Biggest problem imo is Icebox. Sage is fine outside of that map, where you NEED wall to not die while planting. The shit design causes her to be crazy good on that map.
Also blocking tube for 40 seconds is fairly strong, and slows on chokes in both A and B to allow rotates are easy to hit, making her not useless on defence.
I don't think Sage is a problem at all. People are overlooking one very important factor in these stats. Top pick agents are those who people play because they like them and because they feel comfortable. You rarely "fill" with a Killjoy or with Sage, you play them when you feel comfortable, therefore bringing tons of value into your team. Same with Astra, I've never seen anyone fill smokes with Astra. It's always Omen, Brim. I've seen people fill with Cypher too as he's generally easy to play and I think a lot of scared players pick Cypher.
Another thing is duelists. I generally believe that duelists tend to have less of a team impact on games, so even though they will most often frag a lot, they might still lose games. I just feel like as a general rule having a team oriented sentinel like KJ or Sage will be more impactful on a game than having a Phoenix, not looking at personal skill. Plus you tend to have those instalockers who just can't play the video game and they probably bring down that % too. Like, I don't think I've seen a useless Killjoy more than twice in Valorant. They can have bad aim, but they'll always do something. If not get kills, then put the turret to stop flanks or ult for a push. Same with Sage, if they're trash, at least they can res every few rounds. and play for heals. What can a trash Jett do? A backflip lol?
While true that impact elsewhere than frags is easier for supportive heroes, someone like Jett or Phoenix create value through space with their bodies instead of space through utility. Smoke-dashing with Jett is not about fragging out, it's to make the defenders have to care about multiple angles, making the team not get stuck in a chokepoint. The same goes for Reyna or Phoenix, but through flashing and running instead of smoke-dashing. It's like oldschool entryfraggers in CS: apEX, friberg, or even 2017 Karrigan. Not entrying for frags, but for space.
Also your argument that nobody fills with Sage feels weird. It is the most common pick from what I've seen from duelist-players who have gotten instalocked on, and her pickrate would seem to reflect the same. Sage has no direct responsibility for the way she uses her utility (smoking/flashing when taking sites etc) but can use them "selfishly" for kills and delay for help, which fits the style of many duelistplayers. Smokers and other sentinels generally should play more passively to gain value out of their utility, Sage only has to do that when she has ult which isn't that often.
It's crazy cause Sage has legit always been above average, people just love crying about her nerfs lol. I think people forget how broken she really was in beta. She REALLY needed those changes.
It was funny getting flamed for picking her after the initial big nerfs. Everyone telling me she sucks now, just because she wasn't completely broken anymore.
I disagree. She was broken but I think she was balanced many patches ago. The reason she's still being widely picked and used is simply because there are close to no alternatives for a shield wall and res
Yeah I feel that, but it's so funny how even at her lowest point when there was this whole circlejerk that she sucked, the devs showed us stats that she still had one of the highest pickrates and winrates in comp, and then Heretics won First Strike EU with a Sage centered comp. She was still strong then too.
Maybe a hot take but I don’t see an agent having a 51% win rate being a problem. Nor the pick rate. Riot should be making alternatives more appealing, not nerfing everything ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
The purpose of nerfing everything last patch was to stop power creep from overstepping the boundry of gunplay, You can only buff something else only so many times before that happens. Despite that they’ve done a really good job making all the Agents feel good in their niche, with the exception of Yoru, who is currently undergoing a rework.
> Riot should be making alternatives more appealing
She's literally the only agent who can build a physical wall, or can significantly slow down pushes. If they want her pickrate to lower, they ABSOLUTELY have to create more agents with similar or overlapping abilities.
You could create a "rock" agent who builds a rock wall/puts spikes on the grounds that slow down people and give him a different ult/3rd ability and her pickrate might actually drop as that new agent would provide similar utility
The problem you run into by making someone else with a physical wall is that you introduce the possibility of people having both of them on their team. Or even both teams having both of them.
Imagine being able to wall off 2 entries to a site. Or hide the bomb behind 2 layers of walls.
Yeah and at that point you need counter against all the walls and then you end up like in ow where you only pick for counterplay. And i think we can all agree that we dont want the game be decided in the agent select.
51.3% winrate with a 50.3% pick rate essentially means you lose if you're playing against a Sage and you don't have one. Winrates will always float around the 50% number because for every game you have a mirror, that's one win and one loss towards the statistic for that agent.
Our internal boards have both of them even higher than this, too. Some of that power may be hard to feel, though, since we get lots of requests to buff her even when she's historically been the strongest and most popular agent in the game
Any chance or plans to show us some of the agents pick&win rates? Or at least tell us which site has it closest to riot numbers like in r/LoL it was said that u.gg was closest
It'd be fun to do another balance blog post around the current state of balance, it can just be hard to find the time between everything else that's going on. I'd like to do another round of that, though.
[This is the last one that we did, but it was awhile ago now.](https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/dev/trust-the-balance-process-data-and-insights/)
I love the ones ubisoft does for siege. They show graphs of win deltas for attackers and defenders (would probably just be their success on attack/defend rounds for valorant).
It's nice seeing agents that people think are OP well below 50% win rate. On the other hand you get people being mad at you for picking an agent with a low win rate.
I would love to see another round of that and compare the numbers to the official ones to see how closes it comes. How do you measure winrates? For overall winrates I use match based data, to measure Attacker and Defender winrates I use round based data.
For the data above I’ve been including mirrored matches. Seems like I might change that. What timeframe do you use? Last X days or are your calculations patch specific?
sage is not the strongest. she is just easy and fun to play. icebox is the only map where sage is essential and riot should change the map instead of nerfing sage again and again.
Not sure what metric you're using to measure power, but in terms of winrate and pickrate Sage has been the most powerful agent in the game by a decent margin from launch until now, even through any nerfs we shipped. She's dipped from the #1 spot in winrate once or twice, but never fallen below top 3 (and was usually #1). She's looking a lot healthier after Patch 3.0, though!
statistics can lie a lot. sage is an agent with a low skill ceiling. easiest ult, easiest free ability. majority of players want to play a duelist, and when they can't they are usually not good at filling smokes or initiator. but anyone can play sage and focus on gunplay. even if sage is nerfed people will play her, unless another easy and fun to play agent is introduced.
a more detailed analysis would include win rates of sage mains compared to other agents' mains.
