Patch notes for 1.04 have been released!
Lets dive into it – Notable Changes:
- Huge Viper Buffs
- She can stand outside of her ult for 15 seconds now before it goes down, up from 5 seconds
- She can end her ult early manually
- Ult now obscures enemy mini map
- Enemies are brighter in her ult near sight from afar (easier for Viper to see enemies)
- Decay increased to 15 per second and stays for 2.5 seconds
- Poison cloud and toxic screen don’t use extra fuel when both active
- Raze & Brimstone ults now cost 7 instead of 6 ult charges
- Brimstone stim beacon range no longer visible to enemies and can’t be used by enemies
- Cypher can pick up his cages ONLY in buy phase
- Fixed Classic pistol jumping full right click accuracy and buffed the pistol accuracy overall
- Other UI polishing and improvements
So lets talk about these agent balance changes.
Viper got a massive buff, I already thought she was slightly underrated, but they completely buffed everything about her. I think we will be seeing viper is many more games now. She can juke more by leaving her ult and obscuring enemy mini maps and I already thought her visibility was fine inside her ultimate. Decay was a little weak, so I welcome to new effects to it.
Raze and Brim ult charge increase was a good change. Raze ult has definitely been controversial since the beginning, even having Shroud and Summit argue about it. It wasn’t uncommon for Brim to constantly clutch rounds by ulting the bomb. I am surprised they didn’t touch the Raze satchels though as pros satchel hopping across the map was supposed to get a nerf at some point. I do like the Brim beacon buff, letting enemies use it and being extremely visible was a terrible position giveaway, but now a well placed one can be hidden from enemy vision.
Cypher can pick up his cages ONLY during the buy phase, so they helps out newer players or people trying new cage spots as they can reposition them if they mess up their one ways or whatever. I still hate his camera though and how it can be placed so high up that you can’t see/hear/shoot it. I still think those cameras are borderline game breaking and people constantly find new obscure spots to put it in. A good Cypher can essentialy give a team pseudo wall hacks.
Classic pistol jump shotgunning is gone. Thank god.
Now fix smurfing, Riot, Thanks.