Valorant's pricey Operator sniper rifle has been the subject of some ire in the game's fanbase, capable of ripping through enemies with ease in the right hands.
Fans have been calling out for the gun (that costs a princely 4500 creds) to be nerfed since it can kill an enemy with a single shot both via a head or body shot. Riot has other ideas, though.
Is Valorant's Operator Weapon Being Nerfed?
Ryan 'Morello' Scott, the game's lead character designer, noted the following on stream:
“We don’t think the Operator is overpowered. We think some portions of utility might be underperforming in mid elos...but not elite elos or expert elos. We don’t think there’s a balance problem."
When discussing the lethal rifle, Scott explained that players simply aren't countering it correctly.
“There’s an ‘I can’t access the tools I need to fight an operator’ [scenario] in a lot of cases. ‘It’s so much harder to do the coordination for an un-coordinated team that we’re getting bodied by Operators. We don’t think the Operator is actually overpowered.”
“It’s doing what it’s supposed to do. You walk around the corner, and an OP is standing on the corner, it shoots you, and you die? That’s by design, we will not be fixing that.”
Instead of nerfing the weapon, Riot is potentially looking to buff Agents that can offer a counter to it. So, Phoenix, Reyna, or Breach's flash abilities could be the difference-maker.
“My worry is that we don’t see people running a Breach, or a Phoenix, or a Reyna who have flash-like utility, because I think our flash-like utility might just not be potent enough compared to some of the guns. They pop slower, they are harder to place in the right space, they have lower debuff times, they don’t go smokes — if you compare it one-to-one with CS, ours are much worse. That’s by design, but it’s maybe too much worse.”