Valorant: One Agent’s Popularity as the Eternal Instalock Dropping Drastically Hurt us Even More Than the Diabolical Bucky Nerf

Sep 10, 2024, 7:47 PM

In June, Riot Games took a big step and decided to nerf one of the most popular agents of Valorant, Reyna. After Patch 8.11, players believe that Reyna has become the worst duelist in the game, with agents like Iso and Jett overtaking her.

Reyna in Valorant — The *Valorant* community loved Reyna because of her abilities (Image via Riot Games)

Reyna was undoubtedly the most popular agent in Valorant at one point and all Reyna instalockers made it impossible for others to play as her. However, after the the nerf, you will often enter a match where no one has picked Reyna. All of Riot Games’ nerfs are indeed painful but Reyna’s nerf hurt us the most.

Reyna Went From Being The Best Duelist To The Worst In Valorant

In Patch 8.11 for Valorant, Riot Games made a lot of changes to various agents in the game. The studio explained that they balanced Reyna’s abilities to improve the gameplay, however, players complained that Riot Games ruined the popular duelist.

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In the same update, Iso was improved, making him the best duelist in the game. Some changes were also made to Neon, Raze, and Clove. With this update, there has been a drastic decrease in the number of unskilled Reyna instalockers. Although there was a lot of criticism, many players believed that this nerf was necessary as Reyna’s abilities made her quite overpowered.

Riot Games Tried To Balance Reyna’s Abilities

A screenshot from Valorant — Riot Games drops constant updates to improve agents in *Valorant* (Image via Riot Games)

The major changes that were made to Reyna were:

Devour (Q): Healing was decreased from 100 to 50, full heal time was reduced from 3s to 2s and the overheal of armor no longer decayed after a timer.
For Dismiss (E): Top speed was increased from 9.1 meters/second to 12 meters/second, total duration of Dismiss was reduced from 2s to 1.5s.
For Reyna’s Ultimate, Empress (X): The timer was removed and it remained until Reyna is killed or the round ends.

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Some improvements were also made, but the community was stunned to see how Reyna’s Devour (Q) ability was ruined. It’s been roughly three months since this nerf, and it’s safe to say that Reyna’s popularity has significantly dipped. Now, players try out other duelists in the game as instalocking Reyna is no longer the ideal option.

The community believes that this nerf is one of the worst nerfs from Riot Games, even Bucky nerf or Jett’s Ult nerf doesn’t come close to this. Duelists are the most popular type of agents in the game, maybe this was Riot Games’ way to encourage players to try out other agent types. The latest agent that was added to the game, Vyse, is a strong agent, and using her abilities to defend sites can get quite entertaining, so players should definitely try her out.

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