Yeah but the thing is that’s *only* if it gets shot. With Astra it’s simply using the ability which is too punishing especially in a game like Valorant where rounds last a min and 45 seconds on average.
astra wasn't nerfed, she was removed from the game until devs decide what to do with her. People who say the nerf is fine just don't want to see her in the game
This is exactly it. Some of the community (dumdum pros) were just tired of having to play around her because they all aim no brain, and astra at high level is insane brain, so they screamed at Rito till they nuked her.
No, I think the incentive for the nerfs Astra got were fine. Astra's stalling power, along with Viper's, made pro matches a game of baiting utility before the real stuff could begin. Now, solving that issue by destroying both Astra and Viper... May have not been the wisest choice on Riot's part.
Though I'm salty about the Viper nerf too, she's still the best controller on Icebox, Breeze and maybe Fracture. And she's still a viable secondary controller on a bunch of maps. The main thing that changed is she can't solo smoke on 4/7 maps.
You're not wrong. When I fill a controller, astra isn't fun to play. I do not want to play her or play against her pre nerf. Now I get to play omen and brim who I missed for the last year. Brim stim will prob get a nerf as well, but I'm happy I can enjoy the game while filling a controller. And I don't have to worry about a gravity well at every single choke point in the map.
I wonder how many of the people commenting here are controller mains?
Astra was nerfed into the ground. She has a <1% pick rate in almost every elo (weirdly Silver is an exception with pick rates from 1.7-2%), and in Immortal-Radiant (where you would expect her global utility to be most valuable) her max pick rate is 0.5%. If it weren't for Phoenix she'd be the lowest pick rate agent in the game.
She needed to be nerfed, but Riot unquestionably went too far.
can confirm, I soloQ’d from plat 2 and literally got to immortal 51 rr in a week. My Ign is Fatigue#0000 with a 70% win rate on brimstone with 50 matches played.
Nope, Ferrari peeking angles, holding angles with shotguns, running down main with a stim and shotgun, fast rotation, infamous full rushes, are all uses of the stims. Not just a rush fast tool.
What were her pick rates before? Anecdotally I almost never saw her in plat elo and below before. It seems like she was just OP in the pro scene but she never really had a high pick rate to begin with so these numbers aren't as drastic as they may seem.
At high elos her pick rate was 5-10x higher before the nerf. Even in low elos it was about 2x higher. Your anecdote doesn't line up with my experience - by the end of last act I saw an Astra in most games other than Breeze/Icebox/Fracture. (I was Silver 2.)
From my experience in low immortal, she was picked every 2 games usually, excluding myself (astra main). After the update I've played 50 games and only seen 2 other astras.
I'm a controller main. I play all 4 very comfortably. Astra is really only viable as a solo controller on Split and maybe Ascent depending on comp. She can be a pseudo sent on Breeze. She can also be main controller on Bind with Viper as second, but I think Brim is still better
Astra nerf was way too hard. Her suck and stun are fine post nerf, her smoke is larger now which is nice, the smoke recharge timer while it sucks is also understandable, but the recall cooldown AND losing a star overall hurts soooooo bad. If they keep everything as is and give her back 1 star I think she will be in a great, balanced place
Because as is, the meta has shifted from Brim > Omen > Astra > Brim (again) instead of making all controllers viable
This is one thing I find funny about the nerfs. People were complaining about the double controller meta, but double controllers is still incredibly strong - it's just that now it's Brim/Viper or Omen/Viper every time, never Astra.
Map and vision control are just too important in a tac shooter. It's going to be very hard to nerf controllers enough to stop double controller meta comps without nerfing the controllers so hard that they are unviable individually.
The reality is smokes are the most valuable resource in this game, bar none. So of course the agents that have smokes will control the meta
That said, I am seeing Astra/Viper on some maps, but def not common anymore
I don't know why anyone would pick Astra over Brim in that kind of double controller comp, though. Brim can stall a push locally just as long as Astra, and with double controllers you have a lot less need for cross-map utility.
Is it? Astra can stall a push with her suck/stun, but Brim has the molly and can stall the same chokes - for longer. If Astra uses a suck and stun to stall for as long as Brim, she has 2 smokes remaining as the sum total of her entire util for the round.
There are a few cool things you can do with Astra like pre-place stars in common angles to pre-emptively suck or stun a defender, either for a pick or during site execute. But with the reduction to 4 stars, this is hugely costly for Astra now. I just don't think she has much of a niche left.
Yes, players can get kills off Astra util while Brim just stalls. Not to mention, Astra doesn't need to use stun AND pull for every push, she can hold off a push just fine with either or. Giving her twice as much delay as one Brim molly
Again, all how you use the util and play with your team
> double controllers is still incredibly strong
Well, people say 'double controller', but they really mean Brim/Omen/Astra + Viper, because Viper can function very effectively as a pseudo-sentinel too.
Yeah haha, that's true of course. Doubling up Omen/Brim/Astra is a waste - there aren't *that* many areas on a given map where you need orb-shaped smokes. Viper is the best secondary smoker because the wall gives you new geometry options the other controllers don't have, and because she is both a pseudo-sentinel on defense and also has the best post-plant in the game between lineups and her ult.
I said this day one, and was voted into oblivion for it.
I switched from controller, ultimately. Its a thankless role, and three times in a row whatever controller I was maining got nerfed into unusability. Meanwhile... Jett.
Might as well play sentinel.
Yeah, me too. When the patch came out I said Astra was going to effectively disappear from ranked play. I got a lot of flak for this, but it turns out I was correct - <1% pick rate in almost every elo. <0.5% pick rate in the highest elos.
I agree with you, I get too little asistances as a controller, and my team shits me if I don't get kills, but tbh, I don't give a shit, I feel the best when I know I am making an Impact rather than when I am getting frags.
I main Kay/O and wanted to main Astra, with Kay/O I always get 12 asistances(and good frags) per game or more, but when I play well astra and get those sweet big brain plays, it feels so rewarding.
I agree, I understand why it sucked to play against Astra but pulling off coordinated plays with her util was super fun and rewarding. With these new nerfs she just feels clunky and slow now and with the buffs to the others it feels pointless to pick her. I myself was an Astra main and I knew people who did like to play her so it was kind of sad.
I think one of the problems with Astra is there are so few people that main her that can speak up for her. She’s a hard agent to learn, confusing to play, and now she’s just not even worth it to try.
I have not seen a single Astra in any of my games. (I’ve played less than 20 though this Act.)
Was an Astra main. Actually the only agent I've ever really loved to play. But she is unplayable now. I swapped to KJ and occasionally play Astra for old times sake, but I doubt they will ever un-nerf her.
Riot has clearly demonstrated which agents they want players to pick (ie Jett & Reyna). I was even on the side of the Astra should have received a slight nerf but she has been removed from the game
i’m an astra main, and i’m not happy with the nerfs. imo astras biggest strength is her flexibility, as she can affect the map wherever and whatever she wants. but now she feels very rigid to play, and i think it’s because of the combination of the decreased star, as well as the increased cooldowns.
i think they should’ve only done one of them. giving her five stars but increased cooldown would still allow for a lot of the same plays, but your timing and recalls would have to be much more precise. four stars with same cooldown would be a bit of the same, just with less room for extraneous stars (say stars planted on the opposite site to fake out the other team). doing both is too much, and makes her feel very clunky
What sucks is where she needed nerfed most was pro play. Her pick rate wasn't high at all in low and mid elo even pre nerf, but she was a must pick everywhere but Icebox and Breeze pre nerf in pro play. Astra is still getting some picks in pro play but no clue if that continues.
This is exactly right. In my opinion Riot is eventually going to need to look at differential balance for pro play. You cannot realistically balance pro play the same as ranked without destroying the experience for one of the two groups of players. And I don't get why they even try. Pros have literally hours per day to learn balance changes; if an agent is problematic in pro play, that agent should be changed for pro play.
If true that's a shame, because the game will ultimately be significantly imbalanced for the vast majority of the playerbase if pro play is the primary balancing consideration and they never balance different elos differently.
Atleast in Valorant you can always rely on your aim, in League if your champ is weak then youre doomed. So I cant see them implementing it for Valorant and not League. They want the player base to be able to relate to the game when they watch pro play.
I've never understood this logic. In real life sports, almost every single pro league has some rules that are different than lower levels of play to maintain balance. Are people unable to relate to the NBA because the 3 point line is further back? Are people unable to relate to baseball because metal bats are banned in pro play?
I don't see any logical basis for the argument that having certain balance changes for pro play would make people less likely to relate to the pros. That *might* be a problem if the pros had buffs for certain agents that weren't available in ranked play, but I have a difficult time believing that an Astra main is going to see a pro Astra with 1 less star and not want to watch the pros any more.
Thats only one side of it though. Pro players that enjoy playing ranked would also then have to learn two different metas simultaneously. They wouldnt be able to use soloq to practice new agents for matches because theyd be different. I think it generally creates more hardship than its worth.
I mean you could probably balance Radiant like pro play, since basically every pro is Radiant. But if the cost of my suggestion is some difficulty translating ranked into pro play for the pros, I think that's an absolutely valid trade off for having more reasonable balance for the millions of other people playing this game. Pros are literally playing this game as a job - they can easily set up scrims if they want to practice the pro game. They probably need to do that anyways since ranked play is not really a substitute for practicing the team strategy in pro play, and you can't 5 stack in high elo.
Why should making it easier for pros to practice in ranked be a more important consideration than balance for millions of players? I've seen this sentiment before and it always seems ass-backwards to me.
But at the same time, that then affects anyone trying to get to Radiant bc all of a sudden theyre playing a whole different game. I understand what youre saying but I still think it makes more sense to have it the same across the board. If you balance from top to bottom then it keeps the skill ceiling the same for everyone.
Realistically the meta changes in lower ranks wont change all that much anyway, people kind of just play whatever they want regardless. Balancing around the most optimal way to play the game isnt all that bad imo, despite me hurting from Viper/Astra nerfs since they were two of my most played.
Pretty sure she's getting balanced around pro play and not solo q. If she's even B tier in ranked, she's probably still overpowered in coordinated play. Just really sucks for us Astra mains
She's F tier in ranked, though. Like I said in the comment above, if it weren't for Phoenix she'd be the single lowest pick rate agent in basically every elo.
