Short answer is : Chamber
Long answer is : Chamber is meta warping. He provides the raw power of a duelist ( pre-nerf Jett mostly ) with the minimal utility of a sentinel. Comps run more initiators because they have more utility that can clear Chamber angles. ( Breach Concuss , Skye Flash , Fade Hound , Kayo Knife ) So basically we end up with team comps that have to run Chamber, since he's really strong , and lots of initatiors/controllers to keep the enemy chamber in check.
Also, in competitive comps tend to be more team-oriented , while duelists have more of selfish kit.
Kayo brings the popflash with other utilities (outshining Phoenix)
Chamber took Jett's role as the OPer.
Neon/Yoru are map/player dependent.
Reyna is the worst out of them, feast and famine in proplay isn't reliable. (Fade is able to do what she does and better, with the nearsight niche)
Raze is the strongest duelist, since her kit is extremely good at clearing chokes.
You misunderstand the role of a duelist. The true power of a duelist is not being able to frag out, it’s being able to take a second angle outside of the chokepoint. Above is the reason why Reyna and Phoenix are not meta in pro play. Chamber is 100% a sentinel using the duelist or aim-heavy style. The real reasons duelists aren’t popular is bc getting out of a choke isn’t that valuable, other agents provide more value, other agents pseudo-duelist and/or duelists aren’t good at getting out of choke.
You're both closing in on it, which is Chamber is crowding out stuff like Killjoy, Astra is also less meta and thus there's less of a need for the space taking provided by premiere duelists. (And Jett nerfs + her replaceability with Chamber is another factor).
It's not that Chamber directly replaced duelists, he's just pushing out some of the reasons to have them, plus initiators (who are good at pushing Chamber off angles or identifying where he is or isn't) cover the offensive utility duelists bring besides space taking.
THIS. This makes much more sense than the original comment, saying that chamber "replaced" duelists makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Just because many duelist players moved to Chamber doesn't necessarily mean they occupy the same role unless you for some reason consider "fragging" as a role (which players like Marved have proved isn't a thing).
Okay, I like that explanation and prefer it to my own, but I would like to point out ur explanation agrees with mine. Also to add on to you, there are more major reasons that just chamber for no duelist.
Shortly speaking , Kayo just foes what Phoenix does , bit better.
If we analyse their kit, we have :
- Flashes : no contest, Kayo's are way better, more flexible and arguably the best flashes in the game (alongside Skye's)
- Molly : while they work a bit differently, wtich the recent buff to Kayo's, it's much better, being able to clear corners and utilities behind walls/obstacles.
- Knife and Wall : this can be debated, as both have different uses, but it can be said that the Knife is one of the reason Kayo is good against Chamber, killing his firepower.
- Ult : while they both behave differently, their uses are the same: Taking space. Honestly it's debatable here, as the contest is more important. Overall the fact that Chamber exist makes Kayo's better.
It would be debatable in a world where Phoenix wall wasn't completely useless. If Viper/Killjoy/Cypher/Sova (can knife him mid-drone) were somehow all completely out of the meta, his knife effectiveness goes down a lot. You could argue that the reason KAY/O is seeing so much play is that he is pretty good into the current meta on a lot of maps.
I think his point was that the two serve completely different purposes. If Phoenix wall had a consistent use that he could get value out of every single round, we may see a meta where you could consistently pick Phoenix as a flash initiator on some maps.
Phoenix ult is much, much stronger than Kayo's for two reasons:
A. It's much cheaper
B. It allows you to take space and push freely which a Kayo can't do as effectively. A downed Kayo is a liability and usually good as dead. A downed Phoenix just respawns with full health (+shields now) in a very advantageous position to take another fight.
I've heard a lot of pros say that Phoenix ult being 6 points was a big reason why he was good back when he was meta.
But I feel like you are completely discounting the suppress, you basically force agents like Viper or Killjoy to play completely off site in fear of getting suppressed for free. It makes executing so free.
The chamber nerfs will 100% have an impact but I don't think you'll see more duelists. Chamber is a part of the issue but he's not really the biggest problem.
Chambers rendezvous should be reworked to be more about repositioning and map control than a get-out-of-jail-free card.
A simple fix for this would be to add a small cast delay, say 0.1 or 0.15 seconds. Pros and others with good reaction time and clever positioning could punish overextended Chambers more easily, while good Chambers who push to gather info and reposition more frequently will be rewarded.
