Valorant Update Addresses “Worrisome” Jett Problem

Valorant is updating one of its original agents, Jett, soon to address what Riot Games referred to as the “worrisome ways” this character has impacted the game. Jett’s abilities caused friction with the “tactical cycle” in place in Valorant which revolves around planning, executing, and gathering intel once more to start the cycle anew, so to fix that problem, Riot is updating the character’s dash ability. That new version of her dash is planned to release in Patch 4.08, but Riot’s gone ahead and offered a preview of those changes ahead of that release.

While the full patch notes for that update weren’t shared yet, a separate post was dedicated to Jett alone to reveal the changes planned as well as explanations for why they’re needed. The changes below for Jett’s Tailwind ability should be expected from Patch 4.08 whenever the notes are released in full ahead of the update itself.

Tailwind

• 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 Dash’s or the window expire, but can still be regained with two kills.

With these changes, Valorant’s agent designer Alexander Mistakidis hopes to bring Jett back to the “core loop” of the cycle mentioned previously. Mistakidis acknowledged that this will take some getting used to but said it’s felt this is the best solution for Jett after trying out plenty of different options.

“We developed and tested dozens of prototypes for Jett’s dash, but they came up short,” Mistakidis said. “Some of them avoided having to press the dash ability button twice, but ended up being less intuitive for players despite that. Some of them felt better for Jett players, but didn’t give us confidence that it solved the game health issues we set out to fix.”

In response to the inevitable question of why other agents weren’t buffed instead of simply nerfing Jett, Mistakidis said Jett’s presence “pressured the core tactical promise of the game” to a degree that other agents shouldn’t look to imitate, so Jett got nerfed while others stayed relatively the same.

The patch notes will undoubtedly have buffs and nerfs for other agents and different parts of the game, too, so look for them ahead of Patch 4.08’s release to see what’s planned.