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If there is one thing that has stayed constant in Valorant months after its release is Viper's abysmal pick rate.
No matter how many quality of life changes she has received over subsequent patches, nothing seems to be solving her issues with pick rate, both on the competitive stage and standard matchmaking.
However, it’s not like Viper is a weak Valorant Agent. In the right hands, she can take over games, but her higher skill cap goads the average player to shy away from even trying her for more than a few matches. It is mostly because she still remains one of the least popular Agents in the game, according to blitz.gg.
The lack of flexibility in her kit forces players to be hard to commit to one side of the map. And though this turns Viper into an insanely strong defender, her attacking capabilities are still below average when compared to some of the other controller Agents.
In a recent Reddit post, a Valorant player who goes by the handle of SolidColorsRT has brought some much-needed focus on why Viper is still not as popular as she should have been even after repeated buffs.
The Redditor suggested that one solution to this issue can be to make her Poison Cloud ability, a “sticky nade.”
Allowing Viper’s Poison Cloud to stick to surfaces can make her more flexible
SolidColorsRT provided some custom images on his post to explain just how beneficial it can be for Viper players to have their Poison Cloud ability stick to surfaces like Jett’s Cloudburst.
He suggested that:
“At the moment, one of Viper's downsides is that her kit is inflexible. More specifically, her smoke nade just isn't that usable in many situations. Not only do you have such few line-ups at the beginning of the round, but it's often hard to utilize her smoke effectively when entering a site, relocating to a different position, or even retaking a different site than the one you were set up in.”
Unlike the controllers Brimstone and Omen, Viper doesn’t have the luxury of multiple smokes. And once she commits to a site, it’s not possible for her to relocate to another one.
SolidColorsRT felt that instead of allowing Viper to recall her smoke, another viable fix to her inflexibility would be by making her Poison Cloud stick to surfaces.
He suggested:
"Making her smoke nade sticky (attaches to whatever it touches) would give more utilization options to Viper players. More one-ways, set-ups, and strategies simply due to the ability to place it wherever. And it's not that extreme, logically given Viper's use of "chemicals." It also won't affect the inflexibility that much, considering some people think about it as what makes Viper unique because it'll be just as irretrievable."
Viper does not need any more buffs. The recent valorant patches and updates have already made her incredibly strong, and Viper one-tricks are capable of taking over the match from the very first round itself.
Making her Poison Cloud a “sticky nade” will help to tone down her skill requirement. Even the more average player will get the impetus to try and master her.
SolidColorsRT felt that reworking her kit will just ruin her uniqueness, and that is not something that Viper mains such as him really wanting the Valorant devs to commit to.