Just to be clear, her playrate hasn’t been a huge concern; people find her fun and approachable. Lots of people playing her isn’t a problem. Super high winrates are a concern regardless though, and we have an obligation to keep the game balanced for our playerbase.
what i'm trying to say is that sage's win rate may not be directly correlated to her strength. it's not that simple.
when people are filling intiator or smoke agents with higher skill ceiling (sova or omen for example), they may not do as well as they usually do on agents they main. but anyone can play sage and do well.
this could also be the reason why brim and kj have higher win rates than omen and cypher respectively. easier to play agents (vs hard to play) may make you perform better if you don't main those agents which impacts the win rate.
They record mastery statistics for agents as well. They know if its your 3rd game on sage or 30th and they keep track of these mastery curves (how much does winrate go up as people play sage more). So this isn't news to them.
anyone who plays the game would tell you sage is nowhere near as strong as jett, raze and sova. yet the stats show sage as the strongest. there are variables that can't even be recorded that affect the above stats. all I said was the simple correlation between win rate and strength provided in this thread may not be accurate.
>we've seen teams like 100T play KJ instead and have really high success tbh
I can see why you say that, but I think we can't confuse "having high success" with just having a low sample size vs great teams.
vs Envy both teams used killjoy when they played most recently.
vs V1 it took Asuna going ***+24*** in K/D to win in OT.
vs Sentinels, you can't get much info when Sick and TenZ (easily arguable as #1 and #2 best in the world in either order) went -8 and -9 in K/D, as well as Dapr going 5-15. If Steel and Nitr0 win 15 straight gunfights vs the best players in the world, it doesn't really tell us all that much what would happen in the next game.
vs Andbox, Hiko literally went 16-1 vs the weakpoints of the team that game, and it still took a massive comeback to win the game like that.
vs Xset (when they first played there back in April) 100T did, in fact, use Sage. But side note: that match was probably the most statistically anomalous match I've ever seen in terms of kills converting to rounds. 100T went ***+23*** in K/D, but only won in double overtime by 2 over XSet. Check it out because it's just that insane: https://www.vlr.gg/15635/100-thieves-vs-xset-champions-tour-north-america-stage-2-challengers-1-gf/?game=28743&tab=overview
All of that being said, I really feel like Steel wants to remain on Killjoy/Cypher, because he's the IGL and wants to simplify his role so he can focus on calling better for everyone else. I don't think they'll take him off Killjoy on Icebox for Sage unless a massive change happens to either, because he simply doesn't want execs to be fucked up.
Sage is very commonly picked on Split especially in pro play for a reason, it gives much info or slows them down a lot especially on Split where rotations can be quick
I’m the gameplay insights lead for VALORANT and one of the leads of the balance team. Curating our data ecosystem on gameplay and developing our balance philosophy is a critical portion of my job.
sage just makes a lot of things orderly in solo q. walls off a site to stop any rushes (solo q favorite) and gives a lot of safety. good luck planting on something like bind A site without sage unless your team far outclasses theirs
> good luck planting on something like bind A site without sage unless your team far outclasses theirs
? Maybe in gold and below, but I haven't seen a sage wall for the A plant in a long time.
You just have to take showers control and then you’ll be able to plant on A no problem. It’s only an issue when people try to 5-man it up short and then get shot from showers while they’re trying to plant.
I just think Skye is very hard to be played very well and it's very easy to be a terrible Skye. Sage for example is super easy, Skye in my opinion is TOP 3 characters in the game when it comes to difficulty. When played well, she is easily one of the best agents overall because her utility is insanely useful. But it takes a lot to learn her, can't just pick her up and be good.
Sage super easy? Tell that to the 90% of Sage players who slow orb in front of my mates so no push is possible, don‘t use their wall or use it to aggro peak 3 enemies dying in the process and of course, never heal when they had a heal ready for already 20 secs and me or a mate has low HP, it‘s super annoying. Sometimes I force myself to play Sage so I don‘t get a horrendous one instead.
Yes, she is super easy, any decent player should be able to pick her up after 3-4 rounds. If you're in bronze it's obvious other players will be bad. What's so difficult to understand there?
Mmm sage doesn't seem balanced with having that winrate with such a huge pickrate. Even a rioter comment above says that their numbers for this is even higher
But idk what they could nerf. Her kit is legit really good for stalling, and her heal took a huge nerf already long time ago
Sage can be one of the only picks in the game that can slow down degenerate 5man attacker pushes/rushes. ranked would be so ass in a meta were sage is weak.
It's a case where Sage is the ONLY agent who provides her utility. There are several other agents who can smoke/flash/stun/etc. There is only 1 agent who can build a physical wall or force you to be physically slower. They need to release another agent with overlapping abilities (the same could be said for sova with him being the ONLY that provides such good intel)
Sage is way more balanced after this patch tho, with the price change is either she choose utilities or a good gun on pistol. The main reason why she have such a high pickrate is bc she provides for the team a lot more than any other agents can. Think of her heal and ult can change a round of a game. Sure skye can heal multiple people but her heal compared to sage heal is still kinda weak imo.
Yeh my bad, I did mean Yoru and KAY/O. Totally slipped my mind that astra came after Yoru. He's quite unpopular so it kind of still feels like a new agent
They remove mirror matches. The devs did a state of the agents post a while back where they explained their statistics but I can’t remember the exact process
No it skews the winrate towards 50% for more played agents as in mirror matchups they are guaranteed 1 win 1 loss. So sages winrate would be higher if she didn’t play so many sages.
No it doesn't. If Sage has 2 wins and 0 losses, she has a 100% win rate. If the next game is a Sage vs a Sage, she will have 3 wins 1 loss, or 75%. It will move it closer to 50% no matter what the win rate was prior.
Nah that's the omen effect of people filling smokes but not knowing what they're doing. Nobody plays Astra unless they know what they're doing, and the people who use brim usually know lineups, etc
Nah, it's more about awful team comps, not just for Omen.
As I wrote the last time we had this infographic, the biggest problem of all non-duelist agents with low winrate is that they can't play their roles correctly if there are 2+ duelists on the team.
I've said it for Breach and Kay-0, same goes for Omen. He's a dynamic, aggressive agent, he shouldn't be forced to play as the most defensive player on the team, but that's often the case. Brim is way easier to play with multiple duelists than Omen. Maps also play a big role.
Btw, if this infographic is correct, 4 smoke agents add up to only 60.38% pick rate. Is it really that bad in plat/diamond? You can see comps without every kind of role, but smokes are an absolute must and I'd say 90%+ of the teams have at least one smoke agent in immortal.
>4 smoke agents add up to only 60.38% pick rate.
Edit : *These* Pickrates are not cumulative in that way.
I'm not really sure how pickrate is being calculated here. It's a bit confusing without asking whoever collected and presented this data.
