As a CS main that still enjoys following the Valorant scene the biggest thing I'm interested in at this point is to see how Riot controls agent power creep. It seems to have infected nearly every character-based game at some point. Really hard to see that Valorant will be any different but I hope they can overcome it, its great for the CS scene to finally have some competition.
I'll be honest, I feel as though Riots done a fantastic job with every new agent except Astra. Astra to me is just fundamentally broken from the ground up and should be the target for the next major rework.
Riot has always handled balancing very seriously. If you look at League of Legends, you have reworked characters and original characters that are still relevant to this day. There will always be some stronger than others but they do their best to keep characters relevant. Hopefully they replicate this effort in valorant.
Lmao you want precedence look no further than LoL. Riots balance is terrible playing a character pre yasuo is basically power crept out or obsolete baring a rework or just stupid raw stats boost. Ofcourse there are exceptions but generally the new characters kits ARE overloaded and overtuned at launch. Dont believe me, then read character tool tips pre yasuo vs after.
I dont think they should release so many characters. They should honestly stop and just focus on maps and maybe weapons. The game is kinda lacking in the weapons in my opinion.
As someone who wanted to main Astra, she's hard to use but really useful. You need to actually understand the game and nuances of it plus constant comms, which not a lot actually do. Viper is an easier agent to master compared to Astra.
For Astra you need comms, while with Vuper you can almost play solo. I think it's due to the fact that Astra temporarily is "out of" the game while activating her abilities. For Astra to work you need to know where and when to activate which ability.
feels awful that the “most boring type” of agents are getting some hate. ngl, astra is op before but still. people don’t seem to appreciate controllers as much. if they want something “not boring”, just play cs.
And raze feels like a quake FPS, not a tactical FPS. Cypher feels like a R6 character rather than a CSGO character. Killjoy feels like a tower defense character rather than a FPS character. See how stupid that argument is? It’s as if every agent has a completely different way of playing compared to the other and that’s what Riot was intending with their agents.
The problem with Astra was unlike Jett and Sova who are actually routinely replaced by other agent of their class in certain maps(Raze for Jett and Kayo/Skye for Sova), she was *always* the pick for the controller in every map. I don't count Viper, because even the devs themselves acknowledged that Viper is a separate type of controller than others and most of the time she serves as the secondary controller of the team. And so the only real competition that Astra had was Omen and Brim, both we're noticeably weaker than her and what they could do, she could do better and more. Coupled with the fact that her utils other than the smoke are all crowd control utils that she can place and use anywhere on the map, and you can start to see why pros hate playing against her. The meta developed into bait the Astra utils because otherwise she will mess you up even if she is on the literal opposite side of the map.
started playing astra after nerfs, tbh it feels kinda bad having 4 stars and not 5 but everything else feels great. wall might be a little short in duration but the concuss and grav well are pretty dependable. overall i like astra but i wish i played her when she was “broken”
Wouldn’t have been an issue if her utility was somehow counterable. It was quite literally the strongest TWO abilities on ONE character and there was ZERO things you could do about it. Hopefully they learn that completely uncounterable utility isn’t wanted by anybody, and think twice about adding more of it in the future.
Personally love playing Astra, I usually play with my friends and so having that communication and team play allows me to contribute a lot more. Gotta say, the nerf ain’t that bad. Just makes playing Astra slower
The colldown is fine but the 4 stars really is the one that killed her. If you are attacker, you don't have a smoke for post plant and you can't fake a site with the colldown. Recalling her stars is useless when you rotated, you can't retake fast.
Finally, Omen got his 2nd breath. When Riot said that, in expense of new character, they will focus on the in-game life quality changes, I i didnt think that it would be that good :). Nice work Riot
Omen is pretty mediocre because of his ult, I am a proud Omen main and I love him, but his ult is just bad on another level, I appreciate that Riot tried to buff him but it just doesn't cut it, I'd be better off playing Brimstone or Astra than Omen...
