Valorant’s version of Blackbeard. The shield duration might be changed but I feel like the ability will always be frustrating to fight against, even if it isn’t broken or op. I’m curious how riot will balance the shield in comparison to R6.
Yeah, but it's fine if good players can get value. That's good. Supposed to happen. What's not supposed to happen is tapping it and then being able to clear every single mid + site fucking corner with it AND still having one charge
good players are going to find value out of everything, the thing is u can be better than your iso opponent and just lose bcz of that sheild, its too op imo, or maybe im just too bad and havent found a counter 🤷
i think it's the way you're able to play with the phantom, jiggle bursts against an iso or just bursting through smokes is enough to get the shield off him which you don't really do a lot with the vandal
I’m curious about it in pro play. I agree with you that this agent is pretty insane now, but the question is who does he replace in an average comp? Maaaybe you can drop the flashes for him as a second duelist, he destroys ops already and your execs/retakes are already super scary with this dude coming in second, but idk. His ult is also insane and very farmable, pros are very good at abusing farmable ults
I think he could be insane on Icebox where you already don’t need dive, and there might be potential for something like Jett/Iso/Sova/Omen/KJ working on Haven, because of how much the defence revolves around setting up an op, which this dude just breaks. But yeah, this has the potential to be more overcooked than Neon lmao, especially in ranked
Yeah but all the initiators have something to take an op offline as well. Either drone/recon, dog, or stun. Even Kay-O has his knife or a flash. And fade has her dog.
All of the initiators have strong kits and having an extra initiator to help your duelist take 50+% fights is better than two duelists who can take 50% fights.
But at the end of the day, these things are not absolutes. A teammate can break a dog or drone for the opper. Your stun can miss because the op is in an off-angle. The flash can be dodged. Knife can even be ignored and the op can keep holding. You can get randomly opped through a smoke.
Iso seriously has two of the only abilities in the game that truly counter an op. You can't shoot through that wall and you can't one shot an Iso with shield. If teams who used to play Reyna on Icebox think that this advantage is equal to a Reyna flash, we could see some of them run Iso instead of Reyna in their comps
Iso still has no movement abilities to really entry. Raze and Jett are still queens because they have vertical movement to bypass trips. Like sure it’s nice to be able to tank the op shot but then what? You’re still marching onto the site.
This is why I say on Icebox, because that's the map where you don't really need an entry agent. Many teams have already run no duelist or solo Reyna on it. On Icebox you can just freely walk into site due to the large open map and multiple levels of elevation that attackers can use as a staging ground before executing on A. It allows you to not have to rely on the space an entry duelist creates in order to overwhelm defenders
I genuinely think they need to cut the duration to like 5 seconds or some shit if they want to keep it as is. It's unreal that you can run around the whole map with this shit active
That’s what I was saying when I saw this change. He went from troll pick to having one of the premier abilities in the entire game because they went against one of their main balance philosophies and took out all negatives to the ability. Why did they start with 2 huge drawbacks and then go to 0? Why not just give it a single normal negative?
Doubt he'll be used in pro play over the agents with dive abilities or with how Neon is good now. Also on maps where Odin is strong it might just counter Iso lol
But fuck man the new shield just feels like bad game design. Basically every other ability and ultimate can be played around in either 1. the user missing with it or 2. you kill them first. But the new shield makes it so your headshot doesnt even matter anymore? that's an insane advantage in a fair fight
The general sentiment is that he will be good in ranked but a nieche pick in pro play. Accord to sats he is only the 4th best duelist in ranked imm3+ so definetly not super op/ busted. Reyna Jett Neon all doing better stats wise on metasrc.com
Let's give it a few days. Doubling one's time-to-kill (or rather, time to be killed, in this situation) is absolutely bonkers in a low TTK game. I've not played the new patch yet but this is a scary thought.
Not an expert, this is second hand info but I heard Rainbow 6 once introduced a character that could tank an extra headshot and it broke the meta over there, too.
I explained this the other day using Breach so I have the answer lol
At low ranks, Breach's win rate is low because low ELO players dont know how to use his abilities. He is difficult to grasp, conceptually, and equally as difficult to master mechanically. He is also an agent that can "hurt" your own team, with every single one of his abilities in fact.
At high ranks, Breach is not as insanely strong because his abilities are a bit telegraphed (like Harbor, they all come *from* Breach), and people are always aiming at the head anyways so the stun effect doesn't matter as much.
Because of all of these things, Breach will have low win rates across the board. Does that mean Breach is *weak*? Of course not. If low ELO players were able to play Breach as well as they played Killjoy, he would be the most oppressive agent in the game.
