Altombre

First just to set a bit of context: one of our commitments as a balance team is that we aim to create an enjoyable, balanced experience for players across all of our skill levels. With that in mind...

The tournament scene is still early on right now and the meta is adapting; our hope is that with some of the Sage/Cypher nerfs in the past patches, alongside some of the Omen/Phoenix/Jett buffs, that we'll see some more meta differentiation there. If Raze needs serious work to be a viable pick there, we'll look into that too.

Looking at the actual matchmaking playerbase though, yes - Raze was one of the stronger agents across a variety of skill ratings last patch, so she's deserving of a nerf. Compet-level changes will take more nuance and communication as the scene becomes a bit more solidified!

These are all the changes we have currently, but YES there is a small box to jump on to get to that small platform in mid. Hopefully, it should be easier for attackers to make bits of progress through mid with the ability to hop up to that ledge and isolate angles more easily. If this doesn't end up playing out the way we'd hoped, though, we will continue to make changes to the map to improve the experience.

Of course! We always appreciate your feedback on stuff like this.

Starting context: I'm not a designer, I'm insights on gameplay overall, so take my opinions with a grain of salt!

We haven't; currently that mechanic is only present on our Duelist class (Phoenix, Jett, Raze). That definitely doesn't mean Duelists will be the only agents to get 2 kill resets, but that tends to serve as a function to encourage those agents to get kills and optimize their uses, instead of trying to optimize net round value by using abilities off cooldown.

Purely my opinion, but personally, I find abilities like Sage's heal or Sova's recon dart more interesting on cooldown models because they challenge the user to debate between getting max value between cooldowns (using Sage heal as soon as anyone gets hurt, throwing Sova darts at round start) vs. trying to get the max value with a single use (but in doing so and waiting for the perfect moment, risking not getting additional casts before the round is over). The kill reset model shifts that decision ma...

Unfortunately I don't have any insight here - there are tons of folks on the team like myself who just don't interface with bugs at all, so I can't speak to this. Sorry!

Sorry, I work specifically on gameplay content (agents, maps, weapons, live balance) so I don't have much context on the battle pass specifically. /u/Riot_Preeti and u/RiotSWAGGERNAU7 may know more!

Thanks! Game balance is always an ongoing lesson, so we'll continue to iterate as time goes on. And yeah, I'd agree with your assessment on Viper. Can't speak to any details yet, but we're on the same page.

Just an out of date tooltip, Snakebite hasn't slowed for a very long time internally iirc. For clarity, that's not currently something we're looking at for future Viper changes either. Maybe that'll change, but as it stands now it seems unlikely that we'd add a slow to that ability anytime soon.

froggie hat

We've got lots of ideas for Viper, but nothing that we felt comfortable fitting into this specific patch window. We haven't forgotten you poison bae mains though, keep an eye out in the future!

I don’t want to spoil any fun speculation but I will say this - yeah she can’t go over 150.

Yeah, we're looking at all of the issues that get stated pretty often (FPS drops, hit reg, map exploits, etc.) and have solutions we're shipping for our launch patch. I know these things are frustrating (they're frustrating for me too, so I absolutely understand) but we're committed to fixing them and they're very solvable problems.

VALORANT is about to be a truly live game, and it will always have something to fix, add, or change - whether it's balance changes, improving performance, adding new content, etc. - and that'll never stop. I totally understand concerns around some of these issues coming into launch, but I also want to reinforce that we don't see launching VALORANT as the "finish line"; rather, it's the start of a marathon. We are committed to supporting this game for years to come, regardless of what issues crop up - so keep giving us feedback and we'll keep finding more things to fix, add, and change to make the game better.

We're looking at all of these for the launch patch (and have talked about a few in dev blog posts over the last few days). I don't work on any of the groups directly tackling these issues, so I can't give much more context than that, but rest assured we're aware of these and working hard on resolving them.

A lot of that stuff is just in flux right now in general - there are more player cards we’re working on that’ll come in a later patch, so might have something to do with that. I don’t work on that team so I don’t have any super specific context to give, sorry about that!

Reddit can be fickle, sorry about that. Your points made sense; I hope my post helps convey a bit more of our philosophy around the change!

You’re just nutty at bhopping, go get em champ

I don’t disagree with a any of the points you’re making - there are plenty of ways to notice Sage Rez outside of the VO line, it’s just more about sticking to a consistent, easily understandable paradigm for ult callouts. We want ults to feed into the tactical decision making loop for a round, and want all players to be immediately aware of that info to inform their strategy. The idea of an ult having extra power because it’s easy to miss in the moment doesn’t sit super well with us in general.

Sage Rez definitely showed players a good amount of info, it just wasn’t as clear as other ults and didn’t fit our intended paradigm, so we brought it into the fold. I can’t speak to Sage’s character on the yelling portion unfortunately, that’s not my specialty!!

Haha we think Viper needs some love, but as far as I know right now this isn’t something we’re considering at the moment. That tooltip is just outdated! We’re mulling over some other options for Viper in the future, though.

Mechanically things should work the same, yeah, the animation just looks a bit different now!

Jumping anim changed a bit this patch yeah, so bhops look a bit different too. Not an intentional change to target bhop animations, just an emergent result of other anim work