iso main here, can confirm it feels like forever, so many time I have to kill 2 ppl back to back (no time to shoot the orb), then I go back into cover (reloading too), after reload, I can just pop my shield and get back into the fight
I don't like that they're removing the 2 kill reset, but I'm ok with it because I agree that current iso is unhealthy to the meta
Yea. When Iso released it was 15 seconds, then a few patches later it was increased to 20 seconds. Even back then I thought 15 seconds was long enough. Now his new duration with patch 9.0 will be shorter than it was on release.
Old iso they could honestly make the duration infinite and it wouldnât have mattered, it was still a fair fight until he kills someone. Now every fight he takes can be unfair.
Yep i'm surprised they removed the two kill reset instead of just removing those dumbass orbs IMO they're way more frustrating as even if you break his shield if he just wins the next fight he still gets a reset.
Having just a two kill reset seems infinitely healthier and doesn't just have him chaining kills together as much.
fr. i just played a round, shot iso's orb after he killed my mate (first kill of the round), thinking he wont have a shield since there wasnt another kill yet and its already like 28 seconds in. he swings me, and i see he has a freaking shield.
28 freaking seconds in and he still has his free shield. what the actual hell.
Question, so with a shotgun, does Iso's shield block 1 whole blast, or just 1 pellet from the blast? Cuz I'm thinking shotgun vs Iso is worth consideration esp. pistol rounds...
if you go back to like day 1-2 threads about iso you will see top liked comments just shitting on OP about how they just haven't adjusted to him LOL. and I mean I guess he probably isn't that busted in lower elo/ unrated but still, this comment section is singing a different tune
Wrong. If anything he's even more broken in low ELO where bad aim makes 1 tap headshots even more important. If we're only hitting 10% of our vandal HS and now they're blocked the first time we hit them, he's even harder for us to kill.
Iso is definitely more broken in higher elo because the time to kill is typically lower in those elos. High elo players rely on having their first shot be a head shot( vandal one shot kill). Instead of one shoting Iso, it now takes two shots, a 100% increase in the number of bullets needed to kill him.
In lower elo where body shots are more prevalent and it takes 4 body shots to kill most agents it now takes 5 to kill Iso, only a 25% increase in the number of bullets needed to kill him.
I thought everyone learned from Siege that an ability like black beard will be impossible to balance in a one shot headshot FPS
When ISO was first announced it was obvious he will either be awful or OP. Tough mechanic to balance
I agree. A free E press to deny a headshot is incredible. It forces out util or a different playstyle in the enemy. But how Iso was before where he needed a kill to get it started was also trash because his other abilities didnt do enough to help him win the first engagement
a good balance would be to rework his undercut so it just suppresses, stuns or literally anything else (vulnerable is kinda mid) and just reduce the charge to 1, make his contingency bigger and stoppable, promotes teamplay more and actually makes him valuable on executes as a secondary duelist
Yeah well this nerf doesn't address the issue. It's still 12 seconds, it's more than enough to run down/into any site and force an engagement. It still won't change his E + ult combo from being any weaker either.
The mechanic simply can't stay the way it is unless they nerf it to comical levels, like the shield lasting 1-2 seconds. Otherwise, it's still broken.
They can make the focused state last 20 seconds, but the first shield should not be a thing OR only last a couple seconds.
I think Reyna is more selfish - Reyna only has Leer to help the team, while Iso has wall and vulnerable. His ult even has really strong strategic value.
Fnatic used Deadlock just two days ago, there's been previous instances too, e.g. Jawgemo in americas.
Clove even got international play by FPX in Shanghai.
Still broke as long as I get the sheild 7 seconds before I enter the site I'm good. Never really used the kill reset since i just shot the orb and kept going.
Yeah. It was dumb imo before that he needed a kill to use his signiture originally. The issue was that he essentially got it infinitely, or at least what felt like infinitely which this change basically fixes.
you got hated on by the people who got an easy life. I've seen trackers where people have solely switched to ISO and suddenly going 2.0 K/D and winning 15 of their last 20 games.
god forbid you get an enemy team consisting of neon, chamber, and an invincible ISO on the enemy team. it was chaos. it was an up hill battle chamber would get a kill TP away you'd have neon creating chaos and ISO getting HS 5 times with no recourse. Throw a Jett in there with her dashing away trading became impossible.
on top of the fact I rarely got q dodges before this patch and today alone I've played 4 games and been in 8-10 lobbies due to what I think must be people dodging because they didn't get their Neon or ISO or someone didn't pick neon or ISO. I haven't played much the last few days so I can only imagine its not been much different.
Oh shit now that u said that, i had people queue dodge a ton. One time i had people dodge 5 times in a row before finally playing. Didnât cross my mind at all that it was because people wanna play iso
Just so we are being clear, he will still be busted and have high pick rate after this nerf, just not as much as before. Even if the timer goes down to 7.5 seconds like jett dash.
I like the 2 kill refresh mechanic. They should have dropped the stupid orb thing and have him recast on reset. Would put him on par with other duelists as well.
Really? Itâs to force the Iso to stand still to shoot the orb. The idea is to make players play together so that if someone dies to Iso but takes his shield off their teammate can peek. Iso is forced to either fight the next person without his shield or shoot the orb and then have to reset his crosshair to fight.
The point is to force Iso to make a choice, but because the average player is stupid they donât team up to fight him and so it results in free orbs for Iso.