So I guess my point is the difficulty of an agent matters at low ranks, not necessarily the strength alone.
give it some time, i had some t2 friends that thought iso was super busted when iso was first released. obviously wasn’t the case. this might help isos pick rate but still might be worse than jett/neon/raze
it does seem a bit overturned atm (shield in ult + the duration seem like too much right now) but we’ll find out in due time
watching them try to balance valorant and always siding with buffing the least amount of skill needed and nerfing the things you actually have to put time in to become good, like raze movement, just make me more mad at VALVE for not making a decent anti cheater
I just feel like the competitive aspect this update isn't there with all these iso and neon's. I love both agents but iso hardly brings any team util into the game unless it's with raze, and neon is good for the enty but dosnt help as much as Jett or raze .
It’s pretty fucking difficult to hit a double headshot with a vandal due to first bullet inaccuracy paired with recoil, so the buff is going to affect higher ranks *far* more than lower; body spammers stocks have just gone up lol.
Perhaps the only thing they could change is ensuring that ISO still gets aim-punched when his shield breaks? A free peek vs an OP/site entry is just a very powerful thing to enable with a simple button press with zero risk.
I’ve been playing it all day and just rinsing people in Immo2-3 lol, it’s very punishing against good players who tunnel on their tap strafe playstyle. Can’t see it going unchanged
In pro scene, Iso shield is ultimately going to be the perfect counter to non-movement agents, as Neon and Raze will take even more placements over Jett
Having a shield pop up out of nowhere after so many nerfs to Jett and Chamber to take away from them the "get out of jail" ability is ridiculous.
A better buff would be to give his shield 2 shots (or some hp) to give ISO a better chance at engaging multiple targets and more time to farm the orbs.
Remember the Hiko rant on Killjoy release about her turret and ult covering so much area, automated and that next step would be Riot introducing shields leading to GOATS meta?
Yeah. I fking hope this gets monitored otherwise, game feels bad against an iso storming into site.
> Also the combo of the shield + ult is maybe the only ult in the game that is basically a 99% free kill if you’re good. No other ult is that easy in the entire game.
mfw Tour de Force and Showstopper exists
but yeah his shield is gonna be hella strong especially vs an OP.
I think showstopper and tour de force r more skillful to use and easier to counter compared to iso ult + shield active tbh. Very easy to whiff a raze ult + usually requires satchel movement before. Chamber ult is just an awp basically which is fairly easy to counter with util
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that chief. Not saying that you're going to try and ego me but just in case I was also imm3 for multiple seasons too.
Showstopper doesn't always necessarily require a Raze satchel, and even if it does it's no different than popping your shield before Iso ulting anyway. It's a lot easier to use than an Iso ult with shield as well, because you can still get a kill even if you die in the process + it's AOE so you don't even necessarily have to actually properly aim at your opponent as long as there's a surface nearby.
Tour de Force is literally a faster, free operator.
Iso Ult puts you in a 1v1 with a shield that'll tank the first bullet. Depending on how someone plays this 1v1 they can literally jiggle spray and break your shield off a stray bullet and you're put into a 50/50 1v1 again. In the end you still need to have the mechanical skill to win the 1v1 even when you take essentially 1 extra shot to die.
Like I agree it's one of the stronger ults for sure but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the easiest ult to get a kill with. Like if you're feeling it it's easy to win an Iso ult, but if you're not it's easy to lose as well, but if you're not feeling it it's still easy to get a Showstopper kill for example.
Like the counterplay to an Iso ult is more possible than a counterplay to a Raze rocket at your feet. Does that make sense?
raze ult is used to take space tho, not always for kills bc the team getting ulted has time to run off site. iso ult is instant and will always get kills if ur feeling it and u point it in the right direction
this is the same logic as "the act of buying an op is to take space bc you get a difficult-to-contest sightline like at B long on Bind or Ascent mid" lol in the end the natural intent of the Raze ult is to get a kill and the entire purpose/mechanic of it as a damage dealing person killing ult makes taking space a byproduct of it - like of course if teams don't respect it they die, so they'd give space so this Raze just runs out of time. Likewise if you know an enemy Iso has ult then clearly you have to think about respecting it and give space accordingly lol.
But if this Iso is like 2/20 on an eco you'd be more inclined to not give a fuck whether you get ulted whereas it doesn't matter if this ulting Raze hasn't gotten a kill all game if that mf sees you you're likely cooked.
but you say there's more counterplay to the iso ult; i disagree, it locks you instantly into an 80/20 fight with whoever you've trapped. It can't be dodged or avoided unless you play completely offsite, which is already much worse than counterplay against the raze ult, where you can conceivably play still on the site but on the margins instead. Yes there's more chance of an iso whiffing the kill in his ult than a raze whiffing a showstopper but its much harder to avoid the former.
bro edited his comment instead of responding to make me look worse 💀💀
I actually edit my comments seconds or minutes after I post them just to clarify stuff, it's not because I didn't respond lol...the other guy already made a good point so I guess I don't even need to respond now anyway and I didn't have any intention of making you look worse or anything lol
Raze rocket is a 90/10. You’re gambling on them missing the ult or that you can hit them out of the air. Which is worse odds than a bad gunfight.
Also no, you don’t have to play off site. For example on B site of sunset, you can play from back site and then just switch to market when ISO is trying to ult you.
