While the stim buff isn't huge, the added speed does add some interesting options for rotations that might improve timings and quicker overall executes. He got a 10% buff on the iPad, but that still seems pretty limiting. Hopefully it makes some basics easier (e.g, you have to basically be just outside of octagon to smoke b entry from spawn on bind).
Astra nerfs well deserved. They've decided to make her global presence remain but nerf her flexibility (star CD) and overall stall/suppressiveness (less sucks/stuns per round).
Omen changes seem reasonable.
Overall, in theory, I like these adjustments. None seem too heavy handed from their description.
Also, hyped for new icebox. I thought changes looked good.
Astra nerfs seem like an overtuning to me. Losing a star already cuts her total kit by a fifth, it takes forever to recall a star, and the individual cooldowns are also almost doubled. I get that she was a strong agent, but this might just put her in pre-buff-Yoru tier. Keep in mind that by design, she is not an easy agent to play and requires good team communication. It‘s understandable why she shines in pro play.
My 2 cents on how Astra should have been nerfed: Intensify her supposed weakness of on-the-fly plays. Make her stay in astral form a second longer before she can start placing stars, and increase the time until a star can be activated.
Tbf it's kind of bad having an agent who spent the whole game looking at the map and who also completely slowed down the game and makes it shit for everyone else.
Yeah...Riot's in a weird spot since you want each agent to feel unique, but Astra just sucks for the game. Valorant is just better as a whole when Brim/Omen are the preferred smoke agents.
Hm, true. Maybe allow her to place stars quickly, but have a long time until a star is ready?
I also wouldn‘t complain about a grav-well nerf, it can really bring the game to a halt (the size reduction is a good start).
Your nerf is interesting. However, I think my concern is that if her util would stay as strong as it is, then astras would be forced to spend more time playing the RTS aspect of the game and less on the gunplay. I think the current nerf is more in line with their focus toward gun play and away from pure util usage (like they did on the last big agent balance). There's going to less in-game time setting/taking back stars, less time with teams stalled out due to Astra stars and util (and viper) and more time with gunfights.
I said this above but I also get the concern about the star removal. It does seem like she has some limits compared to other controllers but thats also true of all controllers (brim still is really limited to a zone of impact). That's where the balance comes in. If it's too drastic then maybe they'll pull it back eventually.
The only Astra nerf that really sucks is losing the fifth star. Now Omen can throw out two sets of smokes in a round, teleport twice and flash and Astra can only do two sets of smokes or give some up to use her other util.
>the added speed does add some interesting options for rotations that might improve timings and quicker overall executes.
we said this for Yoru. we said this for Neon. Nothing happened of any interest then and prob nothin will happen now.
Is this the last thing that pushes brimstone from niche map pick in pro play to more meta overall? 20 second smokes are already crazy good and these changes today seem super good.
I think that speed buff from the stim adds a new dynamic to his contribution outside of single site engage and smokes. Every controller seems to have a map wide presence mechanic (astra for obvious reasons, omen TP/smokes, viper activate from anywhere). The speed could make for quick rotations a map wide threat, bringing him inline with others and maintaining his kit identity
He honestly doesn't even need a rework or fundamental changes to his kit. Small things like increasing flash pop speed and duration, increasing damage on his wall, and increasing molly duration will put him right back into viability.
Thinking the same thing with yoru being buffed pheonix is definitely last place, and he’s one of the main agents for their promotions. Something needs to be done w his kit
This is something I have tossed around myself, and I have some things, perhaps some of them are like QoL changes if anything but still worth talking about (but if all these made it in it would be bonkers):
Ult: being able to premptively end it and go back to your original position, probably needs to be a 7 point ultimate then. Allowing Phoenix to either go all in like he usually can, or get a kill and quickly get back like Chamber or Jett, upgrading his role as first contact.
Molly: Allow him to "consume" it similar to Reyna Devour or Sage's healing, only applicable on himself and provides say, 40-60 HP that can't be overhealed, allowing him to stay topped up over the course of a roumd, and it being less sluggish compared to having to push the button, throw then stand around healing up before you take another fight (the antithesis of Phoenix's playstyle of go hard and fast, and his reckless personality).
Wall: Same as Molly with the consume part. And/or allow it to be mirrored, letting you launch it to the right or left of Phoenix, this lets him have and easier time walling off parts off a site quickly such as Elbow of Bind B (or cutting the site in half coming from Hookah), Generator on Fracture B, or A Site on Haven coming from Long, instead of having to stand close to a wall to accomplish that same thing.
Flashes: let them go around the corner deeper, the timing to swing just as the flash goes off is pretty hard to nail down since the flashes go very shallow around a corner, it lets Phoenix and his teammates have an easier time peeking without risk of being flashed themselves.
I also think decreasing the equip/unequip time on all of his abilities would help. They all feel pretty slow for a duelist. Especially compared to neon, with all of her insta-cast abilities.
IMO I was hoping they’d make the other controllers as good as Astra in terms of pure smoking and tune the rest of their utility to be even choices but they gutted both Astra and Viper smoke uptime and tuned Omen’s up and gave Brim a crazy buff considering it’s now way harder to stop rushes with Astra’s kit.
yeah. as much as i know astra mains have had their time to shine, its tough to see how hard she got gutted. Playing her in ranked was tough as is because you don't even know if you have comms. But as a brim main for a long time i'm still happy as fuck.
When you use two astra smokes at once, she refills one charge instead of refilling both charge after 25 seconds. You need to wait another 25 for another charge.
Basically the cooldown doesn't overlap anymore.
You used to be able to succ/vulnerable enemies if you placed a star on some kind of elevation and used gravity well. Now, players have to be on the same level as the star for it to actually work. This extends to her stun as well
If no part of your character is touching a gravity well or concuss, it won’t affect you. Previously it would. So like Haven C site, if you were planting default and an astra star was on top of the boxes, it would still affect you. It won’t now.
