Nitr0 & more Valorant pros call for nerf to Frenzy & Stinger meta

Nicholas ‘nitr0’ Cannella, Jake ‘kaboose’ McDonald, and more Valorant pros have spoken out about the Frenzy and Stinger meta in Valorant, making the game feel heavily reliant on RNG.

There’s been a ton of talk from the community about potential changes to Valorant that would make it a better playing experience.

One glaring problem is how cheap the automatic pistol Frenzy and SMG Stinger are, and the impact they have early in the half.

The Frenzy is priced at 400 Creds and the Stinger can be purchased with 1000 Creds. These aren’t the prized weapons you want in a full-buy round, but their RNG makes them incredibly valuable in the opening rounds of a half, according to pros.

“Pistol rounds have been more RNG than I thought was even humanly possible with this Frenzy meta,” 100 Thieves’ Nitr0 said.

This kicked off a large discussion in the Valorant community who agreed with the former CSGO veteran. Many have called for nerfs to the two weapons to try and bring balance back to pistol rounds.

Cloud9 White’s Melanie ‘meL’ Capone likened the first few rounds of a game as a “coinflip,” seeing as loadouts with the Stinger or Frenzy can still shred teams who’re still building their economy.

“Watching [or] playing the first three rounds of the game is just so boring knowing that it’s a coinflip on your running Frenzy/Stinger’s RNG vs the other team’s,” she said.

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While Riot made adjustments to run accuracy in the 2.02 patch update, this doesn’t apply to these two guns.

At close enough ranges, a burst from either of those have a good chance at tagging an opponent’s head. Though it’s obviously not a one-shot kill, the flurry of bullets from the rest of the clip can make light work of a couple of players at a time.

The problem gets even worse when you consider how much of an impact this can have in a game where the regular format is first-to-13.

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“100% my biggest complaint about the game [right now],” Envy’s Kaboose said. “Feels pretty lame to play especially when [you] only need to win 13 rounds in this game.”

Solutions from the pro community range from increasing the prices of the Stinger and Frenzy, increasing their run accuracy spread, or reducing the damage.

Though it’s not the game’s most pressing issue, this has been a trending gripe for a lot of Valorant players, so it’ll be interesting to see if Riot responds soon.