Riot is giving Omen a little bit of a boost in today’s VALORANT patch as a way to try to put him on the same level as other control-style agents, particularly Brimstone.
Brimstone has been one of the more prominently-used agents for his signature ability Sky Smoke, which puts smoke clouds anywhere on the map to block everyone’s vision.
Omen’s comparable Dark Cover ability, while free, hasn’t had nearly the same effectiveness as Brimstone’s smoke. But the developers are looking to narrow the gap between the two agents now.
In addition to increasing the duration of Omen’s Dark Cover to 15 seconds, up from 12, Riot is upping the projectile speed of the orb. As a way to balance things out, the developer increased the new ability’s cooldown to 35 seconds, up from 30.
“Especially at high-tier play, we’ve seen Brimstone become the dominant controller and we wanted to give his peers a boost to make them more viable while hopefully maintaining their unique playstyles,” Riot said.
Riot most recently made tweaks to Omen on April 28 and adjusted the way that his ultimate, From the Shadows, worked. The ability is intended to let Omen teleport anywhere on the map, disrupting the strategies of enemies. While previously he was invulnerable for a short period after his teleportation, Riot realized that wasn’t ideal for balance purposes and made him killable as soon as he phases in.
To compensate for the loss, Riot adjusted some of the sounds associated with his teleportation to make his post-ultimate positioning less obvious to opponents.
Published: May 12, 2020 12:42 pm