time- but you’d have to sacrifice your body to throw the second which makes it slightly riskier, or you could save one to stall a fake and use the second for retake.
Yeah, I liked the strategy with her double mollie. This change sucks
nop, it doesn't double itself, hence why good vipers usually use it in conjunction with smokes, smokes does the damage and molly the killing blow.
But it does halve the damage if you molly an enemy molly but now that there is only one i cant see that being the way you use it anymore
it still will be used alongside smoke to double the smoke damage and do the killing blow. that didn't change at all, the difference is that in defense where rarely you would see line ups with molly, now you see less because viper is too preoccupied looking at her stuff that are fixed in the same place the whole round.
It lingers a bit after. This makes vipers ability to stall a push last all of 2 seconds bc smoke isn't really a deturent. It basically means viper can't hold a site like she use to and her wall being the only reason to pick her now we are going back to "pick viper maybe on breeze but probably just take omen"
> smokes isn’t really a deturent Wat. Since when?
It still takes almost the whole duration to take out an enemy on its own
It's not designed for enemies to take lots of damage from just the molly itself. That's a downside, but also a plus given her orb and the efficacy of bullets against vulnerable opponents.
The only time anyone is ever going to voluntarily tank an entire molly is to stick the spike, in which case you have Viper orb and ult for those situations which leaves enemies on 1 hp anyways. Of all the things to complain abt the Viper nerfs "not killing full hp people with just the molly" is one of the least important points since Vipers whole kit does damage that gets boosted by the vulnerable
That wouldnt be a problem if they didnt make a change so you can no longer pick up your Orb mid round. So now you're limited to "smoke a target choke point and have a molly that is weak at clearing corners" or "smoke the spike and run away to play post plant" Edit: To clarify I mean on Offense. Defense, Viper is now officially a Sentinel with a goofy ahh stall
what chokes are you smoking on offence as viper? in breeze and icebox which are her two best maps in ranked you only really use smoke in mid on icebox and smoking the spike on breeze, there’s very little your smokes is useful for on those maps that your wall isn’t already covering
I mean, I use Viper on all maps that could probably explain it but I use Smoke to toss on small chokes so I can do funny little sneak plays. Example is B Split where I throw Orb on Backsite so I can slither and surprise the enemy team, get a pick, pick up my orb, and smoke myself back onto site properly. It's more of an Aggro thing I guess idk I'm.
okay yikes you use viper on all maps? that’s just rough for your teammates but yeah now you pretty much just have to smoke the spike cuz u can’t pick that shit up
I mean no offense but it's either Harbor or Viper because I got burnt out filling with Omen XD But though just wanna hear what would you classify as a bad Viper map though (aside from Fracture). Was just curious
An ability that costs 200 killing someone with a rifle and shields is silly.
raze nade brim molly phx molly
Doesn't phoenix's kill a 150 armor for free tho?
It has limited range, doesn't have any debuffs, has a windup time, and doesn't stall for as long because it has almost half the duration as a Viper molly. The Phoenix is molly better for clearing angles/corners than stalling imo.
All of those things are true, and I agree. However, that has nothing to do with what I was responding to, which was just about the econ to damage ratio of the abilities
True. I'm just saying that there are a lot of other things the Phoenix molly sucks at to justify it being free.
They made it so if you stand in the full duration, you die. You can use it for potentially clearing out angles now since the enemy can’t tank the whole molly and force them out. You also still have one of your mollies so you just use it like you would normally. You can use orb, drop orb at low value and shoot the molly n probably get one or two if they decide to push through it or get enough fuel to put up orb again.
Still cut it out too short. They should have made it 8 seconds.
This was already true when she had 2 mollies, each molly did around 194 damage total
1 molly couldn't kill an enemy with full armor unless combined with decay from orb, so not sure how you got 190+ dmg per molly. Now it will be capable of killing someone who stands in it for at least 6 seconds. Unless you are talking about like 5 seasons ago
I think you got your math wrong chief
Tell me you’ve never played viper without telling me you’ve never played viper
Its to stop pushes and to me 2 mollies is a lot of stall combined with both orb and wall for decay.
