Riot outlines Yoru rework that aims to fulfill the ‘master of deception’ fantasy

VALORANT’s weakest agent is finally getting reworked.

Yoru, who Riot Games describes as “not up to par” with the rest of the game’s agent roster, will be receiving some additional tools to bring to life a version of his “master of deception” fantasy. 

Riot plans to pivot the agent’s playstyle in the near future and gear him toward outputting disinformation from round to round.

“We’ve learned that in addition to our duelists needing to offer something unique to the field, they also need to have a strong baseline value that any team at any round can rely on in order to maintain strong viability on any team composition,” Riot said. 

The goal of the upcoming rework is for Yoru to have “better tools to trick opponents, a stronger baseline value across his kit, and higher impact per round.” To achieve this goal, Riot is targeting the agent’s Fakeout and Gatecrash abilities.

The devs are replacing the footsteps of Fakeout with a carbon copy of Yoru that will run forward, and upon getting shot, will wind up and explode, “debuffing” enemies for a duration. 

And they’re lowering the range at which enemies can see and hear Gatecrash’s tether on the map while it travels and increasing its travel speed by a full 20 percent. The rework will also enable Yoru to be able to activate the tether from a distance to trigger a “fake teleport,” which will play the same audio and visuals as if he was teleporting. 

But the devs aren’t done yet. They’re not ready to share all of the changes that they’ve been testing. This may include a few changes to Dimensional Drift that will help Yoru break open sites.

The rework is expected to hit the live servers “early” next year, according to Riot. “We’ll continue to monitor [the changes] to ensure we can quickly make adjustments accordingly,” Riot said.

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