Here's the thing though, it doesn't necessarily force them to stand still but might even force them to deadzone the target, which makes the player autopilot themselves into good movement lol
I feel like if your first reaction after a kill is to deadzone a shot onto the orb (and actually hit), then your movement and gunfights are already pretty good
i agree, this is by far the way better choice, in terms of consistency and balance. maybe you also add that while he has his shield up kills won't count towards his kill refresh, so he only builds towards his 2nd shield if his shield is broken before the kill. overall, it prevents the chain killing mechanic that made reyna so annoying while being fairly useless in pro play.
however i guess they want to keep the aimlabs partnership/sponsor money up, so they threw this in for all the "aimbotneon"s complaining about how valorant is nothing like aimlabs.
Well tbf Iso's whole thing is isolating duels and then chaining/snowballing kills in a short window. The only problem was the recent buffs made his "short window" the whole round lol.
After this change, he essentially becomes one of the best agents in the game for the 12 seconds his shield his up, and for however long he can keep it up after that. I think removing the reset is certainly fair.
>Well tbf Iso's whole thing is isolating duels and then chaining/snowballing kills in a short window.
yeah but i dont think it (chain killing/snowballing) really belongs in a tact shooter; it makes the game too "untactical", you kinda just run it down and overheat. on the other hand, having one instance of the shield at least results in a bit more thought; you still run it down, but it's against one instance of damage, so you have to choose and think about how you're going to use the shield and what you're going to do after.
The snowballing is only mental, tho. Iso is technically just as easy/difficult to kill on his first shielded engagement than he is on his last. Same thing with a snowballing Reyna ult.
The trigger is so loud the enemy can just not engage and wait him out lol similar to how people just run from clove so she does on her own when she ults
And? I don't see how that's a problem. You can say the same thing about Raze ult, Breach ult, Fade ult, etc.
Free space is free space, if they run away *everytime* they hear Iso pop shield, then they're just stuck on retake every round. Not exactly ideal for them.
sure, but those are ultimates and ISO shield is his utility, that is the problem. Raze can pop ult and you run, but she still has her nade and satchels for enty. You run from Fade's ult and you still have her eye and prowlers for entry. We're talking about ISO shield, which if you waste it you have what? His wall which is ass? lol
That's the issue with ISO that people are concerned with. He's so hard to balance cause his kit is too unique. It's either ass or gives him too much of an edge.
You have his vulnerable, which is an amazing supportive ability. But also that's not even the point.
You said it yourself, the examples I listed were ultimates. That means they're up maybe 2-3 times a half. Iso gets it *every round*. If they run away everytime they hear an Iso shield, then I wouldn't even care if the shield was literally his only ability. Free space, no matter what, is always insane value.
And if they don't run, then the shield makes you a raidboss for 12 seconds while you take site. If your site take takes longer than 12 seconds, you were never gonna take the site anyways. Simple as that.
Yeah idk why they kept that it's the one thing that actively punishes you even if you broke the shield because you lost the gunfight later.
12 seconds kinda prevents that from happening as much but still just seems really lame and something that doesn't need to exist.
Itâs an ultimate, he should have an advantage. Thatâs like saying raze ult should only kill on a headshotâŚJett knives have faster fire rate, and accuracy. Why shouldnât iso have an advantage when heâs ulting?
I also think losing the 1v1 in his ult shouldnt kill him.
The advantage would be removing someone from the battlefield while the team pushes.
He also already has the three barrier advantage in his ult.
I think having the shield in his ult created too much of an adavantage. I agree he should have an advantage, the cureent advantage is just too great currently
This was the most overturned buff ever in Valorant and anyone who says he's not busted and says "Same as before, just a shield before kills, not OP" is low rank and trash at the game.
I prefer the no 2 kill reset because it forces him to make a major difference with his double tap in one engagement. Being able to ensure 2-3 kills in an engagement as iso is enough of an advantage to win the round, cause you can just chain orbs together as iso. Being able to win an engagement like that, and then preserve a free shield to win a 1v1 later is just so lame. It should really be a 1 engagement for the double tap, and his contingency should be changed to be useful for giving him movement.
Okay, I really hope that they are actually making Undercut and Contingency good now.
Because if they gonna keept it like this he will be once again bad, and that is sad, because the agent was actually fun to play, but now I have no idea what pros will think.
Again, I need to play to feel it, but I really hope they will buff the other skills. That is what they should done since the start. Riot are really scared with Iso, they just can't accept another Chamber episode. I understand, but is quite funny to see Riot DEVS buffing and nerfing agents like pushing a bookshelf: **"A lot to the left, now a little to the right... Like this, like this..."** Lmao
People keep saying this but it's not that simple. For the barrier to work, it first needs to be much longer and the duration of time cannot be too long, as it is unbreakable. If the time duration is too long, it can end up being very OP imo.
I really don't know what to do with the barrier, but Undercut could at least briefly slow enemies, I don't know lol
Let me start the wall closer than a few meters away so I can follow behind it right away.
And make the vuln not hit teammates behind/next to me that aren't even on my screen. They fixed that with omen blind before iso released, how did they forget to give the same fix.
I hate this nerf. They're doubling down on the free shield at the press of a button and nerfing other parts of his kit to make the pill easier to swallow. This mechanic should not be in the game and I'll die on this hill. I don't care that he wasn't relevant before. The game was in a better place without him in it.