@@ayyitshift Omen still works on a lot of maps. I think the controllers are now pretty much all picked in proplay. Though yeah, please change his ult. I'm an omen main too and there is barely any use for the ult.
full agree to the 2 people who replied, i play omen a lot on some maps but his ult is borderline useless, besides checking a push early to see how many people are there, which sova dart and kay/o knife do way better
@@knites9698 yea, but I dont know what should it be then. I think its usefull as attacker to clutch or to fake out, otherwise not so usefull as defender, because you want to hold certain piece of map, and by tp you risk a lot. Maybe we will get to it in some point ....
As an astra main i absolutely loved her kit, she was the only perfect agent in valorant with a kit that didn't help her but the team. She is overpowered yes, but only when you have a good team. I love the new nerfs but i wish they at least reduced the star prices
Astra reminds me of other characters that are fantastic in full team environments but horrible in soloQ. Maybe that’s the reason I haven’t seen an astra in months.
astra had some of the lowest pickrates in low elo comp and her pickrates were still lacking higher up, but when you get into the REALLY high ranks, and especially pro play she was completely busted. A character like that is kind of doomed to begin with, because if you dont nerf her she becomes a menace, but if you do nerf her shes going to get almost 0% play in any low rank game
funny thing i instalock astra in ep3 act 2 a lot and went from gold to diamond by soloQ in just 1act. But yeah, i see lot of lower elos underutilized or simply don't understand how to use it
I hope we don't ever reach a state like the GOATS meta in Overwatch. If abilities get too good the game transforms to a moba and stops being an FPS. You should be able to shoot your way out of almost every situation
@@Cons-hh5ef it was good to rank up if your aim was trash. You just needed gamesense and nothing else which was terrible IMO. Coming to ow from csgo I had to transition into playing tanks and supports instead of my mccree, tracer and soldier. You even had aim Gods like Kephrii and Ans play Brig instead of Widow because at a high enough level dps were basically unplayable
@@jacobosborn8435 it should be like utility. Otherwise it ain't a tactical fps. A bad aimer no matter his gamesense regarding abilities should not be able to reach the highest ranks
Give it a couple months for people to realize she’s still viable if not more viable than Omen & Brim despite the nerfs. All the nerfs really did was give us more of a dilemma when picking a controller agent rather than having Astra be the only agent to pick.
Imo she's still better than omen. There is no reason to play omen when gravity well is still better than omens flash. She also actually has an ultimate
You can still play her, she still good om holding down site, it's just on the attacker side, you can't fake site now if Astra is ur only smoker and you have to put the stars very carefully now coz u only have 4 stars. If you use them all after 30 secs and you didn't enter the site, u have nothing. That us why Brim is now the best smoker, he has 3 smokes ready to deploy. You have 2 for entering site and 1 for post plant. This helps your team win games.
@@flarebear5346 Grav well is on par with omen flash imo. People forget that there is a reason no one played Viper in 2020, because Omen flash is also one button press that clears an entire room/ stops and entire push.
@@ulyssescasio9939 The inability to fake with astra now is the biggest detriment to her for sure. Omen can regain smokes faster and can use them without thinking about other util.
Although Astra was kind of broken many people also liked her because of default plays she enables esp in the pro level, without her many people think it will just be rushing in sites which is boring
I honestly don’t think cosmic divide is extremely broken. As a skye main I usually send a blind then peak, as abilities can go through the wall. There’s counters to it. Some of the combos with the gravity can be kinda broken though.
Tbh for someone like me who played it a lil bit on the strategic side instead of just braindead aiming astra was great . I loved to play astra even jett and sova have a broken kit who were out way before her just community outburst made her be the first instead of being the last to be nerfed which is sad
I don't think Sova is broken; very strong but not broken. Jett definitely needs tuning. But as it stands, I don't disagree with nerfing Astra first. Her existence alone invalidated pretty much every other controller character, whereas you couldn't *quite* say the same for Jett.
@@blasianking4827 I agree with jett needing a LITTLE BIT of tuning but only with dash - out of curiosity what nerfs do you recommend though. Dash really seems like an ability that you either bury or is really good in this type of game Also yea fuck astra lmaoo
@@oomer2 I don't think she needs super severe nerfs. I think as it stands the main problem is how her dash is such an inconsequential get-out-of-jail-free card. I've seen suggestions to make it so that Jett can only dash in the direction she's facing, so if you want to dash away you have to flick. I think this is quite reasonable. Other than that, I don't think her abilities are overpowered; maybe her ult could use some tuning. Maybe reduce the damage of the individual knives to incentivize headshots and raise the skill floor?
