Valorant's Yoru Has Gotten Off To A Rocky Start
On Jan. 12 Valorant's second Episode began. Like with other battle royales, this event kicked off a new competitive season and introduced a number of in-game features, including a new playable Agent named Yoru. In the week following Yoru's addition to Valorant, however, players discovered that some of his abilities didn't work as they were presumably intended.
The two most significant issues with Yoru that have circulated within online Valorant communities both revolve around an ability of his called Gatecrash. This allows Yoru to place a marker called a Rift Tether either immediately next to him or at a distance ahead of his location upon its activation. Then, up to 20 seconds after placing the Rift Tether, Yoru can teleport to it.
The first of the two major Gatecrash issues was shared in a post to the Valorant subreddit by user AzdarLP that was upvoted more than 2,000 times. It depicts Yoru standing on a ledge and placing a Rift Tether at a location of significantly lower elevation than his starting point. Then, when Yoru jumps before activating Gatecrash, he takes damage upon the ability's completion. When simply standing or walking and teleporting to that same spot, Yoru takes no damage.
On one hand, the absence of fall damage in the latter case is as good of an indication as any that Valorant developer Riot Games never intended for him to take any damage in this scenario. Plus, instantly teleporting from one elevation to another is logically not the same as falling through the air onto that same spot.
The second major issue with Yoru's Gatecrash was shared to the Valorant subreddit by user amcaaa and upvoted more than 12,000 times. The issue depicted not only resulted in a more successful Reddit post, but is significantly more severe in scale. In the attached clip, Gatecrash teleports Yoru not to the location of his Rift Tether but to an out-of-bounds area below his then-present location, ultimately resulting in his instant death.
In their description of the clip, amcaaa theorized that what triggered the glitch was attempting to teleport to the Rift Tether at the precise 20 second mark at which it otherwise would have expired. One commenter theorized that the issue is the result of the Rift Tether disappearing within the time Yoru is in the midst of teleporting. Thus, the game has nowhere to place him and defaults to a "0,0,0" coordinate that's ultimately located beneath the map.
Riot is generally receptive to fan feedback, and has even buffed Agents when desired by Valorant's fanbase and added a surrender feature to prevent matches from feeling needlessly prolonged. Riot has yet to address the issues with Yoru's Gatecrash ability, however.