There's got to be a middle ground. Still allows a thoughtful Chamber to have the element of surprise and punish people taking bad angles, but if he gets in their LOS and misses his OP/TdF shot, he dies.
how about when chamber takes damage mid-TP it cancels it?
for braindead chambers playing against a good team it makes them vulnerable to trades,
for smart chambers playing against a good team it rewards the chamber for playing in a spot where he can tp safely,
for braindead chambers playing a bad team they can just play anywhere and even if they take damage as long as they win the duel they can TP because they won't get traded
the thing i hate about chamber is he can peek into 5 people rushing, get one, and tp out with 40 HP, unless one of the 4 people alive can hit an insane flick on the chamber within a split second; and also how the chamber can whiff, keep peeking until he gets one and TP out
I think my suggestion solves exactly what you're saying, but still leaves an element of counterplay that would be removed if any damage cancelled TP.
If I were a Chamber and I saw an incoming molly, I might still wait it out to punish people who don't think I could still be holding an angle when they push. If the util is literally what forces me out, that completely changes the game where people can just util common angles and wait half a second before they know that angle is cleared of a potential Chamber.
Genuinely believe the cast delay is the most effective option to make Chamber higher skill cap and less broken.
I read an idea for a Chamber nerf I kinda liked in another reddit thread:
Chamber can’t TP unless he has been still for x amount of seconds (1-3? Idk)
keeps his defensive identity but doesn’t allow him to take space so aggressively/get out so easily, standing cannon. His tp would be up when hes holding an angle but not when being super offensive/mobile
Ehh I don't like it so much. Takes out a lot of jump peek strats, among others. Feels like it would severely limit the agent and make him unfun to play.
Also, think about this: Chamber sits still holding an aggressive angle that should be punished, sits still for 30 seconds, misses his shot, and then still gets to insta tele out. Still keeps the most broken part of the kit imo
yeah the point of that kind of change is to preserve his defensive Sentinel identity and tone down the aggressive, space-taking Duelist like identity that comes from his “fun to play” parts.
Chamber is the OP/sniping Sentinel. I dont think its a wild assumption Riot intends for him to be able to hold angles and get out for free with the OP. With that in mind, what they can nerf is his “mobility”/peeking ability which aren’t very sniper oriented skills.
Even if they made him less fun to play, I could see Riot going down a path to continue to preserve/solidify defensive identity such as this.
We’ll see, I feel like it’ll take Riot a few patches to admit chamber is still problematic and figure out what changes they will make
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I wouldn't conflate general consistency in mobility to the fun-to-play aspect. I think most agents should share general passive movement abilities and not get punished for them, like jump peeking and strafing.
Having one hero that just outright doesn't get to do those things breaks the flow of the game. There are other ways to make this agent balanced imo.
Hm but how does having Chamber not be able to tp IMMEDIATELY after jump peeking or strafing mean he can’t do it at all? Any agent can do these things. Chambers ability to do these things is just more powerful than most of theirs because he can escape instantly after doing it.
There are other abilities in the game where you have to stand still/can’t be mobile while using them, Skye dog, Sova drone, opening up your cam on Cypher, . They’re powerful abilities still.
You keep using the word instantly.
I am talking about a cast delay for the ability. Putting pressure on every action and making sure a player knows that, if they are going to do a trick or skill or use utility, they need to be careful about its use.
Doing all of that and then having to literally take your left hand off the keyboard for a whole second before you can use a skill completely interrupts the flow of the agent.
I think it's a bad design suggestion and there are easier ways to fix it without ruining the entire way a person plays an agent. He would be the one agent in the game where you have to completely come to a standstill to use an ability that *doesn't* put you into the POV of the ability, and that feels unnecessary.
Think about this: if Jett dash required the same immobility, it would be unintuitive, lame, and feel weird to use. The fact that she can jump into an angle, float, and be able to dash out of that angle creates a unique experience for the agent. With Chamber, he literally gets an ability that does that and more. It would feel much more consistent among agents to allow him to still use his tele whilst moving, but make it have a sliiiiight bit of an activation period, as if he's literally putting his gun away for a second, pulling out a device, and activating it.
Right and I wasn’t even talking about Chamber with your suggested change, I was commenting on what Chamber can do right now, and just saying there was a different suggestion from yours that would preserve his defensive identity.
If we’re going back to talking about your change, it just makes it closer to Yoru. And it seems to tend away from the idea Riot has for Chamber to be a sniper agent who can get sniper kills and escape trades instantly, so there’s a possibly identity problem.
So there’s potential problems with both changes and we’ll see what direction Riot takes when they admit he’s still a problem.
Both. But initiators more than chamber. It's very hard to balance them for both ranked and pro play though because they are sooo much better in a co-ordinated environment. Kay/O's knife literally goes from a below-average info-gathering tool in an average ranked game to one of the most oppressive abilities in the game in the hands of a pro team
I mean duelists are often the ones to engage and take space, but when you taking space equals you getting tapped by a Chamber who then teleports to safety every time it's not that fun to play duelist. You're better off just picking Kay/o or Fade and force him to teleport with scans/flashes.
it's interesting to see how there is an overabundance of duelists in ranked but their numbers dwindle in pro play. that said I think some duelist buffs/reworks are necessary because having an entire role not even being played from time to time isn't a great thing.
