Iso has been massivley over-buffed.
Valorant agent Iso is currently terrorising matches and is considered a must pick by many top players after being massively buffed in the most recent patch earlier this week.
The 8.11 patch notes for Valorant that were released earlier this week featured a major buff for Iso, with the aim of making him more viable at all levels of play. His changes mainly focused around his Double Tap ability, which now gives him a shield after being activated and can be refreshed by getting kills. After months of being a fairly mediocre agent, this change has turned him into a monster that is clearly too strong in its current from.
The changes to Iso, along with nerfs to other agents, have seen his popularity skyrocket and his win rate in high level games isn’t far behind. With the skills of the best players in the world, Iso can now become a menace considering his shield can have a near permanent uptime if you play well. With a lot of the top players relying on a single headshot to take down their opponent, being able to almost permanently block the first instance of damage coming your way is a massive advantage for Iso players, effectively tuning him into a tank.
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It also means that some weapons are almost useless when Iso is in the game. The likes of the Marshal sniper or Sheriff pistol become significantly worse when their speciality is slow but powerful shots and Iso can just block the first one leaving them exposed.
Iso is so strong that some at the top end of the player base are calling for him to be nerfed in a hotfix before the next major patch, where he surely will get toned down somewhat.
While it’s the numbers and uptime of his shield that have caused the issues with Iso being so strong in this patch, it also is proof of the design issues that some, including myself, pointed out when he launched. Having an agent that can negate the skill of an opponent by doing very little is fundamentally not fun to play against, and the only reason this hasn’t been an issue before is because his power has not been strong enough elsewhere to warrant people playing him often enough.
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It’s safe to say that Iso will get nerfed in the next patch, but personally, I would like to see things go one step further and have the agent reworked completely. Even before the buff he wasn’t a fun agent to play against, and the past week or so has proven that he is almost impossible to balance well. A rework of his shield and potentially even his other abilities is likely in order to make sure that Iso doesn’t have this same cycle happen again and again.