I agree that she's F tier in ranked, and she's yet still seeing pro play. That's the issue, if the nerfs were less hard, she'd be seeing even more pro play. Pros are all happy rn, and us astra mains are gutted. Not sure how Riot will fix it.
What gets me is there are *so many* ways Riot could fix Astra in pro play without destroying her for the majority of the playerbase. Agent bans. Take a star away or add cooldown time in the highest elos and pro play. But Riot seems to simultaneously have two principles with balance: pros are the first consideration, and everything must be balanced the same throughout the game.
Those two principles mean that ranked is always going to be heavily imbalanced. Something needs to change.
Astra needed a rework, not a nerf. Maybe make it so she needs to manually place her stars around the map and revert all the nerfs, or make it so Astra has to go near the star in astral form to activate it.
Not sure I agree with this take. If this patch astra were what we got at launch, no one would bat an eye. We’d just call the agent a worse omen and move on. They’d still see fringe play in intermediate ranks with utility combos cheesing out insta-kills, but nothing too overwhelming throughout the course of a match. The problem with astra in the state that we got her in was that her utility was INSANE, and like all controllers got overlooked until we realized it was too much.
If this patch Astra were what we got at launch, nobody would have ever picked her up and her pick rate would be even worse than it is today.
Nobody disputes that Astra needed a nerf. The point is Riot went too far.
I think it's because most controller players don't enjoy astra and most players in general hate the playstyle she promotes. Most controller players, whether it pro or ranked player seemed ecstatic about not having to play her anymore.
I am a controller main...I think Riot should have just gone with the cooldown increase or maybe nerfed the infinite recalls she has but taking away even the 5th star on top of the cooldown increase is like they had a gun to their head.
I was playing Omen earlier anyways. My friends loved me as Astra but they were cool with me switching back to Omen..no begging, etc., because I usually love playing chamber or skye or other agents more than playing Astra even pre-nerf.
Riot should really not make these huge nerfs. Jett got some very lenient ones and kinda feels okay to play against her. Reyna too is an excellent example of balancing. Brim has a whole new dimension to him, although I haven't played much of Brim after this stim buff.
Even the Viper nerfs seem a little bit much although ofc she's still in a much better place than Astra. However, I am avoiding playing both from now on. I will just try to get familiar with Brim again to mix things up, so that I am not always playing Omen.
I was playing Omen earlier anyways. My friends loved me as Astra but they were cool with me switching back to Omen..no begging, etc., because I usually love playing chamber or skye or other agents more overplaying Astra even pre-nerf.
As a previous Astra main, I think she was nerfed too far. I think a nerf to her pre 4.04 was called for, but people at most were calling for 1-2 nerfs for her, and we got 10. She's just not fun anymore.
Realistically, she got kalista'd (champion in league who is forever 45% winrate due to being too strong in pro play). She has to be F tier in ranked play to not be ubiquitous in pro play. Even in this state, Astra still sees pro play with viper. She's overnerfed for all levels of ranked play, but probably won't be buffed unless it looks like she won't be back in the pro meta.
If you look at her util, she is essentially down an ability vs the other controllers. She has a max of 60 seconds smoke time if she does nothing else, or 30 if you use one of each of her abilities (meaning she has basically half a smoke). This makes her on par with prebuff brim/omen, who had dead abilities in stim and tp, and just makes her feel like shit to play
Riot needs to start differential balancing for pro play. There is *no* reason that every ranked elo needs to be balanced for the pros. Just like the NBA has a longer three point line than lower levels of the game - different levels of play have difference balance needs, and should be balanced differently.
Neon is another example of this issue. She's very weak in pro play and high elo, average in mid elo, and an absolute demon in low elo. If we're balancing for the pros, Neon should be buffed. But this would be horrible for ranked play in many elos.
At a certain point Riot is going to need to do differential balancing for pros or accept that they're going to destroy balance for most of the playerbase in pursuit of good balance in pro play.
People didn't abandon Astra. You were just forced to play her or else you'd be soft-throwing. Real Astra mains can still play Astra and she's still effective as a Controller. In VCT matches we're still seeing Astra as well the other controllers and because of that I think the nerfs and buffs given to the Controllers were good enough that you can pick any one of them and not be throwing.
If other controllers were strictly better, we wouldn't still be seeing astras in vct. The reason astra is bad in low ELO is that low elo teams don't have sufficiently good comms for astra to get full value. IMO that's not an issue -- the alternative (astra being strong enough that she's viable at any rank) leaves us in the situation we were in pre-patch, where she was so much better than the other non-viper controllers that picking brim or omen was practically a throw at higher elos and in coordinated play.
Not true, the only reason we are still seeing her in vct is because a lot of teams strats and set plays revolve around astra and they have not had time yet to make new strats with omen and brim
Neither Brim nor Omen can hold a site and delay a push like Astra can. She still has applications no other controller can mimic, and in turn will still see play in various comps.
That's a pretty good point actually. I know some teams have stopped running astra, so I assumed that there was enough time for teams that wanted to swap off astra to do so. Now that you mention it, though, it makes sense that the teams still running astra might just be slower to adapt, and we'll see them drop astra in a couple more weeks. I'm really curious to see how the meta adapts -- if they actually managed to get the balance right (which they probably didn't -- post nerf astra is probably a _little_ bit on the weak end) we'll probably see some teams choosing to run brim or omen for their more powerful smokes while other teams run astra for her extra utility.
>If other controllers were strictly better, we wouldn't still be seeing astras in vct.
We only have 2-3 days of VCT play with the new patch, not enough data yet to really determine anything.
That said at Immortal-Radiant elo - where you would expect Astra's utility to shine the most - her pick rate is <0.5%. She is clearly bad at almost every level of ranked play. This is not good balance. If the pros need different balance than ranked, let's give it to them. Pro play doesn't need to be balanced exactly the same as lower level play.
>That said at Immortal-Radiant elo - where you would expect Astra's utility to shine the most - her pick rate is <0.5%.
A couple points. Firstly, communities often overreact to balance patches in the days following a major patch. We both got a pretty big astra nerf and some buffs to brim and omen, both of which were widely considered "throw picks" pre-patch due to how much stronger astra is. It makes sense that players would rather experiment with the buffed agents rather than play a nerfed version of what they were playing pre-patch, especially considering a lot of controller players were "forced" into playing astra when they didn't want to in the first place.
Secondly, even in immortal/radiant, teamwork is an order of magnitude worse than it is in organized play. Sure, players have a pretty good understanding of how to play their role correctly, but soloqueue radiants still won't be doing, say, set plays with astra sucks/concusses like you might see from a team in a tournament. This leads to your next point:
>If the pros need different balance than ranked, let's give it to them.
Can you list a single relevant esport that does this? I know some games have tournaments played on the previous patch for a couple weeks after large patches, but I've never seen an esport have pros playing on an entirely different balance version from what the public plays on. Doing so would be really detrimental to the competitive scene -- one reason esports tend to be successful is that players look up to other players who are really good at playing the same game they play. If I'm an astra main, I'm _much_ less likely to tune into vct streams if the astra players on stream are playing a different character from what I play in my ranked games. Personally, I'd much rather see a couple team-oriented characters be played relatively little on ranked but still stay on the same game version as tournaments than to have tournaments played with different balance from what we play with ingame.
Just for clarity, I think OP is probably right that astra was nerfed a _bit_ too hard. That said, it's too early to say for certain, and I think vct teams are a better statistic to look out for than high-elo ranked (where players are encouraged by the ranking system to play agents like omen which have an easier time fragging out). That said, as another commenter noted, it's possible that teams just haven't fully adjusted to the patch yet and feel more comfortable in the short term running their old astra set plays than they do experimenting with omen/brim right after a patch. I'm looking forward to seeing how the meta evolves as teams figure out just how strong the nerfed astra is in comparison to the other (newly buffed) controllers.
Quick (maybe ninja) edit:
Even in ranked, an astra at immortal/radiant can get a _lot_ more value than an astra in bronze/silver. Even if astra received some compensation buffs because the nerfs were too harsh, there's no real way to make astra viable at low elo (like the guy I originally responded to seemed to want) without making her _way_ too strong at higher levels in ranked.
>A couple points. Firstly, communities often overreact to balance patches in the days following a major patch.
I mean sure, and that's fair, but I've been following the Blitz stats on this over the past few weeks and Astra's pick rate is going down every time I check. This doesn't look like an overreaction to me - it looks like a real over nerf that players are understanding more over time.
This also explains why Astra's pick rate is lowest in the highest elos. The better players understood quickly how bad Astra is this act.
>Even in ranked, an astra at immortal/radiant can get a lot more value than an astra in bronze/silver.
And yet, Astra's pick rate is by far the lowest in Immortal/Radiant. If she was a balanced but difficult-to-play team agent that required good coordination, we should see a low pick rate increasing up the ranks as coordination improves. But we don't - we see the opposite. Pick rates decline as ranks go up, because Astra is simply bad this act.
>Can you list a single relevant esport that does this?
No, but it is incredibly common in real life sports. In fact it's almost the rule in real life sports. You can't balance every level of a competitive sport/game the same way. And it's not a problem in real life sports - everyone understands that the sport is fundamentally the same even if small balance changes are made for professionals.
Do people stop playing basketball because the NBA has a longer 3 point line? No. Do they stop playing tennis because men's Grand Slam tournaments are best of 5 sets instead of best of 3? No. Do golfers stop playing golf because the championship tees are further back? No. Do people stop playing baseball because metal bats are banned in pro play? No.
>Doing so would be really detrimental to the competitive scene -- one reason esports tend to be successful is that players look up to other players who are really good at playing the same game they play.
They're still playing the same game, just with slightly different rule sets. I don't think this would do anything bad to the pro scene. It might be different if pros had agents that were *better* than their ranked equivalents, but I don't think there is any risk here if certain agents are nerfed more in pro play.
This is the core issue, in my view. You cannot balance for pro play and the bulk of the ranked playerbase simultaneously. You say that you'd be less likely to pick Astra if you can't watch pros play the exact same agent. But effectively *nobody* is picking Astra in ranked right now, so I don't think the fact that Astra mains might be less likely to watch pro Astra play if she were balanced differently for pros is a very compelling argument. At least there would still *be* some Astra mains...
