Viper, as a controller, should be seen as an alternative to Brimstone or Omen, and she actually has all the tools she needs to fill the role. She has two decent mollies, the biggest smoke in the game, and her wall, which in my opinion, is the best LoS-blocking ability in the entire game. So why isn't she as popular as the other controllers?

1. Ease of Use

This is hands down her biggest problem. As mentioned before, Viper has all the utility she needs to execute, and also defend a site. The issue is that she can't do it properly. Viper has to equip her smoke, throw it, wait for it to land, and finally activate it. Meanwhile, Brimstone and Omen can both pinpoint exactly where they want their smokes to go, and can do so without exposing themselves or using complicated lineups. This alone already makes Viper a far less attractive option. To make things even worse, she has to be within cuddling distance of her smoke to pick it up, and as a result, she is forced to commit to smoking a single location, and requires a long time to prepare her smoke to use it on another location. This is, once again, a problem other controllers simply don't have to deal with.

Her wall also had this problem, but after the buffs it is now very easy to use effectively and no longer requires lineups. There is little reason to not buff her poison orb in a similar way.

2. Presence

Cypher's Cyber Cages make noise if the enemy pushes through them. That means it's suicide to walk into it instead of waiting it out, since it is very easy for Cypher to shoot through his smokes to punish anyone trying to walk into site.

Brimstone and Omen can smoke a single location multiple times, forcing the enemy to push through them if they want to take control of a choke point. If this is not necessary, they can use their smokes in different locations.

And guess what, Viper has none of those benefits. If she uses all her fuel, the poison orb lasts 15s (same time of Brim and Omen smokes), and so does the wall. If both are activated at the same time, her fuel barely lasts 10s. Which just isn't worth it. After her fuel is fully depleted, she has to wait 20 whole seconds for it to fully recharge. Therefore, she has to wait 20s to use use ONE of her abilities for another 15s.

As a result, it's simply impossible for Viper's utility to be as present as the other controllers' utility. She can only smoke one spot at a time, and it isn't any harder to push through her smoke wheh compared to Brim or Omen smokes since the Decay debuff does nothing.

3. Possible Solutions

I believe Viper doesn't need more raw map control power, since she already has plenty. What she needs is more ways to use her utility effectively. Her entire kit is strong, but she needs to have an easier time taking advantage of it. So how should she be changed? Here are some suggestions:

• Remove the faster depletion of her fuel if both of her abilities are active (or even better, make her fuel recharge faster)
• Allow Viper to pick up her smoke from a distance, just like Cypher can pick up his camera and traps
• Change the Fragile debuff so it lasts 2-4 seconds after leaving the AoE (So Viper has a better opportunity to punish anyone pushing through it)

These are relatively small changes that, when combined, are pretty substantial. If they STILL aren't enough, here are some crazier, maybe unbalanced ones:

• Let Viper re-use her wall after 35s (just like any other signature ability). If she deploys a new wall, the previous one just disappears.
• Make the Decay debuff much more aggressive, dealing damage slightly faster, but more importantly, making it so it takes a very long time to fully recover from the debuff. The main focus of this is to make her ult actually scary to walk inside of.

If you're still here, thanks for reading! If you're wondering why i didn't talk about her ult as much, it's because i honestly don't know how to buff it without making it extremely overpowered. It surely is in an awkward spot right now, but i don't think it's as bad as people say it is.

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