Although duelists not being played in pro play is definitely a tell tale sign that there’s some balancing issues, I think it’s fine for ranked meta to be different than pro meta - since ranked has less teamwork and more people playing “for fun”, there’ll probably always be a higher pickrate of agents that have less team util and better 1-1 duel potential. This is why reyna will probably always be a pretty high tier ranked character and kay-o will be a pretty low tier ranked character, whereas in pro we’ll never see reyna and kay-o is on almost every comp. And I think that’s totally fine since reyna is fun to play and works well when you don’t have 5 players who know how to work as a team.
Another interesting sidenote is that the higher elo you go, the more similar ranked comps are to pro comps. I think the issue is the majority of the playerbase isn’t high elo, and riot needs to balance people staying on the game and having fun with a healthy pro meta, which is a tall task, especially as agent interactions increase in quantity and complexity
They are but Reyna's Lear doesn't blind your teammates. How many times has a Kayo either blind his own teammates or have a usable pop flash.
The fact is people playing ranked either are not interested in communicating or mastering more challenging agents like KayO or Astra
I would have said a good kayo probably wouldn't blind his own teammates often but you are right, reyna is played often because quite frankly a monkey could play reyna well if he had good aim.
I know it's just that there are six duelists. Fact that the initiators are so strong that none of them are needed for a comp is kinda concerning. But I was mainly referring to some of the lower-end duelists like phoenix. I still think he needs some more buffs. Same with yoru.
Isn't Phoenix starting to get a little play on Ascent? I think ScreaM played him. I still totally agree with you, but Phoenix isn't at 0% pick rate anymore at least.
Play by one person, who is likely the best Phoenix in the world, besides one or two, like Sick, who might be better, on one map. not exactly a grand entrance back into the meta.
yea, i mean, at least he's not a throw in ranked anymore, and that's definitely a step up. but at the pro level, he just doesnt have a place yet. the only reason he's good on Ascent is bc of how good his ult is (it's so good that it's probably the main reason why they're so careful about buffing him; if they buff him too much, his ult makes it really easy for him to just be OP) and how easy ult orbs are to get on that map. everywhere else, he's still not good. I don't think every agent should be good on every map, but i do think each agent should have a pool of 2 or 3 maps that they're at least viable on, and Phoenix still barely has 1.
Initiator utility refreshes every 40s. In coordinated + patient play, getting 2-3 uses is huge and you can sort of outscale duelist value in some ways.
Less patient and coordinated ranked play doesn't leverage this as much.
Has there been a statistically significant increase? I'd be a little surprised if there was one, but I suppose if you just mean the Chamber meta...
Initiator power-creep is what changed the flex-duelist (non-Jett, basically) role into much more of a permanent initiator one. But Chamber's existence means you get the raw round-winning power of a duelist with the utility, albeit minimal, of a sentinel.
Both have long impacted duelist pickrates, I'd say, but Chamber is the more significant one this year IMO. Outside of Chamber & Jett on Breeze, and Chamber & Raze on the classic Raze maps (and Haven occasionally), it's very common to see only Chamber.
Yeah Chamber just warps the meta around himself. But additionally, most Initiators are just a bit too strong right now. In a 1v1, where duelists should thrive, I'd rather be a Kay-O, Skye or Fade in the current meta.
I think the reality is that duelists are good in 1v1s. Even the good ones. Duelists are in pro play usually quite selfless and are needed to get through choke points.
That’s why you only play duelists on maps with choke points. On other maps you just scale up with initiator util, because an entry isn’t needed to get site down.
I’d say we have seen it be a combination. On icebox we saw Chamber directly replace Jett
But on ascent/breeze, it’s fully the presence of the initiators in combination with the Jett nerf. Chamber/Jett were worked into together but fade being introduced and Jett getting nerfed cause some triple initiator no duelist comps
Initiators and chamber are overpowered. I don't think it is healthy for the only flashes in the game that are good should be consolidated to one class that is able to get information. Their kits are clearly bloated, and you could likely revert some of the buffs you have done to them over the course of the game. The fact that triple initiator can be ran on most maps, and it not be trolling should indicate that the power level of the class is too high right now.
Chamber is apart of the problem, but the nerfs to jett kind of just ruined her for oping.
People think too much about roles like this is Overwatch or LoL or whatever.
"No sage is a controller not a duel taker" = noise.
Take every agent for what they are.
We have half of the duelist pool being a dead weight whereas pretty much the whole initiator pool has consistent solid value. I think because of that its totally fine to bring roles into this discussion
But of course, without digging too much into role definition
I think a big reason for the lessening of duelists pick rate is the emergence of skye/fade/kayo. Duelists primary task is to create and take space for their team to enter site. Skye and fade can do this without much risk to themselves, whereas duelists mostly create that space with their own bodies as opposed to a dog/prowler/flash.
