As of patch 10.25, the best counters for Ahri have changed. Currently, her greatest threats are Seraphine, Neeko, Morgana, and Aurelion Sol (the latter could probably even take down gaming legends like Master Chief). If players see any of these picks in-game while playing Ahri, they should be cautious and avoid them as much as possible. It’s important to snowball early, so if the option to ban these champions arises, do

Along with some serious damage in extended fights, Sunfire Aegis also gives additional ability haste for each completed mythic item. This scales to give the item a ridiculous amount of gold efficiency. Every stat is great on the item. If you can’t use the active of Turbo Chemtank, Sunfire Aegis is easily the best opt

** Max Grossman: ** Very important. It’s something that I know tangentially, as we have guys on our art teams that are hyper dedicated to this stuff, but I can give you my layman’s take on it. The most important thing is that every Agent stands out in the environments in some capacity. No camouflaged-looking dudes running through the environment cause if somebody is shooting at you, we don’t want players ever to go, «Huh, where could they be in the environment?» Valorant isn’t a hidden-object game. It’s about you knowing someone’s there and you can have a fight with them. The bright yellow jacket is pushing the extremes of what we are trying to do in that super high visibility. But it’s a super important consideration for

All feedback is meaningful, though. We rarely look at someone’s critique and go, «that’s not useful at all» — all opinions and bandle tale Guide feelings people have about Valorant are important. Whether or not we act upon those concerns is a complicated process, though. When Raze came out, for example, we tested her for so long with this power budgets and thought, «she’s strong, but nothing crazy» — then the community got a hold of her and it turned out we were wr

Moving forward, new champion releases shouldn’t clash so closely with one another. Yone’s debut heavily eclipsed Lillia’s earlier arrival despite players knowing both would come out during the summer event. Furthermore, Seraphine’s social media may have been planned months in advance, but this greatly took away from Samira who seemed like an afterthought. However, this year’s schedule can largely be attributed to the shift cause by COVID-19, and it shouldn’t be a sign that 2021 will continue an erratically slow or fast p

Since the start of summer, shipped updates have included improved AFK detection and the ability to report or mute disruptive players during champ select. These changes have resulted in more penalties and less repeat offenders with League of Legends players feeling their actions are making a noticeable difference. After these successes, Riot is planning further updates for affected teammates such as early surrendering and reducing LP loss in ranked games. While there are still rare issues like players being flagged for actually doing poorly or returning to ranked after several years and being placed in smurf queue, continued work should fix things in the next few months along with further improveme

** Max Grossman: ** For the initial characters that we’ve launched, most started with just their toolkits and different abilities. However, there was at least a «theme» in mind. Phoenix is a good example. He was always going to be fiery in some capacity—he throws a molotov and is reborn from the ashes, that kind of thing. Viper was the same. She started as this toxic, gas wielding character. But discovering that she was a scientist came later in the development process. Killjoy is a fascinating example since she started as a literal robot. So that component was very different at one point in time, but even then, she still had two of her four abilities that shipped with the final version of the character. Some of the characters change a lot, others not so m

«Seraphine was independently created by Riot Games and was not based on any individual. Additionally, the former employee [Stephanie] is referring to left Riot more than a year ago and was in a department and role that has no input whatsoever into the creative design proce

Similarly, the gameplay updates modernized both champions without alienating the fans who grew to love them over the years. Fiddlesticks still has an AOE Crowstorm and targeted fear, yet causes even greater chaos by chain CCing then draining the life from multiple enemies during a teamfight. Volibear no longer flips his foes, but truly lives up to the fantasy of a savage bear god mauling foes with thunderous strength. Either one plays just like before, only with new tricks and skill expression that let them stand up the current ros

The other thing we like to consider when creating Agents is how accessible they are. Some characters are a little bit easier, at least in terms of how obvious their abilities are to use. I think Killjoy tends to lean slightly closer to a beginner-friendly Agent once you set up her stuff. You can rely on a lot of her abilities and quickly understand, «hey, people might come through this chokepoint, I should probably put down my stuff that damages people watching the choke point.» When you first start playing Valorant, it’s a pretty easy toolkit to understand. At least opposed to one of the more complex characters like Viper or Reyna. They require a ton of knowledge to utilize effectively. It sounds like with your friend, or anyone who’s getting started with tactical shooters, Killjoy was a character they could quickly pick up and be successful w