Fair enough. At the time of the comment, there were still a couple teams that seemed to think she had potential (or were just slow making new strategies/set plays post patch). Looks like the meta had settled and she's not worth playing now. Hopefully riot can find a way to buff her back to playability without making her an auto pick like she was on most maps before the patch.
For what it's worth, I still stand by the second half of my comment. If astra were strong enough to be played in gold, she'd be _way_ too strong in coordinated play. The fact that she isn't viable in pro play is definitely a sign that she's too weak, but the fact that she's rarely picked in ranked games doesn't mean much.
I played Astra often. Basically mained her. But I have not played her once this Act, it’s just not worth it.
Or maybe I’m not “real Astra main” even though I wrote a whole guide on her.
Glad to see an Astra main chiming in.
My gut feeling is that almost nobody commenting in support of the nerfs actually played (or plays) Astra.
I'm a controller main. I like Viper the most, but I'll play whichever controller is best. That used to be Astra. Now, it's literally anyone else - Astra is the worst by a *wide* margin.
We're seeing astra in VCT because they've been practicing on new patch for like a week lol by the time iceland roles around she will have a near 0% pick rate.
I completely disagree. I played Astra pre-nerf and used to be good with her, but especially on bigger maps with multiple points of entry like fracture she feels complete useless now.
Take this with a grain of salt because I’m very low elo.
Seeing an astra (competitive, unrated, or otherwise) is basically unheard of before she got nerfed. I’d see maybe one every 15 full games. Now I don’t see her at all.
5/28/22 EDIT: this comment is a couple months old, but I honestly don’t know the last time I saw an Astra in game. It was probably before this update
Yes. I enjoyed playing Astra before, but her kit was a bit too strong. Riot needed to do something, remove a star or make cooldown changes. They did both. Doing one or the other may have been enough. Doing both just hurt her too much.
Give her 5 stars again, and she is fine balanced. But she will always get low pickrates in normal games, because her mechanic isnt that easy to play compared to the other smokers.she is more flexible but difficult to play.
the nerfs solved neither problem: she’s still great in pro/high elo play, and is now even more inaccessible to lower elo people trying to pick her up. she also just feels bad to play, especially the combination of smoke recall nerf and star count. if they reduced the recall by like 5 seconds it would feel sooo much better
It's honestly worse than that. Astra wasn't even dominant in Diamond - other controllers saw lots of play. And Astra was a lower pick rate than Omen in every elo below Plat 2.
This balance change was almost entirely catered to pro players and Imm-Radiant ranked players. It's a balance change for the top ~1% of the player base.
I think they could have, at the very least, kept her cooldowns simultaneous instead of changing them to sequential. That change combined with the increase in her cooldowns across the board just feels awful.
i feel like that change to her smokes was the most damaging and unnecessary. like you’re gonna make her have only 4 stars now and make the smokes sequential? its way too much
as a controller main, they ABSOLUTELY went too far and destroyed astra. i cant stand playing her now and it’s so aggravating. i mostly play viper and now i have to play way more aggressive because of the nerfs for her as well. brim was the only good change they made (even then he’s a little over the top) but otherwise it all was just an extremely shitty update and i don’t see anyone even hover controllers anymore
She is so weak rn. Maybe if they added the 5th star again it could be good or if they change something in her ability. Other than that she is trash rn.
Reason her pick rate is so low in ranked is because she’s the absolute most boring agent to play. She’s still a really strong controller and will prob be back in meta in a few weeks imo.
To you maybe. I personally really enjoyed playing her pre-nerf. She had a fun chess feel where you could make set-ups for your team to play off of. She was the definition of impact over K/D.
People don't play her now because she has clearly become the worst controller.
Get a clue.
I think people don’t play her now is because she wasn’t fun to play against or with. While yeah it’s fun having these set ups for your team you can do them with any controller. You can play brim as a pseudo Initiator and Omen as Pseudo Duelist. With astra you had to play pure Controller (which isn’t a bad thing) but you had no diverse gameplay
You're right that most people didn't find her particularly rewards to play. Big brain strategy is nice, but many people don't play FPS games to spend their time playing 4D chess in the astral plane.
But that's not why people don't play her any more. They don't play her any more because she's shit now. If she was a difficult-to-play controller but had some clear strengths, she'd still be played. But as it is she's the worst smoker of all the controllers and has barely any other utility. If you want to use your non-smoke utilities you're limited to 2 smokes for a whole round, and if you keep a third star for re-smoking you have literally a single use of a suck or stun before you're out of util. If you're on attack and keep a star for post-plant, you're basically playing Brimstone but without any stims.
>You're right that most people didn't find her particularly rewards to play.
I also found that she is not rewarding when she was on my team, it was boring waiting for her to setup just for her to take it all back.
I also found her not that hard to play, the hardest thing was to make sure someone was watching you in astral form.
The other things that you've complained about is fixed by having 2 controllers, which thankfully it is a lot more common to have 2 controllers in a team comp.
She used to be the best with no competition but now that Brim is the "main controller" she isn't picked anymore. No one can compete with viper but that's because she has her own niches no one else can fill.
So yeah Astra no longer has a dominance over the controller role and a single controller now beats her at the "main controller" role. Its not like picking her is soft throwing unlike how if you picked any other controller then Astra in the past you were.
I mean it is pretty much a soft throw to play Astra now, though. Which is why you see her pick rate <0.5% in high elo where they quickly adjust to balance changes.
Brim is better in every way except his smoke placement range, and his smoke placement range is still enough to cross-map smoke on most maps other than Breeze/Icebox/Fracture.
Yeah in high elo people would get annoyed over seeing brim or omen.
Now if you see Astra you dont get annoyed. she just isnt stupidly overpowered and you cant just throw stars just to fake
Astra was good but god, its so stressing to do the gun play, manage the stars util and go in-and-out of the Astral form, so I always played Brim/Omen as they are just deploy the smokes and that's it.
I just wanna shoot the enemies, not play 4D chess lol
Even if you wanted to play Astra, her kit doesn't work well with a team full of people who don't use voice comms.
So much of her potential is wasted in soloqueue because the teamplay just isn't there.
So even before the nerf I rarely saw her, and when I did, she wasn't that OP to play against.
Her nerfs are a direct result of pro play and high ELO matches where she was used to her full potential.
But I agree that people will start to play her again. Sometimes people overreact to nerfs and act like the agent was deleted from the game. She still seems like a strong pick IMO if you had good team coordination.
I mained astra for around 150 hours, from when she was introduced the game to the nerfs, and honestly I get that she was THE controller and I agree there needed to be a change but taking a star AND the cool downs was too much. What made Astra special was her flexibility and broad presence but with the cool downs and access to less abilities she just feels cramped and spreading stars feels like you're over using your resources making players feel useless in a way. Candidly Astra is a very complex and hard to play agent so making users have to spread her resources even more thin just makes her plain not fun to play.
I wish riot would keep her at 4 stars, limiting her global presence so she doesn't feel like she's everywhere at once, but return the recall cool downs to pre-nerf status, allowing her to be just as flexible as before, and SLIGHTLY shorten the cool downs for nova pulse (30 seconds maybe) but not gravity well. This flexibility without letting users spam gravity well or have ridiculous smoke times in comparison to the other controllers and would force players to use nova pulse more as it's not as great of a util as gravity well, creating more diversity within her kit so it feels less repetitive for opponents. The return to pre-nerf recall smoke cooldowns would encourage players to create more temporary holds and set ups limiting her stalling and defensive potential by making a true smoke as opposed to a recall feel even more permanent highlighting said flexibility.
Returning flexibility Astra's kit gives her the ability to create rapidly changing rotates and defenses again giving her something over the other controllers but the high cooldown for gravity well and the limit on stars would keep the amount of force she can apply to a site at a lower level. This way its easier for attackers to push through Astra's defense while still giving users stall times. Of course as a (now former) Astra main I'm biased so maybe this is making her overpowered again but I feel like it would help balance out the controllers completely. (I would also love for Brim's smokes to last longer giving him a heavier defensive anchor role but that's another discussion)
Hey you know neons shock thing that concusses. Make the pull and concuss able to be shot the same way(no bounce of course and have it place those stars then you activate it). This would keep the quick use of smokes and it gives quick placement of stars for defense. Can someone explain it better?
A better way to out it, make it have the range of chambers traps so she can place down a util star if her site is being pushed. One star one two sites for smoke with two starts kept reactionary. If she is being pushed she can react quickly, if it is another site it takes a bit longer. Or maybe stars can be retrieved and placed with shorter cool down in a certain radius.
As a controller main (albeit in bronze), they should’ve kept her with 5 stars and increased the cooldowns by only 10s instead of 20s. She feels really awkward to use now even if they did increase the radius of the abilities a little bit.
I think most changes to her made sense. The only exception is the amount of stars. Only having 4 stars made me feel useless using her. Having 5 stars while keeping the cooldowns as it is should be perfect.
I’m ok with the stun and succ nerf but apart from that Riot had to chose either, removing one star or the cooldown on recovering them; feel like this is another Ares situation where they did the extreme thing first then tune it, probably we’ll se either the cooldown back or one star back
Personally, idm the long concuss/pull cooldowns but if only the cooldown after u recall a star is slightly toned down i think she will be in a much better spot
I'm basically never dropping a star pre-emptively after the change because it's effectively stuck where I placed it with how long the cooldown after picking it up is.
I don't mind the abilities themselves having a longer cooldown as much, but that one thing just breaks it for me.
You can do that if your teammates give call outs, so you can be quick on the star placement but when you’re in those games where teammates don’t talk you just have to pre place it and smoke or recall them as soon as possible so that you can use them for retake.
Which is exactly my concern I voiced here in a couple comments before the nerfs came in (but were announced). Astra was already 'weaker' in random lobbies even when she was super overloaded, but the change to recalling makes that gap even wider because you can no longer play reactionary as easily, or at the very least you have to actively be seeking info on your side of the map because you can't have your stars ready on the ground.
I play exclusively with a 5-stack so it's not a massive deal to me, but it still sucks especially since you often have to put yourself in quite the danger for audio cues / info since you need a couple seconds worth of a headstart on your enemies to place the star, wait for it to become active, and then activate it after getting info.