@@oomer2 I don't remember where but I heard instead of jett's dash being so defensive maybe it could only be offensive by having to charge jett's dash? Like it goes shorter if you just tap the ability but if you hold it down it can go further than it could before.
Aiming is not braindead cs and val are made for you to aim the whole point is to click on enemy's head before he clicks on yours yes you have strategy but only staying in astral form is too boring its boring to play against its boring to play for majority of people and its also boring to watch we needed val to be more shooting and gunplay not just postplant ability spam with astra kj sova etc
My favorite part of valorant is how unique they take things. Instead of having to learn line ups for smokes you literally place them before moving in. But if you want to do lineups there's an agent for that. Wanna be a really annoying flank? Well here's a bunch of teleport abilities have fun. Paranoid about enemies coming from behind at any angle? Pick your alarm system. Explosives? Explosives.
people were saying he was going to be very broken with his skills...and afterwards everyone just kept quiet. I think they did a great job with the duration of his ult to allow for the team to push (by shutting down sentinel utilities) but not allowing it too long such that the defenders can't retake the site.
Astra seems like the Aurelion Sol or Aphelios of valorant but… only even more broken, she’s so unique that it’s almost impossible to balance her for all levels of play.
@@dpocohc have you not played against the braindead auto-push->roam champ that dealt 99999999dmg to your WHOLE TEAM CONSISTENTLY while also being tanky? they would either make asol's numbers so low that he's dogshit or make the numbers go up a LITTLE and he'll be fucking broken, there's no in-between
I think that the best way to make Val a more enjoyable comp experience they should add in a agent ban give one or two to each team not only does this give the devs more data about how to balance certain agents
Before agent bans, I would add agent safety’s. Some teams might have their whole comp rely on a single or two agents, and not playing those would destroy their strategies. Because of this, I would also add agent safeties with bans
as someone who's mained her before AND after patch 4.04, the only real complaint i really have is the fact that you can no longer stack her smokes unless you use both charges. unlike before when you could have two smokes up for 30 seconds since you could stack them. I often find myself trying to smoke off a choke point only to realize it's still on cooldown. Other than that, I love how they made her smokes bigger, her Astral Form UI clearer and I think I'll still continue to main her after I get over my existential crisis of having to be a more flexible controller main instead of just knowing Viper and Astra.
ngl, i became a controller main because of astra and viper. i enjoyed playing them because of the strategies i can use while playing the game. i don't like playing brim and omen, i just like astra better :///
feels like a reason to avoid gun fights and aim duels. yeah strategies are good but only if u have a part in it, there should be a balance in both gun fights and utility usage and she could use all her utlity without moving at all by just sitting in spawn (if you want) which doesn't follow the balance
problem isnt astra, its the player using astra. you have to come up with a plan on spot before the game starts. When the game starts and your plan isnt working out you have to be smart enough to know where to rearrange your stars and fast. And when people fail to do that they blame the agent instead just learning to play her. And even with the stars in position you must know what ability is most effective in the situation at that location. If im being honest she's probably one of the most powerful ik so far. You just need to learn her abelites and up your reflexes
I’m not sure if it would be game coding nightmare, but I feel as though her abilities should have their effectiveness based on proximity (Similar to how Brim’s smokes placements are proximity limited) . Just some brainstorming, if she’s not within a certain range her activated smokes at longer range are halved in duration or that Gravity Well and Nova Pulse can only be activated when shes a certain distance to them (like KJ) just to cut down but not totally erase her global presence.
Instead of nerfing controllers they need to focus more on buffing those that are weaker. Brimstone got slight buffs with stim pack specifically then next patch they remove one of the 💀. Controllers are so essential to playing the game at almost any level but they have only 4 and continue to nerf them.