Overall I tend to agree and feel that from his creation, Contingency probably should have been his signiture rather than Double Tap, but it's hard to really change that at this point. They made a decision and that's probably the end of it. The best we'll get is balancing around that decision. Idk if there's a way to improve Double Tap without making it deployable without a kill, so this is probably the best we can get nerf wise without intentionally making Iso irrelevent again (which is never going to be an option).
Also a lot of balancing is about "making the pill easier to swallow," and it'.s the same practice they honestly should have applied to Raze imo. Sometimes an ability is inherently strong and the choice is either to make it genuinely bad or to nerf the abilities around it to make it work. In loose terms, that's what they did with Jett as well. Instead of nerfing her dash more than the initiation, they took away an updraft, took away a smoke, and cut the smoke duration in half.
Nah hard disagree on it being hard to change, the health of balancing should be #1 priority over everything and if you have an inherently broken aspect of a character ruining the rest of the character as a whole then how can you ever expect them to be balanced.
R6 has this literal exact same issue where they brought in a character that couldnât be headshot by putting on a face shield and they died on that hill so the character has either broken or complete dogshit its entire lifespan.
Just rework that ability and heâs perfectly fine. Replace the ability, revert it, make the other abilities better and the focus of the kit, doesnât matter just anything other than press button for free anti headshot.
Having an ability where pressing a button for free that just makes it so you donât get headshotted in a game thatâs supposed to be about shooting people in the head is atrociously bad game design
Saying they're nerfing other parts of his kit when all of his other abilities are dogshit is literally crazy. There's literally no buffs to his wall and undercut.
Iso should have the upperhand in 1v1s but now they gave you the opportunity to deny that. It's a good change.
You guys really think he is going to get bad? The fact that he still haa almost a second life every round (protects from hs and op) is still broken, he will still be very strong in some situations
Maybe give him a time cooldown instead of a two kill reset
Not having a rechargeable ability sucks tho, especially now that he only have 1 charge of it
everyones saying this was obvious but im honestly surprised they patch it so soon. i was ready to endure this for 3 months or so like the usual changes noone likes.
As an Iso main, I realize that he is broken right now, but I think something like
Reduced E time back from 20 > 15 secs
Removed orbs but kept 2-kill refresh
So he can only refresh in battle if he gets two kills but also doesn't have to worry about his orbs getting stolen, possibly preventing him from getting his shield back all round.
Why are some people acting like he was gutted? Having 12 seconds on command of basically double your ttk with rifles/op is still insane. This is a good step, but I don't think it'll be enough. Imo he shouldn't regen his shield at all and should have his other abilities reworked into something more useful.Â
Yeah they are forgetting one thingâŚ
That buff they gave to Neon, they need to revert that change. Neon is obviously so broken. Any Neon main can basically run and gun with his broken sprint and his ultimate.
You know how many times Iâve gotten railed by Neon, too many times to count
I don't mind most of those Neon slide is disgusting but Jett also gets to run and gun with her ult and it's debatably more disgusting since she gets to just peek over terrain you shouldn't even have to think about watching.
This sounds like worse than release version. Free shield the way they added it is hardly better than original Iso because you announce to half of map about your location if you decide to use it. Duration nerfs is weird since it legitimizes "wait out" strategy, while most of the agnets have util that you can't just "wait out", they even changed Reyna in this regard.
I guess 100% pickrate in this patch and 0% in next will give them good looking average statistics but this looks like rito doesn't know what they're doing. Lack of consistent vision, new agents for the sake of new agents with lacking kit compared to default ones and changes based on crying community is not a good sign.
i do like isos concept and even his util is alright. you can see how small changes can make him a nightmare, so there is merit to his kit. the issue is that riot lacks understanding of how to make him enjoyable
I think both together is a bit much, shorter timer sure thats good but imo removing the 2 kill reset is putting double tap in the same boat as old Reyna ult, now he has to aggro which is strange that they literally just made it so Reynas ult DIDNT require this
it makes a lot more since that he has to be aggro for a util, vs an ultimate that you can play the entire round with. they are similar survivability but isos isnt supposed to be like hes ulting every round.
You actually cannot change base mechanics besides maybe movement speed. Who would have thought a character with EXTRA HP is broken. If any of you have played league you'll know how riot is this game will become too much to handle in a few years because of overturned and "new mechanic" based heroes
Post-buff Iso is too strong for comp.
However, he is still not gonna get picked in tournaments, especially with the nerfs they just solidified that. Does Riot have the competency to fix that? Will Iso remain be the only agent that's never picked in VCT?
I don't think this is the right way to nerf him, IMO. Just lock him out of being able to recast Double Tap while the skill is already in effect. Him having 2 shields in a single gunfight without an orb reset was the biggest issue.
Hmm, I don't know if nerfing it THAT much will make it any good, he'll just return to the old position. I think the biggest problem with his shield is that he is denying 100% of a shot immediately by pressing a button. The whole point of an operator is punish peeks in certain angles. When you give an agent a guarantee that he'll be unpunished (cause he can't be, since the op needs time before firing again) he can peek it easily, so you change the whole game dynamic, making Iso the "must pick" of every team. If they kept his kit the same and made some modifications (for example the first shield cannot deny heavy bullet damage (OP, Guardian, Sheriff etc) or something like that) I think it would be a great fit.
