VALORANT’s Japanese agent, Yoru, is getting a rework in 2022.
“I’ll fight anybody. I’ll fight everybody” is the line VALORANT’s agent Yoru says when players pick him during the agent select screen. Yoru is originally from Tokyo, Japan, and is trying to uncover his past, according to VALORANT fandom wiki. Despite his arrogant and cool demeanor, VALORANT players refuse to pick him during matches. There have also been reports of teammates harassing players who pick Yoru.
Yoru only shines in the hands of really good trickster VALORANT players with a good aim. He is a duelist but one of the least-picked agents in both VALORANT Ranked and pro play. In order to fix his low pick rate, Riot Games has decided to rework Yoru’s kit to make him more viable.
Some of the big changes to Yoru’s abilities are coming to his Gatecrash, Fakeout, and Ultimate. Recently, we got some gameplay footage of his reworked abilities in action. So let’s take a look at Yoru’s Ability changes, gameplay below.
Yoru Rework
Ability Changes
A few weeks ago Riot Games release a blog post showing all of the changes about Yoru’s rework. Below you will find all of his ability changes with a detailed explanation, pictures, and videos.
FAKEOUT
Fakeout—an ability that currently directionally mimics the sound of Yoru’s footsteps to mislead enemies—is now a full copy of Yoru, that runs forward, and when damaged, explodes and debuffs enemies.
As added flavor, when the copy is shot, it faces the direction of the person that fired the shot and flashes towards their position in a conal direction.
- As an ally of Yoru, you will be to tell that it is his copy, and not the real Yoru. This is so that Yoru is not accidentally confusing his allies between who the real one is, and who the copy is.
- As an enemy of Yoru, they will see an identical copy of Yoru.
- During playtests we found that the copy was effective at disrupting an enemies moment-to-moment gameplay—which is awesome—but not when your team gets confused. Below are some of the early explorations for how to visualize the ally Yoru copy.
GATECRASH
Not much has changed with this one since the last post, aside from the team creating the additional art elements needed to bring this portion of Yoru’s update to life. The big thing here is the “puddle” left on the ground after a fake teleport. While the goal of the fake teleport is to create confusion about Yoru’s location, you should be able to go to where the fake teleport occurred, and then understand whether the real Yoru is around, or was it a misdirection?
DIMENSIONAL DRIFT
Here’s a summary of the changes during Yoru’s ult:
- Yoru is no longer revealed to enemies
- Yoru is able to cast all utility while in Dimensional Drift
- Enemies can hear Yoru’s footsteps
- Nearsighted is removed
- Unequip delay time is increased slightly
- Cast delay added when casting Dimensional Drift, preventing the invulnerability frame on cast.
Gameplay
ValorLeaks, a prominent VALORANT leaker, recently shared some gameplay videos of reworked Yoru. During the first part, we can see Yoru’s new Fakeout ability that flashes enemies when shot at. Then the video cuts to Yoru’s new reworked Ultimate. During the new Ultimate Yoru is not revealed to the enemies and can freely use all of his abilities. The downside to this is a delay when coming out of his ultimate.
Release Date
Currently, there is no release date for Yoru’s rework. It might come out with the new Episode 4 Act 2 Battle Pass on March 2, 2022.