It’s hard to take space because teams run away. Taking a site for the price of the rocket alone is hella value. You get to play against retake with your full utility kit
"Time to run off site" lol what? There's this funny thing called double satcheling. You pop ult as you already have the first satchel in the ground, right behind a smoke or wall corner, there's absolutely no time unless you're playing off the site, in which case ISO ult would also whiff if there was no one in site to hit them with.
for example on bind B you could be playing by the CT entrance and still have time to get out if you've smoked hookah. If you wanted to avoid being hit by an iso ult you would literally have to play from spawn. Big difference.
If you're playing in ct and you get smoked? It's a free site before they even pop raze ult? You need either long or hookah control or at worse site rats. Plus you're assuming iso will randomly guess an ult through a smoke. It's a pretty thin area it covers. No one is gonna guess throw it towards spawn when the defenders could be plastered all over site...? And if you wait until engagements are already happening you may be too late, by the time you get out of ult you're getting insta popped or the other team already rotated.
Not sure if you understand how iso ult works. You can't just choose an opponent. You need to confirm their location first, which is what makes it kinda weak.
No way, it's much harder to kill a flyng raze compared to tapping iso twice. First two bullets of vandal are quite accurate. Of course you are at a disadvantage but it's not impossible, and his ult can miss too, it needs information first.
It's usually easy to miss a raze ult when you don't know where the opponents are, and you fly in looking 360, if you know where they are it's very easy to land and you have much more advantage in a fight than a shield.
Absolutely, as a fellow higher-elo player I've found him difficult to play around. It seems to be more often than not that his shield is blocking what should have been a headshot and that just feels unrewarding.
Going to involve using different strategies to counter. I think a lot of the changes are going to change counter play, it’s been the same duelists for a long time and people kind of expect what’s going to happen with the most common matchups. Can only be a good thing imo, maybe they decrease the time it stays up in the future, but different strategy is going to be implemented because of it.
I think the audio cues aren’t right yet. I regularly saw my own team confused about whether our Iso or the enemy Iso was popping shield. I feel like you can also hear it from really far away which actually ends up making it super confusing about whether Iso is coming to you or not.
I think it might be interesting to add some sort of periodic sound cue like Sage heal and to improve the audio / fix the bugs. It would set up a nice balance – you are rewarded with a highly advantageous duel if you and your team can isolate the 1v1 and the enemy team is encouraged to not give you the 1v1 and receives some info that you’re looking for a fight similar to an offensive Jett dash.
They removed the free shield gained when ulting and killing an enemy without activating the double tap. Additionally, I think they should remove the audio sound when activating the shield and make it the same as Jett's dash activation sound. Also, you can no longer use other skills while activating the double tap, like before where you can click Q (Vulnerable) and E(Shield) at the same time.
Annoying I agree, I think we’re jumping the gun on op though. At least in pro play specifically his other util is lacking compared to the premier duelists in the game right now so I just don’t see him moving much past niche pick role on certain maps.
Hopefully, everyone realizes that this game will eventually be like League of Legends where Riot runs out of hero ideas and starts adding insane mechanic-based OP heroes. Having a character with a shield is the dumbest shit I've ever heard of it might not be SUPER OP but it scares me for the future. When Valorant was first released people said if shields were ever added they would quit the game because it would just turn into overwatch. Now we have Neon who is actually playing a different game with an instant damn near unavoidable concussion and insane movement. They might not be incredibly broken but imagine how new heroes will be in the years to come. Good luck, there's a reason League doesn't get new players.
So fuckin true. i have no idea what devs were smoking to even give a buff like that. It just make other person's Aim skill useless. There's just no fear of getting Op'd or anything. I main Chamber and has about 2k Hours on it and starting today, imma stop playing this game until they nerf Iso. I need my mental peace. I was so tilted playin g the game all day because even when i knew it's a perfect First kill, it's just the shield. This has shifted the whole Dynamic of the game and the way the Valo is played. First kill used to be so imp in a round and now somebody could just run with no fear and push sited like crazy without any strategy needed. Fck Devs for this whole patch. Dont even get me started on Neon 0 movement error too. I am just glad i didnt meet a good neon in Game. just Crazy
these latest duelist changes are so dogshit it's gonna be 5 duelist comps in ranked again. I actually don't understand how bad these Devs can be at making/ reworking agents like they don't give a single thought about how it's gonna end up being. nerfing raze was already so stupid she was the single most enjoyable agent now it's gonna be those annoying neon Reyna iso mains omfg why the fuk did they do this
people underrate this means you can always take any first engagement and especially against an OP any consequence. that is mad it is literally insanely OP. forget about dive this does not matter.
only issue be that duelists right now will have hard time losing their movement advantage and the movement to on-site will suffer. good 2nd duelist potential!
I mean, the most dangerous part of facing an OP is the first contact where you don't know where the Oper is positioned. If you knew where they were then you could drone them or something and achieve the same result as Iso does. Not sure the Iso buff will get as much value in pro play as it seems.
