Viper's biggest strength is being able to activate and deactivate her wall and orb from anywhere on the map for virtually any amount of time. Obviously, there's no way to really take that away from her without completely reworking the agent... being able to constantly put your smokes up and down is the entire point of Viper. So naturally, the most effective way to nerf Viper is to reduce the number of things she can put up and down.
I suggest a Viper orb rework.
I think Viper orb should work like old Harbor cove in the way that it's deployed. Instead of being able to put the orb up and down, it becomes a smoke for a set 15 seconds after landing and then disappears. Once the orb goes down, all Viper's left with is the wall.
Viper will still be a good agent, and she'll see play on a lot of maps. However, this change will make Viper a much less enticing pick on some of her maps, lowering her pickrate and opening the floor for other controllers and sentinels—which should ultimately be the goal of a nerf to an agent. Any map where Viper's meta setup involves the orb will be heavily influenced by these changes. Take Split, for example: on attack, the A Ramp orb is a lot less punishing for defenders, and on defense, the mid orb is no longer useful in Mid. Therefore, either Viper is swapped out for another agent, or the way she's played is changed entirely.
Thoughts?
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