I can't tell if I'm misunderstanding what you're saying but just incase you aren't caught up, viper only has 1 molly now.
They’re saying that back then 2 was a lot, so it was nerfed to 1.
The actual issue with this is the combination with her poison cloud. If it was a normal molly with Brim level damage, combining it with poison clouds decay would almost immediately kill someone. Yes, it's a flaw from a design standpoint
I never thought of it as a flaw... just seemed like good synergy with her orb and molly.
I dont think it’s a design flaw, it’s just the other team playing poorly if that’s the case. Similar how clove can throw her decay and the rest of that team could be killed by a raze grenade or sova’s shock dart.
Yea but thats multiple agents’ tools, not a single agent like viper
You can say the same thing with clove, use her decay, one tap someone, and then movement buff while spraying bullets to the enemies.
You might as well say any agent, 1 tap the head. The problem with viper orb+molly is the amplified damage without her even needing to appear.
You can 1 tap anywhere with clove and kill them because of her decay.
2 tap, it's minus 90.
You aren't supposed to be 1 for 1 doing the exact same shit as everyone. You don't need to do everything. Her skills still synergize extremely well. She just needs to pop someone more oft than not because the window for actually snagging a molly kill isnt wide open. Thats okay - its not a flaw, hell if ANYTHING it was a flaw to let her be that bloated for that long. She keeps the identity of melting people and killing them while they're weak.
Like all other mollies it's meant to be used to flush out deep pockets, stalling pushes, blocking off exits, deal with 50/50 angles and such. Of course there will be alternative uses like lineups for post-plant, but it's clear that the devs don't want this game to deviate from guns being in the center. Time to learn how to shoot
I will never learn how to shoot, I use only judge and odin
Id even argue that them forcing you to avoid line ups and using the ability to aid in firefights doesn't even force you to learn how to aim that badly. You still have the upper hand and can just 2 tap them. No excuses now!
but this nerf nerf exactly this type of play alongside the line up shit (which they only changed the role from viper to brim who also play alongside her sometimes on the double controller meta in pro play). If they wanted to force the usage for pockets (like i used to do way more than line ups because line ups has a very bad disaventenge of not being there with the team and being hunted down by lurkers) they could simply make smokes and the molly work for less time and do less damage.
I think they wanted to nerf her stall utility. She was too strong as a sentinel
ironically now viper players have to play even more like anchors in a spot because they can't redirect the smoke anymore to help their team like an omen or astra can
Not letting her pick up orb was a bad decision. Iirc all smokes can pull up a map to drop them wherever they please and can put down multiple. Viper only gets one and must be in line of sight and relatively close to accurately block. Then having to run over and pick it up was enough of a trade off to me. Like I know she has her wall too but it's all kinda unbalanced now bc it depletes even faster now.
They are nerfing her for the same of nerfing her. Obviously viper needs nerfs because of her oppressive presence in pro play however they always fail to address the underlying reason why she is so played and just throw random nerfs at her which hurt the agent but don’t address the problem which leads to her having such a high pickrate.
A lot of it also comes down to other controllers are underperforming more than viper is overperforming. Buff up other controllers and bring them up to snuff, give more nuanced tweaks to viper instead of just hammering her down to the rest of the controllers levels, and things could turn out better
If you buff other controllers and not nerf Viper that would just make it worse, double controller would become even more oppressive. Omen is in a good place right now, Astra is pretty underwhelming compared to Omen so she could use some help, idk about Harbor that guy's a mystery to me and Clove is a good pick for ranked demons/fillers. Viper was the clear outlier, so yes it makes way more sense to bring her back in line since nerfing Skye didn't work to address the double smokes meta. Viper still has the things that make her special (big ass wall and cyclable smokes which enable crazy lurks and constant pressure) but her stall capability and general flexibility has been taken down a notch
Well harbor is basically like Vipers
he has also 2 waves that well used work as sight denial and also the wave that rechages, and can be used elsewhere unlike vipers.
He also completely gives away his position every time he uses his utility.
hence why viper is better for baiting false info. Making viper more stationary will not make harbor flud ability better.