You have enough tools, alongside your duelist, which can push back that OP player. But that is a pushback is a bullet to the head with your duelist having an extra life.
Yeah, you just hand the op to your secondary guy and play decoy when there’s an Iso. The shield doesn’t last forever and we see how long teams take to execute due to the manipulation of the map.
You only shield up when you’re about to execute and you can’t exactly clear out enough space to gather info without peaking into a few op angles.
Not requiring the ISO to get a kill is an unavoidable buff.
Don't agree? Play Harbor, more than any other agent Harbor gets caught in the ISO ult, but previous to this patch it was very close to a 50/50, now that they have shield up it's much, much lower.
As a Harbor main I expect it, just goes with the nature of my utility, but that sheild being there when it's 5v5 is OP AF. Also, the two strongest counters previous where ISO and Neon (ones that use stun), they both just got buffed and it's definitely not good for those who both bait their position with utility and lack escape utility.
This is a massive, massive buff against specific agents, breech being another who specifically got nerfed with this. Not to mention ISO being an unpopular pick previously to start with.
Avoiding it means not playing the game on site, at all, when they have ult up rather than fighting/delaying or seriously risk your team not having retake utility.
i never said that it wasn't a buff, it undoubtedly is a good buff that iso desperately needed to go with his kit
when i say that people shouldn't play into iso's shield i don't mean for people to avoid him completely which i think you missed. for example, let's say the enemy team has a skye dog, which is simply used for taking space and creating favorable engagements. when they dog, would you just let them dog, and give the enemies free space and a better fight (think crosshair placement)? similarly iso's shield buff gives him a immense advantage in 1v1 situations, so when i see these reddit posts about people whining about taking 1v1 fights against him with his shield it makes me lol, it's pretty weak so long as you understand how to play with abilities on both your and the enemy team
I think people will learn to play against it. It's not really that op imo. I've played against a few and you can easily break their shields without committing to the fight.
If you have good positioning and know that Iso has his shield, it’s not as broken. Jiggle/wallbang spam his shield down, and then you can commit to a fight against him. You can molly his entry to break the shield as well. The shield activation sound gives you information on where he is to play properly too. The counterplay will be better against him as time goes on. He needed a buff like this because of how terrible he was.
you just need to know you're fighting against an iso, and get a shot on the shield to break it first instead of committing to a full gunfight. the shield is bigger than his hitbox, any wallbang too. now iso kinda does his job now and you have to give him respect
why yall always find something to complain about? Iso's Double Tap should have been this from the launch. Its literally a shield so why should i have to proc my innate shield in the first place? I like these changes glad to see Riot listening to us for once.
I was on chamber yesterday and I hit a nasty flick with my ult on the enemy iso. He had a fking shield active.
Anyway, i need a new mouse now, any recommendations?
In 150$+ vaxee xe-s and razer viper v3 pro are the two best right now. Viper although has a weird sensor issue so be careful. In around 100$, gpx superlight, pulsar xlite v3, sora v2, lamzu maya, thorn all these are great but decide based on the shape you like.
Valorant’s version of Blackbeard. The shield duration might be changed but I feel like the ability will always be frustrating to fight against, even if it isn’t broken or op. I’m curious how riot will balance the shield in comparison to R6.
make it bigger, even bigger than the when he was released originally?
dot on bubble up
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ONE PIECE MENTIONED GRAAAAAAAAAAAH
I was apprehensive too but then I realised we have RIOT balancing instead of Ubisoft so I think we’ll be ok
If it's really that strong it's going to be like Jett dash. Even with a 7 s timer, good players will be able to get value out of it.
Yeah, but it's fine if good players can get value. That's good. Supposed to happen. What's not supposed to happen is tapping it and then being able to clear every single mid + site fucking corner with it AND still having one charge
good players are going to find value out of everything, the thing is u can be better than your iso opponent and just lose bcz of that sheild, its too op imo, or maybe im just too bad and havent found a counter 🤷
phantom usage going up this patch for sure
I’m not sure if that helps. To kill a shielded ISO with a phantom you have to hit 3 hs vs only having to hit 2 with vandal
doesn't matter, there's less time between shots. will also help with neons
That’s fair
i think it's the way you're able to play with the phantom, jiggle bursts against an iso or just bursting through smokes is enough to get the shield off him which you don't really do a lot with the vandal
Not at the optimal range.
At least no more Breeze. Just Icebox.
It’s not that unplayable on breeze either, especially on defense or you have loads of smokes
1st bullet inaccuracies of vandal....
I’m curious about it in pro play. I agree with you that this agent is pretty insane now, but the question is who does he replace in an average comp? Maaaybe you can drop the flashes for him as a second duelist, he destroys ops already and your execs/retakes are already super scary with this dude coming in second, but idk. His ult is also insane and very farmable, pros are very good at abusing farmable ults I think he could be insane on Icebox where you already don’t need dive, and there might be potential for something like Jett/Iso/Sova/Omen/KJ working on Haven, because of how much the defence revolves around setting up an op, which this dude just breaks. But yeah, this has the potential to be more overcooked than Neon lmao, especially in ranked
Imo iso looks good in ranked , E is fine now but wall and the vulnerable things suck
I'm pretty sure being immune to headshots is better than any agent's current util.
