I've been a Cypher main for as long as I've been playing this game, and I really love it. I love managing enemies position and controlling the flow of information through out a match. However... Cypher has been quite overshadowed as of recently. The buffs to viper that make her comparable to a Sentinel, and killjoy, who's been a great pick in both solo Q and competitive play are some examples.

I wouldn't say that Cypher is weak at the moment, but with the addition of chamber into the roster, its getting harder to justify having a Cypher in your team. Again, Im not trying to say that he is bad or weak, he gets picked in pro play more often than a lot of other characters, but playing him as of recent feels like a hassel.

The main problems with Cypher, imo (Based on Solo Q):

- Predictability: This is actually a huge problem with cypher that i haven't seem people talk about for some reason. The truth is that he is old, part of the original roster. At this point, as long as you are above gold, it is not rare to have enemies who just know the more popular setups, the common cameras etc. If you've been playing since beta, this is kind of a problem that Omen had, his playstyle was just too predictable before the first buffs.

- Impact: When I say Impact, I'm referring specifically to his ultimate. Truth is, and I can say this with confidence: Cypher has the lowest impact ult in the game. Its that simple. No other ult can give you so little value for so much risk. Im not saying the ult is bad, there are certain situations where it can win you a round, but most of the time, you are just going to be using it whenever to benefit from the low point cost.

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Buffs:

The first buff idea has been in my head for quite a while actually, and this could definitely be a bad idea, but what if you couldn't shoot wire you cant see. This would still give cypher the information of a wire getting destroyed, but it would make it more reliable, the enemies would actually have to risk something. This does not, however, apply to abilities. I still think abilities should be able to break wire regardless of distance.

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The second buff is a bit simpler actually, and it's been something cypher mains have been asking for a while: Either drastically increase the range of his ult, or make it so it doesn't need a corpse. Also making it so the outline functions similarly to Sova's drone (maybe with two ticks only) would greatly improve the usefulness of this ult in clutch situations.

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The last buff would be the easiest. Just make his camera have 30 hp, this way his (weak) pistol round would be on par with killjoys insane pistol round. Since 30 hp would take 2 shots from a classic.

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Also just to clarify, I don't want all of this at once, even one of these buffs would be great to increase his potential.