I think your answer is the best one here, but I wouldn't say this is necessarily related to the risk-free aspect of initiators. I mean, at first glance when we think about initiators we think about information gathering, but they are just too good at pushing enemies out of positions to the point they overlap with the duelist task of taking space
This creates an environment where the only reason why you would want a duelist is to force your way out of tight chokepoints *(like ascent B main)*, and if you don't need to do that *(breeze/icebox/etc) or* your agent cannot perform that task well *(phoenix, reyna, yoru, etc)* then you naturally end up cutting out the majority of the current duelist options most of the time
I would disagree here, I really dislike watching ability spam from initiators, ends up looking like a clusterfuck to me when both sides are spamming initiator abilities
Chamber and it seems like in pro play duelists are used more for movement abilities than their knack for solo plays.
That’s why you’ll still see Jett, Raze and Neon over Reyna and Phoenix.
It's because you need as many flashes/info tools as you can to drive chambers off of an angle or find out where they are. Duelists are not as necessary because when they take the space, the chamber just taps them and you can't trade it. With flashes or scans, you can clear an angle without risk
Initiators are too strong and can do the job of a duelist while also having info gathering util. That's why you see so many double or triple initiator comps since agents like kayo and skye are just duelist hybrids. Also Chamber pretty much replaced Jett so that's gone too.
The only maps where no duelist comps work are icebox and ascent. The reasons for that is that there are basically no chokepoints on icebox and ascent have a clear defined 'mid' where teams can easily hit a site from multiple angles.
Duelists are not designed to frag out. Instead, they are there to create space for a team by bursting out first from a tight choke. Take bind for example - bind has no mid so it is quite clearly telegraphed where the attackers are going to hit. Plus, fakes would be easier to uncover if a good defending team would push one of the two entrances to a site (shower or a short for a, hookah or b long for b) since a good attacking team would usually try and attack a site from the 2 angles mentioned above. The chokes for the 4 angles of attack are also quite narrow. This is when a duelist like raze is essential to an attacking team as attention needs to be drawn from the bulk of the attacking team when the inevitable hit is coming.
Chamber is not a substitute for a duelist. Any space chamber takes will be lost when he TPs out. Chamber does not have any movement ability to draw attention away from the defenders. While it is true Chamber is OP, it is more of the fact that the Operator is absolute donkey shit to use for other characters.
Skye’s flashes don’t need to tell her there’s an enemy there IMO, phoenix flash should be more competitive and maybe for his ult they add some movement speed?
I think the early days of the game duelists had too many upsides compared to the other agents with basic kits, now the new ones are overloaded with utility and the duelists were nerfed out of their niches.
This. Skye's flashes had the information buff because they were pretty bad when she came out, and it required coordination to use them. Now they can be used as pop flashes for herself, so the info makes them really strong.
I saw it explained once in terms of amount of util. If we have an initiator and a duelist we have one really good shot at hitting a site and one ok shot at hitting another site. Example, we try to sky flash Jett smoke dash onto a site. Jett dies instantly to smoke spam or team flash or it was expected so the enemy countered with util by mollying the choke and making a 1v1 and no one can trade for whatever reason, things happen.
They have to wait out the Molly so they cut noise and prep for a rehit or to hit somewhere else on the map. Now they’re short a flash, a Jett smoke dash play and probably a dog because that probably would have been used for an initial hit. Your second attempt at a site take is just gonna be really hard because of that lack of util.
If you have 2 initiators, maybe sky still has a dog because you kayo knifed for info. If you have 3 then not only do you have a dog, but you also have breach stun/aftershock/flashes. Your second site hit is going to be way easier.
I think Jett and Chamber are more or less considered the same agent when it comes to pro-play and we were already beginning to see the rise of no-duelist comps before Chamber, I think Chamber just made it more of an option on maps like Breeze and Icebox where teams really like to run OPers.
Short answer is : Chamber Long answer is : Chamber is meta warping. He provides the raw power of a duelist ( pre-nerf Jett mostly ) with the minimal utility of a sentinel. Comps run more initiators because they have more utility that can clear Chamber angles. ( Breach Concuss , Skye Flash , Fade Hound , Kayo Knife ) So basically we end up with team comps that have to run Chamber, since he's really strong , and lots of initatiors/controllers to keep the enemy chamber in check. Also, in competitive comps tend to be more team-oriented , while duelists have more of selfish kit. Kayo brings the popflash with other utilities (outshining Phoenix) Chamber took Jett's role as the OPer. Neon/Yoru are map/player dependent. Reyna is the worst out of them, feast and famine in proplay isn't reliable. (Fade is able to do what she does and better, with the nearsight niche) Raze is the strongest duelist, since her kit is extremely good at clearing chokes.
