The controller role seems heavily unbalanced right now to have an idea I'm gonna expose to you the pickrate of each region (taking VLR stage 2 data of 2024) :
For Americas : Omen have 73% pickrate, Viper have 41%, the next smoker after them is brimstone at 12%
In China : Same pickrate (73% and 41%), and the next smoker is astra at 10%
For APAC, Omen pickrate is 77% and viper's 32%, the next smoker is clove at 8%
For EMEA : Omen pickrate is 75% and viper is at 31%, and the next smoker is brimstone at 6%
Across all regions, Omen have a 74.5% (for stage 2), so 3/4 of maps you will see a Omen
(In masters Madrid Omen had a 68% pickrate and over 60% in Shangai)
What can we do with this information ?
We can assume that the "niche" omen and viper fills make all the other controller useless, exemples right there : For Brimstone, why having 3 instant smokes not refreshable when you can have 5 trhoughout a round that allow you to be extremely precise with the placement. For Astra you can only place up to 4 smokes and not place any other utility, and if you place utility, you need to be 5-head to place a good stun, but Omen just look at minimap. For Harbor, you give away your position when smoking while it is not specially bad, when you need to play slow defaults and you only have a single controller harbor, it won't cut it.
I can completely understand for riot to keep Clove to ranked, but the rest (Brimstone, Harbor and Astra) should not have a pickrate that low, I really hope after champions we can see the huge patch that make controller relevant like they did with iso(but not as broken) and neon
Thoguhts ?
Controller role
I think omen is just too viable in any meta with its current abilities but I don't think it needs a drastic change like how riot nerf any meta to the ground. I think just slight nerfs with maybe the speed of paranoia or the smoke cooldown might make teams consider other controllers. They can also make the orb visible whilst travelling so enemy can know where omen is smoking from.
Controversial maybe but:
- Omen smokes should have the same duration as Clove smokes (12s instead of 14s)
- Astra should get the 5th star back and reduced activation time on stars
- Harbor should gain the ability to offset the beginning of his signature wall by 30 meters or so with an alt fire, allowing him both to be more flexible with its placement and have much larger effective smoke range
Omen was the real OP pick, Viper got a better pickrate but it's only because of the mapool, Icebox and Breeze are unbalanced and wont stay long in the mapool, plus she isn't pick a lot in soloQ, Omen is OP in almost every map that require a dome map, and is viable in every map beside Breeze and is the most picked smoker with Clove even in soloQ.
So we have 2 solution, either nerf him to the ground make him undewhelming to play as we did with so many agents making the game more underwhelming, or we up every other smoker even Viper.
I kinda reach a point where I think despite few agent (Jett, Raze, Sova, KJ, Omen) every agent in the game deserve a big up or a rework
Lets be honnest : in soloQ, Clove is 50% pickrate, Omen is 32%... While the 4 other, are Vip and Brim with 8%, Astra and Harbor with 3%
Every year the state of agent balance worsen, because we balance it around proplay without thinking about soloQ, and it's not even efficient because is balance team isnt able to think about the consequence of their decision, and their inspiration for new agent is bad, they release weak agent that are less fun to play and less fun to play against, it's a full loose loose situation. Every one hate Faria, I love him, but the one that really deserve to have their bad job denounced is the balance team, thoose guy have no idea what are they doing (Give them some love still, it's bad for mental state to be incompetent in your own job)
No the balancing team is right for the most part. There was a patch a year or two ago (around when initiators got 2 flashes instead of 3) that just nerfed utility across the board and it was definitely the best choice.
As the playerbase gets better at the game, utility becomes more and more oppressive to deal with. Look at pro games and how often players who are alone just get util dumped with no hope of fighting back. Even in ranked it can be like that sometimes.
Where the balancing team falls short is estimating the value of particular niches that underpowered agents are in. They expected Harbor would be more valuable than he is for being the only agent who can continuously and flexibly carve up space mid round, but then didn't realize Omen simply being more versatile and comfortable to play is better. Same with the entire sentinel class.
But sometimes they get it right, like with the recent duelist changes. They saw Neon wasn't getting enough use as a pseudo-dive/debuffer combo, so they went all in on her gap-closing niche. And now what do we see? Neon gets picked for her strength in quickly following up off initiator util to cut off enemy escape, something that is now a unique strength to her.
tldr let the balancing team cook
So you think Omen, Jett, Raze, Sova and KJ have too mush utilitary ? If yes it's ok to nerf them, if no that mean you have to up every other agent, cause they overall can't really compete with them.
The recent duelist change is a huge failure, they didn't succeed to up the teamplay of Neon, they just up her and making her horrible to play against in ranked, making her so mush broken individually that she can be playable in proplay (This Neon being viable in proplay is a proof of bad balance since they make more soloQ than before and less teaplay), Iso change is bad, 3 weapon is meta in proplay fullbuy (Vandal, Phanto, Ope), against Iso you cant play ope anymore, they manage to reunite the 2 worst criteria when it comes to balancing agent : Weak agent, Unpleasant agent to play against. They destroyed Yoru by removing his 2 best maps. They managed to make Reyna even worse. Phoenix is still forgotten.
SoloQ is even more miserable than before with Iso+Clove+Reyna+NeonUp, while proplay barely see anychange (beside Neon that is still 2 times less picked than the top 2, and with a lower NMWR)
tldr ; They absolutely burn the house with that change, stop let them cook for the moment, learn them to cook, and then they can cook again. They can't continue cleaning with cheese, and cooking with washing-up liquid, it's gonna kill everyone.
Their utility is too strong, yes. Though not really Jett now but that's besides the point.
I don't know what to say other than that I disagree. We're just talking opinions and anecdotes here and my experience has not been the same as yours.
Keep nerfing the dominant agents, and only buff the weakest of the others (Harbor, Deadlock, maybe Phoenix, Astra, and Chamber)
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