In a way I will agree, but the thing is he is not just countering op, by being able to swing in angles without a care it's not a plain counter. It gives an immediate advantage and there is no counter play in this. You can't wait for the shield to fall, (it was 20", now that it'll be 12 it'll be doable), you either have to find an elaborate way to break the shield or let Iso gain free real estate (free ground)
I agree, but: if you molley you lose utility and risk getting peeked afterwards (now he just has a fair 1-1), wallbanging and breaking yes, but you give him info in where you are and allow him while you wallbang to let him walk in you. That's how at least I see it and why he's a nuisance
If you try and op through a smoke youâre getting sprayed to death. If you try and op an iso youâre getting tapped. I donât see the difference tbh.
Ngl, I was so down for another OP agent meta like they did with Chamber. There needs to be a period of time each year where itâs just absurd buffs on one agent and the meta is around just that lmao
Heâs still very good. Free shield to take fights + you can refresh it if you get a kill. 12 secs instead of 20 is good so you are forced to make a good decision whenever you want to activate it.
(However I thought riot would remove the orb things and keep the 2 kill counter as itâs the trade mark for all duelists)
Id rather them revert him back to how he was or if youâre gonna remove the kill reset then remove the timer. Except a super quick timer after he loses shield for the kill but like just donât peek him after popping it
I think they just need to take away the orb minigame that allowed him to chain the ability. That was the issue.
Removing the two kill reset is kinda lame.
Agreen with the 20 second > 12 second change. Should work just like Jetts. Including the dash/shield
i cannot believe it was 20 seconds. i knew it was long but that long?
I thought it was infinite... đ
20 seconds is honestly a long ass time of a round especially once you know there is action happening or you're initiating it
plus if he keeps resetting it you can have well over 1 min uptime
But now if I last 20 seconds, itâs a too short
I mean it basically is when it resets the timer on kills and in the rare instance it drops can be re-upped if you got 2 kills
iso main here, can confirm it feels like forever, so many time I have to kill 2 ppl back to back (no time to shoot the orb), then I go back into cover (reloading too), after reload, I can just pop my shield and get back into the fight I don't like that they're removing the 2 kill reset, but I'm ok with it because I agree that current iso is unhealthy to the meta
Nice to see a very mature take on this! Oh and to answer your question, Jett brought a snack but she's not sharing unfortunately. ;)
Yea. When Iso released it was 15 seconds, then a few patches later it was increased to 20 seconds. Even back then I thought 15 seconds was long enough. Now his new duration with patch 9.0 will be shorter than it was on release.
Old iso they could honestly make the duration infinite and it wouldnât have mattered, it was still a fair fight until he kills someone. Now every fight he takes can be unfair.
12 seconds still long it should be 8 seconds or something.
Yep i'm surprised they removed the two kill reset instead of just removing those dumbass orbs IMO they're way more frustrating as even if you break his shield if he just wins the next fight he still gets a reset. Having just a two kill reset seems infinitely healthier and doesn't just have him chaining kills together as much.
fr. i just played a round, shot iso's orb after he killed my mate (first kill of the round), thinking he wont have a shield since there wasnt another kill yet and its already like 28 seconds in. he swings me, and i see he has a freaking shield. 28 freaking seconds in and he still has his free shield. what the actual hell.
ShockingÂ
What? You mean the Golds who force-buy Spectre every round on this subreddit MIGHT not know what they're talking about? Crazy!
đ¤đ¤ âjust adaptâ
I mean they donât tho
Thatâs what theyâre saying
He is referring to the people defending current iso
I force buy a judge everytime and i'm in diamond
Question, so with a shotgun, does Iso's shield block 1 whole blast, or just 1 pellet from the blast? Cuz I'm thinking shotgun vs Iso is worth consideration esp. pistol rounds...
It blocks the whole blast. his shield hard counters bucky.
Salamat, thanks!
Take This! HERE WE GO!
Speaking of shocking i wanna see them Neon nerfs too just as dumb of an agent as Iso currently both of them spit in the face of a Tac shooter.
No way anybody couldâve seen this coming /s
You clearly just havenât gotten used to him đ¤
âIso is not broken!â Yeah when the rank is gold and the Iso has Parkinsonâs.
if you go back to like day 1-2 threads about iso you will see top liked comments just shitting on OP about how they just haven't adjusted to him LOL. and I mean I guess he probably isn't that busted in lower elo/ unrated but still, this comment section is singing a different tune
Wrong. If anything he's even more broken in low ELO where bad aim makes 1 tap headshots even more important. If we're only hitting 10% of our vandal HS and now they're blocked the first time we hit them, he's even harder for us to kill.
I'd think he's broken everywhere but like I said, those day1 threads were flaming any gold who said he was OP
Iso is definitely more broken in higher elo because the time to kill is typically lower in those elos. High elo players rely on having their first shot be a head shot( vandal one shot kill). Instead of one shoting Iso, it now takes two shots, a 100% increase in the number of bullets needed to kill him. In lower elo where body shots are more prevalent and it takes 4 body shots to kill most agents it now takes 5 to kill Iso, only a 25% increase in the number of bullets needed to kill him.
We live in a time where people can't think for themselves until it is trending or some influencer says something. Sad really.
Iâm immortal and Iâve seen some really bad isos.
