New in: OP won’t be nerfed, Breach buffs, Raze nerfs and more

Recently, VALORANT’s Lead Character Designer, Ryan “Morello” Scott, discussed on his Twitch stream various topics with his audience. Most importantly, the VALORANT team has decided they will be not nerfing the Operator. Morello thinks that the main reason why this sniper rifle gets so much value with body shots is simply because players most of the time use sentinel agents.

One of the reasons why this weapon was made so powerful is to counter sentinel based team comps - “If you run double control agents, it will be way easier for you to deal with the Operator” - points out Morello. In his opinion, players don’t want to play control agents that often, because they don’t feel that using utilities like Phoenix’s or Breach’s flash and Reyna’s blind impacts Operator users that much. He also says that flash-like abilities might get buffed in the future for that very reason, so maybe for example, flash will last longer when the player is scoped in?

He also talks about Reyna’s spot in the meta. She has a higher win ratio in lower ranks, but a lower win ratio in high ranks and she stays within the bounds of “the tac cycle”, about which you can read more about in our article on how Riot Games balance VALORANT.

Morello was really surprised when one of the viewers asked him, if he thinks that Viper is too strong after recent changes - “Overbuffed Viper? That is the first time I’ve ever heard that!“ - laughs Morello. He doesn’t think that her buff was too strong and in fact, they want to do more with Viper, but very carefully, since she is the agent that has received the biggest buff in the game’s history so far.

Sad news for Raze mains. In the recent patch 1.04, Raze’s ultimate was increased from 6 to 7 points, but it doesn’t feel like she was affected by this change a lot. “We just want to get the damage nerf, so she will be receiving a few more nerfs” - confirms Morello.

On the other hand, good news for all Breach players - he is the next agent who will most likely get buffed soon. The VALORANT team is aware that he has a very low pick rate and they want to see how he will perform in upcoming tournaments to decide on what to do next with him. It is still subject to change, but he definitely needs to get some buffs on his utilities.

Lastly, as a reminder, we want to talk about what players will see in upcoming months. The current Episode 1: Ignition is ending soon and as we know, every episode will last 2 months. On every Episode’s release, there will be a new agent. The newest agent - Killjoy - got leaked lately so it seems like Riot Games adheres to its schedule . Each Act will contain 3 Episodes and at the beginning of every Act, there will be a new map. Simply put - new map every 6 months - so there will be a new map in November.

Do you think that Operator is broken or players should just play control agents more? Are you happy to see more Raze nerfs? And is one map every 6 months too much of a wait? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!