Yoru mains were disappointed to see no buffs to the duelist in VALORANT‘s Patch 3.0. But they’re on the horizon.
Episode Three introduced a myriad of balance and economy changes to Riot’s tac shooter. One thing that was missing, however, was tweaks to the underwhelming Yoru. Game designer Ryan Cousart discussed upcoming Yoru changes today in an interview with HITSCAN’s RyanCentral, which should be pushed out “in the next couple patches or so.”
“There’s some changes that we’ve been testing for quite some time that we feel really good about,” Cousart said. “There’s an element of Yoru that we feel is really important, which is this trickery, this mindgamey type of gameplay, and we want to try and amp that up as much as we can.”
The Yoru buffs appear to be more complex than simply changing an ability’s cost or cooldown. The delay on releasing the alterations is likely because certain “assets” need to be “rebuilt,” according to Cousart, where audio and VFX may need to be restarted from the ground up. Character producer John Goscicki added in a dev AMA that a big portion of the team was working on the hefty economy overhaul to weapons and agents. With those changes already live, now there are more resources to bring Yoru’s new iteration to fruition.
It doesn’t seem like Yoru’s Gatecrash or Blindside will be changed too much since they work relatively well. The duelist’s Fakeout will likely be the main focus because the ability’s current iteration is situational and fairly predictable.
“The first few play tests we had, when we put them in, it was like the biggest smile on a lot of people’s faces,” according to Cousart. “I think we’re going to be amping up how much fun Yoru players have and hopefully get some new Yoru players in.”
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