Very early balance change predictions

#1

Theyre going to
1) Kill Neon and Waylay by basically nerfing their. Movement tools (ie the neon high gear + energy + mayb overdrive and waylay lightspeed + refract)
2) Revert or modify how the Skye flash cooldown works
3) possibly buff the sentinels(most likely vyse{cant wait} and veto cuz cypher and killjoy are seeing relative play, chamber and sage are fine, and deadlock they gave up)
4) Controllers will not be changed, maximum harbor gets a buff or something cuz he's now seeing play and riot would want to encourage it

What else do you think or would you like to see happen?

#2

Galactc

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If they nerf skye again I'll lose faith in the balance team
Actually stop nerfing things

#4

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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They probably will, what i hope they do, is make it so that the inits get variable cooldowns to be fair

#3

asunaluvr

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waylay is perfectly balanced rn

#5

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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Im speaking as what riot would do
Plus I see that timotino glaze, you dont want the waylay merchant (mostly, not fully i agree) to lose and watch 100t devolve

#8

asunaluvr

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riot wont do 2 nerfs for the same agent in such a close timeframe.
timo is not a waylay merchant, but he’s the best waylay itw so obviously he’s gonna play it alot

#9

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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Idk. This is Riot, and with riot's record of nerfs over buffs it seems likely

#13

Thegreat

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best waylay itw is endoist, period....... NA merchants will realize this when he goes T1 next year.

#16

asunaluvr

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BAHAHAHAHAHSHAHAHSHAHHA nice joke ur a funny little guy

#6

inuis

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if sentinels were good it would make up for neon's movement being so strong

when cypher was really strong in 2024, neon was way more broken than she is right now and yet didnt seem as invasive as neon is right now

#7

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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Eh true
Cypher and kj wont get changes though, riot will think their okay cuz of their pickrates post yoru
Vyse and Veto are probably their focus

#10

inuis

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the only reason why pick rates are high in vct right now is because of the map pool, not because of the meta

fracture haven pearl and a lot of the time on lotus teams want to play a sentinel

if they dont see that then replace the whole balancing team

#11

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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This is riot

#15

inuis

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they should be able to see this though, because when neon was in a stronger state last year she was not picked this much

it was only the massive offseason patch that made sentinels and initiators worse for no reason

#17

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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I still have nightmares over it

#19

jixk

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we just had two teams running senti right now and would u look at that the best neon in the world was negative on both maps

senti needs minor buffs the thing keeping them down was yoru he had 60s of Active info vs senti's easily cleared passive info

#29

inuis

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a player going negative doesnt mean an agent is bad what the fuck are you talking about

watch any other game from any region this entire split

and if thats too much just look at the scoreboards man genuinely one of the most brainless takes ive seen in a while

#32

jixk

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i never said neon was bad i said yoru was the reason senti is bad and neon is worse vs a senti dambi wasn't contested when yoru was meta and he got to run around unpunished now he is getting punished waylay can still by pass senti which is why minor buffs are needed but atleast waylay isn't out valuing them on uptime senti's

neon is worse when senti's are being played from lack of yoru if u can't see that that's a YOU problem it's quite easy to understand this wasn't some insane take we do minor buffs to senti's and see if neon is still a problem if so NERF IT

#34

inuis

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dambi clearly isnt playing well today and even still on fracture he was, on solo duelist, throwing his life for the team fight so much of the time and allowing xross and francis to finished the rounds

again go and watch any other game and sentinels look absolutely useless versus this agent

#39

jixk

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from the 5 games played u think that's enough to see if people can or can't deal with neon let the split finish or at least form ur opinion with more than the first week of play

regardless with senti's as weak as they are they need buffs regardless of neon but they can deal with neon or at least force the other team to slow down i think the neon is broken thing is WAY overblown neon is the strongest duelist right now but minor nerfs to neon and minor buffs to senti's is more than enough to slow her down and give other duelists play time

#40

inuis

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there have been 20 series and neon has been played at least once in a map 44 times

there is at least one neon on a map almost every single map and they are almost always having the most amount of impact not just in fragging but also in terms of gathering information and helping with team fights

she doesnt have >75% pickrate so far for no reason man

#12

GarbanzoEnjoyer

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Skye won't be changed; they will just buff the other three flash inits. Sova and Fade are still seeing plenty of use and winrate.

