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A Radiant player recently broke down Viper’s current state in Valorant.
Viper has been dwindling at the lower end of the agent pick rate since the game’s launch. She is often described as extremely hard to use, and her blitz.gg pick rate is currently at 10.1%.
Riot Games developers have also commented on the matter and assured future tweaks to improve her pick rate.
Redditor u/fanae10, a Radiant in the North America region, recently posted his thoughts on Viper in r/VALORANT. He elaborated on Viper’s strengths and weaknesses and suggested changes to improve her gameplay.
Related: Is Viper the new choice for pro Valorant players on Icebox and Bind?
Viper’s strength in Valorant
One of Viper’s primary strengths is her largest collection of one-ways in the game. If properly executed, they can lock off opponents from entering a site. In that case, she can direct opponents towards another site.
From Shower on Bind to B heaven on Split, or B main on Ascent, these one-ways completely lock off a team from pushing a site.
Regarding Viper’s molly, when used correctly, the toxins and snakebite can stall a push on a site for around 40 seconds of each round. In a fast-paced close quarter game with low TTK such as Valorant, the round’s entire tide can be shifted in 40 seconds.
Fanae10 also mentioned how effective Viper is post-plant. A Viper with an expansive knowledge of post-plant line-up and gameplay will assure spike plant 90% of the time. Viper can easily cover more than 20 seconds of the 45-second timer with properly spaced mollies and poison orb on the spike.
However, Viper does have some flaws.
Viper’s weakness in Valorant
The primary weakness of Viper is that she is exceptionally time-consuming. The amount of knowledge of each map required for this agent compared to other smokers is far greater. She cannot default smoke like Omen or Brimstone. Her poison orb and wall are limited and must be used to maximum efficiency.
One other central point is her snakebite animation time, which takes one second to get ready. During the time, opponents could easily kill a Viper.
To sum up Viper as an agent, fanae10 described so:
“Viper is quietly in the A tier of agents at the moment as she has the best post-plant in the game, as well as one of the best stalling abilities. This means that over tuning any of her decay ratios, damage of molly, or toxin length may result in her quickly getting OP.”
He also suggested some tweaks to improve Viper and make her more intriguing as an effective agent. He feels that tweaks such as Viper’s Snakebite animations timing should be reduced.
Viper is quite hard to master. However, she can be extremely effective in turning the tide of any match.
