VALORANT players call for balancing rework to this one-sided duelist

VALORANT offers a diverse roster of 23 agents and counting, most of which are well-designed characters keeping the meta spiced up. Unfortunately, not all agents are perfect. While quite a few of their kits yearn for reworks, one duelist sits at the top of the list of lackluster agents, despite being a popular pick in ranked. Now, players are reminding Riot that they have some fixing to do. 

In a long Reddit post dated June 25, a VALORANT player named Snotax vented their opinion on how Reyna, the kill-driven duelist, continues to be “straight-up bad for the game.” They highlighted her one-sided kit, which is not good for anything other than fragging and offers no team value. 

One may argue that Reyna boasts an incredibly high pick rate in VALORANT’s ranked pool, which is expected due to her independent mechanics and simple kit. Be that as it may, in pro play, she is completely ignored, carrying a near-zero percent pick rate. 

This statistic alone highlights her unbalanced state in the meta—an agent should be able to thrive in pro play as well as it does on ranked. It’s also worth noting that while Reyna enjoys a sky-high pick rate in lower elo like Silver and Gold, her popularity diminishes significantly as we move up the ladder.

Upon climbing the ranked ladder and gaining experience, players learn the importance of team play, and Reyna just doesn’t fit that requirement. She also seems oddly unbalanced and too overpowered in some scenarios.

Snotax also stated how unfairly powerful Reyna is in the hands of a smurf or a hacker due to her incredibly efficient self-healing ability. “The smurfing problem is bad as it is, but if you have a guy that is multiple ranks above everybody in the lobby with the ability to heal after a kill or dismiss and get the ult every second round, it’s something else,” they said.   

As expected, several VALORANT players echoed Snotax’s feelings, urging Riot to bring some changes to the Radiant soul harvester. 

One player highlighted the issues with Reyna’s Empress Ultimate and how it’s “frustrating” to play against an agent who can become invulnerable and enjoy reduced time-to-kill (TTK) in a first-person shooter game. “I felt this when I switched over from CS:GO, and I still feel this now occasionally,” they said.  

In most cases, players called for changes to Reyna’s Devour ability, which can be exceptionally powerful in pistol rounds. Of course, it’s potent only if you get a kill, but if you do, you can boost your health up to 150 HP temporarily—no other agent can heal beyond 100 HP.

There’s also no debuff to harvesting a soul orb—Reyna can continue to heal and take fights at the same time—another feature players don’t want. 

Players just aren’t ready to embrace a self-centric agent in a team-based game like VALORANT. Reyna’s Leer can offer some team plays, but it’s one of the weakest blinding abilities in the game. Rightfully, players want Riot to buff her Leer to make her stronger in her actual role: taking space as a duelist.

Reyna’s kit seems extremely deficient for now, and unless you’re mechanically gifted, other duelists like Raze and Jett, who are viable in solo duelist compositions, have much more team-centric abilities to offer. In a double duelist composition, Neon, Phoenix, and even Yoru are significantly better choices than Reyna due to their supportive yet potent space-taking kits.

Related: The factor separating VALORANT’s best from the rest—but even Fnatic haven’t perfected it

It’s worth noting that while Reyna is under-picked in pro play, Paper Rex didn’t shy away from using her in their VCT Pacific run. With PRX’s star player something steering her, for a while, Reyna seemed one of the best agents to play on Bind in a double-duelist team composition.

Even Evil Geniuses, North America’s Cinderella team, followed PRX’s suit in the third game of VCT Masters Tokyo grand finals against Fnatic, which was played on Bind. That being said, she’s still a rare pick in the pro meta, with most teams steering clear of her.

Whether Riot will heed such community requests is something to be seen in the future, but with VALORANT’s seventh duelist gearing up for a launch in the next few months, it seems unlikely.