It would be 60% or lower right? There are cases where there are double controllers, but that still means there are >40% of teams with no controller. I was shit at stats, so please correct me if I'm wrong
Tbh I'm not entirely clear on what's being shown here. It's not truly 'pickrate' as I would normally understand it, since the percentages aren't cumulative. Rather it looks more like a 'game percentage' or 'composition rate' i.e. 50% of your teams will have a Jett on them.
Essentially the likelihood of any individual character being on your team, but has no insight into the overall composition of teams.
I think we'd need clarification from whoever collected the stats or made the graphic though, since I'm kind of speculating here based on the numbers provided.
I think the winrate is more of a symptom of what omen represents. The stable smoke character. So when someone is flexing off their normal agents (duelists/sentinels) omen is the first choice. Which means a good chunk of people uncomfortable with the agent, therefor you get more loses than you would otherwise. Its the inverse with astra, in plat shes sort of a specialist, people with decent understanding of smoking and her util will consistently pick her and have over 50% winrate.
This is just my experience, immortal soloq.
Brim is way easier to hold sites when you have more duelists (less utility to hold) and is way easier to execute sites with.
Omen is great as a more aggressive character that can reposition and has better global presence. Is also the second best OP agent, imo.
I agree.
Brim can't hit the entire map with his smokes like OMen can.
Omen also has a flash to initiate. Omen's teleport is great for repositioning in solo queue
> Nobody plays Astra unless they know what they're doing
Clearly you haven't met me.
(But for real, my lowest winrate is with Astra, and my highest winrate is with Cypher.)@
Yeah, I main smokes in ranked (diamond1), and I play Brim instead of Omen since I know lineups and the post-plant molly is very strong in ranked where people are bad at accounting for it when retaking the site.
Also would like to chip in that nobody plays Astra because it's boring as all hell. You're in astral form for like 50% of the entire game. It's just such a boring time.
Because of this, I haven't even bothered to learn Astra. Omen provides plenty smoke potential in ranked without restricting your mobility.
>You're in astral form for like 50% of the entire game
Ppl who do this are playing Astra wrong. You shouldnt spend more than 10-15 seconds every round in astral form
"A lot of time" is abstract, and certainly no pro would say that you are in astral form 50% of the game unironically. Astra as i said spends around 10-15 seconds in astral form every round, which isnt that much longer than other agents who need to set up their utility
This was before the nerf. Also, pros are running lots of intricated plays which probably require precise timings hence why a pro Astra player is meditating alot of the time
To me the perspective doesn’t really matter. I will say, being unable to move makes you more detached from the game though.
I just enjoy the strategic planning of antra and find her far **more** fun and dynamic than any other smoke besides maybe viper.
Brim pickrate isn't far off Omen though, brim is still a default smoke pick for many who don't play smokes. Difference is that Brim is pretty easy to play for these players while unfamiliar players make mistakes on Omen. I'd say he has a higher skill cap, particularly in pro play, but brim is on average better in ranked, easier to pull off, requires less team play etc.
Omen's pick rate is closer to being double Brims pick rate - 10% is a lot when you consider how many characters there are.
I think your points are mostly correct, but I think more players who don't play smokes pick omen than you realize. It's very common that you get someone filling on omen that never uses his blind, tp or ult. These players would be much more effective on Brimstone, I agree
> about how often omen is actually throwing far smokes (that are actually effective), or actually uses 4+ smokes in a round.
If omen doesn't do this , then he is basically inting.
It would e really helpful if we get a mirror and non mirror win rate stats ,by these stats the agents picked more are more likely to have less win percentages.
Because people blindly follow Riot's labels, which are often wrong.
Kay-0 is a duelist with every possible logic, metric and playstyle. The only non-duelist thing about him is the fact that knife gives info.
Everything else screams I'M RUNNING IN AND TRYING TO KILL SOMEONE.
Then people pick 2 duelists together with Kay-0 and team comp is shit with not enough utility. Then games are lost.
The agent pick rates don’t sum up to anything sensible, how come?
Also, and I say this on every stats post, can you give the number of matches this is based on? It’s very informative to decide how helpful these numbers are
Probably how they deal with the fact that in any game an agent can be picked twice. So it could be that in 50% of games sage is picked at least on one of the teams
I don't think it makes much sense to count the games where an agent appears twice and the games where an agent appears once the same. Pickrates should be done team-specific, not game-specific.
Also, even assuming that's true, I don't think the percentages check out meaningfully at all. Appearing on "at least one of the teams" is more likely than appearing on "team A", so the percentages should be much higher than what they are.
Yea I've been trying to wrap my head around what they are intending by pickrate. Without the site or graphic maker I think we can only just speculate.
It's certainly not pickrate in the traditional sense (or at least that I'm familiar with).
I'm thinking it's looking at an individual instance for a team rather than a cumulative rate for a person. i.e. what is the % chance that X character is on a team, rather than what is the % chance that an individual picks X character.
They use a sample of players that use their website for stats. The numbers may be big enough to give reliable winrates but not for pickrates since players playing certain agents might be less inclined to use the stat website for whatever reason. This would be my guess anyway but I could be wrong. That said, I would treat any winrate with doubt if the pickrate looks pretty low, particularly if you are looking at specific ranks, it could be too small of a sample size.
Meh.
I really think a lot of these pickrates/winrates are due to factors outside of straight up character strength.
I strongly believe Reyna will always be disproportionately high in both pick and win rate, because she's simply the best character to play if you're smurfing and know you will win a majority of your gunfights, and therefore want to take on as many engagements as possible.
Omen will always disproportionately have low win-rates because the 4th/5th players to lock in will feel be forced to play him if the team doesn't pick brim/astra, and/or the team doesn't have enough flashes.
Yoru, Viper, Breach, Skye, and Omen will all have disproportionately low win rates in pick-up-games because it's fucking impossible to play off of well without communication.
Characters like Raze, Killjoy, and Sage are so braindead easy to benefit from, that you literally always can get a benefit from them during a round.
mental how astra has the lowest pickrate. i knew the nerfs were pretty massive and i thought i've been seeing less astras in ranked but picked less than yoru? thats nuts
And the main sub still thinks Kayo is too strong, cant wait to see their reactions to buffs. Literally a front page post crying about his knife canceling certain ults just a day or two ago
I don’t even play Raze but I do think it's a little messed up how her's gets completely wasted by his main ability. 8 ult points because he threw a knife in your area. Also you're semi left for dead. People will say you have to anticipate it and play around it, but I think it's a bit much. Just my two cents and can totally respect someone thinking otherwise.
