Edit: Wow, this actually got some traction. Nice to see people interested and caring about Omen balancing.

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Come around my metaphorical campfire as I tell you the sad story of Combat Omen. This will both be a recounting of how we got here, but also a suggestion how to bring back an enjoyable playstyle to Omen. Or maybe this is just a salty rant in the form of a short history lesson

\"This is also fine\" spray

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When Valorant was but a somewhat born fetus, Omen was... clunky. His paranoia used to fire on ability trigger rather equipped to launch. His smokes had no special viewer, only the currently optional normal view. His ultimate was a one way trip, more often to the grave than to their backline. Yet, people loved the spooky ghost boi.

A subsection of Omen players emerged. Those who saw something special in this Controller's kit. His smokes were fast, not as fast as Jett but fast enough you could cast them before an enemy rushed you and use it to pull off a play. His teleport was great for giving your enemy a back massage, with a knife or just general sneakyness. But this Combat Omen was incomplete. His unrefined blind and limited ult held this sub-playstyle back from its true potential... Then 1.0 came.

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Combat Omen was on the devs mind, as evidenced by their comment " we still support the quick, close range smoke playstyle many Omen players have honed". They made his kit more intuitive, and turned his ult from a committed one way flank or rotate, into a super-flexible ult. You could gather intel, flush out enemies, or just confuse the absolute hell out of your opponents now. Omen in the right hands was a tactical Jett, with more powerful smokes and sneakier tactics.

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And for a good while Omen had it pretty good, and players like Flexinja started demonstrating just what a skilled player could do with his kit... and that was fine. Omen was not overpowered, just a great generalist with intuitive abilities. His abilities would become not so intuitive in via unintentional changes, starting with

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Patch 2.0.

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The first was to his smokes. They were damn fast, too fast that is. So they slashed his smokes speed by a flat 30%, adding precious milliseconds of delay to up-close smokes... to combat smokes. The nerf was intended to reduce his long range responsiveness, not delay his combat smokes.

and... something not mentioned in the patch notes. A hitbox change that would forever haunt Combat omen. The made the collision hitbox that determines where a TP lands considerably... thicker.

Suddenly nearby walls would block teleports, and if you were jumping you often ended up ontop of something inbetween you and the destination marker.

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G2 AvovA on Twitter: "PSA #2: Omen TP (C) has the biggest hitbox after this update, can't tp across places if you are close to a wall, please fix. @RiotNu @ArnarHrafn" / Twitter

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Above image from: They've officially nerfed every part of Omen : VALORANT (reddit.com)

PSA: OMEN TP Nerf : VALORANT (reddit.com)

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His teleport was changed to try and fix glitches which let Omen with a Sage partner escape the map, but it unintentionally broken how teleport worked and made it horribly unreliable. They tried tweaking this new version to make it function reliably again in normal use (I have tried for 2 hours to find a citation for where I read this, but can't seem to find the damn thing). However this adaptation did not restore full functionality, which manifests as the teleport working unreliably over boxes now, often teleporting the player shorter (such as onto the boxes in the middle of A site Haven, instead of onto the ledge of the sniper's nest). This is what hurt the most for me personally, because it got me killed over and over via teleporting me short, and out in the open instead of to my target.

Edit 2: A post from goldentoasti showing what that shifting effect looks like in game -> https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/ri16wk/since_theoreminegaming_made_the_combat_omen_post/

Now, for horizontal teleports it still works fine and the hitbox no longer gets unreliable around corners *for the most part*. But any thing in the vertical path where it *could* teleport you to something lower than your view that is closer, it will often do that instead of the further location you are aiming at.

This can be tested by going into a private match and trying to teleport over boxes and onto ledges at different distances while jumping. If the ledge is close the teleport marker usually won't lock into the close edge, and will teleport you to the full distance behind said ledge. But at medium distances where you should be able to teleport past the ledge, it locks onto the ledge even if your crosshair reaches well past it, to a wall or corner. This change made the teleport feel like crap in do or die situations, where you don't have time to finagle the marker to go where you are aiming. Previously it worked reliably, but currently it gets stuck on a regular basis. (specifics: When teleporting over boxes (like the one in Mid Haven), or up onto higher elevations (like the double boxes on a lot of sites) will fail if the player is at a medium-close distance from the edge)

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So, so sum it all up.

Omen's smokes were universally slowed down, making close up smokes take longer to activate thusly making them less reliable in close quarters. (also as a result of the previous range buff, his smokes start at a higher distance away which makes smokes right infront of you take longer, but this difference is situational to playing too close to a corner).

His teleport was made less reliable when used quickly due to hitbox changes in response to map escaping abuse, often placing the player lower and closer than they were aiming.

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This might not seem like much, but its enough to make the Combat Omen Playstyle a liability when put into practice, often getting its users killed when used in the same situations it used to work as expected in. The advantage of Jett smokes is how quickly they deploy. In combat every millisecond counts, so having even a slightly slower smokes up close is the difference between having a smoke between you and your enemies, and having to take your time when teleporting is not an option when playing offensively or when being rushed. Two unintentional nerfs made a playstyle go from intuitively controlled, to unreliable and potentially fatal.

So, how do we bring Combat Omen back to his former glory?

1. Make smoke velocity an exponential decline (ie up close its near instantaneous, but the further away the slower it goes). Nerf to long range response speed retained, but up close its responsiveness is slightly better as opposed to slightly worse.

2. Reduce the size of Omen's teleport targeter hitbox (more reliable to get onto tall boxes), and make it prefer distant targets when two viable locations are on the path of a teleport (less teleporting ontop of things you are aiming over).

3. Add a note to Paranoia (Q) saying "Is affected by player velocity", as it is a unmentioned attribute (see: Omen's paranoia travel time changes according to the character's speed). This is for new players who otherwise might not realize this is a mechanic.

4. Let us change the control bindings for Omen's smokes (ex. to restore the old control schema. We have character specific bindings now, so why not).

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These QoL changes would help bring Combat Omen back into usage.

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Discussion: This is my opinion, with some history and evidence of changes to support it. But I am absolutely biased in my opinion, and while this post is definitely to make people aware of these problems, it is also to see what other solutions or changes I might not be considering, and/or potential ways to work around the problems presented above to make combat Omen more reliable.