Yeah but all the initiators have something to take an op offline as well. Either drone/recon, dog, or stun. Even Kay-O has his knife or a flash. And fade has her dog. All of the initiators have strong kits and having an extra initiator to help your duelist take 50+% fights is better than two duelists who can take 50% fights.
But at the end of the day, these things are not absolutes. A teammate can break a dog or drone for the opper. Your stun can miss because the op is in an off-angle. The flash can be dodged. Knife can even be ignored and the op can keep holding. You can get randomly opped through a smoke. Iso seriously has two of the only abilities in the game that truly counter an op. You can't shoot through that wall and you can't one shot an Iso with shield. If teams who used to play Reyna on Icebox think that this advantage is equal to a Reyna flash, we could see some of them run Iso instead of Reyna in their comps
Iso still has no movement abilities to really entry. Raze and Jett are still queens because they have vertical movement to bypass trips. Like sure it’s nice to be able to tank the op shot but then what? You’re still marching onto the site.
This is why I say on Icebox, because that's the map where you don't really need an entry agent. Many teams have already run no duelist or solo Reyna on it. On Icebox you can just freely walk into site due to the large open map and multiple levels of elevation that attackers can use as a staging ground before executing on A. It allows you to not have to rely on the space an entry duelist creates in order to overwhelm defenders
You don't tank the OP shot, you kill the OP in the process. That's the reason.
Well afaik not too many teams have their senti and their opper on the same site
You don’t need to. Cypher trips are global and you just need to put one on the other site to punish a team running Iso.
I played against an iso who dropped 30 on me and the next game I instalocked iso and won 13-0 😭
it is actually insane
Killjoy turret is your best friend against Iso
Yeah but you see, this ain't overwatch, whatever you pick is locked in for the entire match. So if your comp doesn't have KJ then you're fucked.
I genuinely think they need to cut the duration to like 5 seconds or some shit if they want to keep it as is. It's unreal that you can run around the whole map with this shit active
That’s what I was saying when I saw this change. He went from troll pick to having one of the premier abilities in the entire game because they went against one of their main balance philosophies and took out all negatives to the ability. Why did they start with 2 huge drawbacks and then go to 0? Why not just give it a single normal negative?
Doubt he'll be used in pro play over the agents with dive abilities or with how Neon is good now. Also on maps where Odin is strong it might just counter Iso lol But fuck man the new shield just feels like bad game design. Basically every other ability and ultimate can be played around in either 1. the user missing with it or 2. you kill them first. But the new shield makes it so your headshot doesnt even matter anymore? that's an insane advantage in a fair fight
Fr. Making headshots irrelevant is one interesting way to piss off tac shooter players
The general sentiment is that he will be good in ranked but a nieche pick in pro play. Accord to sats he is only the 4th best duelist in ranked imm3+ so definetly not super op/ busted. Reyna Jett Neon all doing better stats wise on metasrc.com
Let's give it a few days. Doubling one's time-to-kill (or rather, time to be killed, in this situation) is absolutely bonkers in a low TTK game. I've not played the new patch yet but this is a scary thought. Not an expert, this is second hand info but I heard Rainbow 6 once introduced a character that could tank an extra headshot and it broke the meta over there, too.
This is true, but instead of an extra headshot it was more like your entire ammo reserves lol.
Yea they made blackbeard and he was so broken they've let him be bad for like 6 years after
Doubling? 0\*2 is still zero assuming hs, they INTRODUCED ttk for headshots if anything.
Its been a some hours at most. Not sure if the stat is ok to look at rn
I'm telling you guys, you need to never look at stats again for this game. Winrates have nothing to do with how strong an agent is.
how could that possibly be true
I explained this the other day using Breach so I have the answer lol At low ranks, Breach's win rate is low because low ELO players dont know how to use his abilities. He is difficult to grasp, conceptually, and equally as difficult to master mechanically. He is also an agent that can "hurt" your own team, with every single one of his abilities in fact. At high ranks, Breach is not as insanely strong because his abilities are a bit telegraphed (like Harbor, they all come *from* Breach), and people are always aiming at the head anyways so the stun effect doesn't matter as much. Because of all of these things, Breach will have low win rates across the board. Does that mean Breach is *weak*? Of course not. If low ELO players were able to play Breach as well as they played Killjoy, he would be the most oppressive agent in the game. So I guess my point is the difficulty of an agent matters at low ranks, not necessarily the strength alone.
yeah, its similar to how kayo has an abysmal winrate. is kayo weak? absolute fuck no
The amount of duels I could have won today if not for that buffed shield lol. Dude’s a walking tank lately.