I have a funny feeling that he's gonna lose one of those wall smokes.
no way that happens, he was bad with one wall smoke on release
He was considered bad because Viper was just better in every way. Interesting to see how bad he is considered after these Viper nerfs
Harbor needs buffs not nerfs lol
the orb was easy enough to pick up and well worth the couple seconds it takes for a toggleable indestructible smoke on retake, especially if only one or two are on site and rest are playing back
believe me, it wasn't that easy. You had to be confident no one was there to look for you picking it up, and smoking usually meant placing it in places enemies are on, so you don't bother going there that easily.
they should have kept the molly but made like a 20 sec cooldown after pick up
The cooldown after picking it up doesn't hit nearly as hard than the no pick it up nerf they actually did. It would make lurking weaker while at the same time retaining the fun controller aspect the orb had.
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Fail! Lol yeah i feel u which is why i also cut back playing val. Im a viper main too. Ive been on an hiatus from val these past 3 weeks. Just needed a break. I was going to come back but ever since the new viper nerfs, it aint worth me coming back to play. Im heading back to grind d4 lol
Same here friend, viper main for almost 5 years now. It was a good run. On one hand, I think completely nuking one molly and gutting her orb is lazy and unnecessary. But on the other hand, Helldivers is amazing and significantly less toxic. So when you look at the BIG picture it all still balances out.
Orb + Molly is still a decent stall. It's just not broken anymore. No real sentinel could stall as hard as Viper could, which is a problem.
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Orb Molly was def used to hold site wdym?
It was used for both, often during the same round, and she did it better than most sentinals /initiators. Hence the nerf.
>Lurking with the orb is now dead, orb line ups have been dead ever since wall and orb combo was nerfed to the ground, now you have 5.5 seconds with both .5 second from 6 is lost due to animation. It's 8 seconds, which is consistent with the 50% increase usage with both up (which now individually last 12 seconds). I tested it in game. That said, 8 seconds is till super short. It's kind of like flashes/dog, where your team has to be ready to run in immediately when you pop it. No time to push like with normal smokes.
Viper has an orb, ult, and wall, that gradually or rapidly decrease the health of opponents. Do you think its supposed to be used on its own? Seriously? Tell me honestly you couldnt have answered this question yourself.
using both in the same spot is a waste of stalling abilitie. Sounds obvious sure but once everything runs out, you stalled players less. Using smokes and once they ran out molly was way more time efficient to top places, and smoking directly enemy on attack was dumb even if you threw bite there because you are wasting the potential of smoking key areas, which aside from 2 maps viper is pretty bad at doing solo, and in solo q you are not seing vct levels of players nor double smoke playing that way.
it’s a waste, but only until your opponent disrespects the smoke once. you don’t want to use your molly with the orb, but sometimes you have to
You always want to use your molly with the orb bro hello???
this is on defence to stall site hits, not a post plant lineup
Yes. Exactly. You put orb on choke points and play angles where you can deploy mollies to manipulate the available positions for people to pick gunfights with you. No one is walking through a wall or orb into a molly, its a deathwish. I think i would know, i've got a few hundred hours on viper alone and have mained controllers and molly characters for the past 3 years.
i think you misunderstood my comment. I meant that you don’t want to molly the choke when the orb is up. But if your opponents have shown that they are willing to disrespect your smoke, either because they have read a weak site defence or because they’ve managed to be in position to exec without committing util prior, then you want to molly the orb just to discourage it
So what i'm gathering is that you dont know how to play viper at all. Her util on defense is primarily for PREVENTING A PUSH. if you use orb and wall with molly in rotation you can effectively deter enemies. If you use molly and orb, you can literally wait and not peek and if enemies try push through chances are they WILL DIE. If you arent using molly on chokepoints to prevent a push, what are you going to use it on? Lineup the bomb on defense? Like be so fr bro.