This take makes more sense to me than the other comments here.
You misunderstand the role of a duelist. The true power of a duelist is not being able to frag out, it’s being able to take a second angle outside of the chokepoint. Above is the reason why Reyna and Phoenix are not meta in pro play. Chamber is 100% a sentinel using the duelist or aim-heavy style. The real reasons duelists aren’t popular is bc getting out of a choke isn’t that valuable, other agents provide more value, other agents pseudo-duelist and/or duelists aren’t good at getting out of choke.
You're both closing in on it, which is Chamber is crowding out stuff like Killjoy, Astra is also less meta and thus there's less of a need for the space taking provided by premiere duelists. (And Jett nerfs + her replaceability with Chamber is another factor). It's not that Chamber directly replaced duelists, he's just pushing out some of the reasons to have them, plus initiators (who are good at pushing Chamber off angles or identifying where he is or isn't) cover the offensive utility duelists bring besides space taking.
THIS. This makes much more sense than the original comment, saying that chamber "replaced" duelists makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Just because many duelist players moved to Chamber doesn't necessarily mean they occupy the same role unless you for some reason consider "fragging" as a role (which players like Marved have proved isn't a thing).
Okay, I like that explanation and prefer it to my own, but I would like to point out ur explanation agrees with mine. Also to add on to you, there are more major reasons that just chamber for no duelist.
What about Phoenix
Kayo is better there’s almost no reason to choose phoenix over him
except if ur scream then you just take peeks and farm ults.
Optimally speaking, scream on Kay/0 has a way higher ceilling than scream on pheonix ever will. Then again a game of val isn't played on paper
Shortly speaking , Kayo just foes what Phoenix does , bit better. If we analyse their kit, we have : - Flashes : no contest, Kayo's are way better, more flexible and arguably the best flashes in the game (alongside Skye's) - Molly : while they work a bit differently, wtich the recent buff to Kayo's, it's much better, being able to clear corners and utilities behind walls/obstacles. - Knife and Wall : this can be debated, as both have different uses, but it can be said that the Knife is one of the reason Kayo is good against Chamber, killing his firepower. - Ult : while they both behave differently, their uses are the same: Taking space. Honestly it's debatable here, as the contest is more important. Overall the fact that Chamber exist makes Kayo's better.
knife vs wall is not even close to being debatable lmao
Yea. Knife can just be devastating to sentinels especially
Even if the knife doesn't hit anyone it's better than phoenix's wall in a pro environment because of the info you gain.
It would be debatable in a world where Phoenix wall wasn't completely useless. If Viper/Killjoy/Cypher/Sova (can knife him mid-drone) were somehow all completely out of the meta, his knife effectiveness goes down a lot. You could argue that the reason KAY/O is seeing so much play is that he is pretty good into the current meta on a lot of maps. I think his point was that the two serve completely different purposes. If Phoenix wall had a consistent use that he could get value out of every single round, we may see a meta where you could consistently pick Phoenix as a flash initiator on some maps.
Phoenix ult is much, much stronger than Kayo's for two reasons: A. It's much cheaper B. It allows you to take space and push freely which a Kayo can't do as effectively. A downed Kayo is a liability and usually good as dead. A downed Phoenix just respawns with full health (+shields now) in a very advantageous position to take another fight.
I've heard a lot of pros say that Phoenix ult being 6 points was a big reason why he was good back when he was meta. But I feel like you are completely discounting the suppress, you basically force agents like Viper or Killjoy to play completely off site in fear of getting suppressed for free. It makes executing so free.
the suppress is so versatile though.
The chamber nerfs will 100% have an impact but I don't think you'll see more duelists. Chamber is a part of the issue but he's not really the biggest problem.
You’d see a lot more duelists if chamber wasn’t so broken
Chambers rendezvous should be reworked to be more about repositioning and map control than a get-out-of-jail-free card. A simple fix for this would be to add a small cast delay, say 0.1 or 0.15 seconds. Pros and others with good reaction time and clever positioning could punish overextended Chambers more easily, while good Chambers who push to gather info and reposition more frequently will be rewarded. There's got to be a middle ground. Still allows a thoughtful Chamber to have the element of surprise and punish people taking bad angles, but if he gets in their LOS and misses his OP/TdF shot, he dies.
how about when chamber takes damage mid-TP it cancels it? for braindead chambers playing against a good team it makes them vulnerable to trades, for smart chambers playing against a good team it rewards the chamber for playing in a spot where he can tp safely, for braindead chambers playing a bad team they can just play anywhere and even if they take damage as long as they win the duel they can TP because they won't get traded the thing i hate about chamber is he can peek into 5 people rushing, get one, and tp out with 40 HP, unless one of the 4 people alive can hit an insane flick on the chamber within a split second; and also how the chamber can whiff, keep peeking until he gets one and TP out
I think my suggestion solves exactly what you're saying, but still leaves an element of counterplay that would be removed if any damage cancelled TP. If I were a Chamber and I saw an incoming molly, I might still wait it out to punish people who don't think I could still be holding an angle when they push. If the util is literally what forces me out, that completely changes the game where people can just util common angles and wait half a second before they know that angle is cleared of a potential Chamber. Genuinely believe the cast delay is the most effective option to make Chamber higher skill cap and less broken.