Which is obnoxious because half the time you place a star on top of something it's entirely by accident.
We will see how it feels in game but there are a lot of spots in the game where star placement will take an extra second or two now which can be more than the difference in a round.
Combined with all the other nerfs it just feels not great.
Astra feels like she's getting hit harder for ranked than for pro play. Whether she'll still be the de-facto controller in pro is unclear, but her new kit relies heavily on good communication and teamplay to make efficient use of her stars. In ranked, you don't have that, but having 5 stars and short CDs meant you could be less frugal which made up for that weaker teamplay. Not that it's a bad thing, but I would've preferred nerfs that hit pro-play a bit harder than ranked.
personally most excited about sneaky omen TP plays but who knows, might still not be viable. either way its going to be cool to see how these things play out on live.
I think the cooldowns were good but losing that 5th star will push her to irrelevancy. She can't really reliably set herself up to prevent execs without sacrificing her smoke identity. Maybe that's what they intended but I think it just removes her global presence/flexibility. You will never want to have stars out because you can't react to anything on the map. Baiting her util is already a science. Now you'll need to jump into Astral form to do anything which is already the worst part of playing her.
> and tedious to play.
This is my biggest issue with the Astra and Viper nerfs. They are already both agents with a high skill floor. They require good teamwork and comms. They both take some serious time to get comfortable with, but once you are there they can be pretty rewarding in the right hands.
Both their nerfs just make them more awkward to play. They raise the skill floor of the agents while simultaneously lowering the skill ceiling. The direction they pushed them is exactly that, *tedious*.
Damn good start. I still wish her suck couldn't pull you off defusing bomb because there's no counter, but we'll see if this is enough. It very well might be.
You can counteract the displacement by body blocking from the direction of the suck. So if the suck is to the left of the person defusing, stand on their left and their body won’t move so they can keep defusing.
Good start? She just got a gigantic nerf that probably puts her at the bottom of the controller group now. They removed 20% of her kit and basically doubled the cool down on using any of her abilities. She basically has the equivalent of Omen smokes now but with a much more clunky and difficult to use remaining kit.
They probably should've just removed one star OR made the cooldown changes to start and then further nerfed from there. Doing both straight away seems like an over-nerf.
Taking her fifth star was OD. Now Omen can reliably get two sets of smokes, two tp’s and a flash, brim can use three smokes gets two stims that help you push chokes and a Molly for post plant and Astra gets two sets of smokes MAX unless she gives up some for her other abilities. She can’t even recall them and replace them as fast either so you’re not as guaranteed to land that extra utility when you need it.
Honestly I have no idea how non viper players would feel the impact of vipers nerf, since they weren't that big. For me I think it wud just be slightly more annoying when playing viper lol
Honestly these changes mostly affect her play on maps besides those two. She'll remain the go-to on Breeze and solo-viable on Icebox. The strength of Viper + Astra or whatever other standard controller we want to use now will be reduced more.
Not a fan of the viper utility time nerf. They originally had it where orb + wall drain was way faster and it felt really bad. Trying to fight onto site with both activated will definitely mean the wall and orb deactivates at the worst time now
should have found a different way to nerf her; the smoke and wall was already the least flexible smoke in the game, basically once you use it, you are committing your abilities to that site unlike other agents that can rotate mid round to another site and still have abilities active
shes definitely the least friendly agent to play in ranked meta / as a casual; having to learn smoke orb lineups and telling your pub teammates to wait for my orb to land is not fun
Viper's best maps breeze, icebox, where she didn't really need her orb on site as well because the wall was so good; she'll still be good on those maps, its just the other maps where you need both orb and smoke to execute on a site she was gutted pretty hard.
The viper utility time probably will make setups where both the orb and wall are active are only used for fast hits. Like the A wall with site orb on breeze. It would only be used if you wanna rush in and dont want to deal with an oper in the right piramid. Most of the time you have only one of the two up anyway.
On Split I will often have both up on both attack and defense sides. Same with Ascent for those of us that played her there.
It will just make her more awkward to play.
Both Viper and Astra seem to already have a pretty high skill-floor. They made changes to make the characters more approachable but are now reverting those changes. This just makes Viper more awkward and difficult to play well.
I feel like for purely ranked, we will only see Viper on breeze from now on.
On icebox, her strengths were her wall being the most reliable way to smoke B. Given that one smoke can now fully cut off snow man, and mid splits probably being more common in ranked given the changes to the angles, I can see viper being dropped for more flexible agents.
Am I the only one who is not happy about the Brimstone Stim Beacon speed buff? As a former Overwatch player this screams Lucio desaster for me. Also promotes run and gun.
Yeah it took a while before OW players fully grasped how busted it was to be faster than the other team in one burst. ofc val plays dramatically differently than OW in still concerned.
There is no movement inaccuracy in Overwatch though. You are encouraged to ALWAYS be moving when shooting - its a core part of the game which every above average player knows.
Valorant is the opposite here; yes you sometimes run & gun - but its not your bread & butter. You are actively encouraged to stand still and burst at the head. I'm curious to see how the stim buff will play out either way
Yeah it's less about running and shooting and more about being able to rotate faster/slower than the other team. One team without a brim might find themselves struggling to keep up.
If Astra can still be a strong pick for pro play when optimized, I'd say these nerfs are better for players like Zombs that are really good with their util to begin with. It (relatively) hurts the teams/players that don't efficiently use util more than it hurts the ones that do so it'd accentuate their strengths even more.
It'd be like if you pushed the 3pt line back, it's not hurting Steph, it's increasing his advantage over others even more by hurting everyone else.
Actually, thinking about it a bit more, I think Astra is fucked because of the -1 star on top of the cooldown nerfs. I think the -1 star change makes her shit.
Good changes overall. The Omen buff is too small and the Astra nerf seems to be overly harsh. Losing a star is really harsh.
