It looks like future Valorant patches will bring us lots of reworks. What Agent meta can we expect in the next few months?
Some time ago, we informed you about the upcoming Yoru and Viper changes, and knowing their current strength, we expected a massive meta shake-up. However, this meta shake-up will be much more significant! One of the Valorant game designers recently informed us that Riot is planning to rework the relatively new Agent — KAY/O. It's pretty interesting because just 2 months ago, everyone expected KAY/O to be an Agent that will tank the most severe nerfs in the game's history. Nowadays, no one seems to think so. Instead of a powerful Agent, we've pretty much got a meme. How is Riot going to change this?
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KAY/O Buffs Leak
According to Coleman "Altombre" Palm, a Valorant game developer, the Riot Games balance team is aware of KAY/O's weaknesses. Quoting one of his latest statements on Reddit:
Kayo’s weak in matchmaking. Likely needs buffs - we’re investigating.Weapon balance is looking pretty good for the most part, but we think there are some opportunities for us to make things feel better. No big outlier balance issues, though, primarily design philosophy stuff.
His concerns are not baseless. Remember how players said it's going to be a "pretty much better Killjoy"? Well, as it turns out, it's not. If you look at the statistics at Valorbuff, you can see that KAY/O has only a 16% pick rate in the Competitive Mode. This is the fourth-least popular Agent pick in the game! However, the design and animations of this Agent itself are exciting, and we're hoping that Riot really takes care of KAY/O.
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Yoru Rework Leak
We recently played a “Buff, Nerf, Delete” game with Valorant Duelist Agents on our Instagram. We probably don't need to tell you which one you would buff... and some of you would even delete him! No wonder why, Yoru is just boring, and it's also a reason why it only has a 11% pick rate in the Competitive Mode. However, let's see what Altombre from Riot Games has to say about the upcoming Yoru rework:
We have changes we want to make, we just need resources from other teams to make them happen. When balance changes are just numbers tweaks, we can take it on ourselves - when we have to involve other disciplines (animation, VFX, etc. etc.) it takes time to incorporate it into their already-busy schedule.It's a bummer for us, too, but we absolutely have changes. We just can't commit to a date that they'll actually ship quite yet.
So, it looks like it' going to be a big one. Also, remember that if Riot plans on adding new Agents to the game, they will have to buff the old ones at some point. After all, power creep is real, and it's an integral part of designing free-to-play games. That said, this is probably not the last time we're going to see some Agent reworks in Valorant.
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