Viper believers, your time has come, as the agent has received her biggest buffs yet.
With patch 2.06, Viper is looking like one of the most viable picks for the second stage of Valorant Challengers and Masters. Her passive Toxin now instantly damages enemies with 50 decay, with the decay level increasing the longer they stay in the toxin. There’s also a slight decrease to the decay over time when enemies are in the cloud, and a decrease to the health regen when out of Viper’s cloud.
The changes to her other abilities also lessen time for deployment and prolong the effect of her smokes. Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen now both stay up for an extra two seconds before fading, if both are active when Viper dies or when she runs out of fuel. The blind distance of Toxic Screen has also been increased.
Poison Cloud’s pickup distance has also increased and it can also be immediately used again when picked up, with a temporary charge. Snakebite’s equip time has been decreased by 0.3 seconds. All of these changes will allow for a faster pace of play.
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Riot states that they want to encourage Viper players to make big, committed decisions that truly alter the map and have both sides plan around her influence. With the added damage, opponents may want to keep their distance or at least think twice about running through her smokes. Viper’s new and improved utilities can better force enemies off-site and seal the deal for post-plant scenarios both on attack and defense.
Sean Gares from Gen.G says that this buff could save Viper, especially on North American Valorant. “Without a drastic buff to Viper, we would see her fade out of this game so quick, especially with Astra now in it,” he says in a YouTube video breaking down the patch.
Two other agents also have some tweaks in this patch: Yoru and Killjoy.
Yoru’s flashes now activate faster, from 0.8 seconds to 0.6 seconds, with the duration increased by 0.4 seconds.
His Gatecrash ability gets a major boost, and is now replenished every 35 seconds. The duration of the fragment is also increased by 10 seconds and the range at which it is revealed has decreased from 7m to 4m. Lastly, Gatecrash can be reactivated while in Dimensional Drift. His Ult Points for Drift have also been reduced by one, making Yoru more mobile and unpredictable. He can now drift around the map and teleport back into his spawn at little cost.
Killjoy can now pick up deployed Nanoswarm grenades during the buy phase to get the charge back, which could help out your team’s economy.
We predict that some Viper mains, especially in the European scene, will be bringing out some new tricks with this new buff, such as FNATIC’s Mistic, FPX Ange1, and Acend Club’s starxo.
Check out the full patch notes here.
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