Chamber received some heavy nerfs in Valorant Patch 5.12 with changes to his core abilities. Pros that spoke to Dexerto say the changes have made him less viable across the board.
Chamber has been a top pick in professional Valorant in 2022. The agent has been an almost ever-present part of compositions, and teams with players that mastered Chamber reaped the benefits in the Valorant Champions Tour.
“If you had a good Chamber player, it was like a cheat code,” Team Liquid head coach Emil ‘eMIL’ Sandgren told Dexerto at Red Bull Home Ground Media Day. “You could win rounds that you shouldn’t win because your Chamber was playing well.”
But with his recent changes in Patch 5.12, Chamber’s teleport and trademark ability (his trap) are significantly worse than before. These changes will make the agent more map dependent and will affect how teams use his trap, according to Team Heretics’ Óscar ‘mixwell’ Colocho and Aleksander ‘zeek’ Zygmunt.
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“On maps that are small, and both bomb sites are small, he’s stronger,” Mixwell said. “I feel like on really large maps he’s weaker, which makes no sense because he has the OP as well. But if you cannot teleport then he’s not strong anymore.”
Chamber’s teleport range was slightly changed in the nerf, and if the anchor is destroyed, then he can no longer use the ability that round. This limits the agent’s ability to take over larger areas and play cheeky angles, even on the biggest Valorant maps.
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For zeek, the biggest change was to Chamber’s trap. The Agent now has to be within a certain range for the ability to go off when an enemy crosses in front of it.
“The fact that they added range to his trap is just going to kill him,” zeek said. “Honestly, I think it’s now just not worth playing him.”
Chamber is now more balanced in Valorant
While the changes to the agent are massive, pros don’t think the French sniper will be gone from the meta entirely. His teleport can still be utilized well on small maps, like Ascent and Split, but he won’t be the meta-defining agent he once was.
“I think there are other agents that are more viable, even with the current Chamber, because you can still pick other agents and make it viable. So now with the nerfs coming in, we’re probably not going to see a lot of Chamber being played. So he’s probably dead, but I don’t know,” eMIL said.
The nerfs to Chamber will hit pro play in 2023 and fans can see how teams adapt at the Valorant LOCK//IN tournament in Brazil, which starts in February.