We are close to the release of VALORANT Patch 4.08, and Riot Games has announced major balance changes for Jett’s overpowered ability, Tailwind. The devs have been working on it for a long time now, and according to Alexander Mistakidis, Agent designer on VALORANT, “her dash has proved unhealthy to the tac cycle in a number of ways that we think are critical enough to address.”
Thus, as the VALORANT Patch 4.08 release, here’s how Jett’s dash ability, Tailwind, will operate.
- On pressing the ability key, after a short delay, Jett activates a 12-second window where she is empowered to immediately dash on the next button press.
- Her Tailwind charge is lost whether she Dash’s or the window expires but can still be regained with two kills.
According to Riot, this update will “bring Jett back into that core loop by asking her to call her shots and then engage with a window of dash power to make those trademark explosive plays. This should create clear signals for other players to consider and understand that Jett made a deliberate call.”
Riot further explained the key issues they found in Jett’s dash that forced them to make adjustments to one of the most favorite agents in VALORANT.
- 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.
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According to Riot, “Jett’s new dash will require an adjustment for players, but we feel this is the best solution to balance maintaining Jett’s identity while increasing game health.”
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