Valorant’s Brimstone might need a major buff after having a 0% pick rate in First Strike NA

From being a must pick Agent in competitive Valorant, Brimstone now hardly gets to see the light of day in both pro play and standard matchmaking.

With the arrival of Skye in the lineup, the Valorant meta has effectively shifted, to compliment gameplay and strategies which like to depend heavily on the use of vision-impairing abilities.

When Omen, Brimstone, and Sage were once the staple picks in the game, it has ever since changed to prioritizing comps that have Breach, Omen, Phoenix, and Skye in the line-up.

Smokes are not as important in Valorant as they used to be, and the recent First Strike tournament NA goes to show as much.

Image via vlr.gg

According to the stat chart created by vlr.gg it would seem that Brimstone is the least popular Agent in the game along with Sage and Viper.

The trio had a 0 percent pick rate through the entirety of the competition, and the North American professionals didn’t bother to pick any of them up in any of the maps that they played.

This got a lot of Valorant players, including Brimstone mains, feeling that the Agent might require some much-needed buffs in future updates.

In a recent Reddit post, a Valorant player who goes by the handle of rust_mods_suck_dick, shines some light on how underwhelming Brimstone feels at the moment and suggests some buff ideas that can help improve his pick rate.

Valorant's Brimstone is in dire need of buffs

Image via Esports Tales

The Valorant player suggests the one aspect of Brimstone which really sticks out like a sore thumb, is that when deploying smokes, Brimstone is left vulnerable, as the gun is unequipped and the wrist map pops up.

The Redditor feels that “it would be pretty cool to be able to set your smokes beforehand and then deploy them while having your gun out during execution.”

Preemptively being able to set your smokes and then activating them to fit the situation at hand, can immensely help Brimstone players out.

It will allow him to set himself up for success, and not just his team, as more often than not, Brimstone takes up the more supportive role for the entry fraggers.

Rust_mods_suck_dick suggests that the interaction for Brimstone’s new smoke animation can play out like this:

• Press E to bring up the full map, set smokes, close map
• When you get in range for a full deploy of smokes brim maybe says a line "ready to deploy smokes"
• Press E again to deploy smokes(while having your gun out or while doing anything)
• Hold E to reset smoke locations and bring up the map again

The entire process provides a great deal of flexibility and Brimstone can once again be flexed into any Valorant line-up.

With Sage already receiving a big boost to her kit in Valorant patch 1.14, Brimstone mains can be optimistic about a buff coming his way in future updates.