Valorant patch 1.09 contains a variety of changes, but Riot knows that much of the talk is about tweaking the one-hit-kill Operator sniper rifle (replacing Counter-Strike's AWP). The change log contains an explanation and a request to read it before sending an email.

"But before you say, "Look at how you butchered my son," let me explain our analysis by one of our lead designers," the developer wrote.

I'll be defiant and start with the changes. The operator is now more expensive, $5,000 instead of $4,500, the damage to the legs is reduced, and the firing rate is a little slower. The movement is a little slower while scoped, the guns become inaccurate immediately after moving, and they take longer to become accurate after stopping. Additionally, all guns have more time to lose accuracy after a jump.

Now the explanation. The price change was made because Riot noticed that some players were getting Operator and Full Armor in round 3, "snowballing additional Ops."

"The new price point delays the appearance of the Operator and increases the penalty for dying with the Operator in hand," Riot wrote.

"We hope to better balance the risk/reward of using this premium weapon.

As for the functional changes to the weapon, it is to make it harder to re-peek at the angle after being pushed off the weapon.

"For aggressive operators, dry peeking angles in operator is clearly more effective (especially for jump peeks) than we would like. Furthermore, pushing the Operator out of the angle with the utility seems less valuable because the user can reliably re-peak and kill the opponent. This set of mechanical changes (dead zone, scope travel speed, rate of fire, equipment time, jump land inaccuracy) target these issues and increase the counterplay around high mobility Operator play Operator is still quite powerful at peeking angles But predictable repeeks should be more easily punished."

From the looks of it, the change has been received mostly favorably on the Valorant subreddit, but not enough time has passed to know if it has had the desired effect - increasing the risk of picking without pushing Op to its limits. Time (and perhaps the data Riot is collecting) will tell.

Other changes in the patch include buffing Viper.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article stated that the Operator's firing speed was slightly faster. It is now slightly slower.