After complaints from Valorant players throughout the world on how overpowered the Operator was, Riot Games has finally decided to hit the sniper with a nerf hammer. Valorant game designer Nick “Wu” Smith has revealed their plans for the Operator in an interview with Team Liquid content creator Mendo.
In the interview, Smith explained the series of nerfs that the Operator is about to receive in the upcoming patch 1.09, and they’re pretty harsh. For starters, its price will see a direct increase of 500 credits from its former value of 4500 creds. Players will now have to invest 5000 credits to get their hands on an Operator.
Besides this, players’ movement speeds when scoped will be reduced from 76% to 72%. The weapon’s deadzone will also be reduced from 30% move speed to 15%, which means that the op will get inaccurate faster and take more time to steady when coming to a stop from moving.
The fire rate of the Operator will also be reduced from 0.75 to 0.6, which is a direct 20% decrease. On top of that, the equip time of the gun has also been increased from 0.3 to 0.5.
These changes, when combined with another upcoming change that will increase the time for stability of landing accuracy from 0.2 seconds to 0.225 seconds will further reduce its impact in Valorant.
It can be said without a doubt that all these brutal nerfs are certain to deteriorate the popularity of the Operator in higher and lower ranks alike. But its synergy with Jett, which many players had complained about before, will still be formidable for anyone to deal with, especially in higher ranks.