I thought everyone learned from Siege that an ability like black beard will be impossible to balance in a one shot headshot FPS When ISO was first announced it was obvious he will either be awful or OP. Tough mechanic to balance
I agree. A free E press to deny a headshot is incredible. It forces out util or a different playstyle in the enemy. But how Iso was before where he needed a kill to get it started was also trash because his other abilities didnt do enough to help him win the first engagement
a good balance would be to rework his undercut so it just suppresses, stuns or literally anything else (vulnerable is kinda mid) and just reduce the charge to 1, make his contingency bigger and stoppable, promotes teamplay more and actually makes him valuable on executes as a secondary duelist
Wall is what needed the big buff. Vuln is fine, just needs teamplay like a lot of util. Shield needed a small buff not the bonkers one it got.
His undercut being a suppress would not help him win fights, and it being a stun would just make it broken
Lmao haven't played siege for years I forgot about the whole BB balancing issue, and Iso is basically blackbeard but with whole body shield đ
Yeah well this nerf doesn't address the issue. It's still 12 seconds, it's more than enough to run down/into any site and force an engagement. It still won't change his E + ult combo from being any weaker either. The mechanic simply can't stay the way it is unless they nerf it to comical levels, like the shield lasting 1-2 seconds. Otherwise, it's still broken. They can make the focused state last 20 seconds, but the first shield should not be a thing OR only last a couple seconds.
I did. Watched a stream few days ago and everyone in chat and including the player saw the broken stuff within him
Lmao at least Iso had his 15 minutes of fame unlike other agents
Iso will remain to be the only agent never to be played on VCT.
I mean his kit kind seems selfish so I understand why no one has tried.
I thought ppl thought Reyna was selfish
I think Reyna is more selfish - Reyna only has Leer to help the team, while Iso has wall and vulnerable. His ult even has really strong strategic value.
Has clove or deadlock been played?
Fnatic used Deadlock just two days ago, there's been previous instances too, e.g. Jawgemo in americas. Clove even got international play by FPX in Shanghai.
I think he'll get played in the (for VCT) upcoming patch, good chance at least one chinese team will pull it out. Possible PRX pick too.
Still broke as long as I get the sheild 7 seconds before I enter the site I'm good. Never really used the kill reset since i just shot the orb and kept going.
We found him guys, the nightmare of all.
What a surprise /s
Drop the slash s let your words be free bro
Freedom is not allowed in reddit
big true
This is like when they overbuffed the ares only to nerf the absolute shit out of it a week later.
Most goated week of val i have ever played. Every round was full armor ares spam
"This feels so wrong but also feels so so right"
Does ares even have a place in the game right now? Why is it even there
The poor teamâs Oden lol. Can be used for a little wall bang action on Ascent still on B Site I feel. Otherwise, kind of a waste
Was a blast especially with brimâs buffs Loved rushing with two buffed stim beacons and overturned ares
I suggested something similar in a thread here , good change I think
Yeah. It was dumb imo before that he needed a kill to use his signiture originally. The issue was that he essentially got it infinitely, or at least what felt like infinitely which this change basically fixes.
Dude i did the same thing and got hated on
you got hated on by the people who got an easy life. I've seen trackers where people have solely switched to ISO and suddenly going 2.0 K/D and winning 15 of their last 20 games. god forbid you get an enemy team consisting of neon, chamber, and an invincible ISO on the enemy team. it was chaos. it was an up hill battle chamber would get a kill TP away you'd have neon creating chaos and ISO getting HS 5 times with no recourse. Throw a Jett in there with her dashing away trading became impossible. on top of the fact I rarely got q dodges before this patch and today alone I've played 4 games and been in 8-10 lobbies due to what I think must be people dodging because they didn't get their Neon or ISO or someone didn't pick neon or ISO. I haven't played much the last few days so I can only imagine its not been much different.
Oh shit now that u said that, i had people queue dodge a ton. One time i had people dodge 5 times in a row before finally playing. Didnât cross my mind at all that it was because people wanna play iso
Just so we are being clear, he will still be busted and have high pick rate after this nerf, just not as much as before. Even if the timer goes down to 7.5 seconds like jett dash.
#PackWatch đ¨đ¨đ¨đŹđŁď¸đŁď¸
rest in piss
It's over, watch
Lol this was my immediate reaction.
I like the 2 kill refresh mechanic. They should have dropped the stupid orb thing and have him recast on reset. Would put him on par with other duelists as well.
Omg yess, this is exactly how it should be done. Why they want to keep the aimlabs in is beyond me
No joke, I think the reason is that without the aimlabs minigame Iso would be the least interesting agent in Valo by a mile so they have to keep it
Really? Itâs to force the Iso to stand still to shoot the orb. The idea is to make players play together so that if someone dies to Iso but takes his shield off their teammate can peek. Iso is forced to either fight the next person without his shield or shoot the orb and then have to reset his crosshair to fight. The point is to force Iso to make a choice, but because the average player is stupid they donât team up to fight him and so it results in free orbs for Iso.
Here's the thing though, it doesn't necessarily force them to stand still but might even force them to deadzone the target, which makes the player autopilot themselves into good movement lol
I feel like if your first reaction after a kill is to deadzone a shot onto the orb (and actually hit), then your movement and gunfights are already pretty good
To give you a chance to stop the iso snowball, that way you can just shoot the enemy Iso orbďźdenying him of his shield. But no one will do it anyway
Enemy team can break the iso orb??? Ok TIL, not that Iâve noticed the orb floating around in the middle of a hectic fight.
I think you can break it? I've shot it out of habit and I couldn't tell if I shot it first or he did because he died shortly after
We can shoot enemy iso ball?
yes you can break it and deny.
