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Ever since Omen got its official release all the way back in June, the shooter has remained one of the more popular agents in Valorant.
He has a very high skills cap. The amount of utility and outplay potential that he brings to the table has allowed him to have a 100 pick rate during the First Strike tournament, according to the stats by vlr. gg.
Omen is a jack of all trades and is the only agent in Valorant who comes with smokes, a flash, and a lot of mobility.
He is one of the biggest reasons why controllers are not popular in Valorant anymore. The shooter’s meta revolves around the use of flashes and vision impairment.
In Valorant patch 2.00, which is the first patch of 2021, not only will Episode 2 be introduced along with the new Agent Yoru, but Omen will also be receiving a lot of nerfs to his kit.
Omen’s upcoming nerfs do not sit well with the Valorant community
A majority of the Valorant community feel that Omen is by far the most balanced agent in the game, and needs to change his kit heading into Act 2.
The fans' consensus is that Omen is getting a nerf to his smokes and increased cost to his vision impairment to allow the new agent Yoru to become more viable. Controllers like Brimstone and Viper will also slowly start to come back in the meta.
Brimstone had an abysmal pick rate during the First Strike tournament. Nowadays, the once “must-pick” agent hardly sees the light of day in Valorant’s matchmaking.
Valorant developer opens up about the upcoming Omen changes
In a recent Reddit post, the Valorant developer who goes by the Reddit handle of Altombre opened up about why Riot is looking to nerf Omen, even though his kit doesn’t seem to be overpowered.
Omen’s entire kit was not very economically demanding and his Q has proven to be incredibly strong on both offense and defense. In making balance changes, we also want to be future-facing and aim to carve out design space for what each controller is meant to provide - Omen having global smoke pressure, recharging smokes, a boost AND a powerful site taking/stalling tool with low ability costs was just making him a bit too good at everything,” he said.
So much of the community speculations do seem to hit the mark, as the Omen nerfs will be set to give the other Valorant controllers more agency.
However, that being said, Riot is also aware that nerfing an agent who is perfectly balanced right now can lead to him feeling underwhelming. Omen could drastically drop in priority.
This is what Altombre had to say if Omen ends up feeling too weak:
“We’ll buff him back - but hopefully these changes can help sharpen why you’d want to pick Omen or Brimstone more clearly.”
Valorant Episode 2 patch 2.00 is all set to go live on January 12, and fans will be quite excited to see how the upcoming updates will affect gameplay.
