Yoru's rework is on the horizon for VALORANT, but will this make him better?

Yoru has always been regarded as one of the worst agents in VALORANT.

Although his concept of a trickster appears to be disruptive on paper, a lot of his abilities leave much to be desired in gameplay, especially when he is surrounded by agents that are able to provide much better value to a team.

Mastering Yoru requires ton of hours put into him to play him right, and even then, he hasn’t seen the light in professional play, even though there are notable high level players that are finding success with using him as a main character, like Red or Ethos.

His teleport is slow moving, its activation time isn’t comparable to Jett’s dash or Reyna’s Dismiss, and makes a ton of noise when he activates it.

The usage of his decoy footsteps is also extremely situational. One may argue that he has one of the best flashes in the game, since he can lob it to anywhere on the screen, but if you are using him just for his ability to flash, there are other agents out there that could fill the void more comfortably, like Skye or KAY/O.

His current Ultimate is good for scouting areas to provide information, reposition or to get a jump on an enemy, but feels lacklustre as an Ultimate.

This has caused Riot Games to concentrate on a rework of Yoru’s abilities.

In a “State of the Agents” update that Riot put out recently, the team stated a couple of interesting things regarding the Yoru rework.

First, with Yoru’s Gatecrash ability (the teleport orb), the orb now has an increased 20% travel speed, which will allow it to reach its intended destination faster.

Players can also trigger the teleport orb to create a fake teleport sound, instead of always having Yoru teleport to the destination of the orb.

Additionally, Yoru will have two teleport charges instead of one, based on the test footage that Riot showed in the update.

Another interesting change to note is that his Fakeout, the fake footsteps ability, is now changed to full-sized Yoru decoy (much like Mirage’s ability in Apex Legends) that will wind up and explode if shot at, debuffing enemies around it. It is unclear if it will debuff allies as well. They also changed the ability to a single charge instead of a double charge.

The team did not share any updates to Yoru's flash, however, so there is no information regarding any changes.

They also didn’t share much regarding any change to his Ultimate ability, but the same video footage also showed his Ultimate requiring 7 ultimate points instead of the 6 points currently.

The only hint we got from the update regarding his Ultimate is that it will “help Yoru break sites wide open”.

Thoughts on the changes

As someone who plays a lot of Yoru, I would say that the change to his Gatecrash and Fakeout ability is a very welcome change.

That you can trigger a fake teleport on command, instead of only doing it at certain places due to a bug, is going to make his mind games even more potent. The fact that the teleport orb also travels so much faster now should make Yoru more effective when entering a site.

His Fakeout being a full-sized Yoru will also cause a lot of paranoia and trickery, especially when played right.

By just allowing the enemy to see a glimpse of Yoru running in a direction is enough to make the enemies question if that's the real deal or not.

Coupled with the fact that the Fakeout may debuff your enemies, opponents will need to make the split decision to shoot it if you send it in their direction in a chaotic moment, or risk it actually being the real Yoru, running at them with a Judge in hand.

Riot has said that the Yoru rework will be live in early 2022. It is still unknown if the rework will accompany the release of the next agent, Neon, or come sometime after the 20th agent’s release. We will definitely be covering his changes once they arrive.

I am definitely waiting patiently to get my hands on a new and improved Yoru. Hopefully with these changes, he will be able to compete on the same level as his other Duelist counterparts.

Dominic loves tech and games. When he is not busy getting headshotted in VALORANT or watercooling anything he sees, he does some pro wrestling.

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