I guess itâs tough to find a scenario where itâs better to shoot the orb rather than iso himself
well, then it wouldnât be called âdouble tapâ would it
i mean enemies would still have to double tap you so...
i agree, this is by far the way better choice, in terms of consistency and balance. maybe you also add that while he has his shield up kills won't count towards his kill refresh, so he only builds towards his 2nd shield if his shield is broken before the kill. overall, it prevents the chain killing mechanic that made reyna so annoying while being fairly useless in pro play. however i guess they want to keep the aimlabs partnership/sponsor money up, so they threw this in for all the "aimbotneon"s complaining about how valorant is nothing like aimlabs.
Well tbf Iso's whole thing is isolating duels and then chaining/snowballing kills in a short window. The only problem was the recent buffs made his "short window" the whole round lol. After this change, he essentially becomes one of the best agents in the game for the 12 seconds his shield his up, and for however long he can keep it up after that. I think removing the reset is certainly fair.
>Well tbf Iso's whole thing is isolating duels and then chaining/snowballing kills in a short window. yeah but i dont think it (chain killing/snowballing) really belongs in a tact shooter; it makes the game too "untactical", you kinda just run it down and overheat. on the other hand, having one instance of the shield at least results in a bit more thought; you still run it down, but it's against one instance of damage, so you have to choose and think about how you're going to use the shield and what you're going to do after.
Yeah, I think this change is a healthy one. Keeps his core premise while keeping his actual snowball potential in check.
The snowballing is only mental, tho. Iso is technically just as easy/difficult to kill on his first shielded engagement than he is on his last. Same thing with a snowballing Reyna ult.
Either they need to keep the 2 kill refresh mechanic or buff the other parts of his kit to make him not suck if they want to implement this change.
Now you have one charge, you activate it and if you don't get a kill within 12 seconds iso is useless for the rest of the round
why would you activate it if you aren't certain you're going to be getting into a gunfight in 12 seconds?
The trigger is so loud the enemy can just not engage and wait him out lol similar to how people just run from clove so she does on her own when she ults
If they all run away you get the space for free. Either way you are getting insane value.
I would love to play against you as an iso. Pop shield, walk into site for a free plant.
And? I don't see how that's a problem. You can say the same thing about Raze ult, Breach ult, Fade ult, etc. Free space is free space, if they run away *everytime* they hear Iso pop shield, then they're just stuck on retake every round. Not exactly ideal for them.
sure, but those are ultimates and ISO shield is his utility, that is the problem. Raze can pop ult and you run, but she still has her nade and satchels for enty. You run from Fade's ult and you still have her eye and prowlers for entry. We're talking about ISO shield, which if you waste it you have what? His wall which is ass? lol That's the issue with ISO that people are concerned with. He's so hard to balance cause his kit is too unique. It's either ass or gives him too much of an edge.
You have his vulnerable, which is an amazing supportive ability. But also that's not even the point. You said it yourself, the examples I listed were ultimates. That means they're up maybe 2-3 times a half. Iso gets it *every round*. If they run away everytime they hear an Iso shield, then I wouldn't even care if the shield was literally his only ability. Free space, no matter what, is always insane value. And if they don't run, then the shield makes you a raidboss for 12 seconds while you take site. If your site take takes longer than 12 seconds, you were never gonna take the site anyways. Simple as that.
boring change.
Yeah idk why they kept that it's the one thing that actively punishes you even if you broke the shield because you lost the gunfight later. 12 seconds kinda prevents that from happening as much but still just seems really lame and something that doesn't need to exist.
Think the orb thing should only be in his ult. Also his shield should not carry into his ult, it should be a fair 1v1
Itâs an ultimate, he should have an advantage. Thatâs like saying raze ult should only kill on a headshotâŚJett knives have faster fire rate, and accuracy. Why shouldnât iso have an advantage when heâs ulting?
I also think losing the 1v1 in his ult shouldnt kill him. The advantage would be removing someone from the battlefield while the team pushes. He also already has the three barrier advantage in his ult. I think having the shield in his ult created too much of an adavantage. I agree he should have an advantage, the cureent advantage is just too great currently
I fully believe they chose to get rid of the reset because they had to put work into the orb mechanic
This was the most overturned buff ever in Valorant and anyone who says he's not busted and says "Same as before, just a shield before kills, not OP" is low rank and trash at the game.
keep the 2 kill reset and cap at 2 orbs that can be shot?
I prefer the no 2 kill reset because it forces him to make a major difference with his double tap in one engagement. Being able to ensure 2-3 kills in an engagement as iso is enough of an advantage to win the round, cause you can just chain orbs together as iso. Being able to win an engagement like that, and then preserve a free shield to win a 1v1 later is just so lame. It should really be a 1 engagement for the double tap, and his contingency should be changed to be useful for giving him movement.
Okay, I really hope that they are actually making Undercut and Contingency good now. Because if they gonna keept it like this he will be once again bad, and that is sad, because the agent was actually fun to play, but now I have no idea what pros will think. Again, I need to play to feel it, but I really hope they will buff the other skills. That is what they should done since the start. Riot are really scared with Iso, they just can't accept another Chamber episode. I understand, but is quite funny to see Riot DEVS buffing and nerfing agents like pushing a bookshelf: **"A lot to the left, now a little to the right... Like this, like this..."** Lmao
Slowly they will remove the changes to the underused duelist that were affected on 8.11 patch
It's simple, just make the barrier able to stop when iso wishes
People keep saying this but it's not that simple. For the barrier to work, it first needs to be much longer and the duration of time cannot be too long, as it is unbreakable. If the time duration is too long, it can end up being very OP imo. I really don't know what to do with the barrier, but Undercut could at least briefly slow enemies, I don't know lol
What if it blocked ulikity rather than bullets?
