This VALORANT Bug Makes Viper a Powerhouse: Recall Trick Causes Havoc
VALORANT, the tactical first-person shooter game developed by Riot Games, is known for its diverse roster of agents, each with unique abilities, best suited for different play styles. One of these agents, Viper, has recently garnered attention due to a bug that makes her appear more powerful than intended, causing disruption for opponents.
Viper, a controller agent, plays an essential support role with her poisonous abilities. Her Poison Orb ability, which deploys a toxic gas-filled sphere to obscure vision and control movements, has a crucial bug that affects its visual effects and gives Viper an unintended edge in gameplay.
The Viper Double Smoke Trick
The bug, known as the Viper Double Smoke trick, was first spotted and shared by popular YouTube creator Harsh Khelraay, famous for his expertise with this agent. The bug creates a confusing visual illusion, where it appears as if two Poison Orbs have been rapidly deployed, one after the other. In a game like VALORANT where players rely heavily on visual cues, this can serve as a major distraction for the enemy and give Viper a significant advantage.
To recreate the bug, players need to place the orb, activate it, and immediately recall it using the Q key. The end result is an illusion that looks similar to a popular VALORANT trick called the Swoop Peek, in which a player recalls an activated Poison Orb to gain a slight vision advantage over the enemy.
Unintended Consequences and Community Response
These visual bugs have serious implications for game balance, as players using Viper can exploit the Double Smoke trick to create an unpredictable gameplay style, something that becomes even more potent in high Elo where precise aim is crucial. Members of the VALORANT community have raised concerns about Viper being “broken” due to this bug and the powerful mechanic of recalling a smoke in general.
As of now, there has been no official response from the game developers regarding this bug, which could indicate that addressing it is not high on their list of priorities. Alternatively, it might be a more complex issue to fix than initially thought.
Recommendations and Potential Solutions
To maintain game balance, developers should work on fixing the Viper Double Smoke bug as soon as possible. This could be achieved through altering the visual effects or tweaking the orb recall mechanic to not enable rapidly deploying and recalling the Poison Orb. In the meantime, the VALORANT community can continue to raise awareness and report bugs to ensure these issues are appropriately addressed.
Ultimately, it remains to be seen how Riot Games will handle this particular bug and what consequences the fix might have on game balance. As Viper’s Poison Orb serves as a major support utility in VALORANT, we can only hope that developers will find the right balance between fixing the bug and preserving the agent’s intended playstyle.
