Added to the game back in November 2021 with patch 3.10, Vincent Fabron, aka Chamber, took the Valorant world by storm with his ability kit, replacing Jett overnight as the primary operator agent in the game.
The teleporting ability of Rendevous, the pocket-guardian Headhunter, the Trademark and the best gun in the game Tour De Force made Chamber a force to be reckoned with. He was economically efficient and had bought almost every round, even in losing situations.
With the two trademarks, it was very hard for agents to flank if there was a Chamber in the opposition, making Chamber a must-pick in most games. Chamber almost made all the other sentinels inefficient.
With Valorant Patch 4.09, changes were made to Chamber’s Trademark, reducing their number from 2 to 1 and increasing the price and the audio range. But these nerf felt like they did not do much damage to the agent, and he still felt overly efficient and overshadowed his sentinel counterparts.
The single proof of how good Chamber is can be found in the fact that the pick-rate of Chamber in VCT Masters Copenhagen was 77% which is 23% higher than the next agent, which is a Duelist Raze, While the next Sentinel on the list, is Sage at 23% and then Killjoy at 11% and Cypher at 1%.
Not just professionally but Casually, there aren’t many matches where we don’t encounter a Chamber, this wasn’t good for the game, and a nerf was almost inevitable for the agent. The nerf was confirmed by a dev back on 20th July on Reddit.
Now, with the latest PBE Patch Notes for Valorant Patch 5.03, It is confirmed that Chamber would be nerfed along with Regional damage Changes and UI Changes.
The summarised Chamber nerfs are as follows:
- The overall slow duration from the Tour De Force or the Trademark reduced from 9.5s to 6s.
- The radius of Rendevous decreased from 21 m to 15 m
- The cooldown for Rendevouz increased from 20s to 30s
- A penalty of 45s cooldown if the Rendevous anchor is destroyed.
These nerfs aren’t public yet and would be tested before they are made public and in place to balance out Chamber rather than nerf him.
The summarised Ability Regional Damage breakup.
Neon’s Overdrive:
- Damage per shot reduced from 22 to 18
- Leg Shot multiplier reduced from 1 to 0.85
- The headshot multiplier increased from 1 to 3
Chamber’s Tour de Force:
- Tour de force Leg shot multiplier reduced from 1.0 to 0.85
Jett’s Bladestorm:
- Leg shot multiplier reduced from 1.0 to 0.85
In the case of Neon, Aiming at the head would kill the enemy faster rather than the body. And for all other agent abilities hitting legs would give 15% less damage than the body.
A Fortnite-type emote wheel is under development for Valorant, and we will hear about it soon.
Along with these changes, multiple UI Changes and Bug fixes are coming to Valorant, and you can read the complete patch notes and read the thread here
