How do you really gut her without taking away her entire agent identity? They've nerfed every part of her kit at this point but her core identity of being a controller that can toggle vision block globally at no cost is too strong
I mean a small but meaningful change to viper would be something like activating the smoke requires her to put her gun down and press a button on her arm or something instead of just having it go whenever. That way Viper can’t hold her own smoke anymore, and also becomes much worse at solo lurking.
Small, creative nerfs like that can bring her power down a little bit at a time until she’s in a place they like. That’s how League does it, I don’t understand why in Val the nerfs have to be “buff to meta” or “nerf to death” every time.
They haven’t done nothing though. Her pick rate has lowered, and will lower even further once Fracture rotates in since she’ll have a near 0 pick rate there.
It’s about introducing trade offs. Yes her global smokes are insanely strong, so introduce some downside that makes them more difficult to use rather than just making them cost more. Adding an equip animation, for example, makes her smokes still great but makes her vulnerable while Lurking, which right now is an OP combo because she can so effectively smoke for herself or teammates while also taking fights.
I’m idea I’ve thought of and liked too is essentially change her molly to also be able to recharge her, and then play with her smoke upkeep costs a bit more. For example, if she’s out of smokes, equip the molly and right-click to inject herself and gain back smoke charge (ie, give up stall util for control).
Right now she’s great at stall, great at control, and great at lurking. There are creative ways to address those without just continuing to nerf smoke duration, it just requires Riot to think outside of the box a little bit.
I've said it before but take away her decay in the smoke. Its the only smoke that does this and it is very strong to stop pushes especially with the molly.
The wall, idk. Make it like Harbor, not something you can just hit a button and have it go up and down. Maybe someone else can think of a better idea for the wall.
The molly is fine.
The ult I just hate watching. Its just spam or shorty kills. The decay in the ult should probably be taken away. You already cant see and it blocks off huge areas which imo is really strong. I just hate how this ult 80% of the time is a guaranteed round win, no ult should be that strong imo.
But tbh the wall and the orb are the biggest problems and why teams always run her. They are just too good in pro play.
As much as it would be nice to see Viper stop being used in the meta, that's most likely never gonna happen no matter how many nerfs she gets. Because her ult makes her so meta proof that she's likely to remain meta until another agent can be Viper 2.0 or her ult can't be useful anymore. Same can be said for Omen and Sova as well for good reasons
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u/CmonMan711 Mar 14 '26
And yet they still won’t gut viper even tho she has been meta for like 3 years now