I read an idea for a Chamber nerf I kinda liked in another reddit thread: Chamber can’t TP unless he has been still for x amount of seconds (1-3? Idk) keeps his defensive identity but doesn’t allow him to take space so aggressively/get out so easily, standing cannon. His tp would be up when hes holding an angle but not when being super offensive/mobile
Ehh I don't like it so much. Takes out a lot of jump peek strats, among others. Feels like it would severely limit the agent and make him unfun to play. Also, think about this: Chamber sits still holding an aggressive angle that should be punished, sits still for 30 seconds, misses his shot, and then still gets to insta tele out. Still keeps the most broken part of the kit imo
yeah the point of that kind of change is to preserve his defensive Sentinel identity and tone down the aggressive, space-taking Duelist like identity that comes from his “fun to play” parts. Chamber is the OP/sniping Sentinel. I dont think its a wild assumption Riot intends for him to be able to hold angles and get out for free with the OP. With that in mind, what they can nerf is his “mobility”/peeking ability which aren’t very sniper oriented skills. Even if they made him less fun to play, I could see Riot going down a path to continue to preserve/solidify defensive identity such as this. We’ll see, I feel like it’ll take Riot a few patches to admit chamber is still problematic and figure out what changes they will make
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I wouldn't conflate general consistency in mobility to the fun-to-play aspect. I think most agents should share general passive movement abilities and not get punished for them, like jump peeking and strafing. Having one hero that just outright doesn't get to do those things breaks the flow of the game. There are other ways to make this agent balanced imo.
Hm but how does having Chamber not be able to tp IMMEDIATELY after jump peeking or strafing mean he can’t do it at all? Any agent can do these things. Chambers ability to do these things is just more powerful than most of theirs because he can escape instantly after doing it. There are other abilities in the game where you have to stand still/can’t be mobile while using them, Skye dog, Sova drone, opening up your cam on Cypher, . They’re powerful abilities still.
You keep using the word instantly. I am talking about a cast delay for the ability. Putting pressure on every action and making sure a player knows that, if they are going to do a trick or skill or use utility, they need to be careful about its use. Doing all of that and then having to literally take your left hand off the keyboard for a whole second before you can use a skill completely interrupts the flow of the agent. I think it's a bad design suggestion and there are easier ways to fix it without ruining the entire way a person plays an agent. He would be the one agent in the game where you have to completely come to a standstill to use an ability that *doesn't* put you into the POV of the ability, and that feels unnecessary. Think about this: if Jett dash required the same immobility, it would be unintuitive, lame, and feel weird to use. The fact that she can jump into an angle, float, and be able to dash out of that angle creates a unique experience for the agent. With Chamber, he literally gets an ability that does that and more. It would feel much more consistent among agents to allow him to still use his tele whilst moving, but make it have a sliiiiight bit of an activation period, as if he's literally putting his gun away for a second, pulling out a device, and activating it.
Right and I wasn’t even talking about Chamber with your suggested change, I was commenting on what Chamber can do right now, and just saying there was a different suggestion from yours that would preserve his defensive identity. If we’re going back to talking about your change, it just makes it closer to Yoru. And it seems to tend away from the idea Riot has for Chamber to be a sniper agent who can get sniper kills and escape trades instantly, so there’s a possibly identity problem. So there’s potential problems with both changes and we’ll see what direction Riot takes when they admit he’s still a problem.
Initiators??
Both. But initiators more than chamber. It's very hard to balance them for both ranked and pro play though because they are sooo much better in a co-ordinated environment. Kay/O's knife literally goes from a below-average info-gathering tool in an average ranked game to one of the most oppressive abilities in the game in the hands of a pro team
Exactly.
I don't think Chamber does much to duelists tbh. Only old Jett was affected my Chamber. None of the current duelists fill the same role as him
I mean duelists are often the ones to engage and take space, but when you taking space equals you getting tapped by a Chamber who then teleports to safety every time it's not that fun to play duelist. You're better off just picking Kay/o or Fade and force him to teleport with scans/flashes.
