I like the thought process for the ult, but I don't feel it's too good for a 9 cost ult. If you compare it to Killjoy's Lockdown, you can see they're very similar in that they demand a massive ton of respect and are great to stall or guarantee space, but both have good counters—in Killjoy's case, it's molly/nade lineups and certain ultimates such as Sova and Killjoy, while in Viper's case, it's recon/angle clearning abilities and certain ultimates such as Killjoy, Harbor, and Gekko.

That being said, Viper doesn't really have much stopping power now that she has one molly. And if we're making her orb throwable then she's not gonna have it on the choke all the time, so you could even timing it.

Trying to keep my head up high
But the water keeps on rising
Praying on my knees for signs
Why can living feel like dying
But there's something inside of me that keeps believing

Champions by Elektronomia, Lunaar, and Donna Tella

Based. I love Egzod and I love that song

NOOOO ZEISH :(((

Norfolk Island

That's a pretty good idea, honestly. How long would you make the recharge, though? 60 seconds?

It's super fun to discuss this kind of stuff! Also yeah, I should be posting the sentinels thread soon.

Interesting that your top 4 is 2 Americas teams and 2 CN teams

He's 24

Haven, yes. Abyss, probably not

Their Lotus is better than their Bind, believe it or not

Great points. Maybe you should be making these threads 😅

LOUD but it's tier 2 EMEA

Does that make johnqt Pacific

You're right, I miss LOUD vs. OPTC too

G2 icy

100% agree with this

LMAO

That's very true, but at the same time, little tweaks and changes don't always help an agent see more play. Chamber, for example, hasn't exactly been used much in the current meta, even though he's been incrementally buffed over the past year or so, and some of those buffs are actually good. I think a better way to go about things is the approach they took with Neon—a quick load of changes, shaking up the meta but not too heavily. I feel Neon's reimplementation as a viable duelist was the smoothest meta change to date, because it helped Neon find her place so quickly while not negatively impacting the pick rate of the other duelists—not even Raze, who has been meta on most of the maps Neon's finding value on now. That's the kind of implementation I like, and that's the kind I'd go for it I was Riot.

• The thing about Omen's Dark Cover is you can't really find a good baseline number where his smokes still have good value as smokes, but aren't too oppressive as oneways. You could argue 11 or 12, but if there's one thing I've learned from playing with Clove, it's that 12 seconds isn't really long enough for a smoke to find full value, especially to stall or exec (Clove can stay the exception; I'm giving her a reduced cooldown to accommodate anyway). Besides, when I draft these threads, I'm not exactly considering the code side of things, and I think you can understand that.

• The Astra changes might be a little much, I'll admit, but the question I had in mind when buffing her was: how far do I need to take it before Astra becomes a 50/50 competitor to Omen? The way I see it, I'm highlighting Astra's strengths as a primary dome smoker in order to incentivize people to consider playing her, whether that be with or in spite of Omen.

• I explained the Brimstone change to 4 smokes in #26, so feel free to check that out.

• The Harbor changes only seem fair, in my honest opinion. He's been the weakest controller for quite a long time, which is quite insane considering how flexible and creative he can be. He has very clear disadvantages as-is and the changes I tried to implement seek to not only fix those gaps in his kit, but also help him find a better balance between baseline value and expected value, as well as to push him to see play on maps where he may not be as considered as he currently is.

Noted, thanks

...thank you?

Good to know, thank you

True. Shouldn't every team that qualified to Ascension have a flair? It's only fair, I'd assume

Unfortunately I don't think you can, no

I'm gonna be completely honest: the title isn't even that good. If it glowed or had a different colour or something, maybe, but there are just so many better titles than "100%". I wouldn't see myself using it

I appreciate that

Got it ty

I love LOUD's. The full green and black just works so well with the design of the classic.

We share the same braincell

https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/5f7bd572

I love the format you went for with the tiles. Where would you put me, btw?

Keep your hopes up! Bind is very solid and Lotus is undefeated this split. Plus Sunset is getting better. We should still be good.

I expected better of you, K4ziuHa

I've never seen anyone with a RIDDLE ORDER flair

I'm gonna be honest, I probably am. But I feel making every controller good is better than making every controller bad. I definitely went too far with that philosphy, though, I think

😨

Right at the top of the thread

Thank you! Do you think Omen's unusable now? I feel all I really did is reduce the range, make oneways less oppressive, and give the paranoia a fair cost vs. expected value.

Thank you! Yeah, in hindsight, that's a pretty extreme change to make, probably even more so than the rework. I'd go back and edit out that change but so many people have replied already as to where I feel there's no point.

Omen got nerfs to oneways, smoke range, and the paranoia. Astra got some overall buffs but all it really does is bring her on par with Omen when it comes to expected value. Clove was a tough agent to come up with changes for but I did the best I could with what I had. And Harbor ult is just slightly harder to dodge. I don't understand why you're so pressed; I might just not be seeing what you're seeing.

I don't mind having another dome smoker as long as they have a fresh take on it. Omen has his shadow realm to place smokes, letting him place very creative smokes but giving him a pretty high skill ceiling (purely taking smokes into account) because of how you can mess up his smokes if you put them down too quickly. Astra has global smokes but you need to learn to place them in advance. Brimstone can place very quick and accurate smokes, but that results in a lack of range. Every controller has their own unique upsides and downsides and I wish Clove had that instead of just copying Brimstone.

As for Viper... yeah, I overcooked with the two orbs. In my head I thought "hmm... maybe Viper can use her wall to lurk while having lineups for both smokes to be able to smoke for the site hit." But that's just way too broken... 😅

The Astra buffs are kind of huge (though I did nerf her smokes duration and made her ult an 8 cost), but knowing the pro scene I think people will still opt into Omen at least half the time. As for Omen, I didn't really do much at the end of the day. I made his oneways last less time, his smoke range is now shorter, and his Paranoia is now slightly less oppressive and has a price tag to match its expected value.

I mean... I don't think so personally, but you know how VLR users are. Gotta give a disclaimer, no matter how accurate.

I definitely overcooked a little, especially with Brimstone and Viper, but I'm honestly pretty happy with what I ended up with :)

#26

Literally read the first sentence of the thread

I think so, too. When I was thinking of the changes I wanted to make for Brim, what went through my head is: what can't Brim do with three smokes? The biggest thing that came to mind was the ability to use smokes sparingly. For example, if you're playing a slow round on the attack, if you were to smoke top mid and then smoke for your teammate to get them out of danger, you now only have one smoke for the site hit, and even if you manage to pull that through you have no smokes for the postplant. Running out of smokes like that is something that doesn't really happen on Omen, and I feel an extra smoke for Brim is the best way to repair that shortcoming without straight up adding a recharge or doing something too crazy. I guess people would be able to use 4 smokes on their site exec now, but that's an unintended consequence.

I'd absolutely love any Harbor buffs Riot are willing to give us. My guy needs some love and he needs it now

Literally read the first sentence