Ever since Raze was introduced to the VALORANT’s roster of playable agents, the community complained about how Raze’s kit was just too oppressive and requires a nerf.
After a lot of back and forth from the community and Devs, Riot finally decides to nerf Raze. In the patch note, devs also emphasized how more savvy players could have actually countered Raze’s abilities pretty efficiently after some time. But as it turns out more players wanted to see Raze’s offensive capabilities get some kind of Nerf. And Riot happily obliged in their latest patch 0.47+.
RAZE Nerfs in Patch 0.47+
- Reduced Paint Shells from 2 to 1
- Paint Shells now have a kill reset, requiring players to get 2 kills to refresh the cooldown
- Tuned and adjusted audio for Paint Shells, Blast Pack, and Showstopper so that they’ll be easier to hear in hectic scenarios
- Fixed an edge case where the second cluster of Paint Shells would explode quicker than intended. They now have a minimum duration before exploding.
All this really creates a clear indication that Riot finally decided that Raze area denial kits were overly oppressive at times. As well as her ultimate made kills easier in certain scenarios which raised some questions regarding Raze’s place in this tactical shooter.
In this patch Riot mainly focused on how to give players more clues and giving them enough tools to combat every scenario more effectively. Raze’s abilities were all focused on area denials. But the number of paint shells and their damages took some players off guard. They also changed the sound cues to give players more precise information about her incoming offensive capabilities.
So, they decided to reduce the number of Paint Shells and increase the number of kills required to actually get those items. All this created a more balanced scenario. Thus putting other agents on a more equal footing against Raze than before. This patch marks the starting point of many more adjustments to come from Riot Games in the future.