Valorant: After recent nerfs, where does Raze stand in the meta?

Ever since her release during the initial weeks of the Valorant Closed Beta, Raze and her wide array of damaging abilities have become a hotbed of controversy.

While they are not as controversial as that of Reyna or Killjoy, the differences in opinion about her are enough to split the community right in two.

In the right hands, Raze can be incredibly oppressive, and all that mobility and damage can rip through the enemy frontline in a matter of seconds. Her Boom Bot and Paint Shells can effectively stall aggressive enemy pushes while having enough kill threat to give some easy frags.

However, with all the outcry within the Valorant community, the devs had no choice but to take her to the nerfing board. Moreover, the very fact that each of her abilities can deal damage, runs as a counter to what Riot CEO Nicolo Laurent said about gunplay and abilities in Valorant back in 2019.

You’ll need all your creativity and style to win: can’t count on cheats or internet lag to help you. We sent the team on a war against peeker’s advantage and aimbots.

— nicolo (@niiicolo) October 16, 2019

Hence, balance changes were inescapable. Right now, Raze has reduced damage and area of effect on her Blast Packs, and the total number of Paint Shells she can carry was nerfed along with how often it can refresh with kills and time.

How well is Raze doing on Valorant’s professional stage?

On the professional level, Raze is not performing as well as some might hope. Much like Reyna, she is one of the least picked Agents in the entirety of the Ignition Series, and in the recent FaZe Clan Valorant Invitational, she had a very low pick percentage of 42.

With that being said, Raze is slowly being utilised as a map-specific Agent, and it was Bind where she saw an incredible pick rate of 76 percent. So unless it’s Bind, Raze is not seeing the light of day in Valorant all that much.

How well is Raze doing in solo-queue?

Snap from Blitz.gg

In Solo/Duo-queue Valorant competitive games, Raze is one of the most popular Agents of choice, along with Sage and Jett.

Her popularity remains sky-high in every ranked tier. However, her win rate is quite average and sometimes even below. So for us, she will stand somewhere in the B tier.

Even after all the nerfs, she still remains one of the most popular Agents out of professional play.

Raze is Hiko’s most ‘comfortable’ Valorant Agent

100 Thieves’ star Spencer ‘Hiko’ Martin recently revealed in his stream with Fortnite star Ninja and Jordan Fisher that Raze is, by far, his most comfortable Agent.

And though it seems like an odd choice for a Valorant pro, who typically revolves their favourites around Jett and Omen, we don’t feel that Hiko is lying about his pick. In the Ignition Series tournaments, Hiko was one of the very few players who was picking up Raze both inside and outside of Bind.

Hence, when replying to Jordan Fisher about his favourite Agent in the game, we feel that Hiko was quite genuine about his Raze pick.