Let me start the wall closer than a few meters away so I can follow behind it right away. And make the vuln not hit teammates behind/next to me that aren't even on my screen. They fixed that with omen blind before iso released, how did they forget to give the same fix.
I hate this nerf. They're doubling down on the free shield at the press of a button and nerfing other parts of his kit to make the pill easier to swallow. This mechanic should not be in the game and I'll die on this hill. I don't care that he wasn't relevant before. The game was in a better place without him in it.
Overall I tend to agree and feel that from his creation, Contingency probably should have been his signiture rather than Double Tap, but it's hard to really change that at this point. They made a decision and that's probably the end of it. The best we'll get is balancing around that decision. Idk if there's a way to improve Double Tap without making it deployable without a kill, so this is probably the best we can get nerf wise without intentionally making Iso irrelevent again (which is never going to be an option). Also a lot of balancing is about "making the pill easier to swallow," and it'.s the same practice they honestly should have applied to Raze imo. Sometimes an ability is inherently strong and the choice is either to make it genuinely bad or to nerf the abilities around it to make it work. In loose terms, that's what they did with Jett as well. Instead of nerfing her dash more than the initiation, they took away an updraft, took away a smoke, and cut the smoke duration in half.
Nah hard disagree on it being hard to change, the health of balancing should be #1 priority over everything and if you have an inherently broken aspect of a character ruining the rest of the character as a whole then how can you ever expect them to be balanced. R6 has this literal exact same issue where they brought in a character that couldnât be headshot by putting on a face shield and they died on that hill so the character has either broken or complete dogshit its entire lifespan. Just rework that ability and heâs perfectly fine. Replace the ability, revert it, make the other abilities better and the focus of the kit, doesnât matter just anything other than press button for free anti headshot. Having an ability where pressing a button for free that just makes it so you donât get headshotted in a game thatâs supposed to be about shooting people in the head is atrociously bad game design
Saying they're nerfing other parts of his kit when all of his other abilities are dogshit is literally crazy. There's literally no buffs to his wall and undercut. Iso should have the upperhand in 1v1s but now they gave you the opportunity to deny that. It's a good change.
I'll wait before jumping to conclusions, but I agree this take may make more sense than the "lol Iso is once again useless" comments.
Lol barely lasted, back to the trashcan you go Iso, they at least could have buffed other parts of his kit to compensate.
You guys really think he is going to get bad? The fact that he still haa almost a second life every round (protects from hs and op) is still broken, he will still be very strong in some situations
Smoking on that isopack.
Maybe give him a time cooldown instead of a two kill reset Not having a rechargeable ability sucks tho, especially now that he only have 1 charge of it
Please tell me someone got fired for that, never let him cook again
God is hearing my cries
everyones saying this was obvious but im honestly surprised they patch it so soon. i was ready to endure this for 3 months or so like the usual changes noone likes.
Aaaaaaaand welcome back Jett and Reyna to every single game.
As an Iso main, I realize that he is broken right now, but I think something like Reduced E time back from 20 > 15 secs Removed orbs but kept 2-kill refresh So he can only refresh in battle if he gets two kills but also doesn't have to worry about his orbs getting stolen, possibly preventing him from getting his shield back all round.
Jett dash got nerfed because a free shot is just OP Chamber got nerfed because a free shot is just OP Iso...
They will keep nerfing his double tap don't worry.
[ŃдаНонО]
Well, that was the wrong way to go about it, they should have just removed the orbs, that solves like 90% of his problems
Back to the gutter you go
Bro came back for 1 patch đ¤Łđ¤Łđ¤Łđđ¤Łđ
The most obviously-getting-nerfed buff in any game I can remember in a long time.
My boy iso getting the viper treatment raaah Wake up > Get giga buffed > Get nerfed > stable Hopefully they don't nerf him to the ground like viper
F for any chances in pro play
Why are some people acting like he was gutted? Having 12 seconds on command of basically double your ttk with rifles/op is still insane. This is a good step, but I don't think it'll be enough. Imo he shouldn't regen his shield at all and should have his other abilities reworked into something more useful.Â
Yeah they are forgetting one thing⌠That buff they gave to Neon, they need to revert that change. Neon is obviously so broken. Any Neon main can basically run and gun with his broken sprint and his ultimate. You know how many times Iâve gotten railed by Neon, too many times to count
Honestly real shit here even if it's not as strong it's way less fun than Iso shield and undermines the concept of a tac shooter.
There are 3 agents i hate solely on their ults that being - Sova, Brim and NeonâŚ
I don't mind most of those Neon slide is disgusting but Jett also gets to run and gun with her ult and it's debatably more disgusting since she gets to just peek over terrain you shouldn't even have to think about watching.