Probably minor buffs to Vyse, Veto, and Deadlock

No changes to controllers. Harbor will only see more play as the year continues.

Neon idk... She doesn't really need a nerf but riot's unfortunately been listening to players more so they might reduce her momentum when changing direction or something like that

#14

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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Riot does have a history of nerfing over buffing but i wouldn't mind an initiator overhaul in just cooldowns. Like variable cooldowns would make so much sense as not all the initiator signatures are made equal

#18

GarbanzoEnjoyer

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Skye was nerfed in the first place bc the 40s cooldowns made it trivial to flash on round start for info and still have both flashes for post-plant/retake. Riot explicitly said the 60s cooldowns don't present that issue, so she's fine now

Variable cooldowns might work since it would force init util dumps to be off-sync if they're used faster, which is an interesting tradeoff.

Unfortunately Breach and especially Gekko have reliability problems that run deeper than cooldown time. They had shit stats even before the nerfs

#21

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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But the change itself would be good. I mean breach has the fundamental issue of zero info in a game where information is key to winning as much as mechanics when compared to his counterparts in the other inits
Gekko's issue is of how he really isnt useful on defense. His stall is weak and he cant really earn good info like the other inits can

#41

GarbanzoEnjoyer

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Yeah Gekko needs some kind of rework. Either Dizzy gets more effective range or he gets the ability to pick up globules from a distance

Mosh is also annoying because it doesn't scale vertically, so there's some spots the other initiators can all clear with their mollies but Gekko can't because there's a tiny barrel to stand on or some shit

#20

Madouza

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Skye should have a longer cooldown than the other initis. Her current form is fair, For the dog I think you should either give her a tiny bit more dog time, let her look around while lunging again, or make it so lunging toward the end of the time extends it until the dog lands from lunging like with gekko ult.
Buff breach, Make his flashes pop faster and give him his old aftershock back (3 bursts.)
Kayo's fine, Maybe one more molly pulse to make his stall a tad better? (as in 4 bursts rather than the 3, not a 2nd molly.)
Sova and Fade are fine as is, their nerfs were fair and needed and I think they're in a good spot.

For duelists
Nerf neon, keep her stun as is, give her less sprint time, and maybe remove the speed boost on the ult or make it so ult boosts less than sprinting does.
Nerf waylay, give her 1 dash no matter what bringing her more in line with jett/raze and making them both situationally Viable rather than waylay just outshining the other.
Buff yoru, give him 2 flashes but keep the TP time the same and lower the duration of his ult.
Buff Jett, This I'm not sure about. But I do know she needs something to bring her in line with the rest of the cast.

For sentis
Buff cypher, make his trips reveal after a shorter amount of time but not stun at the end, keep everything else the same.
Buff vyse, give her unlimited range on her thorns again but keep everything else the same.
KJ is fine
Sage is fine
Give Chamber 2 trips to keep him in line with the now buffed sentis. He's in a spot where he's only good because they're really bad, so he'll need something to let him keep up. Cypher gets 2 trips, vyse gets 2 thorns, KJ gets 2 info abilities, sage gets 2 slows, Give chamber 2 trips. Everything else is fine.
Buff veto so that half a second before it hits you, veto's trip is unbreakable.

Controllers are actually in a good spot, I wouldn't say any of them are in a truly awful spot aside from miks.
Buff miks so that his drones have more health, and his ult blinds rather than slows. This gives people reasons to actually make miks lineups in order to stun enemies from long ranges or heal allies from long ranges. Also increase his stim time, I feel it's too short despite it refreshing after kills.

