Will Yoru's rework finally improve his pick rate in competitive Valorant?

It looks like early next year in Valorant, Yoru will receive a much-needed boost in the form of tweaks and changes to his abilities. The news is sure to delight a number of players who prefer Yoru as their main pick and have not been able to play the agent to its full potential.

The general discontent from the Valorant community has been regarding the fact that Yoru hardly feels like a Duelist compared to other Duelist agents. He doesn't seem to have the explosive sharp edge that makes Duelists unique to what they do on the map.

This is also reflected in the abysmal pick rate of Yoru across almost all tiers, especially the higher tiers. According to blitz.gg, Yoru has a measly 0.7% pick rate in Competitive mode matches across all maps. The agent has not even been picked in the ongoing Valorant Champions 2021.

A possible change in fortune looks to be in the wind as Valorant developers have put out a blog post detailing future rework to Yoru's abilities in a bid to rejuvenate the character.

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Can the future changes salvage Yoru for the Valorant players

In the blog post, Ryan Cousart, game/character designer, describes the Duelist's need to have "a strong baseline value" so that the team can rely on it in any round. All this so that the agent remains viable in any team composition. Yoru's current kit makes him effective only when enemies have been conditioned for him in the early rounds, leaving him ineffective for longer than desired.

The developers see Yoru as an agent who "becomes a master of deception through an increased output of disinformation from round to round." They state that their aim is:

"For Yoru to have better tools to trick opponents, a stronger baseline value across his kit, and higher impact per round."

To this effect, they have discussed two major changes to his Fakeout and Gatecrash abilities. They have added interesting changes to each of them - by overhauling Fakeout by adding a visual component and making the tether of Gatecrash move faster with a smaller detection range and fake trigger possibility. To learn more in detail, read here.

These changes are likely to bring Yoru back into relevance. With the added options to his abilities, it opens up further possibilities of deception and outplays for the players to perform. Riot's implementation of these changes is long overdue and eagerly awaited by the Valorant community.