It’s not what you might think – The agent’s already too OP
With the conclusion of VALORANT Masters Madrid, Riot Games has stumbled upon an unintended change to Viper in game. The agent’s smoke ability saw a reduction in duration post VALORANT Patch 7.09. There was also a reduction in the cooldown of the controller’s ability. However, Valve will not be patching this before the next update partly due to the agent’s dominance in the meta.
How was Viper silently nerfed?
When Riot Games released Patch 7.01, there was an unintended nerf to Viper’s smoke. The Controller’s smoke ability saw a reduced duration by nearly three seconds. Riot Games had not documented this in the accompanying patch notes, nor did they communicate it until today.
“During our most recent balance pass, we discovered that Viper’s smoke uptime is shortened in-game,” said Riot Games in today’s post. “This is due to an update that had unintentionally shipped in 7.09 resulting in reduced smoke duration and cooldown after deactivating Viper’s smoke.”
The Viper VALORANT changes directly impact the agent's playstyle at all levels. However, despite the unintentional nerf, Viper has been a dominant agent in the recent meta.
There have been a few complaints from the community who noticed this unintentional and undocumented change. A three-second reduction in the smoke duration has a big impact as you can find yourself off-guard due to your reliance on a smoke cover.
We’d never intentionally make balance changes without messaging. But since Viper has proven such a dominant force in the meta even with her smoke duration reduction, we will not be reverting the change before the next update.
Even though Riot Games acknowledged the unintended change, they also mentioned they will not be reverting the change back before the next update. So VALORANT players should acclimatize themselves to a lower smoke duration and cooldown for Viper while hoping for a return to the previous duration in the next update.
Meanwhile, there are reports of the VALORANT Night Market making a comeback soon. The VALORANT Night Market offers players cosmetics for a heavy discount. The skins on offer in the VALORANT Night market differ per account. The skins do not refresh on buying, which means players would need to be somewhat lucky to get some of their favorite skins on sale.
Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest VALORANT news and updates