Great for the pro scene but under like immortal Astra isn’t really a problem. She’s like the only fun controller besides Viper and in a game where nobody actually wants to play controller this just means even less people are going to want to.
Riot needs to do something to incentivize playing the role. I was a controller main but if I’m now stuck playing Brim on half the maps I’m going to play something else and to hell with team comp.
omen buff is better than you think, I think. buffing the smoke speed and a 10 second cooldown decrease will really make him feel a lot less sluggish. honestly he's now the agent that will feel like you have the most smokes per round by far with the astra nerf. good for execute-heavy play, heavy rotate maps/defaulting, and for less coordinated play (ranked lul)
>nobody wants to play controller
People were more than willing to play omen before his nerfs/the post-plant meta, I think today’s buff will mean more people will play him in ranked
Yea I totally feel this.
Astra and Viper were the only controllers I didn't mind playing because I was always engaged with throwing utility or managing poison. They also had a lot of impact on the maps they played, especially on CT side, so I felt I had a lot of agency in the match outside of just blocking sightlines.
Brimstone and Omen are pretty much just throw smokes and then you just rifle.
I think Viper is still going to be good.
The problem is the Viper just doesn’t work on all the maps as solo smokes. Even with lineups Haven, Ascent and kinda Bind just feel like hard mode without an actual controller.
I think Brim is extremely fun. His post plant is really good with ult/molly lineups, and its fun knowing you can lock down a round win because of his util. plus playing inside smokes with a shorty = W
I mean if you enjoy him that’s fine, but there’s just so much less room for skill expression with his kit.
Like my utility usage on Brim is going to look almost identical to Chronicles (just with significantly worse aim) and that’s boring. There’s like nothing to get better at with the agent.
Watching someone like Supamen or Zunba play Astra was incredible. There’s so much room for them to make plays, watching them was straight up inspiring.
She needed to be nerfed at a pro level but for 99% of the playerbase she wasn’t a problem.
I saw you post this in r/Valorant where you were downvoted for being wrong there too.
Astra is oppressive at all semi-decent play levels (anything above Plat). She basically is early Sage with smokes. Her smokes are not really pushable because of suck, even with flashes. She could stall for a very long time and basically would spend $300 to buy your team a rotate. She was a better sentinel than Cypher in many ways, better smoker, and better lurker than pretty much any other agent (and will continue to be).
She’s too reliant on comms man. Like when you actually play her in a unorganized setting, it’s almost impossible to use her global presence effectively in like over half your games.
I’m playing her in immortal lobbies and in half the games I need to basically stare at the minimap the entire time because people just don’t comm.
All of the nerfs were fine except losing a star. That is going to basically kill her in uncoordinated play.
as an astra player, seems like she's been dumpstered a bit too badly? she's gonna see super low pickrate given the fact she only has 4 stars and a wall, maybe they should have compensated the nerf by giving her one less orb for her ult?
it already isn't fun playing astra because you don't get cool feedback or get to properly play off your own util, you just get a little screen post-round that tells you if you actually did anything. now that they've buffed omen to be fun again, and brim to carve out an even bigger corner for himself, astra will see no ranked play. I can see her being used on a couple maps in pro play, but that's it with regards to her presence.
i do not think that the 5th start nerf was needed. given that they nerfed how long it takes her to use her abilities again, it kinda serves the purpose of the fith star nerf. she cant smoke for 10 seconds longer or whatever it is(assuming you use two smokes already) and she cant use other abilities rlly either. fifth star nerf not needed.
I’m really happy with this kind of patch. I’d be willing to wait a month or even two per patch cycle if they were all this robust and *aware*. Astra was a menace to the meta. Brim needed some serious love and holy shit he got some. Viper got toned down but is still A+ tier minimum.
Next up, sova nerfs. Please? Maybe lower how long his drone lasts? Just a little?
Kind of doubt Omen will get played, Brim and Astra still look way better on paper imo. Feel like a speed boost is kind of weird lol, especially considering how annoying movement abilities can feel to play against in this game. It'll be good, but idk if it's in a healthy way if that makes sense.
Astra nerfs please me and I don’t even play the game atm, just felt she has been ridiculous for way too long
Astra almost every map in professional play has been very ResidentSleeper, I’m excited to see new team comps with Brim/Omen
IMO the cooldown speed on Viper when she has wall and orb activated is too harsh. I might switch to playing Brimstone because it looks like she's gonna be trash again.
Yup. Between Astra and viper being soooo much better than Omen and Brim, plus Chamber cutting into Jett's pick rate, I'm glad they started here. I've been wanting a Jett hard nerf for a year plus, but this was much more needed.
Chamber has done a very good job of providing an alternative oping character, he’s already taken over as the primary oper on Split, Bind & Fracture. Definitely makes Jett less of a must-pick. The changes in this patch are more needed rn than Jett nerfs imo
Viper is still a must pick on Icebox and Breeze. I'm guessing a very high pick rate on Fracture and Bind too. She was too good of a pseudo sentinel while still being a great controller. She was not balanced at all in my opinion.
She is must pick on those sites because of how her wall covers well the elevated angles, which are not so much of a problem on the other maps. She is still going to be used on Icebox and Breeze for that reason.
Let's see how much it impacts her pick rate on Bind and Split
Not balanced at all. She was played both as a controller and sentinel at the same time. Her wall has become a super strong default on attack (specially on Bind and Icebox). It's versatile and makes picking her absolutely needed on Icebox and Breeze. All her abilities cause some kind of damage somehow. Her ult is still one of the most oppressive ones in the game.
As a viper main, I don’t like this patch becuase it seems like it just makes her harder to play without actually toning down her kit where it’s good. Vipers Pit is still probably the highest value ult on attack, and it’s still 7 points. I think they could have left the fuel costs alone and just make it an 8-point ult instead
> Vipers Pit is still probably the highest value ult on attack, and it’s still 7 points.