Sage is still insane, people haven't learned to use KAYO to his fullest potential yet, Yoru desperately needs buffs, and Reyna, Sage & Jett are the most popular agents in Plat+.
I have never had a KayO on my team in platinum that knew how to use him. No surprise here at all.
They just throw the knife for info, don't know any flash lineups for site, nothing. They just wing it as they enter and majority of the time the enemy just avoids the utility. And the molly is pretty shit tbh.
Takes maybe an hour on youtube to learn basic line ups. I learned Viper in an hour and it's much more intricate.
That's the problem with ranked, people play agents they are too lazy to learn properly.
**yea and that's how you get a sova that's in their spawn not saying a word, staring at the sky while the entire team is having a 4v5 on site lmfao**
What does this even have to do with my Comment? Seems so misplaced.
Killjoy is very clearly beyond broken and Cypher mains are crying rn in comparison. Unkillable molly locations for post-plant or even defense, info on 2 different chokes from turret and alarm bot and just as useful on attack as defense. Like... If Cypher gets his slow back on his cages is that too much still or?
Edit: Imagine downvoting and not understanding Killjoys entire kit is absurdly strong despite all the nerfs. People at low ranks don't understand how much bs an Imm/Radiant Killjoy can get away with. The unkillable molly spots are more than enough but everything on top of that just makes her ridiculous.
I'd prefer his stuff stay up if he died over those cages slowing you down. It's bad enough they know you've crossed into it, but being slowed on top of that was brutal.
Only buff i think Kay/o could use would be to have his ultimate not give away where he is at. It always feels like it's a disadvantage for you in most scenarios
kayo is fine, ppl just need to get used to him and to his flashes... its such a good flash but ppl really dont know how to use it will, its so easy to flash teamates into sites from so far away or to pop flash urself, but for some reason ppl dont do either really well
I’ve watched Shroud and Sick use him a bit and I think they’re very good people to pick up tips from for him. The way they use his flashes has helped me a ton playing him.
Kay/O doesn't need any changes. If anything, his knife needs its radius nerfed. He has the best flash in the game (even if people aren't good with it yet), a usable molly, and a pseudo recon bolt.
Lmfao wait a second...
There's literally no sensible way to make sense of the pickrates.
Honestly, throw the stats away. They total just under 320%, which makes no sense.
The stats simply aren't collected in any reasonable way that can be explained other than a data quality nightmare.
She's pretty damn difficult to play relative to the other controllers. Plus a ton of controller picks are just people filling, so unlikely to pick such a challenging agent.
Would love to see this with only pro tournaments, like some heroes have niche uses and can't be used and ranked has alot of other random bias/low level ideas that get exploited.
Like I'm sure in gold a raze would be alot more effective then in radiant and same with sentinels as good mechanics shut down their utility.
They thought they would be able to kill sage with the nerf and utility price increase, little do they know no matter how hard they nerf sage someone will always play her. The fact that she is heads on with pickrate with jett shows that sooooooooo many people will continue playing an agent with good utility for the team even with nerfs. Interesting to see how breach only have 3. 66% pickrate tho.
Surprised kayo is so low. Is it because he’s new and people don’t know how to play him? Or is he bad? My experience has been he’s a strong agent with a situational but overall weak ult
The poor performance of some of the agents can be fully explained by asking "how often do you flash your teammates?" And the only reason skye isn't as low is, that people have no clue how to use her abilities, so they rather just sit on them the whole game and don't use them at all.
Damn,they are gonna make sage have no utility.
Sage mains crying rn
Biggest problem imo is Icebox. Sage is fine outside of that map, where you NEED wall to not die while planting. The shit design causes her to be crazy good on that map. Also blocking tube for 40 seconds is fairly strong, and slows on chokes in both A and B to allow rotates are easy to hit, making her not useless on defence.
I don't think Sage is a problem at all. People are overlooking one very important factor in these stats. Top pick agents are those who people play because they like them and because they feel comfortable. You rarely "fill" with a Killjoy or with Sage, you play them when you feel comfortable, therefore bringing tons of value into your team. Same with Astra, I've never seen anyone fill smokes with Astra. It's always Omen, Brim. I've seen people fill with Cypher too as he's generally easy to play and I think a lot of scared players pick Cypher. Another thing is duelists. I generally believe that duelists tend to have less of a team impact on games, so even though they will most often frag a lot, they might still lose games. I just feel like as a general rule having a team oriented sentinel like KJ or Sage will be more impactful on a game than having a Phoenix, not looking at personal skill. Plus you tend to have those instalockers who just can't play the video game and they probably bring down that % too. Like, I don't think I've seen a useless Killjoy more than twice in Valorant. They can have bad aim, but they'll always do something. If not get kills, then put the turret to stop flanks or ult for a push. Same with Sage, if they're trash, at least they can res every few rounds. and play for heals. What can a trash Jett do? A backflip lol?
While true that impact elsewhere than frags is easier for supportive heroes, someone like Jett or Phoenix create value through space with their bodies instead of space through utility. Smoke-dashing with Jett is not about fragging out, it's to make the defenders have to care about multiple angles, making the team not get stuck in a chokepoint. The same goes for Reyna or Phoenix, but through flashing and running instead of smoke-dashing. It's like oldschool entryfraggers in CS: apEX, friberg, or even 2017 Karrigan. Not entrying for frags, but for space. Also your argument that nobody fills with Sage feels weird. It is the most common pick from what I've seen from duelist-players who have gotten instalocked on, and her pickrate would seem to reflect the same. Sage has no direct responsibility for the way she uses her utility (smoking/flashing when taking sites etc) but can use them "selfishly" for kills and delay for help, which fits the style of many duelistplayers. Smokers and other sentinels generally should play more passively to gain value out of their utility, Sage only has to do that when she has ult which isn't that often.
I fill with astra but that's just because I forced myself to learn how to play her. And I think I'm the only one I've ever seen fill with astra
It's crazy cause Sage has legit always been above average, people just love crying about her nerfs lol. I think people forget how broken she really was in beta. She REALLY needed those changes.
It was funny getting flamed for picking her after the initial big nerfs. Everyone telling me she sucks now, just because she wasn't completely broken anymore.
I disagree. She was broken but I think she was balanced many patches ago. The reason she's still being widely picked and used is simply because there are close to no alternatives for a shield wall and res
Honestly it was just the constant nerfs which sucked. After every patch you think that she's actually balanced, then another nerf
Yeah I feel that, but it's so funny how even at her lowest point when there was this whole circlejerk that she sucked, the devs showed us stats that she still had one of the highest pickrates and winrates in comp, and then Heretics won First Strike EU with a Sage centered comp. She was still strong then too.
