Clove had it all. A 54.4% win rate — the highest of any agent in Valorant. Picked in nearly every ranked game. The ability to literally help your team after you die. For months, Clove has been the most forgiving agent in the game: mess up, get killed, and still contribute smokes and crowd control from the grave.

Patch 12.05 just changed that. Drastically.

What Exactly Got Nerfed

Ruse (Post-Death Smoke): 14 seconds → 6 seconds

This is the big one. Clove's signature move — casting smokes after being eliminated — just lost 57% of its duration. Fourteen seconds was long enough to cover an entire site execute or retake. Six seconds barely covers a single push.

To put this in perspective: a typical site execute in coordinated play takes 8-12 seconds from the first smoke to plant completion. At 14 seconds, Clove's death smokes lasted the entire execute. At 6 seconds, they expire before your team finishes planting.

This is the difference between "Clove dying is fine, we still have smokes" and "Clove dying means we lose our smokes mid-push." That's a fundamental shift in how you play around this agent.

Meddle (AoE Crowd Control): 6m radius → 4m radius

Meddle's area-of-effect got shrunk by 33%. This means enemies need to be significantly closer together for a multi-target Meddle to connect. In practice, you're going from "throw it in the general area" to "you need to nail the placement."

Individually, this nerf is manageable. Combined with the Ruse change, it paints a clear picture: Riot wants Clove to be punished for dying, not rewarded for it.

Why Riot Did This

The patch notes are blunt about the reasoning. Clove was "winning from the grave" at a rate that undermined the core Valorant principle: dying should be a punishment. When an agent contributes as much dead as alive, there's no real cost to aggressive plays that don't work out.

Clove's 54.4% win rate wasn't because the agent had insane gunplay or movement. It was because even bad Clove players extracted value after dying. That's a design problem, and this nerf addresses it directly.

Yoru Got Hit Too (And It's Connected)

In the same patch, Yoru caught significant nerfs:

Gatecrash beacon duration: 30 seconds → 15 seconds
Blindside charges: 2 → 1

Riot said Yoru was "bleeding into other roles" — his teleport was functioning as Sentinel-level map control, and his double flash was crowding out dedicated Initiators. Sound familiar? It's the same philosophy behind the Clove nerf: agents should stay in their lane.

This is clearly a broader balance direction. Riot is drawing harder lines between roles, and agents who cross those lines are getting pulled back. Miks — the new agent who heals, smokes, AND stims — might want to watch his back.

Is Clove Still Playable?

Short answer: yes, but you have to change how you play them.

The old Clove playbook was simple: play aggressive, if you die, cast smokes and Meddle from death screen, let your team capitalize. That's dead. Six-second smokes from death are a minor convenience, not a strategy.

The new Clove playbook needs to prioritize staying alive. Which sounds obvious, but it's a genuine shift for an agent whose entire identity was built around death being a feature, not a bug. Here's what works now:

Use Ruse while alive. Clove's smokes are still good when cast normally. