Yoru as an agent was released in Valorant back in January 2021. Yoru brought to Valorant an interesting and unique decoy-based kit that would have challenged the status quo of tactical competitive shooter just like Jett’s dash. But Yoru’s design only works after multiple rounds of decoy conditioning and faking, which means he is not of any use before and after his “dream play”. Players asked for a rework that would fix this aspect to make him more reliable to play.
Contents
Yoru Rework
It’s been around 6 months since the announcement of Yoru reworks and the wait for the agent rework will finally come to fruition. Riot is set to revamp his entire kit during Episode Four Act Two. Here, we breakdown the changes in Yoru’s starting with:
FAKEOUT
Previously Fakeout would ” directionally mimics the sound of Yoru’s footsteps to mislead enemies”. It was a weak ability and would never work on experienced players. The ability has been changed “to a full copy of Yoru, that runs forward, and when damaged, explodes and debuffs enemies”
The debuff here is a directional conical flash towards the direction of the player who shot the decoy. Allies will be able to differentiate the decoy from the real, but to enemies it will look like an actual player walking towards them. It seems the decoy has 1hp.
GATECRASH
The core ability to gatecrash remains the same, Yoru can still Teleport to his gatecrash but a new layer has been added to it. Yoru can now Fake TP. Roit devs conveyed their intentions about this in a blog post stating” 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?”. Using fake TP will leave a “puddle” on the ground.
DIMENSIONAL DRIFT
Yoru’s ultimate got the biggest and the most amount of changes. Riot devs commented that they “wanted to fix some of the unintended play patterns that have shown up in-game.” As of now, Yoru’s ultimate is used either as a tool to get out of harm’s way or to get behind enemies and shorty them then TP away. While these are valid applications of the ultimate, Riot wanted his ulti to be “the tools to gain ground on enemies using stealth and initiate the rest of his team to follow.”
The changes are:
- 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 the cast.
The changes to his ULTI now provide him enough potential to support his team as they enter the site and stealthy approach enemies to gain a upper hand. This will allow Yoru to enter the enemy line unhindered, creating pressure among them on the whereabouts of his presence.
The Yoru rework changes are still in the works and can change before his rework release. Yoru can finally become a viable agent creating new opportunities for various new team-comps. Valorant is a game about infinite possibilities and with these changes, it is safe to say that the game will be getting more fun and more complex, and we should be thrilled about this.