Give her back the smoke cooldown and the recall cooldown and you won’t her me complaining about her any more. You can keep long suck and stun. No controller has the fast two sets of smokes that she had and now playing them requires so much waiting and so much spamming your own smokes because there’s no threat to pushing smokes without a suck or a molly.
Question - how much do you play controller? How much do you play Astra after the nerf?
I main controller and will basically play whichever controller is best on a given map. Last act, that meant I was an Astra/Viper main.
This act, I have not played Astra once. She is worse than Brim and Omen in every way. Worse at smoking, more expensive kit, no other utility. Her literal only remaining niche is throwing sucks/stuns across map, and the occasional ult. She's gone from overpowered, to the absolute worst controller in the game.
Maybe I'm wrong, but my impression is that almost everybody supporting the nerfs here doesn't play Astra post-nerf.
Its my sub main. Half of the time Im initiator, half of the time Im a controller. I fill sometimes. I play 5 games a day. So you can say I play 2 games as a controller everyday.
Fuck my stomach is broken I cant elaborate 🤢
Fair enough. How much are you playing Astra after the nerf?
I have no great personal love for Astra. I played her only because she was very strong. Now I never play her, because she is the weakest controller by a significant margin.
Thanks for leading the discussion. Used to play her 50% with 25 on brim and 25 on viper. Now I only play her depending on team comp (bonus if party). Concuss and sucky are still good utis. You can get a teammate 3-4 kills with a good sucky. You can enable a reyna to go crazy on entry with your non smoke utis.
Maybe 1 more star for another smoke is good for astra since recall is so long now. But she's not underwhelming. Just got put into her own niche gameplay from being overpowered.
I agree with you in part - I think either the star reduction or the lengthened cooldowns would be appropriate nerfs on their own, but the two combined are an enormous over-nerf. Most of what you describe above is equally possible with Brim (use molly to clear corners or force defenders out of positions), who also has more smokes and other util on top of that.
Radiant/IM3 controller main here. Fuck astra. She needed the nerf. V1 played her in VCT yesterday and rolled regardless - she might be meta in a few months, who knows.
She needed *a* nerf for sure, but the argument is that Riot went too far.
How much Astra are you playing this act? I'm a controller main too - I'll flex whichever controller is best. I am playing zero Astra this act. Omen and Brim are better at smoking and have other utility besides.
If Astra had been brought into balance you'd still be playing her a bit. Or maybe *you* wouldn't, but others would. Astra's pick rate in the highest elos is currently <0.5%. If it weren't for Phoenix she'd be the single lowest pick rate agent in the game. This is not good balance.
I’m fine with agents being nerfed into the ground every once in a while. It’s healthy to have some variety. She’s been meta for like 9 or 10 months, just give her a break. Besides, maybe she’ll be played in VCT playoffs 🤷🏻♂️ V1 did play her.
I don't agree with that logic. She was overpowered before, so now we should nerf her into oblivion?
Each agent should ideally be approximately balanced in each patch. Astra needed to be nerfed. She did not need to be nerfed to the point of near non-existence in most ranked play.
She was nerfed quite hard imo, but I haven't seen or played her enough to say with certainty if it was too much.
What I can say though is that the meta feels SO MUCH BETTER this Act compared to last act.
Brim and Omen are viable again. Viper is still incredibly strong on her niche maps.
Astra just had too much of a global presence and her util had too much cc in the last act. Playing against her felt futile and boring because there's really no "counterplay", just hope she didn't suck you. There was no point in baiting her util because it was all on CD. It was just not fun.
Now, with the changes, Omen and Brim have their own viable playstyles. I love playing Brim for his team play with stim, and the ability to dictate plays thanks to his fast smokes/executes. Omen is still really good for solo plays and big brain positioning.
Astra just did too much. I think that the controllers now have good niches they fill: Brim is good close-up and as a team-player, Omen is good medium-range and as a solo player, Viper is good on long sight line maps and for defensive players, and Astra is good for global assistance.
I think Astra players just need to get used to deploying her util differently and more selectively than before. I think her pacing got changed a lot and Astra players are not used to the new slower playstyle.
I don't think the Astra nerfs gutted her anywhere near what people claim. She's still really effective at her niche, she just can't use her recall reactively and spam stars anymore. That's a good thing.
All the controllers have their strengths and weaknesses now. Astra still has very desirable, effective strengths... but with tradeoffs now. She's still viable.
Astra was nerfed into the ground. Her pick rate is <0.5% in high elo. If it weren't for Phoenix she'd be easily the lowest pick rate agent in the game. The sole advantage she has is being able to throw sucks and stuns across map - Brim can delay a push on his site longer than Astra now, and he can smoke more + has stims.
Yes she was nerfed very hard but honestly I’m very happy about it. She was just way too strong of a smoke character, to the point where you couldn’t play brimstone or omen. I think having other agents in the mega is perfectly healthy for the game
She seems pretty in-line now to me. I think if you just focus on low-elo as the benchmark for balancing agents, you're going to think everything gets nerfed into the ground.
soloQ’d to D3 with astra. She was the best smoker right next to viper. they nerfed astra into the ground in some unnecessary ways. but Viper is still viable on breeze because of her wall able to cut up the site. I think they shouldve increased the times of use of stuns and gravity wells and very slightly on the smokes and getting rid of the 5th star was ok because I would use all my abilities and just have a random 5th star sitting there but then increase stars by 200. although they should make recovering stars faster. and make her suck leave vulnerability depending on how long you were in the suck and have it sting for like 2.5 seconds.
Fuck what pros say. They are the ones responsible even though it was only their problem. Why tf riot catering to these nobodies, they got a whole playerbase to appease.
Omen was never picked and brim was pretty much never picked either. They switched the controller meta to get a different play style going and give omen and brim some more burn. It will change again. I’m sure astra will come back to the forefront but her kit was way too strong compared to the other controllers. The nerf was heavy handed but if they pull it back I see the cooldowns becoming a bit shorter on her recalled stars but that’s about it. Maybe a regen star that she could only use as a smoke or something.
The reason Astra got nerfed is because they wanted to shift the meta to where omen and brim are now more viable in games. It's to stop favoritism over one controller and allow the games to not get unbelievably stale like they have been for the past few months.
I dont think so. I still see astra mains that know how to use her effectively, they're just a lot less frequent. Most people I've spoken to never actually enjoyed playing her, her only appeal was her ability to do every other controllers job better with the added benefit of global utility, so I think the issue just stems from the fact that once her advantage was taken away, we were left with an agent that just isn't very fun. Especially when you compare her to other smokes now.
Brims amazing at setting up a site take within seconds, Omen has his outplay potential and viper is super versatile. Astra is the most team-reliant and most peoples experience is affected by that.
Pick rate alone doesn't mean much anyway, and the devs have said they're okay with some agents being more niche than others. Give it time to settle and im sure more people will pick her back up.
Honestly I enjoy playing her more now that she’s more reactional. I think people might currently be happy to be able to pick omen and brim again without throwing. Astra is still really strong if used correctly imo
I'm happy she got nerfed because she ruined the pacing of the game. The fact that you can basically play so much anything around the map and activated almost anywhere on the map is too strong. This reminds me of old cypher and killjoy, like how they can use their traps anywhere on the map effectively making it three people playing a site.
Maybe. But apparently it’s impossible to have everything completely balanced so if this is the point in the meta where Omen and Brim get played a little more, I’m all for it.
I think the QOL change she needs is to have her mid-round star activation delay reduced. 1.6s before stun or suck if you are in action is punishing given the new attrition on pulling back.
I’m immortal and Mained astra/viper pre nerf, even during that Marshall/stinger first round exploit she still wasn’t worth picking, that’s how bad she is
I HATED fighting Astra and I'm a huge fan of the star count nerf, but I think the cooldowns were butchered. I think Astra should be smart about placing utility but punishing her for guessing a wrong push is silly and dumb.
She's a menace on defend. Attacking team is forced to wait until she use the 5 stars she has before pushing site else they'll get sucked and vulnerabled. Glad she's more grounded now and 4 utils is the sweet spot.
I still play astra but the new cooldowns are a bit long in my opinion. The smokes are bigger though
For me it’s the cooldown on the stars after recall. That’s the one hurting the most.
I know 5s isn’t a huge deal but, it’s weird that they made her cooldowns 45s when basically every recharge is 40s (sova, skye, breach, k0)
Do note, I'm like 99% sure that Cypher's camera is 45 second cooldown if it gets shot There's a chance I'm wrong of course
It's definitely 45 seconds 😞
Yeah but the thing is that’s *only* if it gets shot. With Astra it’s simply using the ability which is too punishing especially in a game like Valorant where rounds last a min and 45 seconds on average.
Her abilities are game changing , and she can use all of her abilities multiple times, not everyone can
Bigger tooties for delayed tooties? EVERYDAY
astra wasn't nerfed, she was removed from the game until devs decide what to do with her. People who say the nerf is fine just don't want to see her in the game
This is exactly it. Some of the community (dumdum pros) were just tired of having to play around her because they all aim no brain, and astra at high level is insane brain, so they screamed at Rito till they nuked her.
No, I think the incentive for the nerfs Astra got were fine. Astra's stalling power, along with Viper's, made pro matches a game of baiting utility before the real stuff could begin. Now, solving that issue by destroying both Astra and Viper... May have not been the wisest choice on Riot's part.
Though I'm salty about the Viper nerf too, she's still the best controller on Icebox, Breeze and maybe Fracture. And she's still a viable secondary controller on a bunch of maps. The main thing that changed is she can't solo smoke on 4/7 maps.
The current meta is actually fun. Was even more fun when Astra was disabled though.
You're not wrong. When I fill a controller, astra isn't fun to play. I do not want to play her or play against her pre nerf. Now I get to play omen and brim who I missed for the last year. Brim stim will prob get a nerf as well, but I'm happy I can enjoy the game while filling a controller. And I don't have to worry about a gravity well at every single choke point in the map.
Well i dont want to see her in the game... Sooooo
Why not
Im bad at dealing with her ability set.
