Valorant: Operator Nerf a Step Too Far?

The primary sniper in Valorant, known as the Operator, was recently under criticism for being too overpowered. Players had called Riot out for giving the gun unbelievably high stats. Keeping in mind the abilities and stats of Agents currently available in the game, countering the Operator looked difficult.

Players had criticized the gun for having high damage and penetration. Since Riot was already facing a lot of backlash about Valorant being an inconsistent game, they needed urgent solutions. They have confirmed that they plan to nerf the Operator as part of patch 1.09.

All the information comes from a recent podcast uploaded by Liquid Mendo. The podcast is in collaboration with Nick Wu, the person-in-charge of live balances. They do discuss the latest patch and give their opinions on how the nerf will change the game dynamics.

Operator nerf will make Valorant more stable

In order to nerf the Operator, Riot has brought changes to its cost, damage, and mobility. They have decreased the gun’s scoped-in movement speed from 76% to 72%, which will affect the players who used the gun to hard-scope and hold angles. They have also decreased the deadzone from 30% to 15% which will decrease the accuracy of the gun when used to quick-scope, no-scope, or blank-scope.

Furthermore, Riot has also nerfed the firing rate from 0.75 to 0.6, making the sniper slower to shoot. Additionally, they have also increased the equip time from 0.3 to 0.5 seconds. Finally, they have reduced the damage dealt by the gun on legs, from 127 to 120.

The above changes alter the mechanics of the gun, requiring players to have more skill to use it. However, another major change that Riot will include in the patch will be to increase the Operator’s price from 4500 to 5000 credits. This would lead to fewer players buying the gun in order to maintain their economy.

On the first impression, this nerf looks like an overkill. While players just wanted the dynamic of agents and the Operator to be fixed, it appears that Riot has made the sniper unusable. They should have either gone for a stat nerf or an economy nerf. Combining them both just seems like they want to eliminate it from the meta completely.

This is going to cause further problems in the game dynamic. Players need to wait for the patch to go live in order to see how the gun feels.