Though I believe that every single duelist in the game has its own certain uniqueness and charisma in their own rights, ranked play and more in particular pro play has highlighted that certain duelists are simply not viable in the game anymore.
In the cases of Phoenix, Reyna, and potentially Yoru, initiator agents such as KAY/O, Breach, and Skye hoist similar handicaps with lack of movement, yet have much more superior kits when it comes to site taking.
How to level this problem? We can keep the initiator agents the same, but level up the duelist agents in question, and though this argument has lasted for many months now, I think I've figured out a very balanced and reasonable way to tackle the problem.
PHOENIX (This is arguably the worst agent in the game right now, but hear me out on these changes)
- Adding a right click and left click option to his curveball.
- Maintaining the curveball properties in the left click, but buffing the blindness durability, speed, and increasing the length at which the curveball can be thrown
- Instead of the right click changing the direction of the curveball, adding a bounce option to the flash similar to the Yoru flash
- Increasing the length of the fire wall and increasing the speed at which it heals
- Increasing the duration of the Phoenix molly
REYNA (Properly criticized for a lack of initiation value)
- At first I believed that a proper buff to her kit would be to revert her charge amount, by increasing her Heal/Dismiss amount from 2 -> 4, but this may cause the problem that Reyna had in the beginning, but it would definitely increase her pick rate and value; alternatively, potentially increasing her Heal/Dismiss amount from 2 -> 3 as small as it may seem will directly increase her value as a character and potentially increase her pick rate in professional play. Why? Her snowball effect increases by 150% in a normal round.
- Next, her flash. Reyna's flash is not as valuable as an agent's such as KAY/O, Skye, or Breach, because of its versatility and usage possibilities. Because of how close it must be used, it falls in a similar problem as the Phoenix flash. Now, since the flash has completely different mechanics than a Yoru or Phoenix flash, I thought a potential fix would be by reworking its mechanics to a similar level of control as the Fade eye. Why? The eye and Reyna flash have similar appearances and it seems like an appropriate fix to the ability.
These are the two agents that most heavily require reworks in my opinion, and the next two are both subtle but can influence the meta and agent picks heavily.
YORU
- A potentially viable rework/buff would be to allow Yoru to control his decoy in the way that Fade controls her seeker or how Skye controls her flashes. This would make the decoy much more viable in pro play and a lot more beilevable.
- Another potential buff would be giving Yoru a third flash, just like how Skye used to have, so that his initiating potential is much stronger and he could go toe to toe with initiators and other duelists
JETT
- I think that the dash rework is problematic in the sense that now her ability to create space and take a site is limited to one window that may only be recharged with two kills. This makes taking sites a lot less viable if right after activating her dash, the push is halted by a plethora of utility. How can this be fixed?
- The most commonly proposed solution: directional dash. I think it puts her in a similar situation as an OPing Chamber or Yoru in which there is a momentary delay in which you must turn your POV to dash to safety. This also makes Jett much more valuable when taking sites on the fly again and does not limit her to a 12 second window that can be shut down in an instant.
Conclusion:
The problem with some of these duelists, is that if movement is not in the picture, they can be easily overshadowed by a much more versatile kit in the hands of initiators. Though one could argue for an initiator nerf, I think that I am speaking for the community when I say that buffing agents creates a much more versatile and fun meta than nerfing agents does; also, it puts more agent picks into team comps and creates an ever changing meta with even more possibilities.
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