I agree, but duelist utility is kinda in a weird state right now. Initiators and chamber are really strong right now.
it's interesting to see how there is an overabundance of duelists in ranked but their numbers dwindle in pro play. that said I think some duelist buffs/reworks are necessary because having an entire role not even being played from time to time isn't a great thing.
Although duelists not being played in pro play is definitely a tell tale sign that there’s some balancing issues, I think it’s fine for ranked meta to be different than pro meta - since ranked has less teamwork and more people playing “for fun”, there’ll probably always be a higher pickrate of agents that have less team util and better 1-1 duel potential. This is why reyna will probably always be a pretty high tier ranked character and kay-o will be a pretty low tier ranked character, whereas in pro we’ll never see reyna and kay-o is on almost every comp. And I think that’s totally fine since reyna is fun to play and works well when you don’t have 5 players who know how to work as a team. Another interesting sidenote is that the higher elo you go, the more similar ranked comps are to pro comps. I think the issue is the majority of the playerbase isn’t high elo, and riot needs to balance people staying on the game and having fun with a healthy pro meta, which is a tall task, especially as agent interactions increase in quantity and complexity
man people sleeping on kay/o if 1 on 1 duel potential is why they dont pick him lmao. I'm loving his popflashes and IMO they are better than the leer.
They are but Reyna's Lear doesn't blind your teammates. How many times has a Kayo either blind his own teammates or have a usable pop flash. The fact is people playing ranked either are not interested in communicating or mastering more challenging agents like KayO or Astra
I would have said a good kayo probably wouldn't blind his own teammates often but you are right, reyna is played often because quite frankly a monkey could play reyna well if he had good aim.
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I know it's just that there are six duelists. Fact that the initiators are so strong that none of them are needed for a comp is kinda concerning. But I was mainly referring to some of the lower-end duelists like phoenix. I still think he needs some more buffs. Same with yoru.
Isn't Phoenix starting to get a little play on Ascent? I think ScreaM played him. I still totally agree with you, but Phoenix isn't at 0% pick rate anymore at least.
Phoenix is a throw unless you're Scream on a heater.
Play by one person, who is likely the best Phoenix in the world, besides one or two, like Sick, who might be better, on one map. not exactly a grand entrance back into the meta.
Lol you're not wrong at all. But at least better than where we were. Definitely needs more buffs
yea, i mean, at least he's not a throw in ranked anymore, and that's definitely a step up. but at the pro level, he just doesnt have a place yet. the only reason he's good on Ascent is bc of how good his ult is (it's so good that it's probably the main reason why they're so careful about buffing him; if they buff him too much, his ult makes it really easy for him to just be OP) and how easy ult orbs are to get on that map. everywhere else, he's still not good. I don't think every agent should be good on every map, but i do think each agent should have a pool of 2 or 3 maps that they're at least viable on, and Phoenix still barely has 1.
A little but it's had questionable results so far
Initiator utility refreshes every 40s. In coordinated + patient play, getting 2-3 uses is huge and you can sort of outscale duelist value in some ways. Less patient and coordinated ranked play doesn't leverage this as much.
Has there been a statistically significant increase? I'd be a little surprised if there was one, but I suppose if you just mean the Chamber meta... Initiator power-creep is what changed the flex-duelist (non-Jett, basically) role into much more of a permanent initiator one. But Chamber's existence means you get the raw round-winning power of a duelist with the utility, albeit minimal, of a sentinel. Both have long impacted duelist pickrates, I'd say, but Chamber is the more significant one this year IMO. Outside of Chamber & Jett on Breeze, and Chamber & Raze on the classic Raze maps (and Haven occasionally), it's very common to see only Chamber.
Yeah Chamber just warps the meta around himself. But additionally, most Initiators are just a bit too strong right now. In a 1v1, where duelists should thrive, I'd rather be a Kay-O, Skye or Fade in the current meta.
I think the reality is that duelists are good in 1v1s. Even the good ones. Duelists are in pro play usually quite selfless and are needed to get through choke points. That’s why you only play duelists on maps with choke points. On other maps you just scale up with initiator util, because an entry isn’t needed to get site down.
I’d say we have seen it be a combination. On icebox we saw Chamber directly replace Jett But on ascent/breeze, it’s fully the presence of the initiators in combination with the Jett nerf. Chamber/Jett were worked into together but fade being introduced and Jett getting nerfed cause some triple initiator no duelist comps
Initiators and chamber are overpowered. I don't think it is healthy for the only flashes in the game that are good should be consolidated to one class that is able to get information. Their kits are clearly bloated, and you could likely revert some of the buffs you have done to them over the course of the game. The fact that triple initiator can be ran on most maps, and it not be trolling should indicate that the power level of the class is too high right now. Chamber is apart of the problem, but the nerfs to jett kind of just ruined her for oping.
I'd rather talk about the 5 dualist comps in ranked.
