100 Thieves star player Spencer “Hiko” Martin isn’t a fan of the new Yoru rework. Like Jay “sinatraa” Won, he doesn’t think the changes announced by Riot Games will work in pro games.
The 31-year-old Valorant pro player questioned the effectiveness of the Japanese agent’s new Fakeout and Dimensional Drift abilities in particular. After looking at all the changes, Hiko concluded that Yoru still isn’t a good agent and that he likely won’t make it into the Valorant pro meta.
Hiko believes the Yoru rework isn’t overpowered at all
The 100 Thieves Sova main wasn’t impressed by the new changes to Yoru’s Fakeout ability, saying that it would only work against lower-ranked players.
“[The decoy] looks like a silver player,” he said. “So if you’re in silver, you can really Fakeout your enemies.”
He also believes the new Dimensional Drift’s increased unequip delay is a major nerf to the ultimate. “You probably can’t ult and one-shot people with a shotgun anymore,” said Hiko, even though Riot made the change with nerfing that play in mind.
The cast delay added to Dimensional Drift also prevents invulnerability on activation, another letdown in the rework for Hiko.
Yoru players can currently run around the map freely while they have the Dimensional Drift ultimate equipped. If they are in danger, they can easily activate it and become invulnerable.
Unfortunately, the new cast delay means they can no longer get away with this. “If you ult like a noob, you will die like a noob,” said Hiko.
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At the end of the day, the 100 Thieves Valorant star remains convinced that the changes don’t do much to improve Yoru’s kit and make him a viable pick in the pro meta. In fact, Bind is the only map that Yoru has a chance to be selected in pro play because of his ability to play around the teleporters and deceive opponents.
Pro games work a lot differently from ranked matches, so Hiko disagreed with the viewers on his stream who believe that Yoru is going to be incredibly overpowered. While he acknowledged that it might be tough to play against a good Yoru after the buff, he explained that Yoru’s kit probably won’t be effective in team-based pro play.
He also believes that Chamber is still a much better agent choice in pro games and that Yoru only has the potential to be a pub stomp agent, similar to Neon.
“As long as Chamber exists, he can do everything better than Yoru, minus the ultimate,” the Valorant pro player said. “I think Yoru will just be a pub and ranked agent only.”
For Hiko’s full thoughts on the Yoru rework, you can watch the video below.
The changes to Yoru will go live in Valorant Episode 4 Act II, which is expected to start on March 1.
