Valorant patch notes 4.11 were released, bringing with it a myriad of small changes and bug fixes. One fix, in particular, stood out. A small note to VALORANT Yoru players: “Fixed a bug where Yoru could use weapons earlier than intended when exiting Dimensional Drift (…again).” This tired addition is a nod towards Riot’s ongoing battle with tricky Yoru players about how the character should be played, and has a history dating all the way back to the agent’s first entrance.
When Yoru was added all the way back in Patch 2.0, he played very differently from how he does today. Most notably, his Dimensional Drift, the ultimate ability that allows him to phase out of sight, had a very short exit time. This feature allowed Yoru players to sneak behind enemies and pop out with a shotgun, netting an easy kill. Riot wasn’t a fan of this playstyle because of how inconsistent it was. Yoru wasn’t able to always pull this trick off and usually enemies had very little time to react to Yoru’s decloak.
When the time came for a full rework of Yoru’s kit, his Dimensional Drift was quickly changed. Most notably, the time to exit the ultimate was doubled. With the extended delay, it was no longer an option for most Yoru players to continue playing so aggressively.
It wasn’t long before fans of “Yorty” (a combination of “Yoru” and “shorty”, the two ingredients for the play) came up with a technical workaround to the ultimate delay. By hooking onto ropes on certain maps while entering the animation, Yoru would skip the unequip animation altogether. This trick would allow players to raise their weapon and start shooting faster than they could before.
Riot fired back in Patch 4.07 by removing the exploit. Players quickly responded with another animation cancel, using a skillful timing of activating Yoru’s abilities to override the animation allowing him to start shooting directly after unequip.
Finally, the latest round of bug fixes takes a hard stance against players trying to squeeze precious seconds out of Yoru’s Dimensional Drift. Riot has repeatedly slapped Yoru players on the wrist to make their point clear: “play Yoru the right way”. The last change cedes some ground, though. Riot added a note with the patch: “we are keeping a close eye on the results of these changes”. This promise likely alludes to a future rebalance to Yoru’s ultimate to please fans of the aggressive playstyle, but certainly won’t re-add “the bad experience of getting shot by invisible Yoru.”
Valorant’s Act Four is coming to a close in two weeks. Hopefully, the cocky Japanese agent gets some small buff from Riot in the upcoming Act Five. Otherwise, devious fans may eventually find just another bug that bypasses Yoru’s flaws.
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