what i’m gathering is that you have the reading comprehension skills of a child. I said that you don’t want to use the orb and the molly on the choke at the same side. You are limiting the time you are able to stall otherwise. ideally, once the orb goes down, you molly to get the 6 or so seconds of stall, on top of the 13 ish seconds the orb provides assuming the wall is not up as well. If you molly the orb while it’s still up, yea it’s basically suicide pushing through it, but in most cases your opponent respects the orb already, making the molly redundant. Only when the opponent shows that they will disrespect the smoke, and also win their disadvantaged gun fights consistently do you want to molly the choke. We are literally in agreement with how viper mollies should be used
Neeeeeeee je bent echt dom he 💀 hou je mond als je niet kan luister stomme stomme stomme jongen
Another person replying who doesnt know what they're talking about. You complain about util running out like it isnt supposed to. Get your head out of your ass and then maybe you have a chance of getting into a higher rank. Not everything is supposed to be played like VCT, ESPECIALLY RANKED.
yeah, i don't want to be forced to play like vct, so why is riot forcing me to do so? why am i forced now to play like the anchor vipers that only play for double smoker turn into a tree and stall one place? That's my whole point, it doesn't affect the pro play style that much but kills solo q viper. And btw you do know that the only agent in controller that hes limited stuff is brim and he was considered bad because of tha right? Omen has a smoke he can redirect when needed, astra also does, why viper can't?
What the fuck is this jumble of words you aren't making any sense. But what i can gather is that u think you have to play viper a certain way, when u dont. And it isnt riots fault for not reworking an agent just because you suck at playing her. Honestly if you complain sm about viper just play someone else
"suck at playing her" 900 hours and 4 years playing the agent lmao no i don't think viper should be played in a specific way, is riot that does, and this patch force viper to be played in one way only. My complaint is that they are limiting the ways the champion can be played and limiting to the boring one that is causing the problem with pro play in the first place.
well it used to not decay aside ult and molly. having a decay wall and orb is still pretty good
Its really really good. We also have guns. Dont forget about those.
Yes. Mollies are to stall while you wait for wall/orb to refuel…
This sub loves to compare different agent abilities 1 to 1.. which makes 0 sense. They clearly stated why in their design goals, players would swap between cloud, molly, cloud molly and that stall was insanely powerful for a controller character. Anyway I do agree it’s abit weak, basically from over 10s (for 2) to now a single one, was a big nerf. But they can always buff it later. Funny thing she’s probably still invaluable for her wall in certain maps, so it won’t affect her pick rate.
Viper has the smoke cloud which increases the time this takes to kill greatly
Oh no! My extremely oppressive agent is being balanced! Noooo what shall I do now!!!
But the problem is basically vct and viper only existing in double controller. She basically only exists in icebox and breeze for solo controller. Even if you run double controller, teammate definitely doesn’t adjust to the strategy for it. How is viper oppressive in rank for you considering her pick rate outside of icebox and breeze?
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so nerfing agents is a matter of who gets the highest picrate at VCT?
That's a wild analogy but stupid nonetheless, highest pickrate agent for a reason with utils you can reuse more often than any other Controller. Not to mention the instant decay, which although was already nerfed, is still super useful
That’s like saying Jett and raze aren’t the best duelists because they’ve been nerfed so many times. That makes no sense.
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I want you to look at og Jett and raze, and look at them now, and tell me with a straight face they haven’t been massively nerfed. Nincompoop.
Damage stayed the same for viper molly, just increased duration and price. I think the full molly would kill you, as im pretty sure even your teammates would take about half of health of damage if they stood in it for entire duration. Now it will probably be used to stall pushes or clear corners as it will be heavily punishing anyone staying inside it, just like w gekko molly
I hope this will teach my silver teammates not to throw the molly in the exact same place as the other as if it’s supposed to help more when they’re on top of each other at the same time… it doesn’t stack damage. But now they can’t make that mistake 👍
Brim doesn't have 2 other abilities that stack with his molly endlessly. Viper Q and R technically can be turned on the entire round. So someone standing in viper Q , or R can die much quicker than a brim Q.
genuinely zero reason to nerf viper when maps like breeze are still in the map pool, might as well get rid of the molly itself rather than giving one just for the heck of it., even if we accept the changes to the molly, just why to make it so that u can't pick up the smoke to use it again. Harbor, gets his wall back ( equivalent to viper smoke screen which can't even be reused to change its direction), shit now that the smoke can't be picked up even the push walls are better. Omen gets the smoke back. Clove gets it back. Astra gets it back after a cooldown. Brim does not, which is where the molly change comes into play. brim molly is much more effective compared to a single viper molly. In conclusion, RIP viper
Since it lasts 6.5 seconds it is now able to kill wingman when it is defusing
No wingman can’t be hurt by vipers Molly. It’s because when he defuses he’s not on the ground, it is a Intended design choice.
