What you and everyone else seems to keep forgetting and not addressing is that Valorant is not only made up of pro players playing VCT or game changers or scrimming. Its made up of a ton of ranked players and streamers and new players just having fun.
These nerfs don't just impact the pro scene (who have been running double smokes for a looong time so it doesn't matter they switch to harbor,viper or omen viper or astra,viper) but it impacts one of the lowest picked controller agents in the game after harbor (and even after astra in Immortal and radiant).
This nerf ruins a lot of the fun of playing the agent in ranked as viper is just not viable as a solo smokes and not even fun to play in general. In my opinion as an Asc2 controller player (except Harbor, which I might main now lmao) who mains Viper this nerf was not needed in ranked play at all but instead just made another agent unplayable and un-enjoyable in ranked.
Thank rito games.