Riot’s lead gameplay designer describes some potential Raze tweaks and clarity changes for her Paint Shells and Showstopper Ultimate ability.

In the short time that the Valorant closed beta has been live, the character Raze has proven to be the games most controversial Agent. Players have been vocal about the fact that her grenades and rockets can be lethal without any warning. According to Valorants lead gameplay designer, Trevor Romleski, Riot has heard the complaints and is looking into it for the betas first major patch.
One of the communitys most frequent topics of conversation around Raze, which Romleski mentioned, is that her abilities focus more on damage than those of any other Agent. While gunplay is the only way for most characters to get kills, Raze can often use her grenades or her rockets to take enemies down. In fact, Romleski feels that this is part of the reason that shes drawn such a strong reaction.
Romleski explained in a phone interview that when an opponent is playing a particularly good game as Cypher, you may not notice how often youre getting trapped or being spotted on cameras, even though those moments can be the difference between winning and losing a round.
But when Raze is super high-impact and powerful, shes just killing a bunch of people, Romleski said. So its definitely more impactful and more obvious when balance is off with someone like Raze.
Even though this damage makes Raze a little more frustrating when shes overpowered, it does make it easier to balance her.
As far as things to change with her, I think in the same way that its more obvious when shes overpowered, its a bit more obvious what tuning levers make sense when balancing a character like that, Romleski said.
In other words, the balance team can take damage out of some of Razes most offensive abilities, whereas a character like Cypher, who doesnt have much damage in his kit, requires more specific changes.
Image: Riot Games via Polygon
But that isnt the only kind of change that Romleski said the team is discussing for Raze. It also wants to adjust the clarity of Razes abilities, to help players get better at dodging all that damage. Romleski explains that there has to be a balance between how powerful an ability, especially an Ultimate ability, is and how easy it is to dodge.
If you look at something like Brimstones Ultimate or Sovas Ultimate, Romleski said, those both can be lethal as well. But you get the right set of cues and information provided to you to plan around those abilities and react to them in the moment.
Romleski went on to explain why Raze might have an issue on that front.
For someone like Raze, those abilities are faster, Romleski said. And if youre not responding very quickly, [they] can be a lot more punishing. So what were assessing right now is, whats the right time window to react to these abilities? […] And do we give you the right visual and audio cues to respond to [them] accordingly so that you have fair counterplay against them?
Romleski also made it clear that while the plan is to get the patch out soon, there isnt an exact time frame yet. He explained that Riot wants to get a little bit more information before it makes any big changes to Valorant. With the closed beta just being a week old, its difficult to tell the difference between things that are overpowered or underpowered, and things that people need to get used to.
As an example, Romleski brought up Omen, a character that many in the Valorant community see as one of the weakest Agents in the game. But Romleski believes that part of the reason players think hes weak is because they dont fully understand how to use him yet. Similarly, he thinks that while Raze definitely needs some changes, players will also get better over time at understanding how to avoid her highest-damage abilities.
As for the rest of the changes that will be coming to Valorant, and what nerfs and buffs each character will actually get, well have to wait for the patch to actually be released sometime in the near future.
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