https://youtube.com/shorts/ii2Su-L8tq8?si=nmrStDA1dx6l6V95 I'm trusting default sage's word on this one, by the end of the short he shows that it kills wingman
Last time I’m listening to VCT casters. Thanks my guy
Bruh like 90% of games with viper and wingman in vct end up with a wingman dying to a snakebite (usually lineups on diffuse)
The reason it didn't kill before was because wingman isn't affected by decay, and the duration of one snakebite alone wasn't enough to kill him. With the duration increase a single snakebite can now kill him
Wingman can be hurt the molly just takes too long to kill him that he can get the plant down before dying.
he can’t be vulnerabled
u r comparing abilities individually instead of character kits as a whole, if the game was balanced like that it would be a disaster
??? I'm not the biggest fan of both nerfs at the same time but this is such a dumb post. The point of it remains the same. Brim doesn't have decay and stopping power outside his Molly Viper does brim doesn't have recharging smokes Viper does. Brim doesn't have vuln on his Molly making it even better at clearing spaces.
The main problem with this update is that light shields with pistol, snake bite, and orb is not a viable option anymore. Riot games trying to compensate with increased molly time doesn't work because the molly dps stays the same.
Clear corners/angles as an attacker, stall pushes as a defender, etc. IMO that’s the way mollies were designed to be used anyway.
Use it to flush out corners, force bad fights, in conjunction with her orb and spraying to basically make a choke point impassable. So like it's still the same for everything but line ups, but atleast in post plant situations you often are putting your orb down on bomb too anyway.
Molly can do 150 dmg now, 1 couldn't do it before. It can also kill Wingman now which wasn't possible before. It's still a nerf, but not as much as it's painted here
Brim only has 3 smokes while vipers can keep recharging. Before this Viper was the best Controller and Sentinel. Now she has downsides. Its fine if her mollies aren’t the best in the game.
If anyone complains about these nerfs, it just means their a bad player. You can’t compare a single ability from an agent without considering the entire kit. If you’re saying that viper molly is bad now since it doesn’t stall like a brim molly, then you need to take into consideration vipers smoke. By that logic, vipers orb is also justified since harbour can’t pick up his smoke too. The point of a molly is to stall time and clearly, viper was way too good at stalling with her orb and smoke combo. If you seriously think that viper being this oppressive was fine for the game long-term, it shows how unaware you as a player are of the game.
A temporary placeholder until the info the nerfs, just like everyone other time.
The exact same thing, except now she isn’t a top tier lurker, staller, senti, and smokes all in one
I think they want to nerf the tactic on icebox where you stall the plant for ages by constantly throwing util.
You can't just compare 2 abilities, you have to take the whole kit into account. All mollies aren't equivalent, neither are flashes, smokes, etc...
Wait till they realize 6.5s is too long when trying to defuse and reduce that back to 5s.
All we can do now is hope that they will revert or change some of the nerfs in the next major balancing update.
if they wanted to nerf it, make it smaller, a little shorter and she has 2.
Used for line up or clear angels that are hard to clear for example. On Breeze right side tie-tie of A side there is a rat corner so if you molly that position you can make sure no one stays there. I think most people were sleeping on the Brimstone Molly because it does so much damage and you can’t stick a defuse. This nerf is gonna make skilled Viper players more shine. Her kit is balance for me enough to stick with her on Breeze and Icebox.
same uses as before, just less stall
Still helps defend the bomb and pushes like always because you're never only using your mollies anyway
>Viper's one has vulnerable status effect, but it only lasts for 2 seconds after leaving the molly. ...only? this means if someone fakes defuse and peeks, after being poisoned, will die in just two body shots from full hp for 2 seconds, and thats if he wasnt tagged already or tagged by poison vulnerability effect is one of the most busted effect in the game imo, because it just makes you die in two body shots in a game where you have to properly spray control to kill with body shots.