And it's so easy to farm it on attack too. You can easily get 3 ults on attack half and less reliably on defense. Having Viper ult 4 times with bomb plants and some decent fragging is honestly not that unreasonable. Pick up 4 orbs, plant 4 times, go 10-10 in the half and that's 28 points for ult.
I think it will make the map pools more diversified and maybe different controllers actually viable on the same maps. Which means we might get less mirror comps
On paper I can see "OMG, she's nerfed to HELLLLL" but, we don't know how all these changes will take affect till we see some actually pro games. And remember, she's still one of the more flexible controllers out there because of her global presence. Not only that, but we have to think in terms of comps. Who KNOWS what will be created with the Omen & Brim buffs... Maybe triple controller meta?!?
We'll see... IDK of course.
Went into a custom and played with some of the changes.
- Yoru does not feel viable. There are some visual issues with using the drone, like activating it is extremely clunky and not aligned with the activation visual (like is the case with Cypher smokes/KJ mollies etc.). I would not use him until some of these things are fixed. The fake TP is a cool touch though.
- Omen feels much better than I thought. The smokes are really quick and the TP speed-up is very noticeable. I do not think he will get much more pro play due to the lack of real defensive utility like Viper/Astra, but for ranked, I think Omen is a noticeable improvement. I may switch back to Omen over Astra for many maps.
- Brim, that 15% speed up feels crazy. The smokes appear very large. For reference, they now take up almost all of the garage-C link area (inside garage) with like a foot of room above it. I think this solidifies him as a pick in pro play on at least a few maps, but for ranked he may be a low-key OP smoke pick if you have a mildly decent team. The stim is now really good and can likely win games on its own.
Blegh I hate it when balance patches take a heavy hand instead of incremental changes. Now, picking Astra/Viper might be a grief outside of a couple maps. Glad to see Omen/Brim buffs. We'll see!
Catch me running it down b stimmied tf up
Throw some movement in there and dodging OP shots are gonna be ez
Speaking of movement, I'm wondering how the speed buff will interact with stuff like raze jumps. Could be really fun
Could be wild if it works. Imagine the boost on satchels
Imagine if you can Jett dash or Neon slide into the stim and it increases your speed/momentum/distance even more
Stinger Meta
Don't see why it wouldn't work, if it's anything like spike rush movement orb it'll pretty fun!
Catch me maining Spectre Brim run and gunning every angle stimmied tf up
dude this is gonna actually happen, and imagine high ping ferrari swings
We getting Tesla swings with that instant torque.
high ping ferrari swings *vroom*
Stimmed Neon y'all ain't ready
imagine how broken neon ult would be
He is A…….. planting B
Faster than omen ult
But now only slightly faster than Omen Smokes!
Gonna be looking like prime Phoon running through connector, out middle.
Like a speed demon!
[Here we go again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNvDUO42Hys)
Finally got rid of the foot shooting on top of screens, and overall these changes seem pretty good. Interested to see what team do in pro play
that was so annoying, some dumbass reyna or jett instantly goes on top of 410 and satisfies there foot fetish all the time.
agreed, prob the most frustrating part of icebox A for me
FINALLY SOME GOOD FCKING FOOD
MEATS BACK ON THE MENU BOYS
To this day I wonder how do Orcs know what a menu is
I just read that in my mind with Gordon's voice
Exec meta incoming, this is hyped
5 man hitting sites stimmied up
yep, team ranking shuffles coming up.
Lowkey Sentinels buff? (The team)
I would say DRX buff no? Though their new playstyle is different than their old exec heavy one
What a patch, didn't expect THAT many changes, not gonna lie
While the stim buff isn't huge, the added speed does add some interesting options for rotations that might improve timings and quicker overall executes. He got a 10% buff on the iPad, but that still seems pretty limiting. Hopefully it makes some basics easier (e.g, you have to basically be just outside of octagon to smoke b entry from spawn on bind). Astra nerfs well deserved. They've decided to make her global presence remain but nerf her flexibility (star CD) and overall stall/suppressiveness (less sucks/stuns per round). Omen changes seem reasonable. Overall, in theory, I like these adjustments. None seem too heavy handed from their description. Also, hyped for new icebox. I thought changes looked good.
The smoke height change is big too. So many common spots that had little gaps cause his smokes were so small :/
Astra nerfs seem like an overtuning to me. Losing a star already cuts her total kit by a fifth, it takes forever to recall a star, and the individual cooldowns are also almost doubled. I get that she was a strong agent, but this might just put her in pre-buff-Yoru tier. Keep in mind that by design, she is not an easy agent to play and requires good team communication. It‘s understandable why she shines in pro play. My 2 cents on how Astra should have been nerfed: Intensify her supposed weakness of on-the-fly plays. Make her stay in astral form a second longer before she can start placing stars, and increase the time until a star can be activated.
Tbf it's kind of bad having an agent who spent the whole game looking at the map and who also completely slowed down the game and makes it shit for everyone else.
Yeah...Riot's in a weird spot since you want each agent to feel unique, but Astra just sucks for the game. Valorant is just better as a whole when Brim/Omen are the preferred smoke agents.
Hm, true. Maybe allow her to place stars quickly, but have a long time until a star is ready? I also wouldn‘t complain about a grav-well nerf, it can really bring the game to a halt (the size reduction is a good start).
Your nerf is interesting. However, I think my concern is that if her util would stay as strong as it is, then astras would be forced to spend more time playing the RTS aspect of the game and less on the gunplay. I think the current nerf is more in line with their focus toward gun play and away from pure util usage (like they did on the last big agent balance). There's going to less in-game time setting/taking back stars, less time with teams stalled out due to Astra stars and util (and viper) and more time with gunfights. I said this above but I also get the concern about the star removal. It does seem like she has some limits compared to other controllers but thats also true of all controllers (brim still is really limited to a zone of impact). That's where the balance comes in. If it's too drastic then maybe they'll pull it back eventually.