No way they nerf Iso but let Neon be
act surprised everyone. now I can finally get back to playing comp
This sounds like worse than release version. Free shield the way they added it is hardly better than original Iso because you announce to half of map about your location if you decide to use it. Duration nerfs is weird since it legitimizes "wait out" strategy, while most of the agnets have util that you can't just "wait out", they even changed Reyna in this regard. I guess 100% pickrate in this patch and 0% in next will give them good looking average statistics but this looks like rito doesn't know what they're doing. Lack of consistent vision, new agents for the sake of new agents with lacking kit compared to default ones and changes based on crying community is not a good sign.
i do like isos concept and even his util is alright. you can see how small changes can make him a nightmare, so there is merit to his kit. the issue is that riot lacks understanding of how to make him enjoyable
Honestly a shielded agent like this has no place for a low TTK game anyways, its a nightmare to balance
I think both together is a bit much, shorter timer sure thats good but imo removing the 2 kill reset is putting double tap in the same boat as old Reyna ult, now he has to aggro which is strange that they literally just made it so Reynas ult DIDNT require this
it makes a lot more since that he has to be aggro for a util, vs an ultimate that you can play the entire round with. they are similar survivability but isos isnt supposed to be like hes ulting every round.
âBut heâs supposed to be this intimidating in one-on-one match ups.â
Starting a round with a free shield still invalidates a pretty diverse amount of guns, just feels bad for a shooter to have something like this
i thought we were supposed to just âget used to himđ¤â
You actually cannot change base mechanics besides maybe movement speed. Who would have thought a character with EXTRA HP is broken. If any of you have played league you'll know how riot is this game will become too much to handle in a few years because of overturned and "new mechanic" based heroes
is this patch going to be used for stage 2?
Yeah, saw that coming.
Removing the two-kill reset is a perfect nerf
no recast is kinda tuff I feel like you just play retake against any iso and u win
Post-buff Iso is too strong for comp. However, he is still not gonna get picked in tournaments, especially with the nerfs they just solidified that. Does Riot have the competency to fix that? Will Iso remain be the only agent that's never picked in VCT?
I don't think this is the right way to nerf him, IMO. Just lock him out of being able to recast Double Tap while the skill is already in effect. Him having 2 shields in a single gunfight without an orb reset was the biggest issue.
Should have nerf neon poor iso
I think Iso need to nerf remove double-taps' armor when used Iso ult and hit someone it's op
Keep the two kill reset but it just refreshes the focus mode like before the buff
Glad they are adjusting it but they need to rethink their playtesting process something this game breaking shouldn't have gotten through
Hmm, I don't know if nerfing it THAT much will make it any good, he'll just return to the old position. I think the biggest problem with his shield is that he is denying 100% of a shot immediately by pressing a button. The whole point of an operator is punish peeks in certain angles. When you give an agent a guarantee that he'll be unpunished (cause he can't be, since the op needs time before firing again) he can peek it easily, so you change the whole game dynamic, making Iso the "must pick" of every team. If they kept his kit the same and made some modifications (for example the first shield cannot deny heavy bullet damage (OP, Guardian, Sheriff etc) or something like that) I think it would be a great fit.
Point of iso was to counter op, and smokes do the same thing
In a way I will agree, but the thing is he is not just countering op, by being able to swing in angles without a care it's not a plain counter. It gives an immediate advantage and there is no counter play in this. You can't wait for the shield to fall, (it was 20", now that it'll be 12 it'll be doable), you either have to find an elaborate way to break the shield or let Iso gain free real estate (free ground)
You can get tapped through shield, mollied off, or wallbanged to lose it. Duelist abilities tend to allow them to scale, yes.
I agree, but: if you molley you lose utility and risk getting peeked afterwards (now he just has a fair 1-1), wallbanging and breaking yes, but you give him info in where you are and allow him while you wallbang to let him walk in you. That's how at least I see it and why he's a nuisance
Smokes definitely do not do the same thing; they don't shoot back and kill you.
If you try and op through a smoke youâre getting sprayed to death. If you try and op an iso youâre getting tapped. I donât see the difference tbh.
They should buff his wall if theyâre adding this change
So Iso who was really weak got really strong because of a buff he needed and now they will make him weaker than before the buff?
I mean I don't want to completely nerf him, maybe make it so his shield can't sponge headshot idk
Ngl, I was so down for another OP agent meta like they did with Chamber. There needs to be a period of time each year where itâs just absurd buffs on one agent and the meta is around just that lmao
Maybe change his C and Q ability, that would be nice too cuz its so shit. Most of the shitness is the wall
Heâs still very good. Free shield to take fights + you can refresh it if you get a kill. 12 secs instead of 20 is good so you are forced to make a good decision whenever you want to activate it. (However I thought riot would remove the orb things and keep the 2 kill counter as itâs the trade mark for all duelists)
Id rather them revert him back to how he was or if youâre gonna remove the kill reset then remove the timer. Except a super quick timer after he loses shield for the kill but like just donât peek him after popping it
I hope they make some of his other abilities better at some point. Heâll probably still be ok though.
damn, he doesnât even get his second charge back, honestly deserved but still
Thank god
Revert him back to release form, this is just so bad
I feel like they should buff his Q and his C rather than just nerfing his E
I love how they can't make him balanced like he is either broken or shit
I think they just need to take away the orb minigame that allowed him to chain the ability. That was the issue. Removing the two kill reset is kinda lame. Agreen with the 20 second > 12 second change. Should work just like Jetts. Including the dash/shield
It's very tough to defend anything when the iso consistently goes in first, absorbs the headshot and kills you, or gets easily traded guaranteed.
I mean I think that he will be to bad now (compared to the other duelist) Edit: he need a nerf I just donât know if this was the right approach
I have never been so happy to see what is presented in front of my eyes lol
I still think he will be played more than before like being able to have the shield when u want at first
Im an iso main, Please dont nerf iso