Reason Behind Yoru And Clove Nerfs

Riot Games is preparing balance changes for two popular agents in Valorant, with both Clove and Yoru receiving notable nerfs.

The adjustments target some of their strongest abilities and are meant to improve overall agent balance and encourage more variety in team compositions.

Clove Smoke and Decay Abilities Nerfed

Clove’s utility is being toned down, especially the strength of their abilities after death.

Two of the agent’s abilities are changing:

Ruse (Smoke)

• Duration reduced from 14 seconds to 6 seconds when cast after death

Meddle (Decay)

• Area of effect reduced from 6 meters to 4 meters

The change specifically targets Clove’s ability to provide powerful utility after death.

Yoru Losing a Flash and Shorter Teleport

Yoru is also receiving a significant adjustment to his toolkit.

Gatecrash (Teleport)

• Duration reduced from 30 seconds to 15 seconds

Blindside (Flash)

• Charges reduced from 2 to 1

These changes make Yoru’s abilities less flexible and force players to use them more carefully during rounds.

Riot Explains Why the Nerfs Are Happening

According to Riot, the goal of these adjustments is to keep the game balanced while encouraging different agents to appear in team compositions across all skill levels.

For Yoru, the developers said his current abilities allow him to perform too many roles at once.

His teleport allows fast map-wide rotations, while his flash is considered one of the most versatile in the game. Because of that, Riot believes he has started to overlap with other roles such as flash initiators and even some sentinels.

Reducing the power of his core abilities should create more meaningful tradeoffs when using them.

Clove’s Win Rate Was Too High

Clove’s nerfs come after the agent reportedly achieved the highest win rate in the game since release, while also remaining one of the most popular picks.

Riot said the main issue comes from Clove’s ability to place smokes after death, which consistently provides strong value with very little counterplay.

The shorter smoke duration is meant to limit situations where players could fully defuse the spike inside a smoke with almost no risk.