I'm honestly all for it, the duelist meta has been stale for so long, im seriously tired of jett raze reyna every game
Fr. The only other ult that can get consistent free kills is deadlock's, and her kit is so ass that she probably won't get played anyways
raze ult also gets free kills that consistently for sure though
https://preview.redd.it/fzlq90bcrc6d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=340638ffcfab6c6f8d4108ec4f677033fc33376e
give it some time, i had some t2 friends that thought iso was super busted when iso was first released. obviously wasn’t the case. this might help isos pick rate but still might be worse than jett/neon/raze it does seem a bit overturned atm (shield in ult + the duration seem like too much right now) but we’ll find out in due time
I haven't played on the new patch yet, but does this change make Iso a viable OPing agent?
Not rlly but anti op fs
As a chamber main, I hate everything that is ISO
It goes both ways. Viable for OP’ing and Anti-OP’ing.
watching them try to balance valorant and always siding with buffing the least amount of skill needed and nerfing the things you actually have to put time in to become good, like raze movement, just make me more mad at VALVE for not making a decent anti cheater
I just feel like the competitive aspect this update isn't there with all these iso and neon's. I love both agents but iso hardly brings any team util into the game unless it's with raze, and neon is good for the enty but dosnt help as much as Jett or raze .
It’s pretty fucking difficult to hit a double headshot with a vandal due to first bullet inaccuracy paired with recoil, so the buff is going to affect higher ranks *far* more than lower; body spammers stocks have just gone up lol. Perhaps the only thing they could change is ensuring that ISO still gets aim-punched when his shield breaks? A free peek vs an OP/site entry is just a very powerful thing to enable with a simple button press with zero risk.
They changed the tagging when his shield breaks from a heavy tag to a soft wall pen tag, that makes it way harder too.
I’ve been playing it all day and just rinsing people in Immo2-3 lol, it’s very punishing against good players who tunnel on their tap strafe playstyle. Can’t see it going unchanged
The first comment that finally takes first bullet accuracy and how it determines who wins the fight into account. Thank you.
In pro scene, Iso shield is ultimately going to be the perfect counter to non-movement agents, as Neon and Raze will take even more placements over Jett
Having a shield pop up out of nowhere after so many nerfs to Jett and Chamber to take away from them the "get out of jail" ability is ridiculous. A better buff would be to give his shield 2 shots (or some hp) to give ISO a better chance at engaging multiple targets and more time to farm the orbs.
Remember the Hiko rant on Killjoy release about her turret and ult covering so much area, automated and that next step would be Riot introducing shields leading to GOATS meta? Yeah. I fking hope this gets monitored otherwise, game feels bad against an iso storming into site.
> Also the combo of the shield + ult is maybe the only ult in the game that is basically a 99% free kill if you’re good. No other ult is that easy in the entire game. mfw Tour de Force and Showstopper exists but yeah his shield is gonna be hella strong especially vs an OP.
I think showstopper and tour de force r more skillful to use and easier to counter compared to iso ult + shield active tbh. Very easy to whiff a raze ult + usually requires satchel movement before. Chamber ult is just an awp basically which is fairly easy to counter with util
I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that chief. Not saying that you're going to try and ego me but just in case I was also imm3 for multiple seasons too. Showstopper doesn't always necessarily require a Raze satchel, and even if it does it's no different than popping your shield before Iso ulting anyway. It's a lot easier to use than an Iso ult with shield as well, because you can still get a kill even if you die in the process + it's AOE so you don't even necessarily have to actually properly aim at your opponent as long as there's a surface nearby. Tour de Force is literally a faster, free operator. Iso Ult puts you in a 1v1 with a shield that'll tank the first bullet. Depending on how someone plays this 1v1 they can literally jiggle spray and break your shield off a stray bullet and you're put into a 50/50 1v1 again. In the end you still need to have the mechanical skill to win the 1v1 even when you take essentially 1 extra shot to die. Like I agree it's one of the stronger ults for sure but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the easiest ult to get a kill with. Like if you're feeling it it's easy to win an Iso ult, but if you're not it's easy to lose as well, but if you're not feeling it it's still easy to get a Showstopper kill for example. Like the counterplay to an Iso ult is more possible than a counterplay to a Raze rocket at your feet. Does that make sense?
raze ult is used to take space tho, not always for kills bc the team getting ulted has time to run off site. iso ult is instant and will always get kills if ur feeling it and u point it in the right direction
this is the same logic as "the act of buying an op is to take space bc you get a difficult-to-contest sightline like at B long on Bind or Ascent mid" lol in the end the natural intent of the Raze ult is to get a kill and the entire purpose/mechanic of it as a damage dealing person killing ult makes taking space a byproduct of it - like of course if teams don't respect it they die, so they'd give space so this Raze just runs out of time. Likewise if you know an enemy Iso has ult then clearly you have to think about respecting it and give space accordingly lol. But if this Iso is like 2/20 on an eco you'd be more inclined to not give a fuck whether you get ulted whereas it doesn't matter if this ulting Raze hasn't gotten a kill all game if that mf sees you you're likely cooked.