#22

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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Vyse thorns had range?
Also
Chamber with 2 trips is broken
The reason- He can cover 3 lanes of a map at once, one with his body + rendezvous, the other 2 with the trips
Currently all sentinels that have a form of info trip can cover max 2 lanes while being safe

Also you mentioned waylay with 1 dash. I feel like that would just make raze meta. Cuz raze and waylay have very similar patterns if you use the double dash and double satchel, only difference is that raze gets 2 and doesn't need to dash instantly
What i would do instead is reduce the time on refract to match the Jett dash timer of 7.5s cuz then they have equal escape timings
OR rework waylay so that you cant just dash in and slip out without being punishable somehow, like mayb make it so that refract can be stopped somehow or give it a standard velocity of like (for assumption im using the omen orb velocity as per the files) at 64m/s and you can see the crystal through walls always, so you know how far the waylay has gone back

#24

Madouza

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At the moment they have limits on how far you can pop them from.

They used to be unlimited like chamber/cypher trips.

#26

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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I mean its fine tbh cuz it lines up with killjoy who has a similar ability to stall

#27

Madouza

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Vyse is only truly decent when she can pop those thorns on A while holding B.
Without that gimmick she's just a slightly worse KJ

#31

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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Honestly i just want her arc rose flash info back
On defense she's fine. On offense is where she severely lacks and the flash info would do so much good for her

#28

Madouza

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But chamber with 1 trip is Awful compared to Meta Cypher/KJ, so it's a bit weird.

Chamber's either amazing or he's dogshit and theres no in between, Maybe give the trips a short range? So that you have to put one of them close to chamber and the other can hold something?

#30

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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I think the best we can do is give chamber a 24m rendevous to really let him get aggro. Or change his trips so they dont require LoS to shoot their target, so even if you're a dashing jett in the air the chamber trip can ground you. Or make the trip supress you in that area

#23

GarbanzoEnjoyer

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Kayo molly already pulses four times, and Miks ult applying blind would be so broken with how large the area is. But these changes are nice.

It hadn't occured to me how much it would reduce shotgun slop to cut waylay's dash down to one, or just shorten the distance

#25

Madouza

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I thought it pulsed 3 times? My bad-
give him 5, but nerf the damage of each one. Allows him to buy more time without his ult.

#33

ViperV3-PRO-ABUSER

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BUFF JETT AND RAZE why play jett when waylay does everything better why play raze when neon does everything better

#35

Vyse-Fan_In-more-than-one

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Honestly the only reason raze isnt played more is cuz skye exists and the waylay refract exists which are superior drone info tools than the boombot
Jett however, has the simple problem of Neon being able to do all she does, and more
Neon can dash(the slide and dash are around the same distance in themselves) and isolate angles like jett
The thing is
Jett only has verticality over neon
Neon has self catalysis for kills in relay bolt and far deeper entries than Jett + she is a hard target to hit WHILE also being relatively accurate while doing it

If you buff jett and raze all you go back to is double duelist

#36

ViperV3-PRO-ABUSER

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would add more variety in the map pool is what i meant and neon also way faster pull out speed can instantly slide while jett has the 1 second cooldown arguably a worse ult. I do think waylay did need some tuning down she was a walking sova drone with lethality. the only thing i want to see tuned down for neon is either the size of the stun or the length you're stunned by neon. Give jett her updraft back and give raze her strafe with the satchels back and you bring both agents back from the dead vct wise and their more balanced with each other.

#37

Nigellomeister

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typed it so many times but no one cared but my idea to buff breach:

removes slowing down when you're charging stun, it doesn't make sense when sova doesn't get slowed down either when he charges his recon
add alt fire to flash the surface like vyse, this way you can flash through smoke via the floor, more flexible to set up exec
get old ult size, make it 9 orb again if needed

if he's still shit, i guess up the speed numbers, because he's so clunky even compared to fellow support character, either keep up the clunky but make it stronger or make it faster.

#38

ViperV3-PRO-ABUSER

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He's to aggravating to play against i think is the reason riot doesnt buff him and also is required to be played in a double iniatior meta (same as kayo) but all iniatior are kind of butt right now