So, for some weird reason one of my favorite things to do happens to be thinking about and discussing balance changes. I find myself often thinking about the ways Valorant could change agents to either put them on the same level as other agents, or to just add interesting and unique features to them. And since I rarely see discussion about all the changes that could be implemented, I decided to make this post and use my ideas in order to hopefully start up more discussion about what could be done to make all agents compete well with their peers.

Please note that I am not a developer nor am I a professional player, so don’t expect all of these ideas to necessarily be good ideas. Also, if I suggest multiple ideas for changes to an agent, I am not suggesting that all of them should be implemented, I’m just giving multiple different ways that said agent could be buffed or nerfed. Lastly, for anyone wondering, the agents are listed in alphabetical order. If an agent isn’t listed, then that means that I personally think that they don’t need changes.

-BREACH: Although Breach is definitely the most irritating character in Valorant right now, I do believe that it’s important that Breach remains a viable pick in order to ensure a good counter to the Operator. However, his flashes are not only hard to dodge, but they also give virtually no punishment to Breach for using his flashes in the way that a Phoenix would thanks to the long amount of time that the flash lasts for. I think that the time it takes for him to pull out his gun after using a flash should be ever-so-slightly longer, in order to try and ensure that he’s using his flashes to set his team up rather than using it selfishly for kills.

-BRIMSTONE: Thanks to the 2.06 Viper buffs, I believe that Brimstone is currently the worst controller in the game. Not only are his smokes simply inferior to the free, recharging smokes that Omen has to offer, but the rest of his kit isn’t nearly as influential as the other controllers kits happen to be. Even after a decent amount of slight buffs to Brimstone, I still see zero reason to pick Brimstone over the other controllers. There’s thousands of changes that could be made to his kit, but I’m going to give what I think are the ones that could really give brimstone a chance to shine.

First I’m going to address the biggest problem with brim, which is his stim beacon. Making your entire teams guns virtually 15% better sounds good in theory, but in a game where engagements rely on quick head-taps and spray patterns, the stim beacon often ends up being useless or even a detriment to the muscle memory of Brimstones teammates. So instead of the stim beacon buffing firing rate, I believe that the stim beacon should buff something of much higher importance: Movement speed. If the stim beacon gave increased movement speed to brim and his team, this would not only be potentially helpful when pushing into a site and engaging in combat, but it would now have a use outside of combat, allowing Brimstone to rotate his team to other areas on the map much faster.

The second biggest issue that Brimstone runs into is in his smokes. Even though his smokes are good, due to the fact that he only gets three of them (and the fact that he has to pay for two of them assuming he uses all three), it often isn’t worth it to use Brimstone smokes over smokes from other controllers since those other controllers all get their smokes for free. I think that a nice little touch that could be added to Brimstone would be to give him all three of his smokes for free. This would probably work well if the stim change mentioned above was also implemented, since I could definitely see the stim beacons price increasing to 200 after those changes.

Lastly, both Brimstones incendiary grenade and ultimate could use slight buffs as well. I think the only change the incendiary would need is to make it last around 2 seconds longer, in order to further distinguish it from a snakebite and give it a respective strength. His ultimate could also be buffed to last slightly longer, or it could be changed to cost only six orbs. I personally would prefer the first change, but I think either one is fine.

-CYPHER: Honestly, Cypher doesn’t really need a buff, but if it turns out that he ever does need a buff, they could always make the camera a bit harder to spot while being placed in order to give his camera more potential to spot out enemies, especially when trying to use his camera offensively.

-KILLJOY: For the love of everything good and beautiful in this world, let Killjoy pick up her swarm grenades. I don’t see why she’s not able to. Not only did Riot make changes to encourage Killjoy to move the rest of her utility rather then let it sit or be destroyed, but they even made her able to pick up her swarm grenades before the match starts now as well. As for the keybind, you can either add another one or just make it so that if Killjoy holds down her swarm grenade button for a second while looking at a placed swarm grenade, said grenade will be retrieved. If it does turn out that this is a massive change that needs balancing, they could always add a range for her swarm grenades, similar to how they added a range for her turret and detection bot. Those changes would allow Killjoy to fully encompass the role of a mobile fortress.

-SKYE: If you pick Skye, let’s be honest, your picking her for her flashes, since the rest of her kit is easily overshadowed by other abilities in the game. In order to balance out her kit, I think all she needs is a few slight changes that should hopefully put her on the level of the other initiators.