>release agent which isn't OP, others are weak >nerf new agent into the ground making them as weak as everyone else they nerfed >repeat very saddening but should be expected from Riot lmao
@@asclepius.dionysus it is not happening dude every new agent will be op just like their main game league of legends wheb they release new champion they are always op
I agree, astra is op as hell, but she doesn't leave the map when shes placing her stars, her model is still there, so you CAN interact with her if you run up on her
This makes riot a very well game company unlike some others like blizzard. (Yeah im not afraid to mention them). Astra is very similar to Brigitte a character that could potentially ruins the game. Riot really listens to their community where their nerf astra and buff other agents that really needs it. And the way they are not afraid to nerf her drastically to make sure the game are still fun to play. Unlike Brigitte where they couldnt nerf her enough they decided to create pick role which ruining the versatility that the player can get and startegies that a pro player could came up with. Thanks riot keep up the good work
Even I am on the minority side, i liked playing her a lot because she requires a lot of skill, coordinated play and people in lower ranks than immortal barely played her (and now it is much worse). I agree with the nerfs, except the 1 star removal :(
im sorry but im still pissed about the cooldown and number of stars reduction, i think the sweet spot should be one or the other, longer cooldown or less stars. cuz now you cant really smoke and stun, and sunt is kinda bad already.
Heroshooters aren't mobas, they have to set more focus on gunplay. Especially 5v5 tactical genre. "Heroes" in such FPS's resemble Utility usage but in a more creative way. But this creativity might lead to a huge mistake, which unbalances everything. Just look at r6s Lion at release, 1 button push gave the whole team wallhacks. Or look at Apex's Seer at release, also a constant heartbeat sensor passive, a wallhack beam which dealt 20 damage, stuns enemies, cancels/locks every enemy ability + reveals enemy HP for like 20 seconds, and an Ult which gives constant wallhacks in a huge area, whenever an enemy makes a noise in it. Basically a walking wallhack machine. When that happens, any gunplay plays a secondary role, since every one is depending on this one OP ability. In valorant particularly , it is 1st the Smoke/flash/eplosive or molly destrebution between characters. Some are Smokes only and others do "Flash go yeet". And raze goes all KABOOM literally. And with many characters, such small variety of throwables just has to be shared between characters, and to spice shit up they do the 2nd changing properties and executions of the same throwable. Best example are smokes, Viper smoke needs to be thrown and additionally activated, it decreases hp/shield of enemy players inside it. brimstone actvates 3 smokey by a press of a button, they last for ages. And jett throws short-living airballs which can be mooved midair and yade yade yade. With this mix, we develop from knowledge dependend lineups by the whole team, to a pathetic "i click three times on the minimap and shit appears magically" type of bullshit. Valorant is enjoyable but far from perfect. It is not for everyone but everyone is playing.
There's some truth to Astra being OP. The first few times I played Fracture, I picked Astra so that I can be as useful even if I couldnt duel as well in a new map.
Astra is still kinda good on other maps but not all maps. also Astra needs coordination of a team however, more than 80% of the player base is low elo and basically kinda hit and miss in comms. it maybe a nightmare in pro/high elo but total clown on lower ranks. imagine astra setting stars in mid fight and being knifed as hearing is reduced and you lose sight of the environment on low elo play.
Tbh, omen is too clunky with his smokes, and brim just doesn’t feel good to play. Astra can still keep up with the other controllers, especially with her buffed smoke size, so I definitely am going to keep playing her. Her nerfs don’t offset that global presence tbh. At least nobody plays her anymore so I never get astra diffed since there’s never another astra LMAO
Astra has clear weaknesses now compared to her original incarnation. Having only 4 stars and her recall/ abilities being significantly slower to recharge really helps her have a defined weaknesses when it comes to rushing and long play. Having a character that does global presence on a game is cool, but it should definitely be something that is slow to begin with compared to Omen and Brimestone. Viper is just viper.
@@ProtonSpriter its just personal preference, nothing wrong with omen & brim, just i personally prefer astra. What I meant was that astra, for me, is much more precise with her smokes compared to omen, and brim is forced to play close to his team, which doesnt really fit my playstyle all the time. I'm happy to see other controllers coming into the meta, but i was just saying that I preferred astra much more than omen & brim
i understand this but the problem it that in lower elo like silver very few play astra cyz of her skill barrier i was one of the few who used astra to a good extent and i am disappointed that even tho it is a big issue in pro play in normal low elo ranked it was rlly gud
On god she did. She is so down horrendous when you pair her with a line up agent. You suck the enemy off the spike then shoot them with a lineup. Literally nothing the diffuser can do to escape. As long as you get the plant down it’s a 12-0 attacker
That's why I can't take any eSports seriously besides CS, Rocket League and StarCraft(even tho that one is pretty dead). Because any character based game is bound to have those kind of shenanigans. There's too many variables to consider to reach sustainable balance between all characters without inducing powercreep since you have to keep releasing new characters to keep it fresh and interesting for the playerbase.
