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When it came to agent pick rate, Valorant’s Viper never truly shied away from a bit of controversy.
Despite receiving repeated buffs to her kit, Viper still remains the least picked Agent in the game across all ranked tiers. According to a recent stat by blitz.gg Viper has a 1.7% pick rate in Gold alone, and it gets even worse as the tiers go up. She has a 1.1% rate in immortal with a 1.3% rate in Radiant.
Viper’s incredibly low pick rate has been the only constant for the Agent ever since Valorant’s official launch. The issue with her was not just limited to average matchmaking alone, as she hardly saw the light of day in any of the competitive games during the Ignition Series tournaments. This trend seems to have followed her into the North American First Strike qualifiers as well.
Even though with recent patches, some might feel that Viper may have been over buffed, her pick rate remains as abysmal as always, and the Valorant devs also feel that she still “needs a bit of help”.
Riot are in the works of buffing more Brimstone and Viper
In a recent Reddit post, a Valorant developer, who goes by the handle of Altombre, weighed in on some of the Agent buffs that Riot have been working on recently.
Breach and Viper seem to be the upcoming targets for some buffs, and Altombre says that:
“We’ve got some Brim buffs that we’re testing internally, but don’t want to release them and shake things up too badly during First Strike. Controllers are definitely on our mind, though!”
Brimstone has been falling off the Valorant meta quite hard in recent patches, and with Omen and Jett on the roster, he too has been seeing lesser competitive picks.
When asked by a Redditor, “Do you guys have any incoming Viper buffs?”
Altombre replied by saying:
“Not for a bit, we're holding back on big changes during First Strike. We still think she needs a bit of help but it'll probably be a few patches before we get Viper anything substantial.”
Riot will be holding on to any meta changing updates till the First strike competition concludes, as that might substantially disrupt Valorant’s competitive integrity.