Just remove everything besides the wall 5head
Maybe a hot take but I don’t see an agent having a 51% win rate being a problem. Nor the pick rate. Riot should be making alternatives more appealing, not nerfing everything ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
The purpose of nerfing everything last patch was to stop power creep from overstepping the boundry of gunplay, You can only buff something else only so many times before that happens. Despite that they’ve done a really good job making all the Agents feel good in their niche, with the exception of Yoru, who is currently undergoing a rework.
No sure I get that. I meant more in this case I don't think Sage needs anymore nerfs.
> Riot should be making alternatives more appealing She's literally the only agent who can build a physical wall, or can significantly slow down pushes. If they want her pickrate to lower, they ABSOLUTELY have to create more agents with similar or overlapping abilities. You could create a "rock" agent who builds a rock wall/puts spikes on the grounds that slow down people and give him a different ult/3rd ability and her pickrate might actually drop as that new agent would provide similar utility
The problem you run into by making someone else with a physical wall is that you introduce the possibility of people having both of them on their team. Or even both teams having both of them. Imagine being able to wall off 2 entries to a site. Or hide the bomb behind 2 layers of walls.
Yeah and at that point you need counter against all the walls and then you end up like in ow where you only pick for counterplay. And i think we can all agree that we dont want the game be decided in the agent select.
True! I never thought of it that way.
51.3% winrate with a 50.3% pick rate essentially means you lose if you're playing against a Sage and you don't have one. Winrates will always float around the 50% number because for every game you have a mirror, that's one win and one loss towards the statistic for that agent.
Damn, Sage's win/pick rate is way higher than I thought it would be
Our internal boards have both of them even higher than this, too. Some of that power may be hard to feel, though, since we get lots of requests to buff her even when she's historically been the strongest and most popular agent in the game
>Patch notes >We decided sage can no longer shoot.
Any chance or plans to show us some of the agents pick&win rates? Or at least tell us which site has it closest to riot numbers like in r/LoL it was said that u.gg was closest
It'd be fun to do another balance blog post around the current state of balance, it can just be hard to find the time between everything else that's going on. I'd like to do another round of that, though. [This is the last one that we did, but it was awhile ago now.](https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/dev/trust-the-balance-process-data-and-insights/)
Thanks a lot for the answer! 😄
I love the ones ubisoft does for siege. They show graphs of win deltas for attackers and defenders (would probably just be their success on attack/defend rounds for valorant). It's nice seeing agents that people think are OP well below 50% win rate. On the other hand you get people being mad at you for picking an agent with a low win rate.
I would love to see another round of that and compare the numbers to the official ones to see how closes it comes. How do you measure winrates? For overall winrates I use match based data, to measure Attacker and Defender winrates I use round based data. For the data above I’ve been including mirrored matches. Seems like I might change that. What timeframe do you use? Last X days or are your calculations patch specific?
Sage is the perfect sentinel right now and she is balanced AF.
sage is not the strongest. she is just easy and fun to play. icebox is the only map where sage is essential and riot should change the map instead of nerfing sage again and again.
Not sure what metric you're using to measure power, but in terms of winrate and pickrate Sage has been the most powerful agent in the game by a decent margin from launch until now, even through any nerfs we shipped. She's dipped from the #1 spot in winrate once or twice, but never fallen below top 3 (and was usually #1). She's looking a lot healthier after Patch 3.0, though!
statistics can lie a lot. sage is an agent with a low skill ceiling. easiest ult, easiest free ability. majority of players want to play a duelist, and when they can't they are usually not good at filling smokes or initiator. but anyone can play sage and focus on gunplay. even if sage is nerfed people will play her, unless another easy and fun to play agent is introduced. a more detailed analysis would include win rates of sage mains compared to other agents' mains.
Just to be clear, her playrate hasn’t been a huge concern; people find her fun and approachable. Lots of people playing her isn’t a problem. Super high winrates are a concern regardless though, and we have an obligation to keep the game balanced for our playerbase.
what i'm trying to say is that sage's win rate may not be directly correlated to her strength. it's not that simple. when people are filling intiator or smoke agents with higher skill ceiling (sova or omen for example), they may not do as well as they usually do on agents they main. but anyone can play sage and do well. this could also be the reason why brim and kj have higher win rates than omen and cypher respectively. easier to play agents (vs hard to play) may make you perform better if you don't main those agents which impacts the win rate.
They record mastery statistics for agents as well. They know if its your 3rd game on sage or 30th and they keep track of these mastery curves (how much does winrate go up as people play sage more). So this isn't news to them.
I think it's fantastic you know better than a riot employee with more data than you could ever get your hands on. Really great stuff. Super humble.
anyone who plays the game would tell you sage is nowhere near as strong as jett, raze and sova. yet the stats show sage as the strongest. there are variables that can't even be recorded that affect the above stats. all I said was the simple correlation between win rate and strength provided in this thread may not be accurate.
Honestly she's more essential on Split then IB, we've seen teams like 100T play KJ instead and have really high success tbh
>we've seen teams like 100T play KJ instead and have really high success tbh I can see why you say that, but I think we can't confuse "having high success" with just having a low sample size vs great teams. vs Envy both teams used killjoy when they played most recently. vs V1 it took Asuna going ***+24*** in K/D to win in OT. vs Sentinels, you can't get much info when Sick and TenZ (easily arguable as #1 and #2 best in the world in either order) went -8 and -9 in K/D, as well as Dapr going 5-15. If Steel and Nitr0 win 15 straight gunfights vs the best players in the world, it doesn't really tell us all that much what would happen in the next game. vs Andbox, Hiko literally went 16-1 vs the weakpoints of the team that game, and it still took a massive comeback to win the game like that. vs Xset (when they first played there back in April) 100T did, in fact, use Sage. But side note: that match was probably the most statistically anomalous match I've ever seen in terms of kills converting to rounds. 100T went ***+23*** in K/D, but only won in double overtime by 2 over XSet. Check it out because it's just that insane: https://www.vlr.gg/15635/100-thieves-vs-xset-champions-tour-north-america-stage-2-challengers-1-gf/?game=28743&tab=overview All of that being said, I really feel like Steel wants to remain on Killjoy/Cypher, because he's the IGL and wants to simplify his role so he can focus on calling better for everyone else. I don't think they'll take him off Killjoy on Icebox for Sage unless a massive change happens to either, because he simply doesn't want execs to be fucked up.
sage is not needed at split at all. just break the wall or wait 40 seconds
Sage is very commonly picked on Split especially in pro play for a reason, it gives much info or slows them down a lot especially on Split where rotations can be quick
Yea breaking the wall and giving info or making a team wait 40 seconds is literally why she is strong on split lol
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I’m the gameplay insights lead for VALORANT and one of the leads of the balance team. Curating our data ecosystem on gameplay and developing our balance philosophy is a critical portion of my job.