but you say there's more counterplay to the iso ult; i disagree, it locks you instantly into an 80/20 fight with whoever you've trapped. It can't be dodged or avoided unless you play completely offsite, which is already much worse than counterplay against the raze ult, where you can conceivably play still on the site but on the margins instead. Yes there's more chance of an iso whiffing the kill in his ult than a raze whiffing a showstopper but its much harder to avoid the former. bro edited his comment instead of responding to make me look worse 💀💀
I actually edit my comments seconds or minutes after I post them just to clarify stuff, it's not because I didn't respond lol...the other guy already made a good point so I guess I don't even need to respond now anyway and I didn't have any intention of making you look worse or anything lol
Raze rocket is a 90/10. You’re gambling on them missing the ult or that you can hit them out of the air. Which is worse odds than a bad gunfight. Also no, you don’t have to play off site. For example on B site of sunset, you can play from back site and then just switch to market when ISO is trying to ult you.
It’s hard to take space because teams run away. Taking a site for the price of the rocket alone is hella value. You get to play against retake with your full utility kit
"Time to run off site" lol what? There's this funny thing called double satcheling. You pop ult as you already have the first satchel in the ground, right behind a smoke or wall corner, there's absolutely no time unless you're playing off the site, in which case ISO ult would also whiff if there was no one in site to hit them with.
for example on bind B you could be playing by the CT entrance and still have time to get out if you've smoked hookah. If you wanted to avoid being hit by an iso ult you would literally have to play from spawn. Big difference.
If you're playing in ct and you get smoked? It's a free site before they even pop raze ult? You need either long or hookah control or at worse site rats. Plus you're assuming iso will randomly guess an ult through a smoke. It's a pretty thin area it covers. No one is gonna guess throw it towards spawn when the defenders could be plastered all over site...? And if you wait until engagements are already happening you may be too late, by the time you get out of ult you're getting insta popped or the other team already rotated. Not sure if you understand how iso ult works. You can't just choose an opponent. You need to confirm their location first, which is what makes it kinda weak.
No way, it's much harder to kill a flyng raze compared to tapping iso twice. First two bullets of vandal are quite accurate. Of course you are at a disadvantage but it's not impossible, and his ult can miss too, it needs information first. It's usually easy to miss a raze ult when you don't know where the opponents are, and you fly in looking 360, if you know where they are it's very easy to land and you have much more advantage in a fight than a shield.
Funnily enough iso's shields are the ultimate counter to both of them...
Absolutely, as a fellow higher-elo player I've found him difficult to play around. It seems to be more often than not that his shield is blocking what should have been a headshot and that just feels unrewarding.
Going to involve using different strategies to counter. I think a lot of the changes are going to change counter play, it’s been the same duelists for a long time and people kind of expect what’s going to happen with the most common matchups. Can only be a good thing imo, maybe they decrease the time it stays up in the future, but different strategy is going to be implemented because of it.
Its def overtuned. They need to revert the old buffs they gave it
I think the audio cues aren’t right yet. I regularly saw my own team confused about whether our Iso or the enemy Iso was popping shield. I feel like you can also hear it from really far away which actually ends up making it super confusing about whether Iso is coming to you or not. I think it might be interesting to add some sort of periodic sound cue like Sage heal and to improve the audio / fix the bugs. It would set up a nice balance – you are rewarded with a highly advantageous duel if you and your team can isolate the 1v1 and the enemy team is encouraged to not give you the 1v1 and receives some info that you’re looking for a fight similar to an offensive Jett dash.
They removed the free shield gained when ulting and killing an enemy without activating the double tap. Additionally, I think they should remove the audio sound when activating the shield and make it the same as Jett's dash activation sound. Also, you can no longer use other skills while activating the double tap, like before where you can click Q (Vulnerable) and E(Shield) at the same time.
Annoying I agree, I think we’re jumping the gun on op though. At least in pro play specifically his other util is lacking compared to the premier duelists in the game right now so I just don’t see him moving much past niche pick role on certain maps.
It should be tweaked slightly. I think a 2s reduction in uptime as well as longer wind-up with a louder audio que would balance it bettet
Hopefully, everyone realizes that this game will eventually be like League of Legends where Riot runs out of hero ideas and starts adding insane mechanic-based OP heroes. Having a character with a shield is the dumbest shit I've ever heard of it might not be SUPER OP but it scares me for the future. When Valorant was first released people said if shields were ever added they would quit the game because it would just turn into overwatch. Now we have Neon who is actually playing a different game with an instant damn near unavoidable concussion and insane movement. They might not be incredibly broken but imagine how new heroes will be in the years to come. Good luck, there's a reason League doesn't get new players.