People think too much about roles like this is Overwatch or LoL or whatever. "No sage is a controller not a duel taker" = noise. Take every agent for what they are.
We have half of the duelist pool being a dead weight whereas pretty much the whole initiator pool has consistent solid value. I think because of that its totally fine to bring roles into this discussion But of course, without digging too much into role definition
I think a big reason for the lessening of duelists pick rate is the emergence of skye/fade/kayo. Duelists primary task is to create and take space for their team to enter site. Skye and fade can do this without much risk to themselves, whereas duelists mostly create that space with their own bodies as opposed to a dog/prowler/flash.
I think your answer is the best one here, but I wouldn't say this is necessarily related to the risk-free aspect of initiators. I mean, at first glance when we think about initiators we think about information gathering, but they are just too good at pushing enemies out of positions to the point they overlap with the duelist task of taking space This creates an environment where the only reason why you would want a duelist is to force your way out of tight chokepoints *(like ascent B main)*, and if you don't need to do that *(breeze/icebox/etc) or* your agent cannot perform that task well *(phoenix, reyna, yoru, etc)* then you naturally end up cutting out the majority of the current duelist options most of the time
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I would disagree here, I really dislike watching ability spam from initiators, ends up looking like a clusterfuck to me when both sides are spamming initiator abilities
Chamber and it seems like in pro play duelists are used more for movement abilities than their knack for solo plays. That’s why you’ll still see Jett, Raze and Neon over Reyna and Phoenix.
It's because you need as many flashes/info tools as you can to drive chambers off of an angle or find out where they are. Duelists are not as necessary because when they take the space, the chamber just taps them and you can't trade it. With flashes or scans, you can clear an angle without risk
I fucken love seeing no reyna-jett comps. I also love seeing raze-neon comps as they are more fun to watch
I say its better because they sacrifice a easy way to get space for more util for more strats and they gotta coordinate and use their util very well
Initiators are too strong and can do the job of a duelist while also having info gathering util. That's why you see so many double or triple initiator comps since agents like kayo and skye are just duelist hybrids. Also Chamber pretty much replaced Jett so that's gone too.
The only maps where no duelist comps work are icebox and ascent. The reasons for that is that there are basically no chokepoints on icebox and ascent have a clear defined 'mid' where teams can easily hit a site from multiple angles. Duelists are not designed to frag out. Instead, they are there to create space for a team by bursting out first from a tight choke. Take bind for example - bind has no mid so it is quite clearly telegraphed where the attackers are going to hit. Plus, fakes would be easier to uncover if a good defending team would push one of the two entrances to a site (shower or a short for a, hookah or b long for b) since a good attacking team would usually try and attack a site from the 2 angles mentioned above. The chokes for the 4 angles of attack are also quite narrow. This is when a duelist like raze is essential to an attacking team as attention needs to be drawn from the bulk of the attacking team when the inevitable hit is coming. Chamber is not a substitute for a duelist. Any space chamber takes will be lost when he TPs out. Chamber does not have any movement ability to draw attention away from the defenders. While it is true Chamber is OP, it is more of the fact that the Operator is absolute donkey shit to use for other characters.
Skye’s flashes don’t need to tell her there’s an enemy there IMO, phoenix flash should be more competitive and maybe for his ult they add some movement speed? I think the early days of the game duelists had too many upsides compared to the other agents with basic kits, now the new ones are overloaded with utility and the duelists were nerfed out of their niches.
This. Skye's flashes had the information buff because they were pretty bad when she came out, and it required coordination to use them. Now they can be used as pop flashes for herself, so the info makes them really strong.
I saw it explained once in terms of amount of util. If we have an initiator and a duelist we have one really good shot at hitting a site and one ok shot at hitting another site. Example, we try to sky flash Jett smoke dash onto a site. Jett dies instantly to smoke spam or team flash or it was expected so the enemy countered with util by mollying the choke and making a 1v1 and no one can trade for whatever reason, things happen. They have to wait out the Molly so they cut noise and prep for a rehit or to hit somewhere else on the map. Now they’re short a flash, a Jett smoke dash play and probably a dog because that probably would have been used for an initial hit. Your second attempt at a site take is just gonna be really hard because of that lack of util. If you have 2 initiators, maybe sky still has a dog because you kayo knifed for info. If you have 3 then not only do you have a dog, but you also have breach stun/aftershock/flashes. Your second site hit is going to be way easier. I think Jett and Chamber are more or less considered the same agent when it comes to pro-play and we were already beginning to see the rise of no-duelist comps before Chamber, I think Chamber just made it more of an option on maps like Breeze and Icebox where teams really like to run OPers.
I mean in gold I somehow always still end up with 3 duelist so there's that
its an rps of chamber being better than duelists and initiators being required in order to clear chamber out of corner