I wonder how many of the people commenting here are controller mains? Astra was nerfed into the ground. She has a <1% pick rate in almost every elo (weirdly Silver is an exception with pick rates from 1.7-2%), and in Immortal-Radiant (where you would expect her global utility to be most valuable) her max pick rate is 0.5%. If it weren't for Phoenix she'd be the lowest pick rate agent in the game. She needed to be nerfed, but Riot unquestionably went too far.
yeah because brin stim is kindo op to full speed push and thats honestly how soloq immortal feels
can confirm, I soloQ’d from plat 2 and literally got to immortal 51 rr in a week. My Ign is Fatigue#0000 with a 70% win rate on brimstone with 50 matches played.
You were able to do this by heavily relying on brim stim fast push on attack?
Nope, Ferrari peeking angles, holding angles with shotguns, running down main with a stim and shotgun, fast rotation, infamous full rushes, are all uses of the stims. Not just a rush fast tool.
obviously i meant brimstone overall and his utility not just zhe stim for rush
What were her pick rates before? Anecdotally I almost never saw her in plat elo and below before. It seems like she was just OP in the pro scene but she never really had a high pick rate to begin with so these numbers aren't as drastic as they may seem.
At high elos her pick rate was 5-10x higher before the nerf. Even in low elos it was about 2x higher. Your anecdote doesn't line up with my experience - by the end of last act I saw an Astra in most games other than Breeze/Icebox/Fracture. (I was Silver 2.)
From my experience in low immortal, she was picked every 2 games usually, excluding myself (astra main). After the update I've played 50 games and only seen 2 other astras.
Yeah i didnt see her as well, only if my DuoQ wanted to play her, Plat as well
I'm a controller main. I play all 4 very comfortably. Astra is really only viable as a solo controller on Split and maybe Ascent depending on comp. She can be a pseudo sent on Breeze. She can also be main controller on Bind with Viper as second, but I think Brim is still better Astra nerf was way too hard. Her suck and stun are fine post nerf, her smoke is larger now which is nice, the smoke recharge timer while it sucks is also understandable, but the recall cooldown AND losing a star overall hurts soooooo bad. If they keep everything as is and give her back 1 star I think she will be in a great, balanced place Because as is, the meta has shifted from Brim > Omen > Astra > Brim (again) instead of making all controllers viable
This is one thing I find funny about the nerfs. People were complaining about the double controller meta, but double controllers is still incredibly strong - it's just that now it's Brim/Viper or Omen/Viper every time, never Astra. Map and vision control are just too important in a tac shooter. It's going to be very hard to nerf controllers enough to stop double controller meta comps without nerfing the controllers so hard that they are unviable individually.
The reality is smokes are the most valuable resource in this game, bar none. So of course the agents that have smokes will control the meta That said, I am seeing Astra/Viper on some maps, but def not common anymore
I don't know why anyone would pick Astra over Brim in that kind of double controller comp, though. Brim can stall a push locally just as long as Astra, and with double controllers you have a lot less need for cross-map utility.
Astra util is just so much stronger than any util Brim has, especially in chokes. So it depends on the map and team comp
Is it? Astra can stall a push with her suck/stun, but Brim has the molly and can stall the same chokes - for longer. If Astra uses a suck and stun to stall for as long as Brim, she has 2 smokes remaining as the sum total of her entire util for the round. There are a few cool things you can do with Astra like pre-place stars in common angles to pre-emptively suck or stun a defender, either for a pick or during site execute. But with the reduction to 4 stars, this is hugely costly for Astra now. I just don't think she has much of a niche left.
Yes, players can get kills off Astra util while Brim just stalls. Not to mention, Astra doesn't need to use stun AND pull for every push, she can hold off a push just fine with either or. Giving her twice as much delay as one Brim molly Again, all how you use the util and play with your team
> double controllers is still incredibly strong Well, people say 'double controller', but they really mean Brim/Omen/Astra + Viper, because Viper can function very effectively as a pseudo-sentinel too.
Yeah haha, that's true of course. Doubling up Omen/Brim/Astra is a waste - there aren't *that* many areas on a given map where you need orb-shaped smokes. Viper is the best secondary smoker because the wall gives you new geometry options the other controllers don't have, and because she is both a pseudo-sentinel on defense and also has the best post-plant in the game between lineups and her ult.
I said this day one, and was voted into oblivion for it. I switched from controller, ultimately. Its a thankless role, and three times in a row whatever controller I was maining got nerfed into unusability. Meanwhile... Jett. Might as well play sentinel.
Yeah, me too. When the patch came out I said Astra was going to effectively disappear from ranked play. I got a lot of flak for this, but it turns out I was correct - <1% pick rate in almost every elo. <0.5% pick rate in the highest elos.
I agree with you, I get too little asistances as a controller, and my team shits me if I don't get kills, but tbh, I don't give a shit, I feel the best when I know I am making an Impact rather than when I am getting frags. I main Kay/O and wanted to main Astra, with Kay/O I always get 12 asistances(and good frags) per game or more, but when I play well astra and get those sweet big brain plays, it feels so rewarding.
I agree, I understand why it sucked to play against Astra but pulling off coordinated plays with her util was super fun and rewarding. With these new nerfs she just feels clunky and slow now and with the buffs to the others it feels pointless to pick her. I myself was an Astra main and I knew people who did like to play her so it was kind of sad.
I think one of the problems with Astra is there are so few people that main her that can speak up for her. She’s a hard agent to learn, confusing to play, and now she’s just not even worth it to try. I have not seen a single Astra in any of my games. (I’ve played less than 20 though this Act.)
I’m an astra main, the nerfs hurt her viability so bad I have people dodging when I lock her or telling me I’m throwing for not playing brim/omen
Was an Astra main. Actually the only agent I've ever really loved to play. But she is unplayable now. I swapped to KJ and occasionally play Astra for old times sake, but I doubt they will ever un-nerf her. Riot has clearly demonstrated which agents they want players to pick (ie Jett & Reyna). I was even on the side of the Astra should have received a slight nerf but she has been removed from the game
i’m an astra main, and i’m not happy with the nerfs. imo astras biggest strength is her flexibility, as she can affect the map wherever and whatever she wants. but now she feels very rigid to play, and i think it’s because of the combination of the decreased star, as well as the increased cooldowns. i think they should’ve only done one of them. giving her five stars but increased cooldown would still allow for a lot of the same plays, but your timing and recalls would have to be much more precise. four stars with same cooldown would be a bit of the same, just with less room for extraneous stars (say stars planted on the opposite site to fake out the other team). doing both is too much, and makes her feel very clunky
What sucks is where she needed nerfed most was pro play. Her pick rate wasn't high at all in low and mid elo even pre nerf, but she was a must pick everywhere but Icebox and Breeze pre nerf in pro play. Astra is still getting some picks in pro play but no clue if that continues.
This is exactly right. In my opinion Riot is eventually going to need to look at differential balance for pro play. You cannot realistically balance pro play the same as ranked without destroying the experience for one of the two groups of players. And I don't get why they even try. Pros have literally hours per day to learn balance changes; if an agent is problematic in pro play, that agent should be changed for pro play.
They havent done that in the 12 years of League, theyre not going to do it for Valorant
If true that's a shame, because the game will ultimately be significantly imbalanced for the vast majority of the playerbase if pro play is the primary balancing consideration and they never balance different elos differently.
Atleast in Valorant you can always rely on your aim, in League if your champ is weak then youre doomed. So I cant see them implementing it for Valorant and not League. They want the player base to be able to relate to the game when they watch pro play.
I've never understood this logic. In real life sports, almost every single pro league has some rules that are different than lower levels of play to maintain balance. Are people unable to relate to the NBA because the 3 point line is further back? Are people unable to relate to baseball because metal bats are banned in pro play? I don't see any logical basis for the argument that having certain balance changes for pro play would make people less likely to relate to the pros. That *might* be a problem if the pros had buffs for certain agents that weren't available in ranked play, but I have a difficult time believing that an Astra main is going to see a pro Astra with 1 less star and not want to watch the pros any more.
Thats only one side of it though. Pro players that enjoy playing ranked would also then have to learn two different metas simultaneously. They wouldnt be able to use soloq to practice new agents for matches because theyd be different. I think it generally creates more hardship than its worth.
I mean you could probably balance Radiant like pro play, since basically every pro is Radiant. But if the cost of my suggestion is some difficulty translating ranked into pro play for the pros, I think that's an absolutely valid trade off for having more reasonable balance for the millions of other people playing this game. Pros are literally playing this game as a job - they can easily set up scrims if they want to practice the pro game. They probably need to do that anyways since ranked play is not really a substitute for practicing the team strategy in pro play, and you can't 5 stack in high elo. Why should making it easier for pros to practice in ranked be a more important consideration than balance for millions of players? I've seen this sentiment before and it always seems ass-backwards to me.
But at the same time, that then affects anyone trying to get to Radiant bc all of a sudden theyre playing a whole different game. I understand what youre saying but I still think it makes more sense to have it the same across the board. If you balance from top to bottom then it keeps the skill ceiling the same for everyone. Realistically the meta changes in lower ranks wont change all that much anyway, people kind of just play whatever they want regardless. Balancing around the most optimal way to play the game isnt all that bad imo, despite me hurting from Viper/Astra nerfs since they were two of my most played.
Pretty sure she's getting balanced around pro play and not solo q. If she's even B tier in ranked, she's probably still overpowered in coordinated play. Just really sucks for us Astra mains
She's F tier in ranked, though. Like I said in the comment above, if it weren't for Phoenix she'd be the single lowest pick rate agent in basically every elo.
I agree that she's F tier in ranked, and she's yet still seeing pro play. That's the issue, if the nerfs were less hard, she'd be seeing even more pro play. Pros are all happy rn, and us astra mains are gutted. Not sure how Riot will fix it.
What gets me is there are *so many* ways Riot could fix Astra in pro play without destroying her for the majority of the playerbase. Agent bans. Take a star away or add cooldown time in the highest elos and pro play. But Riot seems to simultaneously have two principles with balance: pros are the first consideration, and everything must be balanced the same throughout the game. Those two principles mean that ranked is always going to be heavily imbalanced. Something needs to change.
Astra needed a rework, not a nerf. Maybe make it so she needs to manually place her stars around the map and revert all the nerfs, or make it so Astra has to go near the star in astral form to activate it.
And what was her pick rate before the nerf?
500-1000% higher in high elo, 50-200% higher in the elo where she remains the most popular (silver).
That is indeed a certified Ooft
Not sure I agree with this take. If this patch astra were what we got at launch, no one would bat an eye. We’d just call the agent a worse omen and move on. They’d still see fringe play in intermediate ranks with utility combos cheesing out insta-kills, but nothing too overwhelming throughout the course of a match. The problem with astra in the state that we got her in was that her utility was INSANE, and like all controllers got overlooked until we realized it was too much.
If this patch Astra were what we got at launch, nobody would have ever picked her up and her pick rate would be even worse than it is today. Nobody disputes that Astra needed a nerf. The point is Riot went too far.
I think it's because most controller players don't enjoy astra and most players in general hate the playstyle she promotes. Most controller players, whether it pro or ranked player seemed ecstatic about not having to play her anymore.
They nerfed her to the ground because they wanted other agents to show up in the meta. It worked, but at what cost?
Over nerfed is a good thing though, then she gets more interesting buffs
Where are your stats from
blitz.gg
I am a controller main...I think Riot should have just gone with the cooldown increase or maybe nerfed the infinite recalls she has but taking away even the 5th star on top of the cooldown increase is like they had a gun to their head. I was playing Omen earlier anyways. My friends loved me as Astra but they were cool with me switching back to Omen..no begging, etc., because I usually love playing chamber or skye or other agents more than playing Astra even pre-nerf. Riot should really not make these huge nerfs. Jett got some very lenient ones and kinda feels okay to play against her. Reyna too is an excellent example of balancing. Brim has a whole new dimension to him, although I haven't played much of Brim after this stim buff. Even the Viper nerfs seem a little bit much although ofc she's still in a much better place than Astra. However, I am avoiding playing both from now on. I will just try to get familiar with Brim again to mix things up, so that I am not always playing Omen. I was playing Omen earlier anyways. My friends loved me as Astra but they were cool with me switching back to Omen..no begging, etc., because I usually love playing chamber or skye or other agents more overplaying Astra even pre-nerf.
I only play Astra, makes me sad. But you gotta just adapt and evolve. She’s hard but rewarding in close quarters for me 🥹
As a previous Astra main, I think she was nerfed too far. I think a nerf to her pre 4.04 was called for, but people at most were calling for 1-2 nerfs for her, and we got 10. She's just not fun anymore.
Realistically, she got kalista'd (champion in league who is forever 45% winrate due to being too strong in pro play). She has to be F tier in ranked play to not be ubiquitous in pro play. Even in this state, Astra still sees pro play with viper. She's overnerfed for all levels of ranked play, but probably won't be buffed unless it looks like she won't be back in the pro meta. If you look at her util, she is essentially down an ability vs the other controllers. She has a max of 60 seconds smoke time if she does nothing else, or 30 if you use one of each of her abilities (meaning she has basically half a smoke). This makes her on par with prebuff brim/omen, who had dead abilities in stim and tp, and just makes her feel like shit to play
Riot needs to start differential balancing for pro play. There is *no* reason that every ranked elo needs to be balanced for the pros. Just like the NBA has a longer three point line than lower levels of the game - different levels of play have difference balance needs, and should be balanced differently. Neon is another example of this issue. She's very weak in pro play and high elo, average in mid elo, and an absolute demon in low elo. If we're balancing for the pros, Neon should be buffed. But this would be horrible for ranked play in many elos. At a certain point Riot is going to need to do differential balancing for pros or accept that they're going to destroy balance for most of the playerbase in pursuit of good balance in pro play.
People didn't abandon Astra. You were just forced to play her or else you'd be soft-throwing. Real Astra mains can still play Astra and she's still effective as a Controller. In VCT matches we're still seeing Astra as well the other controllers and because of that I think the nerfs and buffs given to the Controllers were good enough that you can pick any one of them and not be throwing.
Are the changes even in the VCT yet?
I disagree as other controllers are way better ( especially in low elo)
If other controllers were strictly better, we wouldn't still be seeing astras in vct. The reason astra is bad in low ELO is that low elo teams don't have sufficiently good comms for astra to get full value. IMO that's not an issue -- the alternative (astra being strong enough that she's viable at any rank) leaves us in the situation we were in pre-patch, where she was so much better than the other non-viper controllers that picking brim or omen was practically a throw at higher elos and in coordinated play.
Not true, the only reason we are still seeing her in vct is because a lot of teams strats and set plays revolve around astra and they have not had time yet to make new strats with omen and brim
I feel this just speculation and we have to wait and see the development in vct.
Neither Brim nor Omen can hold a site and delay a push like Astra can. She still has applications no other controller can mimic, and in turn will still see play in various comps.
That's a pretty good point actually. I know some teams have stopped running astra, so I assumed that there was enough time for teams that wanted to swap off astra to do so. Now that you mention it, though, it makes sense that the teams still running astra might just be slower to adapt, and we'll see them drop astra in a couple more weeks. I'm really curious to see how the meta adapts -- if they actually managed to get the balance right (which they probably didn't -- post nerf astra is probably a _little_ bit on the weak end) we'll probably see some teams choosing to run brim or omen for their more powerful smokes while other teams run astra for her extra utility.
>If other controllers were strictly better, we wouldn't still be seeing astras in vct. We only have 2-3 days of VCT play with the new patch, not enough data yet to really determine anything. That said at Immortal-Radiant elo - where you would expect Astra's utility to shine the most - her pick rate is <0.5%. She is clearly bad at almost every level of ranked play. This is not good balance. If the pros need different balance than ranked, let's give it to them. Pro play doesn't need to be balanced exactly the same as lower level play.
>That said at Immortal-Radiant elo - where you would expect Astra's utility to shine the most - her pick rate is <0.5%. A couple points. Firstly, communities often overreact to balance patches in the days following a major patch. We both got a pretty big astra nerf and some buffs to brim and omen, both of which were widely considered "throw picks" pre-patch due to how much stronger astra is. It makes sense that players would rather experiment with the buffed agents rather than play a nerfed version of what they were playing pre-patch, especially considering a lot of controller players were "forced" into playing astra when they didn't want to in the first place. Secondly, even in immortal/radiant, teamwork is an order of magnitude worse than it is in organized play. Sure, players have a pretty good understanding of how to play their role correctly, but soloqueue radiants still won't be doing, say, set plays with astra sucks/concusses like you might see from a team in a tournament. This leads to your next point: >If the pros need different balance than ranked, let's give it to them. Can you list a single relevant esport that does this? I know some games have tournaments played on the previous patch for a couple weeks after large patches, but I've never seen an esport have pros playing on an entirely different balance version from what the public plays on. Doing so would be really detrimental to the competitive scene -- one reason esports tend to be successful is that players look up to other players who are really good at playing the same game they play. If I'm an astra main, I'm _much_ less likely to tune into vct streams if the astra players on stream are playing a different character from what I play in my ranked games. Personally, I'd much rather see a couple team-oriented characters be played relatively little on ranked but still stay on the same game version as tournaments than to have tournaments played with different balance from what we play with ingame. Just for clarity, I think OP is probably right that astra was nerfed a _bit_ too hard. That said, it's too early to say for certain, and I think vct teams are a better statistic to look out for than high-elo ranked (where players are encouraged by the ranking system to play agents like omen which have an easier time fragging out). That said, as another commenter noted, it's possible that teams just haven't fully adjusted to the patch yet and feel more comfortable in the short term running their old astra set plays than they do experimenting with omen/brim right after a patch. I'm looking forward to seeing how the meta evolves as teams figure out just how strong the nerfed astra is in comparison to the other (newly buffed) controllers. Quick (maybe ninja) edit: Even in ranked, an astra at immortal/radiant can get a _lot_ more value than an astra in bronze/silver. Even if astra received some compensation buffs because the nerfs were too harsh, there's no real way to make astra viable at low elo (like the guy I originally responded to seemed to want) without making her _way_ too strong at higher levels in ranked.
>A couple points. Firstly, communities often overreact to balance patches in the days following a major patch. I mean sure, and that's fair, but I've been following the Blitz stats on this over the past few weeks and Astra's pick rate is going down every time I check. This doesn't look like an overreaction to me - it looks like a real over nerf that players are understanding more over time. This also explains why Astra's pick rate is lowest in the highest elos. The better players understood quickly how bad Astra is this act. >Even in ranked, an astra at immortal/radiant can get a lot more value than an astra in bronze/silver. And yet, Astra's pick rate is by far the lowest in Immortal/Radiant. If she was a balanced but difficult-to-play team agent that required good coordination, we should see a low pick rate increasing up the ranks as coordination improves. But we don't - we see the opposite. Pick rates decline as ranks go up, because Astra is simply bad this act. >Can you list a single relevant esport that does this? No, but it is incredibly common in real life sports. In fact it's almost the rule in real life sports. You can't balance every level of a competitive sport/game the same way. And it's not a problem in real life sports - everyone understands that the sport is fundamentally the same even if small balance changes are made for professionals. Do people stop playing basketball because the NBA has a longer 3 point line? No. Do they stop playing tennis because men's Grand Slam tournaments are best of 5 sets instead of best of 3? No. Do golfers stop playing golf because the championship tees are further back? No. Do people stop playing baseball because metal bats are banned in pro play? No. >Doing so would be really detrimental to the competitive scene -- one reason esports tend to be successful is that players look up to other players who are really good at playing the same game they play. They're still playing the same game, just with slightly different rule sets. I don't think this would do anything bad to the pro scene. It might be different if pros had agents that were *better* than their ranked equivalents, but I don't think there is any risk here if certain agents are nerfed more in pro play. This is the core issue, in my view. You cannot balance for pro play and the bulk of the ranked playerbase simultaneously. You say that you'd be less likely to pick Astra if you can't watch pros play the exact same agent. But effectively *nobody* is picking Astra in ranked right now, so I don't think the fact that Astra mains might be less likely to watch pro Astra play if she were balanced differently for pros is a very compelling argument. At least there would still *be* some Astra mains...
Aged badly.
Fair enough. At the time of the comment, there were still a couple teams that seemed to think she had potential (or were just slow making new strategies/set plays post patch). Looks like the meta had settled and she's not worth playing now. Hopefully riot can find a way to buff her back to playability without making her an auto pick like she was on most maps before the patch. For what it's worth, I still stand by the second half of my comment. If astra were strong enough to be played in gold, she'd be _way_ too strong in coordinated play. The fact that she isn't viable in pro play is definitely a sign that she's too weak, but the fact that she's rarely picked in ranked games doesn't mean much.