First and foremost, let’s talk about her flashes. Her flashes, for some odd reason, don’t seem to be able to differentiate between an enemy being partially blind and fully blinded even though they should, which is why Skye should only say “blinded” if you fully blinded them (in order to avoid Skye/her teammates dying because they were only partially flashed for .2 seconds). If her flashes ever do end up needing to be nerfed, they could always give her a similar change to the Breach nerf mentioned above, or they could make the bird a bit easier to kill before it pops, although I doubt that they will due to drawbacks of Skye’s flashes)

Next up is Skye’s tiger. It’s very apparent that her tiger is easily overshadowed by Sova’s drone. The reason Skye’s tiger is worse is simple: Sova’s drone is basically guaranteed to get value whenever it’s used due, especially when it has the ability to tag enemies before it’s death, while her tiger relies on more specific circumstances in order to be useful at all (not to mention the fact that actually concussing a enemy is almost sheer luck). The way I see it, there is almost no reason why her tiger should have nearsightedness. And even though at first, this might seem too big of a buff, remember that although Skye’s tiger is faster, it also has a larger hit box, can’t fly and won’t be able to tag enemies before it dies, which can still leave it weaker then a Sova drone in some scenarios. Even if they don’t fully remove the nearsight, they should at least allow her tiger to see more then what it can currently see. Alternatively, they could also make the tiger faster, although I wouldn’t suggest this since her tiger is already harder to play off of then Sova’s drone, and the speed increase would only make it ever harder for her team to keep up with it.

A few other changes that would definitely help would be to allow Skye to heal herself, either from using her regrowth normally or from creating a right click functionality that only heals herself instead (although this could lead to the ability still being a bit weak). Seeing as she is one of the most team-based characters, I don't think anyone would object to giving her a bit of self-sustainability, especially when she's often the person in the frontlines right next to the duelists. Oh, and just improve the ultimate pathfinding. Sometimes it really does suck and it would be nice to have it function better/be faster when dealing with verticality.

-VIPER: Post 2.06, I believe that Viper is in a much better place then she was on the release of Valorant. However, there are still a few more changes that I think would allow her to be a solid pick overall, and not just a very powerful pick in only some scenarios.

Although we only have had a very limited amount of time to experience the 2.06 Viper buffs, I could definitely see them nerfing the new Viper passive, and I wouldn't object if they changed the number of the instant decay from 50Hp to something less punishing, like 35hp. That way, Marshall's wouldn't kill with a body shot, and the ghost wouldn't kill with a headshot. They could probably raise the decay per second back to 12 along with those instant decay nerfs, as to still make her poison orb and ultimate feel punishing to stand in.

However, the biggest problem with Viper right now is that she may not get picked up often due to the difficulty of getting the poison orb, one of her two smoking abilities, into a spot that can properly block LOS. If Riot ever finds that the pick rate for Viper is still below what they want it to be, they could always make the landing location for the orb visible in real games, just like how it is able to be seen in custom games with cheats.

Also her snakebite could probably use a slight DPS buff (From 24 DPS to 30 DPS), although seeing that viper might be in a good state right now, I don't see them implementing this buff in the near future.

-YORU: Similar to Brimstone's stim beacon, Yoru's footsteps is known to be one of the worst abilities in the game, often failing to deceive enemies who are aware of how the ability functions. Many players within the Valorant community have argued that Riot should replace this ability for another one, but I think that the footsteps still do have some potential given the right changes.

Although the footsteps themselves often range from a mediocre to terrible ability depending the map, one place where they always tend to shine is when interacting with other agent abilities. The power to confuse Cypher, Killjoy, and Raze utility alike in the way that the footsteps can is something that makes the ability unique in its own right. Thus, I think a valid direction to take with this ability could be to make it more of a counter utility ability. This could happen in multiple forms, ranging from having decoys appear as Yoru/His teammates to any camera utility (Cypher cam, Sova drone, Skye tiger, etc.) to having his footsteps break sage walls as if they were knifing them (it should probably make the knifing sound as well). Riot could also allow Yoru to choose what distance the footsteps travel by making it so that the footsteps will end where he was originally looking when he used the ability. That way, it would be less likely that the enemy would be able to see that the footsteps are fake. Of course, Riot could also make the footsteps anywhere from invisible to hard-to-spot, but I don't know how that would fare out so I'm not going to recommend it.

If the footsteps are truly a lost cause, a possible replacement for the ability would be to give Yoru some anti-sound utility (similar to Omen's paranoia and Astra's cosmic divide). This would synergize well with Yoru's kit, not only due to him being a lurker at heart, but it would also allow him to further diminish the punishing (and silencing) noises of his gatecrash and his ultimate.

On the topic of his ultimate, a possible buff to the ultimate would be to allow Yoru to send out his gatecrash while in his ultimate. That would allow him to play much more tactically with his gatecrash, and would also give his ultimate some sort of synergy with the rest of his kit.

Also as for any gun changes:

-PRIME ODIN & PRIME VANDAL: A 50% decrease in damage should be solid enough.

If you like or dislike any of my ideas, feel free to voice your opinion. And make sure to spread any of the ideas that you like so that we could potentially see what I think are some great changes to underpowered characters. I'll try to respond to any comments.