Three VALORANT Agents That Need To Be Reworked

VALORANT is one of the most versatile shooting games on the market thanks to its wide variety of agents. The full release of the game has only been out for five months, but there are already 13 agents to choose from when it comes to both casual and competitive play. Not only that, but much like Riot Games' MOBA League of Legends, the developer intends to release new agents regularly as the game grows.

Now, it seems that the community is happy with most of the agents, many praising Riot for the dynamic playstyles some of the agents add to the game, but of course, others have been calling for the likes of Jett and now Breach to be nerfed on a weekly basis.

However, again, in League of Legends, champions don’t just receive nerfs and buffs, they also often go through dramatic reworks like the iconic Akali, or sometimes smaller reworks in an attempt to balance out the meta and the game.

Therefore, it’s not that outlandish to think that Riot would also take that approach to VALORANT - here are three agents that we think could use a rework as opposed to the traditional nerfs and buffs.
 

REYNA

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Reyna is one of the most polarising agents in the game; she’s a bit like Marmite; you either love her or hate her. Some outstanding players have managed to make her work in competitive play, but if you know anything about the European scene, you’ll notice that she rarely makes an appearance, and Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom of Team Liquid is pretty much the only pro player that unlocks her maximum potential.

Like Jett, Reyna is a very self-serving agent, while her flash is definitely useful in team play, the rest of her abilities solely benefits herself. Jett, on the other hand, at least has smokes to work with and her dashes and updraft is a great way of relaying information to her teammates. Everything we’ve seen in pro play tells us that VALORANT is a game that favours teamwork and compositions that is able to extract or limit information; therefore, in many instances, Reyna is almost totally pointless.

While some players love using Reyna in solo queue because the element of teamwork comes into play a lot less, if you have a bad game on an agent like Reyna, you become pretty much useless to your team. She is a high-risk and high reward agent, but the risk is much, much higher than the reward, and it is because of this imbalance that makes her one of the agents that absolutely requires a rework. 

The only thing that probably doesn’t require a rework, however, is her flash. Being able to shoot and destroy her flashes means it’s not something that’s impossible to deal with unlike Breach’s three flashes so tweaking her other abilities would be the priority. 
 

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VIPER

Viper probably takes the crown as VALORANT’s most forgotten agent, while she’s very popular in the North American competitive scene, FPX has been the only top team that’s found success with her in Europe. At this point, it feels like any team that chooses to play Viper in a composition is considered quirky, big-brained, or just taking a massive risk. Not to mention, Viper isn’t really an agent that works in solo queue because her smokes and her wall naturally need a high level of communication, which is a complete coin toss when it comes to grinding with strangers as a casual player.

Unlike Omen and Brimstone, the other two smoke agents, Viper’s smoke cannot be placed cross-map at will, players have to know certain line ups to be able to achieve one-way smokes and need to be in close vicinity to execute them. So as a support agent, she is very challenging to play and is much more inferior when compared to the other supports in the game. 

Her ultimate is arguably one of the worst ultimates in the game too. Almost all of the agent ultimates in the game brings an advantage to the team that’s using them - Sage is able to revive her teammate, Cypher can reveal his enemies' locations, and both Raze and Jett are often guaranteed kills when their ultimates are activated. Viper's on the other hand, can sometimes even be a disadvantage to use, and is highly situational which is not something you want in an ultimate especially if you take a look at how valuable other agents’ ults are.

However, Viper does have her quirks and nuances, which brings a level of creativity and ‘cheese’ to certain maps and team comps, so unlike Reyna, she doesn’t necessarily need a complete rework. Her ultimate definitely needs to change in some way, but a revamp or a makeover of some of her other abilities could definitely elevate her and add more balance to the game.
 

BRIMSTONE

Now this one is a different approach to Reyna and Viper. Brimstone is undoubtedly one of the most useful and popular agents in the game, but in recent times, he has fallen second to Omen in competitive play. However, this is not through any fault of Brimstone’s, but because of the fact, Omen’s paranoia is too overpowered to leave him on the sidelines. In many ways, Brimstone can be more useful and reliable than Omen and would be considered as your bread and butter agent, but there could definitely be a way to upgrade him in order to give players more choices when it comes to which smoke agent to use.

His smokes, Molotov, and ultimate are all incredibly powerful, but the Stim Beacon is where a rework should be due. In an effort to elevate Breach, Riot gave him three flashes instead of two, meaning he’s absolutely indispensable on certain maps and if they want to counter and challenge how popular Omen is, they need to give Brimstone something that’s more enticing than just his smoke and mollies. While his Stim Beacon can be useful, it’s not impactful enough to help the agent stand out, and it’s definitely one of the most dispensable abilities in the entire game. 

So, to be able to improve Brimstone and also spice up team compositions, completely reworking his Stim Beacon could do the trick. There are a few possibilities too when it comes to what the Stim Beacon should be replaced with, something like Sage’s slow orb could really switch things up for Brimstone, and that’s just one possible change out of many. It's difficult to justify buffing any of Brimstone's abilities so a rework could be a more sensible way to nudge him into top-tier play. 


Images via Riot Games