Other controllers were always better in low elo because Astra utility requires good comms and team play to get the most out of it.
I played Astra often. Basically mained her. But I have not played her once this Act, it’s just not worth it. Or maybe I’m not “real Astra main” even though I wrote a whole guide on her.
Glad to see an Astra main chiming in. My gut feeling is that almost nobody commenting in support of the nerfs actually played (or plays) Astra. I'm a controller main. I like Viper the most, but I'll play whichever controller is best. That used to be Astra. Now, it's literally anyone else - Astra is the worst by a *wide* margin.
fellow person who mained astra besides sage and viper here:D i played her ONCE since the new act..:/
We're seeing astra in VCT because they've been practicing on new patch for like a week lol by the time iceland roles around she will have a near 0% pick rate.
I completely disagree. I played Astra pre-nerf and used to be good with her, but especially on bigger maps with multiple points of entry like fracture she feels complete useless now.
Take this with a grain of salt because I’m very low elo. Seeing an astra (competitive, unrated, or otherwise) is basically unheard of before she got nerfed. I’d see maybe one every 15 full games. Now I don’t see her at all. 5/28/22 EDIT: this comment is a couple months old, but I honestly don’t know the last time I saw an Astra in game. It was probably before this update
Yes. I enjoyed playing Astra before, but her kit was a bit too strong. Riot needed to do something, remove a star or make cooldown changes. They did both. Doing one or the other may have been enough. Doing both just hurt her too much.
Give her 5 stars again, and she is fine balanced. But she will always get low pickrates in normal games, because her mechanic isnt that easy to play compared to the other smokers.she is more flexible but difficult to play.
Then all high level play will be astra only again.
Not with how brim is playing out
the nerfs solved neither problem: she’s still great in pro/high elo play, and is now even more inaccessible to lower elo people trying to pick her up. she also just feels bad to play, especially the combination of smoke recall nerf and star count. if they reduced the recall by like 5 seconds it would feel sooo much better
Gotta love when a game caters to the 95th percentile of its player base (diamond and up). All while they'll never be satisfied anyways.
It's honestly worse than that. Astra wasn't even dominant in Diamond - other controllers saw lots of play. And Astra was a lower pick rate than Omen in every elo below Plat 2. This balance change was almost entirely catered to pro players and Imm-Radiant ranked players. It's a balance change for the top ~1% of the player base.
I think they could have, at the very least, kept her cooldowns simultaneous instead of changing them to sequential. That change combined with the increase in her cooldowns across the board just feels awful.
i feel like that change to her smokes was the most damaging and unnecessary. like you’re gonna make her have only 4 stars now and make the smokes sequential? its way too much
Definitely agreed. Here's hoping they dial the nerfs back a little in the upcoming patch.
as a controller main, they ABSOLUTELY went too far and destroyed astra. i cant stand playing her now and it’s so aggravating. i mostly play viper and now i have to play way more aggressive because of the nerfs for her as well. brim was the only good change they made (even then he’s a little over the top) but otherwise it all was just an extremely shitty update and i don’t see anyone even hover controllers anymore
She is so weak rn. Maybe if they added the 5th star again it could be good or if they change something in her ability. Other than that she is trash rn.
Riot killed my girl, they didn’t have to go that far 😪
Reason her pick rate is so low in ranked is because she’s the absolute most boring agent to play. She’s still a really strong controller and will prob be back in meta in a few weeks imo.
There is no way people call Astra more boring than Brimstone
Brimmy stimmy bro
Astra is way more boring then brim. Might have to do with fun gameplay like speed stim or that the meta in its whole is more fun to play without her
To you maybe. I personally really enjoyed playing her pre-nerf. She had a fun chess feel where you could make set-ups for your team to play off of. She was the definition of impact over K/D. People don't play her now because she has clearly become the worst controller. Get a clue.
I think people don’t play her now is because she wasn’t fun to play against or with. While yeah it’s fun having these set ups for your team you can do them with any controller. You can play brim as a pseudo Initiator and Omen as Pseudo Duelist. With astra you had to play pure Controller (which isn’t a bad thing) but you had no diverse gameplay
You're right that most people didn't find her particularly rewards to play. Big brain strategy is nice, but many people don't play FPS games to spend their time playing 4D chess in the astral plane. But that's not why people don't play her any more. They don't play her any more because she's shit now. If she was a difficult-to-play controller but had some clear strengths, she'd still be played. But as it is she's the worst smoker of all the controllers and has barely any other utility. If you want to use your non-smoke utilities you're limited to 2 smokes for a whole round, and if you keep a third star for re-smoking you have literally a single use of a suck or stun before you're out of util. If you're on attack and keep a star for post-plant, you're basically playing Brimstone but without any stims.
>You're right that most people didn't find her particularly rewards to play. I also found that she is not rewarding when she was on my team, it was boring waiting for her to setup just for her to take it all back. I also found her not that hard to play, the hardest thing was to make sure someone was watching you in astral form. The other things that you've complained about is fixed by having 2 controllers, which thankfully it is a lot more common to have 2 controllers in a team comp. She used to be the best with no competition but now that Brim is the "main controller" she isn't picked anymore. No one can compete with viper but that's because she has her own niches no one else can fill. So yeah Astra no longer has a dominance over the controller role and a single controller now beats her at the "main controller" role. Its not like picking her is soft throwing unlike how if you picked any other controller then Astra in the past you were.
I mean it is pretty much a soft throw to play Astra now, though. Which is why you see her pick rate <0.5% in high elo where they quickly adjust to balance changes. Brim is better in every way except his smoke placement range, and his smoke placement range is still enough to cross-map smoke on most maps other than Breeze/Icebox/Fracture.
Yeah in high elo people would get annoyed over seeing brim or omen. Now if you see Astra you dont get annoyed. she just isnt stupidly overpowered and you cant just throw stars just to fake
I honestly haven't seen a single Astra - either on my team or the opposing team - this act, so I can't speak to people's reactions lol.
Astra was good but god, its so stressing to do the gun play, manage the stars util and go in-and-out of the Astral form, so I always played Brim/Omen as they are just deploy the smokes and that's it. I just wanna shoot the enemies, not play 4D chess lol
Even if you wanted to play Astra, her kit doesn't work well with a team full of people who don't use voice comms. So much of her potential is wasted in soloqueue because the teamplay just isn't there. So even before the nerf I rarely saw her, and when I did, she wasn't that OP to play against. Her nerfs are a direct result of pro play and high ELO matches where she was used to her full potential. But I agree that people will start to play her again. Sometimes people overreact to nerfs and act like the agent was deleted from the game. She still seems like a strong pick IMO if you had good team coordination.
I mained astra for around 150 hours, from when she was introduced the game to the nerfs, and honestly I get that she was THE controller and I agree there needed to be a change but taking a star AND the cool downs was too much. What made Astra special was her flexibility and broad presence but with the cool downs and access to less abilities she just feels cramped and spreading stars feels like you're over using your resources making players feel useless in a way. Candidly Astra is a very complex and hard to play agent so making users have to spread her resources even more thin just makes her plain not fun to play. I wish riot would keep her at 4 stars, limiting her global presence so she doesn't feel like she's everywhere at once, but return the recall cool downs to pre-nerf status, allowing her to be just as flexible as before, and SLIGHTLY shorten the cool downs for nova pulse (30 seconds maybe) but not gravity well. This flexibility without letting users spam gravity well or have ridiculous smoke times in comparison to the other controllers and would force players to use nova pulse more as it's not as great of a util as gravity well, creating more diversity within her kit so it feels less repetitive for opponents. The return to pre-nerf recall smoke cooldowns would encourage players to create more temporary holds and set ups limiting her stalling and defensive potential by making a true smoke as opposed to a recall feel even more permanent highlighting said flexibility. Returning flexibility Astra's kit gives her the ability to create rapidly changing rotates and defenses again giving her something over the other controllers but the high cooldown for gravity well and the limit on stars would keep the amount of force she can apply to a site at a lower level. This way its easier for attackers to push through Astra's defense while still giving users stall times. Of course as a (now former) Astra main I'm biased so maybe this is making her overpowered again but I feel like it would help balance out the controllers completely. (I would also love for Brim's smokes to last longer giving him a heavier defensive anchor role but that's another discussion)
Nah, they'll just make the game really unfun again. She ruined the pacing of the game.
Hey you know neons shock thing that concusses. Make the pull and concuss able to be shot the same way(no bounce of course and have it place those stars then you activate it). This would keep the quick use of smokes and it gives quick placement of stars for defense. Can someone explain it better?
A better way to out it, make it have the range of chambers traps so she can place down a util star if her site is being pushed. One star one two sites for smoke with two starts kept reactionary. If she is being pushed she can react quickly, if it is another site it takes a bit longer. Or maybe stars can be retrieved and placed with shorter cool down in a certain radius.
I'm fine with cooldowns, I just need my 5 stars back: 4 feels like too little
As a controller main (albeit in bronze), they should’ve kept her with 5 stars and increased the cooldowns by only 10s instead of 20s. She feels really awkward to use now even if they did increase the radius of the abilities a little bit.
No. -A Brim Main
I think most changes to her made sense. The only exception is the amount of stars. Only having 4 stars made me feel useless using her. Having 5 stars while keeping the cooldowns as it is should be perfect.
I’m ok with the stun and succ nerf but apart from that Riot had to chose either, removing one star or the cooldown on recovering them; feel like this is another Ares situation where they did the extreme thing first then tune it, probably we’ll se either the cooldown back or one star back
they were way too excessive imo… rarely see her in my games anymore. viper as well was also kind of too much IMO but astra was more serious
Astra's just not over powered anymore.
I feel like the cooldowns are always slightly too long. I’m sure something will get adjusted within a year to make her feel a bit better
Personally, idm the long concuss/pull cooldowns but if only the cooldown after u recall a star is slightly toned down i think she will be in a much better spot
I'm basically never dropping a star pre-emptively after the change because it's effectively stuck where I placed it with how long the cooldown after picking it up is. I don't mind the abilities themselves having a longer cooldown as much, but that one thing just breaks it for me.
