Since Valorant was released in the early weeks of the Closed Beta, Raze and its wide array of damaging abilities have been the subject of discussion. While not as controversial as those of Reyna or Killjoy , the disagreements about her are enough to split the community. In the right hands, Raze can be incredibly oppressive, and all that mobility and damage can pierce through an enemy front in seconds. Boom Bot and Paint Shells can effectively stop aggressive enemy thrusts while having adequate kill threats.
However, despite all the objections from the Valorant community, the developers had no choice but to take it to the annoying panel. Moreover, the fact that each of his abilities can do damage goes against what Riot CEO Nicolo Laurent said about weapons and abilities in Valorant in 2019.
We are making Project A because we are passionate about tactical shooters. We believe there is so much to build on in the genre as well as several problems to fix. https://t.co/hwq6CqHLWy
— nicolo (@niiicolo) October 16, 2019
So balance changes were inevitable. Currently, Raze has reduced the damage and area of effect on Blast Packs, and the total number of Paint Shells it can carry has been reduced.
On a professional level, Raze doesn't perform as well as some might hope. Like Reyna, she is one of the least selected Agents in the entire Ignition Series and had a very low 42 selection percentage in the last FaZe Clan Valorant Invitational .
However, Raze is slowly being used as a map-specific Agent, and it has been shown to have an incredible 76 percent preference rate.
He is one of the most popular Agents of choice, along with Raze, Sage, and Jett in Solo/Duo-queue Valorant competitive games. Its popularity is skyrocketing at every level. That said, the win rate is pretty average and sometimes even lower. So it will stop somewhere on the B floor for us. Even after all the nerfs, he still remains one of the most popular Agents outside of the pro game.