Being a competitive FPS, VALORANT needs its occasional share of meta updates to maintain balance and freshness. That said, Riot Games’ approach toward balancing the game isn’t always ideal, leaving players and esports personalities like NRG coach Chet Singh ruffled.
After the latest patch notes for VALORANT dropped the bomb on Skye mains on Jan. 23, Chet announced his frustration with Riot’s moves in a thread of tweets on X (formerly Twitter).
Quoting a tweet highlighting the latest Skye nerf, Chet took a dig at the situation, comparing it to Palworld’s no-brainer “Pokémon with guns” survival experience. “Can’t wait for Patch 8.02 where they basically make the game Palworld,” he said.
In a follow-up tweet, Chet highlighted how annoying last-minute changes are for esports professionals, saying. “Next year I’m just gonna start scrims 1 week before the season starts cause fuck me I guess and all the pros time,” he said. He also took the chance to remind us that a highly requested feature like a replay system is yet to be deployed, while Riot keeps sabotaging.
Chet also took a dig at the VCT 2024 schedule, which restricts teams to five matches per regular season split, indicating that Riot could have thought of a better plan, but went with the inferior idea anyway.
Riot has been embracing the “kill strong agents, introduce weak agents” approach for some time now. While VALORANT’s meta has never been more balanced, the approach has destroyed the personality and design of multiple agents, including Chamber, Jett, and now, Skye. To top it off, introducing drastic meta changes just ahead of an esports season is undoubtedly a major blow to professional teams and their preparation.
Then again, I’d also love to see a shift in the initiator meta going forward, and with Skye’s nerf in Patch 8.01, we’re definitely going to see some intriguing counter compositions.