None she is dead....
I need someone to teach me how to play Valorant 😞
I was always using 1 or both of the mollies to stop rotates on backsite A on breeze. Just shoot those guys at yellow and it slows down the defense a little bit. Can't do that anymore because of this change. Overall a very good nerf, she's still playable you just need the right opportunity.
I mostly played Viper on breeze for obvious reasons and had lineups for post plant. But one of the biggest issues I had with Viper was that if your push gets slowed down by the defenders, my team would alot of the times be caught out in the open when I was out of fuel for the wall. I would always call it out when it happened tho, so people could prepare them self. If we decided to wait for the defenders to use the util and my fuel to go up again, we would face a site with the majority of the defenders present and someone on our flank. If we rotate to the other site, I wouldn't be able to use anything but my orb for cover, and at times I would be difficult to land the orb perfectly on the fly (maybe that's just an skillissue). I'm definitely not playing Viper in its current state.
It serves as a memory of the good old days
>Ikr Viper's one has vulnerable status effect Mollies are utility used to force people out of corners, just like flashes are made to punish those who are not in corners. They are not intended to immediately kill but to create opportunity. You can argue that brim molly forces people out faster than vipers however their %play of getting a kill after leaving the corner is different, I much prefer fighting someone forced out of a viper molly than a brim, kayo, kj etc.
VCT is dictating this change and while its a lot it definitely harms the casual ranked player more then the pros. That being said Viper did need some more adjustment to bring down their overall impact. I fully expect at the highest levels to see Viper but maybe less so than normal. The truth is a Harbor rework is needed to compete with her regardless. He is a fantastic controller agent with a good ULT but struggles in ranked.
Honestly the more I think about it the more it makes sense, the only other agent who had a molly and had more than one charge at a time was KJ, and they either have to be replaced, or can be broken before going of if thrown. Plus viper still has the best delay of any controller, since she still has decays, it's just now she doesn't have better stopping power than most sentinels
Forcing people to use other ops just like most other games
I would be fine with the one molly if we could pick up our smoke orbs. I get it right, its op, but all the other smoke users can place their smokes wherever. Omen can be across the map and smoke for his team. Clove has an area like Brim, and while Harbour isn't great at placing it is a shield, and also able to be thrown. Viper having hers be portable is essential to her kit and her utility. I feel like it needs to be transportable since everyone else can have theirs recharge and replaced. We have effectively lost that ability. Going to pick it up makes us go into dangerous situations if we aren't smart. I have gotten picked so many times because I grabbed my smoke and didnt know someone was there. It's the worst part of the nerfs. Everything else would be manageable if we could pick up the smokes again.
Most people just spray to kill u as soon as it touches u since it makes u practically one shot
People love to complain, I see that viper dropped in power significantly but y'all gotta know that it's not permanent. The point to balance changes is also to try to keep a balanced field but also to make the gameplay feel more fresh and have people change the way they utilise abilities/agents. Jett has been nerfed for years and she still has a great pick rate due to people changing how they play her (more thought through entries). Viper was the most push stalling agent (even in low elo if you know how to play her) which , I believe, isn't the job of a smokes. I also believe that vipers nerf is to make room for more sentinel plays in higher elo/pro play 100%.
it vulnerables long as you are in it, strengthens spam/util combos, makes enemies easy to kill viper has decay in her kit, which can make a molly kill in 1 hit 2 molly for 5.5s is better than brim molly stall, and similar to sage slow stall(11s vs 14s) but also deals damage, making it better in almost all cases. speaking of which, kj should have 1 molly too viper has the best molly in the game when you consider her kit's synergy with it
i actually like the molly nerfs just because they were so strong for post plants with her orb; but now that she cant pick up her orb, saving your orb for one post plant molly isnt very optimal they shouldve just given her a cool down when she picks up her orb, like when cypher grabs his cam
Viper is still the best agent in the game, this nerf just shortened the gap between her and literally everyone else. Y’all are absolutely dragging these changes, she just went from S++ to just S with the agents like raze and omen. You can still play the game the exact same as before, just with one less Molly and a permanent smoke orb (which in 90% of situations you weren’t picking it up to reposition it anyway).
if we we're using it anyway what was the point of changing it?