Astra did not break Valorant, come on guys give her a break, she receives so much hate as it is, and now she's FUCKING NERFED TO THE GODDAMN GROUND!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry had to vent a little. Sincerely, an Astra main.
I love playing Astra. I feel like people don't give her enough credit for being fun to play. She adds a lot of depth and strategy to the game that not a lot of other agents do.
Sad to see the nerfs, she was the first added agent from Africa so I always had a soft spot for her, but the nerfs were necessary. How about some buffs for Africa's only other agent? Show Cypher love please
You see the trailers where he always dies? Yeah, not gonna happen soon. Jokes aside, I feel his kit is really pretty great now, he doesn't have damage utilities (except the few times the traps do 5 damage and kill the opponent) but they really help alot with information gathering.
i've been maining omen since a year (despite of the nerfs and buffs I have stayed loyal to him) and now that he got a buff every team has one, but i rarely get diff'd, I dont see players using his kit to outplay or even reposition themselves, it is so much rare that I have appreciated an enemy omen, because all they do is smoke and sit, they are better off playing brim or astra at this point, i m very much a team player, constantly looking at the radar checking if my team need smokes, so after a year i m so used to the controller mindset that I can perform fairly decent on any of them, u cant escape from intense gunfights with any other controllers, you cant kill someone from behind being infront of them a second ago, omen has a bit of duelist in him which i really like
basically all role, except duelist; plugged into one and it even reached a point that playing omen/brim is literally trolling especially in higher ranks
Astra, the Brigitte of Valorant lmao she's so unique and I love it, but she really needs more than just nerfs. I think best they could do is have two separate kind of stars, wherein one is for smokes and the other is for both well and pulse. 3 for smokes, 2 for the others.
As a Astra main i can guarantee that she is the BEST Controller agent that valorant has right now (IMO), one of the reason is that how she can call back the stars and it summons a smoke
They should have also included a limitted range where astra can place her stars relative to where her first star were place just like chambers rendezvous.
@@aokay3196 its a meme, there was this one time a rioter responded to a thread on reddit about Riot Games balancing issues on their game and this rioter responded, in a now deleted comment, saying "what do you know about game design? We have 200 years of collective game design experience, you think you can do a better job than us?" kind of thing, so people meme on riot games even harder for having "200 years of experience" and still sucking at their job.
I'm a huge fan of strategy games and only got into Valorant because my girlfriend wanted me too. Because of this Astra was my favorite agent and I would actually enjoy the game while playing her. However I understand why they had to nerf her as she does seem kinda out of place in a game like Valorant
and this is why i main astra =)............and you say "boring" but that is an opinion, i enjoy the strategy of the placing of stars and then moving in and killing everyone it really is op once you get good at her, although i don't think it is slow either, i actually play quite fast with her and rush people more than you would think, although i do agree with most things you said and i do spend most time in space instead of shooting people.
Imo, the astra nerf in the latest update was just too much. Sure she was very powerful before said nerf, but having her entire kit pretty much cut in half just makes her completely unplayable.
astra is now half dead in the meta because it has better options she in fact that one day we will see astra in tier B but as the game progresses she will slowly fall into oblivion because she will have better options (for example: the omen that has 4 smokes and the 3 skills the brim that has 3 smokes that last longer and has many more skills just see the next controlling agent and that's it if he is tier A she will be forgotten and replaced for the difficulty that is to manage their skills )
A meta where everyone is trading abilities, almost no gun usage, Astra showed us how future Valorant is going to look like, if Riot decides to release more agents like her.
my first main was astra and honestly not playing a braindead rush duelist helped me improv3 much faster like I hit gold in 2months of playing? compared to my friend who plays duelist and is still silver 1?