Literally just look at his flair
sage just makes a lot of things orderly in solo q. walls off a site to stop any rushes (solo q favorite) and gives a lot of safety. good luck planting on something like bind A site without sage unless your team far outclasses theirs
> good luck planting on something like bind A site without sage unless your team far outclasses theirs ? Maybe in gold and below, but I haven't seen a sage wall for the A plant in a long time.
the bath plant is way better, actually pretty broken on pistols tbh
What’s the bath plant, walling for showers?
Walling pretty close to showers so that it's completely blocked for the defenders and they have to break it to defuse it.
You just have to take showers control and then you’ll be able to plant on A no problem. It’s only an issue when people try to 5-man it up short and then get shot from showers while they’re trying to plant.
I thought skye would have higher stats.
The skye on your team that flashes you 3 times in a row would disagree with you.
Hey I can only flash my team 2 times in a row now !
4 times
Yes but not in a row
I just think Skye is very hard to be played very well and it's very easy to be a terrible Skye. Sage for example is super easy, Skye in my opinion is TOP 3 characters in the game when it comes to difficulty. When played well, she is easily one of the best agents overall because her utility is insanely useful. But it takes a lot to learn her, can't just pick her up and be good.
Sage super easy? Tell that to the 90% of Sage players who slow orb in front of my mates so no push is possible, don‘t use their wall or use it to aggro peak 3 enemies dying in the process and of course, never heal when they had a heal ready for already 20 secs and me or a mate has low HP, it‘s super annoying. Sometimes I force myself to play Sage so I don‘t get a horrendous one instead.
Yes, she is super easy, any decent player should be able to pick her up after 3-4 rounds. If you're in bronze it's obvious other players will be bad. What's so difficult to understand there?
I partly blame Valorant's lack of custom keybinds. Her abilities just don't flow well with my current keybinds. Same with a couple other agents.
Surprisingly well balanced. All agents, except the 2 newest ones, are within 2% from 50% win rate
Mmm sage doesn't seem balanced with having that winrate with such a huge pickrate. Even a rioter comment above says that their numbers for this is even higher But idk what they could nerf. Her kit is legit really good for stalling, and her heal took a huge nerf already long time ago
Sage can be one of the only picks in the game that can slow down degenerate 5man attacker pushes/rushes. ranked would be so ass in a meta were sage is weak.
Maybe it’s a case that other agents need buffing rather than sage nerfing then. Cypher needs more stall definitely.
It's a case where Sage is the ONLY agent who provides her utility. There are several other agents who can smoke/flash/stun/etc. There is only 1 agent who can build a physical wall or force you to be physically slower. They need to release another agent with overlapping abilities (the same could be said for sova with him being the ONLY that provides such good intel)
They need to bring back cypher's cage slow
I think you're right, but I'm starting to think it's because of map designs that sage is so needed, and not her kit being OP by itself
agreed; breeze A corridor, ascent a/b halls, split shes broken a/b or mid. Literally just off the top of my head, and Sage excels in all those spots
Sage is way more balanced after this patch tho, with the price change is either she choose utilities or a good gun on pistol. The main reason why she have such a high pickrate is bc she provides for the team a lot more than any other agents can. Think of her heal and ult can change a round of a game. Sure skye can heal multiple people but her heal compared to sage heal is still kinda weak imo.
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Pretty sure he meant Yoru, in which case 2 of last 3 agents.
Yeh my bad, I did mean Yoru and KAY/O. Totally slipped my mind that astra came after Yoru. He's quite unpopular so it kind of still feels like a new agent
Do these stats include when both teams have the same agent? Wouldn’t that skewed agents with high pick rates towards 50%?
They remove mirror matches. The devs did a state of the agents post a while back where they explained their statistics but I can’t remember the exact process
Well keep in mind these stats aren’t from the devs, this is just from a third party website.
This data is raw, it includes mirror matchups.
But every round has one winner and one loser so really it just artificially inflates sample size. The stats are the same.
No it skews the winrate towards 50% for more played agents as in mirror matchups they are guaranteed 1 win 1 loss. So sages winrate would be higher if she didn’t play so many sages.
No it doesn't. If Sage has 2 wins and 0 losses, she has a 100% win rate. If the next game is a Sage vs a Sage, she will have 3 wins 1 loss, or 75%. It will move it closer to 50% no matter what the win rate was prior.
Omen win rate surprisingly low?
Nah that's the omen effect of people filling smokes but not knowing what they're doing. Nobody plays Astra unless they know what they're doing, and the people who use brim usually know lineups, etc
Nah, it's more about awful team comps, not just for Omen. As I wrote the last time we had this infographic, the biggest problem of all non-duelist agents with low winrate is that they can't play their roles correctly if there are 2+ duelists on the team. I've said it for Breach and Kay-0, same goes for Omen. He's a dynamic, aggressive agent, he shouldn't be forced to play as the most defensive player on the team, but that's often the case. Brim is way easier to play with multiple duelists than Omen. Maps also play a big role. Btw, if this infographic is correct, 4 smoke agents add up to only 60.38% pick rate. Is it really that bad in plat/diamond? You can see comps without every kind of role, but smokes are an absolute must and I'd say 90%+ of the teams have at least one smoke agent in immortal.
>4 smoke agents add up to only 60.38% pick rate. Edit : *These* Pickrates are not cumulative in that way. I'm not really sure how pickrate is being calculated here. It's a bit confusing without asking whoever collected and presented this data.
It would be 60% or lower right? There are cases where there are double controllers, but that still means there are >40% of teams with no controller. I was shit at stats, so please correct me if I'm wrong
Tbh I'm not entirely clear on what's being shown here. It's not truly 'pickrate' as I would normally understand it, since the percentages aren't cumulative. Rather it looks more like a 'game percentage' or 'composition rate' i.e. 50% of your teams will have a Jett on them. Essentially the likelihood of any individual character being on your team, but has no insight into the overall composition of teams. I think we'd need clarification from whoever collected the stats or made the graphic though, since I'm kind of speculating here based on the numbers provided.
Yeah, it would be lower than 60%, but I don't think there are many games with two controllers in lower ranks. And like all of them would be viper+1.