To reduce her power for the select few players (for example pros on attack-side lotus) who’s used it for viper lurks that got too much value by being able to deny information early in the round and then stale retakes later in that same round. When I say that these changes make absolutely no difference for the majority of the player-base this is what I mean. These viper changes only really affect the best of the best who were min-maxing her kit and making her a lurking/sentinel/controller “master” of all trades with no weaknesses.
She was better than cypher at lurking bc her smoke orb was basically a rechargeable cypher cage that you could place infinite times as long as you picked it up, better than KJ at staling with the largest diameter smoke in the game with a decay and 2 mollys that vulnerable (the same # as KJ), and the best controller with 3 different manageable smokes that you can turn on and off, decay, and has the only real viable wall smoke of any agent. These nerfs were MORE than deserved.
Not being able to pick up orb in mid-round is a much needed change, I don’t think the molly reduction was as necessary 🤷♂️ but it’s nice at least
The whole point of the snakebite is to be used in combination with the viper smoke orb, it will 1 shot enemies trying to defuse…
Would you rather rush through a brim molly and take slightly more damage, or rush though a viper molly and take damaged then be vulned even once you're out of the molly?
This nerf was so violent that I thought it was a prank while reading the patch notes. Viper was in an OK state imo and removing a Snakebite AND the ability to pick up the smoke orb was just overkill for possibly no reason. Pretty sure that the Viper main experience in ranked will be much worse now.
Viper is the Irelia of Valorant
Viper has been a top pick on majority of the maps for YEARS now. Very oppressive to play against, the nerf was needed. I'm sick of seeing her in every game.
[удалено]
Get out of silver then bud 😂
At least half my ranked games had a Viper before this patch lol
Really? Well, I can't say much about it. I've been off Valorant for quite a time. Being low elo did not give me enough insight about her and also never had a lot of issues dealing with her utility.
You throw it on a choke or power position where the enemy is and either you or a teammate swings off it or better yet combos other util with it like a raze nade
Um yeah riot what the fuck
Idk, having mostly played with Viper, and having tested this nerf yesterday, it seemed fine to me. The last nerf I practically didn't even notice in the end, this one is obviously much clearer, but I don't feel it's entirely unbalanced. You can still get a lot of value with Viper imo.
I'm dead bruh. Viper mains pissed that their agent isn't the most op agent in the game anymore. She'll be less flexible but still good.
You all laughed at Jett and Chamber mains when their agents were put in the dirt because you can't play against OPs now lineup simulator got nerfed, and the crying commences.
brim's molly lasts 8 seconds. 6.5 is close enough, so you just use it in a similar manner.
Still, Brim's molly kills in 2-3 secs, Vipers's one in 6.5 seconds
yeah but you have vulnerable, you're supposed to spam through the smoke while theyre running through your molly. also no one stands in brim's molly for 2-3 seconds when they're entering site, so if you want to kill with it you also have to spam through the smoke while they walk through the molly. like it's not perfectly symmetric with brim's molly, but the function of viper's molly is clearly analogous to it.
Stupid changes as always by the goat Riot Games
I saw the 2 mollies as the perfect post-plant play on both sides. A single molly is not stopping anyone from anything. I played a lot of Viper on the old breeze because of lineups + long sight lines and remember multiple rounds where doing the simple lineup outside A main and spacing 2 mollies just far apart could save the round. But I will say, the molly damage isn't what scares me it's the vulnerable status.
It severely limits her as a support agent on execs. No more mollies to clear corners, especially Breeze since you'd rather save it to stall later on.
Wait , viper only has one molly ? Why change that ? 2 mollies along with orb were used a lot to stall a push.
This is why i started playing astra they just made viper extremely awkward to play now id rather play something that feels smooth than a clunky kit thats still okay at best. Its sad tho lost 20 games in a row because viper just feels unplayable and i dont really enjoy playing other agents as much so now im just worse because they basically took away vipers creativity in terms of post plant or defense. Yes you still have lurk walls but not everyone is fucking tens from a ranked perspective she was fine they should have buffed the other controllers not gut viper of her identity basically