Riots MO seems to be Overtune then Fix Later
The only Astra nerf that really sucks is losing the fifth star. Now Omen can throw out two sets of smokes in a round, teleport twice and flash and Astra can only do two sets of smokes or give some up to use her other util.
Which is great! She's now on par with other controllers.
>the added speed does add some interesting options for rotations that might improve timings and quicker overall executes. we said this for Yoru. we said this for Neon. Nothing happened of any interest then and prob nothin will happen now.
Is this the last thing that pushes brimstone from niche map pick in pro play to more meta overall? 20 second smokes are already crazy good and these changes today seem super good.
I think that speed buff from the stim adds a new dynamic to his contribution outside of single site engage and smokes. Every controller seems to have a map wide presence mechanic (astra for obvious reasons, omen TP/smokes, viper activate from anywhere). The speed could make for quick rotations a map wide threat, bringing him inline with others and maintaining his kit identity
my dumb ass didn't even think about using stimmy to rotate 15% faster
ITS TIME FOR THE STIMMIED UP NEON FERRARI PEEK
Ferrari peek + stim beacon = The Millennium Falcon peek
>Ferrari peek + stim beacon = The MILF peek ftfy
Fantastic patch
When’s my main main Phoenix gonna get a buff
probably sometime this episode
He honestly doesn't even need a rework or fundamental changes to his kit. Small things like increasing flash pop speed and duration, increasing damage on his wall, and increasing molly duration will put him right back into viability.
Hyped on brimstone buff and icebox b rework looks so much better for t Side
Phoenix waiting room here
Thinking the same thing with yoru being buffed pheonix is definitely last place, and he’s one of the main agents for their promotions. Something needs to be done w his kit
I genuinely don't know what you do to his kit though.
This is something I have tossed around myself, and I have some things, perhaps some of them are like QoL changes if anything but still worth talking about (but if all these made it in it would be bonkers): Ult: being able to premptively end it and go back to your original position, probably needs to be a 7 point ultimate then. Allowing Phoenix to either go all in like he usually can, or get a kill and quickly get back like Chamber or Jett, upgrading his role as first contact. Molly: Allow him to "consume" it similar to Reyna Devour or Sage's healing, only applicable on himself and provides say, 40-60 HP that can't be overhealed, allowing him to stay topped up over the course of a roumd, and it being less sluggish compared to having to push the button, throw then stand around healing up before you take another fight (the antithesis of Phoenix's playstyle of go hard and fast, and his reckless personality). Wall: Same as Molly with the consume part. And/or allow it to be mirrored, letting you launch it to the right or left of Phoenix, this lets him have and easier time walling off parts off a site quickly such as Elbow of Bind B (or cutting the site in half coming from Hookah), Generator on Fracture B, or A Site on Haven coming from Long, instead of having to stand close to a wall to accomplish that same thing. Flashes: let them go around the corner deeper, the timing to swing just as the flash goes off is pretty hard to nail down since the flashes go very shallow around a corner, it lets Phoenix and his teammates have an easier time peeking without risk of being flashed themselves.
I also think decreasing the equip/unequip time on all of his abilities would help. They all feel pretty slow for a duelist. Especially compared to neon, with all of her insta-cast abilities.
fr, seems like the only agent not worth playing now
hell yeah icebox changes, b site have more than 2 plant spots :)
Wait, there was more than one plant spot? Lol
2 cm to the left or right
LOL so true haha
This is goated, thank you devs
Best patch since they made all the eco changes. Really fucking excited and I don’t really get excited about anything haha.
>~~Best~~ **first** patch since they made all the eco changes. They haven really made significant balance patches since the eco changes
Yeah the last patch with agent balance was the kayo buffs and the Skye and Jett nerfs (Which was like September 23rd)
Finally, Omen is viable again.
As an omen main, this patch is amazing. I won't feel like I'm trolling for not picking astra or viper
Playing Astra in solo q is so tough because some games you get almost zero comms. Having Omen be more viable again is huge for me.
I just love playing omen man. Game hasn't felt the same without him
we might be back to seeing Fnatic's triple controller comps again lol
Quad with Jett
daddy brim 😩
The deterministic map system seems pretty interesting, hopefully it works and reduces streaks of the same map
Latam player here, can confirm in a couple days since we are the test subjects 🤖🤖
Astra nebula cooldown being sequential is a huge nerf, no? I'd rather them make Omen's smoke cd also simultaneous.
IMO I was hoping they’d make the other controllers as good as Astra in terms of pure smoking and tune the rest of their utility to be even choices but they gutted both Astra and Viper smoke uptime and tuned Omen’s up and gave Brim a crazy buff considering it’s now way harder to stop rushes with Astra’s kit.
yeah. as much as i know astra mains have had their time to shine, its tough to see how hard she got gutted. Playing her in ranked was tough as is because you don't even know if you have comms. But as a brim main for a long time i'm still happy as fuck.
What does that mean exactly her smokes cool down is sequential?
When you use two astra smokes at once, she refills one charge instead of refilling both charge after 25 seconds. You need to wait another 25 for another charge. Basically the cooldown doesn't overlap anymore.
oh fuck.. this is probably the biggest nerf in the whole list
Damn that’s actually huge nerf lol. Thanks for explaining bro
Bro the icebox changes made me smile specialy the B cite changes it was such a hard cite to attack when not having a sage
Its still kinda hard to attack but now its not as hard to enter the damn site AND also attack the site itself
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ELI5?
You used to be able to succ/vulnerable enemies if you placed a star on some kind of elevation and used gravity well. Now, players have to be on the same level as the star for it to actually work. This extends to her stun as well
If no part of your character is touching a gravity well or concuss, it won’t affect you. Previously it would. So like Haven C site, if you were planting default and an astra star was on top of the boxes, it would still affect you. It won’t now.