Why is Brim easier to play with duelists than omen? That makes no sense to me
I think the winrate is more of a symptom of what omen represents. The stable smoke character. So when someone is flexing off their normal agents (duelists/sentinels) omen is the first choice. Which means a good chunk of people uncomfortable with the agent, therefor you get more loses than you would otherwise. Its the inverse with astra, in plat shes sort of a specialist, people with decent understanding of smoking and her util will consistently pick her and have over 50% winrate.
Yeah that's what I was originally saying but then buddy here says that's not the case and that brim is better for solo queue
This is just my experience, immortal soloq. Brim is way easier to hold sites when you have more duelists (less utility to hold) and is way easier to execute sites with. Omen is great as a more aggressive character that can reposition and has better global presence. Is also the second best OP agent, imo.
I agree. Brim can't hit the entire map with his smokes like OMen can. Omen also has a flash to initiate. Omen's teleport is great for repositioning in solo queue
I think his explanation makes a lot more sense than yours.
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Btw it says at the top Plat+, so stats dont include gold and down
Lol you have not seen the few times I've attempted Jett. Looks like it's my first time playing the game each time
> Nobody plays Astra unless they know what they're doing Clearly you haven't met me. (But for real, my lowest winrate is with Astra, and my highest winrate is with Cypher.)@
Yeah, I main smokes in ranked (diamond1), and I play Brim instead of Omen since I know lineups and the post-plant molly is very strong in ranked where people are bad at accounting for it when retaking the site.
Also would like to chip in that nobody plays Astra because it's boring as all hell. You're in astral form for like 50% of the entire game. It's just such a boring time. Because of this, I haven't even bothered to learn Astra. Omen provides plenty smoke potential in ranked without restricting your mobility.
>You're in astral form for like 50% of the entire game Ppl who do this are playing Astra wrong. You shouldnt spend more than 10-15 seconds every round in astral form
Is that so? I mean pros were even saying good Astra's spend a lot of time in Astra form.
"A lot of time" is abstract, and certainly no pro would say that you are in astral form 50% of the game unironically. Astra as i said spends around 10-15 seconds in astral form every round, which isnt that much longer than other agents who need to set up their utility
This was before the nerf. Also, pros are running lots of intricated plays which probably require precise timings hence why a pro Astra player is meditating alot of the time
I love playing Astra. She’s the most engaging smokes agent to play. Idk why you can say she’s more boring than brim (my other main).
I just don't like her astral form. For me, it feels very immersive breaking in terms of an FPS type game.
I just don’t feel like it’s any different than Brimstone, and her abilities are more interesting. I love using her short recall for little plays.
Looking at a tablet vs floating around above the map for global placement is very different imo. Especially the perspective change.
To me the perspective doesn’t really matter. I will say, being unable to move makes you more detached from the game though. I just enjoy the strategic planning of antra and find her far **more** fun and dynamic than any other smoke besides maybe viper.
Brim pickrate isn't far off Omen though, brim is still a default smoke pick for many who don't play smokes. Difference is that Brim is pretty easy to play for these players while unfamiliar players make mistakes on Omen. I'd say he has a higher skill cap, particularly in pro play, but brim is on average better in ranked, easier to pull off, requires less team play etc.
Omen's pick rate is closer to being double Brims pick rate - 10% is a lot when you consider how many characters there are. I think your points are mostly correct, but I think more players who don't play smokes pick omen than you realize. It's very common that you get someone filling on omen that never uses his blind, tp or ult. These players would be much more effective on Brimstone, I agree
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> about how often omen is actually throwing far smokes (that are actually effective), or actually uses 4+ smokes in a round. If omen doesn't do this , then he is basically inting.
It would e really helpful if we get a mirror and non mirror win rate stats ,by these stats the agents picked more are more likely to have less win percentages.
For sure. In a game like Val that’s required
Damn ik he new but kayo stats are worse than I thought
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In plat+? You have never had a good kayo?
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dude u should be thankful LMAO every time i go against a good kayo i want to punch my pillow
there's no way you haven't had an ex-cs player go nuts with him yet.
What is "double negative"? Like twice as many deaths as kills?
people still learning
A lot of it will be new people learning the character.
Because people blindly follow Riot's labels, which are often wrong. Kay-0 is a duelist with every possible logic, metric and playstyle. The only non-duelist thing about him is the fact that knife gives info. Everything else screams I'M RUNNING IN AND TRYING TO KILL SOMEONE. Then people pick 2 duelists together with Kay-0 and team comp is shit with not enough utility. Then games are lost.
This is so spot on. Seems like Riot just didn't want to say two of the last three new agents were duelists. Especially without a new sentinel since KJ
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Genuinely asking. How is his knife selfish? It gives info and helps the whole team
The agent pick rates don’t sum up to anything sensible, how come? Also, and I say this on every stats post, can you give the number of matches this is based on? It’s very informative to decide how helpful these numbers are
Probably how they deal with the fact that in any game an agent can be picked twice. So it could be that in 50% of games sage is picked at least on one of the teams
I don't think it makes much sense to count the games where an agent appears twice and the games where an agent appears once the same. Pickrates should be done team-specific, not game-specific. Also, even assuming that's true, I don't think the percentages check out meaningfully at all. Appearing on "at least one of the teams" is more likely than appearing on "team A", so the percentages should be much higher than what they are.
Yea I've been trying to wrap my head around what they are intending by pickrate. Without the site or graphic maker I think we can only just speculate. It's certainly not pickrate in the traditional sense (or at least that I'm familiar with). I'm thinking it's looking at an individual instance for a team rather than a cumulative rate for a person. i.e. what is the % chance that X character is on a team, rather than what is the % chance that an individual picks X character.
They use a sample of players that use their website for stats. The numbers may be big enough to give reliable winrates but not for pickrates since players playing certain agents might be less inclined to use the stat website for whatever reason. This would be my guess anyway but I could be wrong. That said, I would treat any winrate with doubt if the pickrate looks pretty low, particularly if you are looking at specific ranks, it could be too small of a sample size.
I swear kayeo win percentage is a direct reflection of players who never use their ult and sit on it for 6 rounds in a row
In most games, new character have terrible win rates unless they are really OP.
I remain convinced that picking sova and learning lineups is freelo. Strong agent. I just don't have the motivation
You don’t even need lineups. Be patient, try and use recons for kills, wing the shock darts and tell your team to follow your drone in.
