Astra quickly went into pro scene and also ranked games. What can they nerf outside making the stars shootable ?
Sentinels, Faze, Gen.G, LG - nobody of them used Astra, they all preferred Omen. Guess what, they got eliminated.
100 Thieves, BBG, NRG, C9B, Version1 mostly ignore Astra as well.
Literally among 8 NA teams which are in Challengers 1 right now only Envy, XSET and Immortals run Astra consistently, and Andbox only sometimes.
So Astra is actually still being experimented in the meta. You have some teams immediately making a switch because it suits their team and they have good strategies with it, like XSET. Other teams are taking a slower approach and making sure they know what they're doing and that they have right number, like Sentinels, who only use Astra on split. However, most teams are not running Astra at all. This is probably for a couple of reasons, the first being that they haven't liked her enough to run her, and that they think Omen is better. The other, and probably more likely scenario, is that they haven't explored her capabilities enough and don't feel comfortable straying from their Omen strategies. Also, Omen is still good. His blind is a core for a lot of good strategies. Either way, this is a bad take. EU is likely using Astra more because their strategies are slightly more advanced and they were able to find good use of the agent quickly, or they just don't like Omen. I personally think both agents are very in-meta, and I'm sure a lot of you agree.
astra, viper, yoru was never weak! the only problem was and is that this agents needs to be played by someone whos full focused and thats the problem imo. Many people just want quick games ez wins ez rank ups with simple and fast agents. nobody wants to do whole site setups and wait like a turtle/snail in matchmaking. ive seen many good Yorus before the buff and it always looked very strong to me. i had many situation where yoru just ulted, ran into us by knowing we will see and chase him and while we was distracted someone peeked after him and got us off guard and the thing is that you dont know how to handle yoru really since you have to follow him somehow if you caught him. if not he has a good position somewhere behind you. and we know smoke heave teams are just so annoying that they mostly win without fighting seriously. if riot be like "we have to buff agents so they get more pickrate" they have to nerf overused agents too! like hard nerf jett, reyna, phoenix, kj, sova, raze and people will use the other stuff without a buff anyway.
for Astra I think just remove the vulnerable from the Suck, the ability is already good enough without it especially if you combo it with other abilities. With Viper, in ranked I don't think its that bad, the only time the 50 damage feels really strong is when you walk into the viper ult which I think is good because it makes viper ult good at what its supposed to be good at, blocking an area and deterring a push their. In pro play though I can see the wall being really strong with set plays around punishing people walking through viper util. In that case, maybe they decrease the damage you take when walking through her wall and smoke, not the ult.