For quite some time, players of Riot’s tactical shooter VALORANT had been demanding Raze to be nerfed and were frequently seen complaining about the Brazilian agent being overpowered. It appears like Riot has listened to its fans, as the latest VALORANT patch 1.04 has delivered a nerf to Raze’s ultimate while simultaneously implementing many other changes to the game to balance things out.
The most notable change, however, is the amount of love Viper received in this patch. Not only were her abilities massively buffed, but she received no nerfs whatsoever. Her ultimate, Viper’s pit, will now be significantly more effective to hold down important choke points or bombsites. Here are the new changes to Viper’s pit as mentioned in the official blog post by Riot. Her Decay from all sources has also been increased from 10 to 15 hp per second – a considerable increase of 50%. Furthermore, after the enemies exit Viper’s smoke, the decay will continue to persist for 2.5 seconds before starting to fade.
Another important change that Viper received is that having both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen active will consume the same fuel as having either one up.
On Raze, the Riot devs said in the blog, “Raze’s ultimate is one of the most impactful in the game and useful in almost any situation. As a result, it is being used a bit too often.” Consequently, the cost of her ultimate has been increased from 6 to 7 – the same as Sage or Sova, for example.
Like Raze, the cost of Brimstone’s ult Orbital Strike has also been increased from 6 to 7 points. However, his Stim Beacon has received significant buffs. Not only will it not provide buffs for enemies from now on, but its effect radius will also be invisible to enemies to conceal Brimstone’s positioning.
“The Stim beacon is meant to be a pretty situational ability but we felt that revealing Brimstone’s location and having the potential to accidentally buff enemies was making this ability significantly weaker than we’d like,” Riot devs said.
The Classic pistol received some minor fixes which included adjustments to its jumping and running inaccuracies. Also, a 10% bonus accuracy has been added if the weapon is used while crouching or standing still.
Besides all these, the update also included some bug fixes, quality of life changes, and performance updates which can be read in-depth on VALORANT’s official website here.