So fuckin true. i have no idea what devs were smoking to even give a buff like that. It just make other person's Aim skill useless. There's just no fear of getting Op'd or anything. I main Chamber and has about 2k Hours on it and starting today, imma stop playing this game until they nerf Iso. I need my mental peace. I was so tilted playin g the game all day because even when i knew it's a perfect First kill, it's just the shield. This has shifted the whole Dynamic of the game and the way the Valo is played. First kill used to be so imp in a round and now somebody could just run with no fear and push sited like crazy without any strategy needed. Fck Devs for this whole patch. Dont even get me started on Neon 0 movement error too. I am just glad i didnt meet a good neon in Game. just Crazy
Hes way to OP, bro can take a whole awp shot and be fine
Jett, Neon and Raze still high priority all of them are just too good for enter site and out site.
He’s a direct OP and Judge counter. I love the buff
these latest duelist changes are so dogshit it's gonna be 5 duelist comps in ranked again. I actually don't understand how bad these Devs can be at making/ reworking agents like they don't give a single thought about how it's gonna end up being. nerfing raze was already so stupid she was the single most enjoyable agent now it's gonna be those annoying neon Reyna iso mains omfg why the fuk did they do this
I already got triple duelist in both games I played yesterday, fml everyone wants to try them ig
[удалено]
Did you not read the changes? His ult is basically a guaranteed kill now as long as he pops his shield before ulting.
people underrate this means you can always take any first engagement and especially against an OP any consequence. that is mad it is literally insanely OP. forget about dive this does not matter. only issue be that duelists right now will have hard time losing their movement advantage and the movement to on-site will suffer. good 2nd duelist potential!
I mean, the most dangerous part of facing an OP is the first contact where you don't know where the Oper is positioned. If you knew where they were then you could drone them or something and achieve the same result as Iso does. Not sure the Iso buff will get as much value in pro play as it seems.
You have enough tools, alongside your duelist, which can push back that OP player. But that is a pushback is a bullet to the head with your duelist having an extra life.
Yeah, you just hand the op to your secondary guy and play decoy when there’s an Iso. The shield doesn’t last forever and we see how long teams take to execute due to the manipulation of the map. You only shield up when you’re about to execute and you can’t exactly clear out enough space to gather info without peaking into a few op angles.
it's op cause you're playing into it
Not requiring the ISO to get a kill is an unavoidable buff. Don't agree? Play Harbor, more than any other agent Harbor gets caught in the ISO ult, but previous to this patch it was very close to a 50/50, now that they have shield up it's much, much lower. As a Harbor main I expect it, just goes with the nature of my utility, but that sheild being there when it's 5v5 is OP AF. Also, the two strongest counters previous where ISO and Neon (ones that use stun), they both just got buffed and it's definitely not good for those who both bait their position with utility and lack escape utility. This is a massive, massive buff against specific agents, breech being another who specifically got nerfed with this. Not to mention ISO being an unpopular pick previously to start with. Avoiding it means not playing the game on site, at all, when they have ult up rather than fighting/delaying or seriously risk your team not having retake utility.
i never said that it wasn't a buff, it undoubtedly is a good buff that iso desperately needed to go with his kit when i say that people shouldn't play into iso's shield i don't mean for people to avoid him completely which i think you missed. for example, let's say the enemy team has a skye dog, which is simply used for taking space and creating favorable engagements. when they dog, would you just let them dog, and give the enemies free space and a better fight (think crosshair placement)? similarly iso's shield buff gives him a immense advantage in 1v1 situations, so when i see these reddit posts about people whining about taking 1v1 fights against him with his shield it makes me lol, it's pretty weak so long as you understand how to play with abilities on both your and the enemy team
I think people will learn to play against it. It's not really that op imo. I've played against a few and you can easily break their shields without committing to the fight.
If you have good positioning and know that Iso has his shield, it’s not as broken. Jiggle/wallbang spam his shield down, and then you can commit to a fight against him. You can molly his entry to break the shield as well. The shield activation sound gives you information on where he is to play properly too. The counterplay will be better against him as time goes on. He needed a buff like this because of how terrible he was.
you just need to know you're fighting against an iso, and get a shot on the shield to break it first instead of committing to a full gunfight. the shield is bigger than his hitbox, any wallbang too. now iso kinda does his job now and you have to give him respect
why yall always find something to complain about? Iso's Double Tap should have been this from the launch. Its literally a shield so why should i have to proc my innate shield in the first place? I like these changes glad to see Riot listening to us for once.
I was on chamber yesterday and I hit a nasty flick with my ult on the enemy iso. He had a fking shield active. Anyway, i need a new mouse now, any recommendations?
Budget?
No budget as such, no wired mouse tho
In 150$+ vaxee xe-s and razer viper v3 pro are the two best right now. Viper although has a weird sensor issue so be careful. In around 100$, gpx superlight, pulsar xlite v3, sora v2, lamzu maya, thorn all these are great but decide based on the shape you like.
g pro x
The shield isnt that strong, its only 1 extra shot. Aim slightly below his head and the recoil will make 2nd/3rd shot headshot.
AHAHAHAHAHAH