VALORANT players are all too familiar with Jett. Being an Agent that released with the game, the wind-weaving Duelist is almost synonymous to the game itself. VALORANT developer and publisher Riot Games is grounding Jett by introducing massive nerfs to her dash, Tailwind.
In the blog post, Agent designers Alexander Mistakidis, Jay Watford, and Sal Garozzo talked about Jett's upcoming changes, and their rationale for it. They began by saying that they “wanted to do right for the game's health and for Jett players.”
Jett Tailwind Nerfs
The designers said that Jett's impacts on the game aside from her powerful entry potential and kill streaks from Blade Storm has been worrisome, and “pushes beyond VALORANT's core tactical cycle.”
The following changes will be applied to Jett's Tailwind come Patch 4.08:
- On pressing the ability key, after a short delay Jett activates a 12 second window where she is empowered to immediately dash on next button press.
- Her Tailwind charge is lost whether she uses her Dash or the window expires, but can still be regained with two kills.
Upon activating it, white streaks of win will be displayed on the sides of the Jett player's HUD, denoting that the Tailwind recast is available. There is also a bar in the middle of the screen, indicating the 12 second duration of the recast. As for her enemies and allies, they can see faint wisps of wind circling Jett's legs while the recast is available.
The rationale provided by the dev team was to keep the tactical cycle by “asking her to call her shots then engage with a window of dash power.” Since Tailwind is no longer available instantly, Jett players now need a little bit of foresight to make full use of the reposition.
Alexander and his team also lined up the following bullets as the “key issues” with the Jett dash as it is now:
- The dash had no prerequisite, so she always had access to her escape power with no intentional decision making. This freedom gave Jett the unintended capacity to continually take space or hold unusual ground without having to commit her ability. This play pattern is something that no other Agent could match, and allows Jett to exert an extreme amount of pressure on a match in a way that can be oppressive, especially at high MMRs or in professional play.
- This lack of intentional decision making made it feel like she played outside of the tactical cycle all our other Agents adhere to. Too often, she didn’t have to leverage game sense that other Agents needed to succeed, because her reactive dash could often negate her own strategic mistakes, or the great tactical calls by her opponents.
- As we talked about in the Controller Deep Dive, one of our core design philosophies is that Agents are sharp and provide both clear upsides and opportunity costs when compared to their peers. Jett's strength as both a dash-in executor on attack and holding angles with an Op—with unrestricted access to escape—provided her broad power with little downside. We want her to retain as much aggressive power on offense as possible, but reduce her defensive Op power.
- Even in highly coordinated play, she's proven very difficult to strategize against, and her access to an instant escape (not to mention two on demand smoke screens) marginalized most of the tools the rest of the Agents have to deal with her.
To cut the story short, the dev team had to cut down Jett's “recklessness” provided by the dash, without taking it all away. With the changes, Jett players keep their Dash while also providing viable counterplay to her enemies.
VALORANT is Bigger than One Agent
The blog post also gave a reason why they didn't just buff the other duelists to match Jett's powerful potential. Aside from keeping the focus on gun play, buffing the other agents to match might “jeopardize the tactical promise” key to VALORANT. Alexander and his team also left the following words:
“It’s not just about existing Duelist balance either, as Jett’s power also makes it more difficult to create compelling and viable alternatives for Duelist players. Also it sometimes made it hard to balance other Agents. For example, we were concerned about a Sova nerf before we shipped 4.08, since his utility is a key piece of how many of you deal with Jett in coordinated play. We found it necessary instead to update Jett’s dash ability to avoid reworking the entire game around her.”
Jett's Future
The VALORANT dev team hopes that the changes reward thoughtful plays. They said that they're also committed to making sure that Jett keeps her unique spot on the roster, while providing apt counterplay.
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