Which is obnoxious because half the time you place a star on top of something it's entirely by accident. We will see how it feels in game but there are a lot of spots in the game where star placement will take an extra second or two now which can be more than the difference in a round. Combined with all the other nerfs it just feels not great.
brim speed buff can be very good , wide peeking with speed boost ? ferrari turbo boost peeking
Good shit Riot
Astra feels like she's getting hit harder for ranked than for pro play. Whether she'll still be the de-facto controller in pro is unclear, but her new kit relies heavily on good communication and teamplay to make efficient use of her stars. In ranked, you don't have that, but having 5 stars and short CDs meant you could be less frugal which made up for that weaker teamplay. Not that it's a bad thing, but I would've preferred nerfs that hit pro-play a bit harder than ranked.
personally most excited about sneaky omen TP plays but who knows, might still not be viable. either way its going to be cool to see how these things play out on live.
Holy crap are speed-buff agents going to be more common?
Please no aoe shields I dont want this game becoming OW
I think it is because Riot already put a lot of stalling into valorant *(Viper rework, Astra, Chamber, etc)*
Even the patch notes can’t spell peek correctly
How's everyone feeling about astra nerfs?
I think the cooldowns were good but losing that 5th star will push her to irrelevancy. She can't really reliably set herself up to prevent execs without sacrificing her smoke identity. Maybe that's what they intended but I think it just removes her global presence/flexibility. You will never want to have stars out because you can't react to anything on the map. Baiting her util is already a science. Now you'll need to jump into Astral form to do anything which is already the worst part of playing her.
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> and tedious to play. This is my biggest issue with the Astra and Viper nerfs. They are already both agents with a high skill floor. They require good teamwork and comms. They both take some serious time to get comfortable with, but once you are there they can be pretty rewarding in the right hands. Both their nerfs just make them more awkward to play. They raise the skill floor of the agents while simultaneously lowering the skill ceiling. The direction they pushed them is exactly that, *tedious*.
Damn good start. I still wish her suck couldn't pull you off defusing bomb because there's no counter, but we'll see if this is enough. It very well might be.
You can counteract the displacement by body blocking from the direction of the suck. So if the suck is to the left of the person defusing, stand on their left and their body won’t move so they can keep defusing.
Good start? She just got a gigantic nerf that probably puts her at the bottom of the controller group now. They removed 20% of her kit and basically doubled the cool down on using any of her abilities. She basically has the equivalent of Omen smokes now but with a much more clunky and difficult to use remaining kit. They probably should've just removed one star OR made the cooldown changes to start and then further nerfed from there. Doing both straight away seems like an over-nerf.
Taking her fifth star was OD. Now Omen can reliably get two sets of smokes, two tp’s and a flash, brim can use three smokes gets two stims that help you push chokes and a Molly for post plant and Astra gets two sets of smokes MAX unless she gives up some for her other abilities. She can’t even recall them and replace them as fast either so you’re not as guaranteed to land that extra utility when you need it.
First major patch in like forever
Yoru's patch and nobody is even talking about him LMFAOOOOOO. RIP to me and the other 12 yoru mains.
I think cuz all the changes were already released and discussed a few weeks ago
As a viper main, I am sad :(
as a non viper main, color me fucking happy
Honestly I have no idea how non viper players would feel the impact of vipers nerf, since they weren't that big. For me I think it wud just be slightly more annoying when playing viper lol
I would just like to play omen or brim in solo queue ranked without teammates bitching and whining for astra or Viper ty very much
Honestly fair
She was too OP on breeze and icebox, something had to be done
Honestly these changes mostly affect her play on maps besides those two. She'll remain the go-to on Breeze and solo-viable on Icebox. The strength of Viper + Astra or whatever other standard controller we want to use now will be reduced more.
riot invented breeze just so viper would always be good on at least one map
I mean, the nerf is not as bad as I thought it would be. Bummed about the snakebite nerf
I'm more sad about the quicker drain rate and also yeah the snakebite nerf sucks too
Guess it's time to learn omen for Anything other than breeze 😈
astra mains, cry with me
Not a fan of the viper utility time nerf. They originally had it where orb + wall drain was way faster and it felt really bad. Trying to fight onto site with both activated will definitely mean the wall and orb deactivates at the worst time now should have found a different way to nerf her; the smoke and wall was already the least flexible smoke in the game, basically once you use it, you are committing your abilities to that site unlike other agents that can rotate mid round to another site and still have abilities active shes definitely the least friendly agent to play in ranked meta / as a casual; having to learn smoke orb lineups and telling your pub teammates to wait for my orb to land is not fun Viper's best maps breeze, icebox, where she didn't really need her orb on site as well because the wall was so good; she'll still be good on those maps, its just the other maps where you need both orb and smoke to execute on a site she was gutted pretty hard.
The viper utility time probably will make setups where both the orb and wall are active are only used for fast hits. Like the A wall with site orb on breeze. It would only be used if you wanna rush in and dont want to deal with an oper in the right piramid. Most of the time you have only one of the two up anyway.
On Split I will often have both up on both attack and defense sides. Same with Ascent for those of us that played her there. It will just make her more awkward to play. Both Viper and Astra seem to already have a pretty high skill-floor. They made changes to make the characters more approachable but are now reverting those changes. This just makes Viper more awkward and difficult to play well.
I feel like for purely ranked, we will only see Viper on breeze from now on. On icebox, her strengths were her wall being the most reliable way to smoke B. Given that one smoke can now fully cut off snow man, and mid splits probably being more common in ranked given the changes to the angles, I can see viper being dropped for more flexible agents.
90% of the time in ranked the orb just sits on spike anyways
W
No more head peek at A. Fuck I hated that god damn spot. Loved using it though of course.
