Iso’s reign of terror is coming to an end after just two weeks. The VALORANT dev team at Riot has put in a plan to nerf his overpowered Double Tap shield ability in next week’s Patch 9.0.
One of VALORANT‘s game designers, penguin, confirmed via a post on Twitter/X today that the team has planned to nerf Iso at the start of Episode Nine, Act One. Riot is removing the two-kill reset on the Double Tap shield ability, effectively taking away an additional charge of the ability, and reducing the ability’s duration from 20 seconds to just 12.
With these changes, Iso’s ability to snowball off an entire enemy team has been reduced. In his current state, an Iso who picked up two kills was gaining an extra charge of Double Tap, which when combined with the reset granted by popping an orb, granted Iso an additional 40 seconds of his shield.
Penguin said that by removing the two-kill reset, Iso stays at just one activation of the ability per round, and added that the shortened duration of the ability “should create a clearer window for opponents to deny him fights.” Enemy teams should spend less time running away from Iso.
Even with these changes, Iso is still in a relatively strong state as he can activate Double Tap immediately, swing around a corner, and take the first engagement of the round with his shield active. The rest of his ability kit remains unchanged. Iso could still potentially make some impact on the professional level, though players and coaches are split on exactly how much of an impact he’s made.
Even with the new changes to the patch update schedule that push new agents, maps, and act releases to Wednesday instead of Tuesday, the tweaks to Iso should still go live on Tuesday, June 25 since they fall under the category of balance changes.