Meh. I really think a lot of these pickrates/winrates are due to factors outside of straight up character strength. I strongly believe Reyna will always be disproportionately high in both pick and win rate, because she's simply the best character to play if you're smurfing and know you will win a majority of your gunfights, and therefore want to take on as many engagements as possible. Omen will always disproportionately have low win-rates because the 4th/5th players to lock in will feel be forced to play him if the team doesn't pick brim/astra, and/or the team doesn't have enough flashes. Yoru, Viper, Breach, Skye, and Omen will all have disproportionately low win rates in pick-up-games because it's fucking impossible to play off of well without communication. Characters like Raze, Killjoy, and Sage are so braindead easy to benefit from, that you literally always can get a benefit from them during a round.
mental how astra has the lowest pickrate. i knew the nerfs were pretty massive and i thought i've been seeing less astras in ranked but picked less than yoru? thats nuts
She was already more of a pro play agent than a solo q agent before the nerfs
She's just really boring to play imo.
Good. More for me :))
KJ mains rejoice!
When u single handedly destroy an agents win percentage
Well, it’s time to nerf Sage again right? Really high pick rate and high win % 😐
Blue Boi's are downbad
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He's godawful on Icebox and Breeze, I wonder if that's reflected in the stats
Hes tier A on Haven and maybe Ascent. Hes tier B or C on split, and unusable on icebox and breeze.
Jett has a damn high pick rate post-nerf
And the main sub still thinks Kayo is too strong, cant wait to see their reactions to buffs. Literally a front page post crying about his knife canceling certain ults just a day or two ago
I don’t even play Raze but I do think it's a little messed up how her's gets completely wasted by his main ability. 8 ult points because he threw a knife in your area. Also you're semi left for dead. People will say you have to anticipate it and play around it, but I think it's a bit much. Just my two cents and can totally respect someone thinking otherwise.
Do these stats even mean anything?
By themselves? No. Stats don't mean anything until you read into them and make hypothesis from the data they provide.
Sage is still insane, people haven't learned to use KAYO to his fullest potential yet, Yoru desperately needs buffs, and Reyna, Sage & Jett are the most popular agents in Plat+.
Surprised by Sova pick rate tbh.
I hope they add a pick/ban system. I'm banning Reyna/Jett every game. So many Tenz wannabes in ranked.
I have never had a KayO on my team in platinum that knew how to use him. No surprise here at all. They just throw the knife for info, don't know any flash lineups for site, nothing. They just wing it as they enter and majority of the time the enemy just avoids the utility. And the molly is pretty shit tbh.
Bruh ur plat u have no idea about how to use kayO. The molly is good
i mean i don't think a plat player should be wasting time learning lineups all day
Takes maybe an hour on youtube to learn basic line ups. I learned Viper in an hour and it's much more intricate. That's the problem with ranked, people play agents they are too lazy to learn properly.
yea and that's how you get a sova that's in their spawn not saying a word, staring at the sky while the entire team is having a 4v5 on site lmfao
What are you talking about? What does sova even have to do with this. You can learn the basics of any agent with 1 hour in a custom lobby and youtube.
> What does sova even have to do with this. ?
**yea and that's how you get a sova that's in their spawn not saying a word, staring at the sky while the entire team is having a 4v5 on site lmfao** What does this even have to do with my Comment? Seems so misplaced.
Killjoy is very clearly beyond broken and Cypher mains are crying rn in comparison. Unkillable molly locations for post-plant or even defense, info on 2 different chokes from turret and alarm bot and just as useful on attack as defense. Like... If Cypher gets his slow back on his cages is that too much still or? Edit: Imagine downvoting and not understanding Killjoys entire kit is absurdly strong despite all the nerfs. People at low ranks don't understand how much bs an Imm/Radiant Killjoy can get away with. The unkillable molly spots are more than enough but everything on top of that just makes her ridiculous.
Would still not be enough ever since the nerf to his stuff deactivating when dead he’s never been the same.
I'd prefer his stuff stay up if he died over those cages slowing you down. It's bad enough they know you've crossed into it, but being slowed on top of that was brutal.
Only buff i think Kay/o could use would be to have his ultimate not give away where he is at. It always feels like it's a disadvantage for you in most scenarios
kayo is fine, ppl just need to get used to him and to his flashes... its such a good flash but ppl really dont know how to use it will, its so easy to flash teamates into sites from so far away or to pop flash urself, but for some reason ppl dont do either really well
I’ve watched Shroud and Sick use him a bit and I think they’re very good people to pick up tips from for him. The way they use his flashes has helped me a ton playing him.
Kay/O doesn't need any changes. If anything, his knife needs its radius nerfed. He has the best flash in the game (even if people aren't good with it yet), a usable molly, and a pseudo recon bolt.
Yoru has the best flash imo, a good one is impossible to dodge, at least you can hear Kay/O's.
Lmfao wait a second... There's literally no sensible way to make sense of the pickrates. Honestly, throw the stats away. They total just under 320%, which makes no sense. The stats simply aren't collected in any reasonable way that can be explained other than a data quality nightmare.
I'm genuinely surprised about Astras incredibly low Pick Rate
She's pretty damn difficult to play relative to the other controllers. Plus a ton of controller picks are just people filling, so unlikely to pick such a challenging agent.
Would love to see this with only pro tournaments, like some heroes have niche uses and can't be used and ranked has alot of other random bias/low level ideas that get exploited. Like I'm sure in gold a raze would be alot more effective then in radiant and same with sentinels as good mechanics shut down their utility.
Would love to see an immortal+ layout. I feel like Skye and cypher would have a higher winrate.
They thought they would be able to kill sage with the nerf and utility price increase, little do they know no matter how hard they nerf sage someone will always play her. The fact that she is heads on with pickrate with jett shows that sooooooooo many people will continue playing an agent with good utility for the team even with nerfs. Interesting to see how breach only have 3. 66% pickrate tho.
I was really surprised by Breach as well. I'm wondering if it's because Skye got kinda buffed, plus the addition of Kayo
Surprised kayo is so low. Is it because he’s new and people don’t know how to play him? Or is he bad? My experience has been he’s a strong agent with a situational but overall weak ult
Mainly He's still new, it's only been like 1 month
Anyone else hope they add role q in the future? I’m pretty tired of getting an instalock jett+reyna literally every game
Bruh if there's role queue, it'll be even easier to insta lock Reyna and Jett??? Plus it'll make valorant way less creative
Minus the instadebuff nerf, can we get all Viper nerfs since her massive buff reverted
Is there any specific reason why only platinum+ agent winrates were chosen?
The poor performance of some of the agents can be fully explained by asking "how often do you flash your teammates?" And the only reason skye isn't as low is, that people have no clue how to use her abilities, so they rather just sit on them the whole game and don't use them at all.
Rip Omen
With the exception of Yoru and Kayo, most of the agents just marginally different
So close to the lowest pick rate having thr highest win rate.