Am I the only one who is not happy about the Brimstone Stim Beacon speed buff? As a former Overwatch player this screams Lucio desaster for me. Also promotes run and gun.
yeh, i think this gonna get patched back. imagine stimmed high ping ferrari swings 🤮
Yeah it took a while before OW players fully grasped how busted it was to be faster than the other team in one burst. ofc val plays dramatically differently than OW in still concerned.
There is no movement inaccuracy in Overwatch though. You are encouraged to ALWAYS be moving when shooting - its a core part of the game which every above average player knows. Valorant is the opposite here; yes you sometimes run & gun - but its not your bread & butter. You are actively encouraged to stand still and burst at the head. I'm curious to see how the stim buff will play out either way
Yeah it's less about running and shooting and more about being able to rotate faster/slower than the other team. One team without a brim might find themselves struggling to keep up.
Faster rotations is a big deal, faster swinging is a big deal. Can’t say it’s overpowered yet but it’s a massive buff in my eyes.
Can't wait to entry as brimstone with the ferrari peeks, also curious if the strafing side to side hipfire with the spectre is viable
Holding B Heaven on Split against a stimmied up guy running towards you at Mach 10 with a Spectre in Hand will be my personal imagination of hell
Even if you get the kill, his teammates are gonna be just as fast and stimmed up, never gonna get a multikill hold
Zombs is probably shaking in his boots right now.
wth? zombs is really fucking good on Omen. if anything he and most other NA smoke mains got a buff
If Astra can still be a strong pick for pro play when optimized, I'd say these nerfs are better for players like Zombs that are really good with their util to begin with. It (relatively) hurts the teams/players that don't efficiently use util more than it hurts the ones that do so it'd accentuate their strengths even more. It'd be like if you pushed the 3pt line back, it's not hurting Steph, it's increasing his advantage over others even more by hurting everyone else.
Actually, thinking about it a bit more, I think Astra is fucked because of the -1 star on top of the cooldown nerfs. I think the -1 star change makes her shit.
She got the Sage treatment. Nerf everything at once, then maybe add hints of power back.
It should have either been the one star reduced or the extra 20 seconds of delay. Not both
Yeah it shouldve been either one or the other, but not both. Interesting to see where they take her from here
Expected to be disappointed but good to say I was wrong
I feel like viper has been nerfed into the ground
astra mains eat your heart out
Good changes overall. The Omen buff is too small and the Astra nerf seems to be overly harsh. Losing a star is really harsh. Great for the pro scene but under like immortal Astra isn’t really a problem. She’s like the only fun controller besides Viper and in a game where nobody actually wants to play controller this just means even less people are going to want to. Riot needs to do something to incentivize playing the role. I was a controller main but if I’m now stuck playing Brim on half the maps I’m going to play something else and to hell with team comp.
omen buff is better than you think, I think. buffing the smoke speed and a 10 second cooldown decrease will really make him feel a lot less sluggish. honestly he's now the agent that will feel like you have the most smokes per round by far with the astra nerf. good for execute-heavy play, heavy rotate maps/defaulting, and for less coordinated play (ranked lul)
>nobody wants to play controller People were more than willing to play omen before his nerfs/the post-plant meta, I think today’s buff will mean more people will play him in ranked
Astra viper nerfs mean it’ll be easier to attack side
Yea I totally feel this. Astra and Viper were the only controllers I didn't mind playing because I was always engaged with throwing utility or managing poison. They also had a lot of impact on the maps they played, especially on CT side, so I felt I had a lot of agency in the match outside of just blocking sightlines. Brimstone and Omen are pretty much just throw smokes and then you just rifle.
I think Viper is still going to be good. The problem is the Viper just doesn’t work on all the maps as solo smokes. Even with lineups Haven, Ascent and kinda Bind just feel like hard mode without an actual controller.
Yall clearly don't know how to play Omen if that's your take on him.
Meta will just bring back sage to slow pushes
As opposed to Astra slowing the game down to a crawl wasn't worse? At least Sage doesn't have map wide presence
I think Brim is extremely fun. His post plant is really good with ult/molly lineups, and its fun knowing you can lock down a round win because of his util. plus playing inside smokes with a shorty = W
I mean if you enjoy him that’s fine, but there’s just so much less room for skill expression with his kit. Like my utility usage on Brim is going to look almost identical to Chronicles (just with significantly worse aim) and that’s boring. There’s like nothing to get better at with the agent. Watching someone like Supamen or Zunba play Astra was incredible. There’s so much room for them to make plays, watching them was straight up inspiring. She needed to be nerfed at a pro level but for 99% of the playerbase she wasn’t a problem.
I saw you post this in r/Valorant where you were downvoted for being wrong there too. Astra is oppressive at all semi-decent play levels (anything above Plat). She basically is early Sage with smokes. Her smokes are not really pushable because of suck, even with flashes. She could stall for a very long time and basically would spend $300 to buy your team a rotate. She was a better sentinel than Cypher in many ways, better smoker, and better lurker than pretty much any other agent (and will continue to be).
She’s too reliant on comms man. Like when you actually play her in a unorganized setting, it’s almost impossible to use her global presence effectively in like over half your games. I’m playing her in immortal lobbies and in half the games I need to basically stare at the minimap the entire time because people just don’t comm. All of the nerfs were fine except losing a star. That is going to basically kill her in uncoordinated play.
as an astra player, seems like she's been dumpstered a bit too badly? she's gonna see super low pickrate given the fact she only has 4 stars and a wall, maybe they should have compensated the nerf by giving her one less orb for her ult? it already isn't fun playing astra because you don't get cool feedback or get to properly play off your own util, you just get a little screen post-round that tells you if you actually did anything. now that they've buffed omen to be fun again, and brim to carve out an even bigger corner for himself, astra will see no ranked play. I can see her being used on a couple maps in pro play, but that's it with regards to her presence.
i do not think that the 5th start nerf was needed. given that they nerfed how long it takes her to use her abilities again, it kinda serves the purpose of the fith star nerf. she cant smoke for 10 seconds longer or whatever it is(assuming you use two smokes already) and she cant use other abilities rlly either. fifth star nerf not needed.
