Valorant The Issue with Raze
The honeymoon phase is finally over, it would seem, and people are beginning to air their grievances and issues with Riots new tactical FPS, Valorant.
The general consensus is that the game is exceptionally well made. It's polished beyond belief for a BETA game and could be released tomorrow with nobody batting an eye. However, there is one point of contention that all the hotshots over on Twitch and Twitter seem to be complaining about, and that's how overpowered one certain character is.
The attitude wearing rocket blasting Raze has been the bane of many a Valorant player's existence this last week or so. She is an offensive character who's abilities, in the eyes of Summit, go completely against the spirit of the game, and we have to agree.
Riot has done a great job when it comes to balancing abilities in this game. Nearly all of them are utility and situational based, meaning that skillful use of them is going to help a team's strategy, but an individual player can rely on them as a crutch. That is not the case with Raze.
Whereas most other characters rely on their weapon as their main avenue of damage, Raze has the ability to fire explosive rockets. That's all well and good, we've seen that before—Pharah, Ash, and so on. The issue here is that Raze's rockets kill in one shot.
The nature of the ability allows Raze players to jump headfirst at their opponent, essentially face-rolling their one on one gunfights. Given that the game has been specifically designed for abilities to be all about utility, there has been a widespread call for Riot to delete the character.
Needless to say, don't expect Riot to nuke Raze out of existence. However, the Riot dev team has been incredibly active on Twitter and Reddit, responding to complaints and criticism eagerly and without delay.
The team has assured us that they are working on rebalancing Raze to be more in spirit with the rest of the game, so it's only a matter of waiting to see what happens.
Raze has a blast pack, which allows her to gain additional altitude on the map. Combine that with the nearly infinite amount of grenades she has and the damage coming from her splash-damage rocket, and you have a recipe for frustration.
All of her abilities are damage dealing in some way - All of them. Making her the only pure offensive character in the game, and easily the highest damaging.
As we've said, Valorant is still in the BETA phase. There are a lot of things that are going to be changed, for better or for worse, before the game launches to the public. Hopefully, Raze gets hit with the nerf hammer before that happens.
Riots developer team has a storied history, and a wealth of experience when it comes to managing Esports titles, so we reckon there's nothing to worry about, which is a sentiment that seems to be shared by the general masses, with speaks volumes to the trust and faith that people have put in this team.