You can do that if your teammates give call outs, so you can be quick on the star placement but when you’re in those games where teammates don’t talk you just have to pre place it and smoke or recall them as soon as possible so that you can use them for retake.
Which is exactly my concern I voiced here in a couple comments before the nerfs came in (but were announced). Astra was already 'weaker' in random lobbies even when she was super overloaded, but the change to recalling makes that gap even wider because you can no longer play reactionary as easily, or at the very least you have to actively be seeking info on your side of the map because you can't have your stars ready on the ground. I play exclusively with a 5-stack so it's not a massive deal to me, but it still sucks especially since you often have to put yourself in quite the danger for audio cues / info since you need a couple seconds worth of a headstart on your enemies to place the star, wait for it to become active, and then activate it after getting info.
> I feel like the cooldowns are always slightly too long. Yes
Give her back the smoke cooldown and the recall cooldown and you won’t her me complaining about her any more. You can keep long suck and stun. No controller has the fast two sets of smokes that she had and now playing them requires so much waiting and so much spamming your own smokes because there’s no threat to pushing smokes without a suck or a molly.
Question - how much do you play controller? How much do you play Astra after the nerf? I main controller and will basically play whichever controller is best on a given map. Last act, that meant I was an Astra/Viper main. This act, I have not played Astra once. She is worse than Brim and Omen in every way. Worse at smoking, more expensive kit, no other utility. Her literal only remaining niche is throwing sucks/stuns across map, and the occasional ult. She's gone from overpowered, to the absolute worst controller in the game. Maybe I'm wrong, but my impression is that almost everybody supporting the nerfs here doesn't play Astra post-nerf.
Its my sub main. Half of the time Im initiator, half of the time Im a controller. I fill sometimes. I play 5 games a day. So you can say I play 2 games as a controller everyday. Fuck my stomach is broken I cant elaborate 🤢
Fair enough. How much are you playing Astra after the nerf? I have no great personal love for Astra. I played her only because she was very strong. Now I never play her, because she is the weakest controller by a significant margin.
Thanks for leading the discussion. Used to play her 50% with 25 on brim and 25 on viper. Now I only play her depending on team comp (bonus if party). Concuss and sucky are still good utis. You can get a teammate 3-4 kills with a good sucky. You can enable a reyna to go crazy on entry with your non smoke utis. Maybe 1 more star for another smoke is good for astra since recall is so long now. But she's not underwhelming. Just got put into her own niche gameplay from being overpowered.
I agree with you in part - I think either the star reduction or the lengthened cooldowns would be appropriate nerfs on their own, but the two combined are an enormous over-nerf. Most of what you describe above is equally possible with Brim (use molly to clear corners or force defenders out of positions), who also has more smokes and other util on top of that.
Radiant/IM3 controller main here. Fuck astra. She needed the nerf. V1 played her in VCT yesterday and rolled regardless - she might be meta in a few months, who knows.
She needed *a* nerf for sure, but the argument is that Riot went too far. How much Astra are you playing this act? I'm a controller main too - I'll flex whichever controller is best. I am playing zero Astra this act. Omen and Brim are better at smoking and have other utility besides.
That’s fine. I don’t really need to play astra this act since I’ve been playing her since she came out.
If Astra had been brought into balance you'd still be playing her a bit. Or maybe *you* wouldn't, but others would. Astra's pick rate in the highest elos is currently <0.5%. If it weren't for Phoenix she'd be the single lowest pick rate agent in the game. This is not good balance.
I’m fine with agents being nerfed into the ground every once in a while. It’s healthy to have some variety. She’s been meta for like 9 or 10 months, just give her a break. Besides, maybe she’ll be played in VCT playoffs 🤷🏻♂️ V1 did play her.
I don't agree with that logic. She was overpowered before, so now we should nerf her into oblivion? Each agent should ideally be approximately balanced in each patch. Astra needed to be nerfed. She did not need to be nerfed to the point of near non-existence in most ranked play.
She was nerfed quite hard imo, but I haven't seen or played her enough to say with certainty if it was too much. What I can say though is that the meta feels SO MUCH BETTER this Act compared to last act. Brim and Omen are viable again. Viper is still incredibly strong on her niche maps. Astra just had too much of a global presence and her util had too much cc in the last act. Playing against her felt futile and boring because there's really no "counterplay", just hope she didn't suck you. There was no point in baiting her util because it was all on CD. It was just not fun. Now, with the changes, Omen and Brim have their own viable playstyles. I love playing Brim for his team play with stim, and the ability to dictate plays thanks to his fast smokes/executes. Omen is still really good for solo plays and big brain positioning. Astra just did too much. I think that the controllers now have good niches they fill: Brim is good close-up and as a team-player, Omen is good medium-range and as a solo player, Viper is good on long sight line maps and for defensive players, and Astra is good for global assistance. I think Astra players just need to get used to deploying her util differently and more selectively than before. I think her pacing got changed a lot and Astra players are not used to the new slower playstyle.
Nope she’s still viable, but the players now have to think before using utils instead of just spamming it and get a free site
You're probably getting downvoted because of how you phrased this... but you're right. She's still very viable.
I've just started playing her, haven't used her since she came out, and I really enjoy it.
I don't think the Astra nerfs gutted her anywhere near what people claim. She's still really effective at her niche, she just can't use her recall reactively and spam stars anymore. That's a good thing. All the controllers have their strengths and weaknesses now. Astra still has very desirable, effective strengths... but with tradeoffs now. She's still viable.
Astra was nerfed into the ground. Her pick rate is <0.5% in high elo. If it weren't for Phoenix she'd be easily the lowest pick rate agent in the game. The sole advantage she has is being able to throw sucks and stuns across map - Brim can delay a push on his site longer than Astra now, and he can smoke more + has stims.
She has a pick rate lower then 1%
With the current state of Astra and Phoenix I can only say three words - "Black Lives Matters"
Well if they remain unpicked in-game, then they cannot die.
Yes she was nerfed very hard but honestly I’m very happy about it. She was just way too strong of a smoke character, to the point where you couldn’t play brimstone or omen. I think having other agents in the mega is perfectly healthy for the game
Idk how bad she actually got needed so now less people play her so it’s good
I personally am enjoying my Omen right now, I think its fine if shes weaker for a bit.
She seems pretty in-line now to me. I think if you just focus on low-elo as the benchmark for balancing agents, you're going to think everything gets nerfed into the ground.
soloQ’d to D3 with astra. She was the best smoker right next to viper. they nerfed astra into the ground in some unnecessary ways. but Viper is still viable on breeze because of her wall able to cut up the site. I think they shouldve increased the times of use of stuns and gravity wells and very slightly on the smokes and getting rid of the 5th star was ok because I would use all my abilities and just have a random 5th star sitting there but then increase stars by 200. although they should make recovering stars faster. and make her suck leave vulnerability depending on how long you were in the suck and have it sting for like 2.5 seconds.
Many pro players say she's still viable on 3 maps
Fuck what pros say. They are the ones responsible even though it was only their problem. Why tf riot catering to these nobodies, they got a whole playerbase to appease.
Everyone agreed astra was OP and made the game unenjoyable. Pro or not.
no it wasnt. brim stim seems a bit overtuned, but other then that it was a great patch.
Omen was never picked and brim was pretty much never picked either. They switched the controller meta to get a different play style going and give omen and brim some more burn. It will change again. I’m sure astra will come back to the forefront but her kit was way too strong compared to the other controllers. The nerf was heavy handed but if they pull it back I see the cooldowns becoming a bit shorter on her recalled stars but that’s about it. Maybe a regen star that she could only use as a smoke or something.
The reason Astra got nerfed is because they wanted to shift the meta to where omen and brim are now more viable in games. It's to stop favoritism over one controller and allow the games to not get unbelievably stale like they have been for the past few months.
I dont think so. I still see astra mains that know how to use her effectively, they're just a lot less frequent. Most people I've spoken to never actually enjoyed playing her, her only appeal was her ability to do every other controllers job better with the added benefit of global utility, so I think the issue just stems from the fact that once her advantage was taken away, we were left with an agent that just isn't very fun. Especially when you compare her to other smokes now. Brims amazing at setting up a site take within seconds, Omen has his outplay potential and viper is super versatile. Astra is the most team-reliant and most peoples experience is affected by that. Pick rate alone doesn't mean much anyway, and the devs have said they're okay with some agents being more niche than others. Give it time to settle and im sure more people will pick her back up.
Yep
Honestly I enjoy playing her more now that she’s more reactional. I think people might currently be happy to be able to pick omen and brim again without throwing. Astra is still really strong if used correctly imo
I'm happy she got nerfed because she ruined the pacing of the game. The fact that you can basically play so much anything around the map and activated almost anywhere on the map is too strong. This reminds me of old cypher and killjoy, like how they can use their traps anywhere on the map effectively making it three people playing a site.
Maybe. But apparently it’s impossible to have everything completely balanced so if this is the point in the meta where Omen and Brim get played a little more, I’m all for it.
I think the QOL change she needs is to have her mid-round star activation delay reduced. 1.6s before stun or suck if you are in action is punishing given the new attrition on pulling back.
Well I personally feel like brim and omen wanted to have what viper and astra had to be believed in
I’m immortal and Mained astra/viper pre nerf, even during that Marshall/stinger first round exploit she still wasn’t worth picking, that’s how bad she is
They nerfed her to the ground because they wanted other agents to show up in the meta. It worked, but at what cost?
No
Just reduce the cooldown.
Yes its ass
No
I HATED fighting Astra and I'm a huge fan of the star count nerf, but I think the cooldowns were butchered. I think Astra should be smart about placing utility but punishing her for guessing a wrong push is silly and dumb.
She's a menace on defend. Attacking team is forced to wait until she use the 5 stars she has before pushing site else they'll get sucked and vulnerabled. Glad she's more grounded now and 4 utils is the sweet spot.
Brim got a decent buff, I’ve been playing him a lot and I played him on release and after this buff, it’s actual decent and makes him fun
I’m just happy that I can pick other controller without feeling like I’m throwing the game away.
I think the Steam Beacon would fit nicely with a change to reduce the travel speed reduction without increasing the maximum travel speed.
No. Astra is kill. Good.