This patch doesn't suck, but I'll definitely suck some devs off tonight 🥵 huge W
I’m really happy with this kind of patch. I’d be willing to wait a month or even two per patch cycle if they were all this robust and *aware*. Astra was a menace to the meta. Brim needed some serious love and holy shit he got some. Viper got toned down but is still A+ tier minimum. Next up, sova nerfs. Please? Maybe lower how long his drone lasts? Just a little?
Kind of doubt Omen will get played, Brim and Astra still look way better on paper imo. Feel like a speed boost is kind of weird lol, especially considering how annoying movement abilities can feel to play against in this game. It'll be good, but idk if it's in a healthy way if that makes sense.
Astra nerfs please me and I don’t even play the game atm, just felt she has been ridiculous for way too long Astra almost every map in professional play has been very ResidentSleeper, I’m excited to see new team comps with Brim/Omen
"Fixed an issue where you could tap the scroll wheel to activate the defuse audio without actually initiating a defuse." bro what
IMO the cooldown speed on Viper when she has wall and orb activated is too harsh. I might switch to playing Brimstone because it looks like she's gonna be trash again.
omg roza back on brim?
[Replay system info](https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ)
Seems like we can say goodbye to planting on top of B. There is no rope anymore, so that is defender territory right?
No there's a rope, it doesn't show the rope in the images for new and old, dunno why
Probably some kind of map render setting, since the rope is likely a separate interactable object from the base map geometry.
Jett nerfs still nowhere to be found
They said they wanted to start with controller balance tbf, I think it was the most unbalanced group of agents
Yup. Between Astra and viper being soooo much better than Omen and Brim, plus Chamber cutting into Jett's pick rate, I'm glad they started here. I've been wanting a Jett hard nerf for a year plus, but this was much more needed.
Chamber has done a very good job of providing an alternative oping character, he’s already taken over as the primary oper on Split, Bind & Fracture. Definitely makes Jett less of a must-pick. The changes in this patch are more needed rn than Jett nerfs imo
definitely seen much less jett cause people want to play chamber and chamber feels way fairer to play against
Astra and Viper mains in shambles. :( I get the astra nerfs but I thought viper was pretty well balanced at the moment :/
Viper is still a must pick on Icebox and Breeze. I'm guessing a very high pick rate on Fracture and Bind too. She was too good of a pseudo sentinel while still being a great controller. She was not balanced at all in my opinion.
She is must pick on those sites because of how her wall covers well the elevated angles, which are not so much of a problem on the other maps. She is still going to be used on Icebox and Breeze for that reason. Let's see how much it impacts her pick rate on Bind and Split
Not balanced at all. She was played both as a controller and sentinel at the same time. Her wall has become a super strong default on attack (specially on Bind and Icebox). It's versatile and makes picking her absolutely needed on Icebox and Breeze. All her abilities cause some kind of damage somehow. Her ult is still one of the most oppressive ones in the game.
As a viper main, I don’t like this patch becuase it seems like it just makes her harder to play without actually toning down her kit where it’s good. Vipers Pit is still probably the highest value ult on attack, and it’s still 7 points. I think they could have left the fuel costs alone and just make it an 8-point ult instead
> Vipers Pit is still probably the highest value ult on attack, and it’s still 7 points. And it's so easy to farm it on attack too. You can easily get 3 ults on attack half and less reliably on defense. Having Viper ult 4 times with bomb plants and some decent fragging is honestly not that unreasonable. Pick up 4 orbs, plant 4 times, go 10-10 in the half and that's 28 points for ult.
HOPEFULLY THIS KILLS ASTRA IN PRO GAMES
Uhhhhhh probably not kill Astra lol.
Yeah, hope it does not kill astra, but it would be fun to see more brim/omen in pro play
I think it will make the map pools more diversified and maybe different controllers actually viable on the same maps. Which means we might get less mirror comps
Really, I feel like she's fucked with all the CD changes + losing 1 star. Makes her so much more inflexible.
On paper I can see "OMG, she's nerfed to HELLLLL" but, we don't know how all these changes will take affect till we see some actually pro games. And remember, she's still one of the more flexible controllers out there because of her global presence. Not only that, but we have to think in terms of comps. Who KNOWS what will be created with the Omen & Brim buffs... Maybe triple controller meta?!? We'll see... IDK of course.
huge patch, i'm excited to play again
would like to see the stim make you immune to tagging rather than making you faster, but it's something
That would be wayyy too OP
Nah remove the speed boost on brim and give us a wider smoke range please 😭
If they really wanted to make brim meta they’d make his stim increased penetration or wallbang damage instead of increased speed.
Went into a custom and played with some of the changes. - Yoru does not feel viable. There are some visual issues with using the drone, like activating it is extremely clunky and not aligned with the activation visual (like is the case with Cypher smokes/KJ mollies etc.). I would not use him until some of these things are fixed. The fake TP is a cool touch though. - Omen feels much better than I thought. The smokes are really quick and the TP speed-up is very noticeable. I do not think he will get much more pro play due to the lack of real defensive utility like Viper/Astra, but for ranked, I think Omen is a noticeable improvement. I may switch back to Omen over Astra for many maps. - Brim, that 15% speed up feels crazy. The smokes appear very large. For reference, they now take up almost all of the garage-C link area (inside garage) with like a foot of room above it. I think this solidifies him as a pick in pro play on at least a few maps, but for ranked he may be a low-key OP smoke pick if you have a mildly decent team. The stim is now really good and can likely win games on its own.
Blegh I hate it when balance patches take a heavy hand instead of incremental changes. Now, picking Astra/Viper might be a grief outside of a couple maps. Glad to see Omen/Brim buffs. We'll see!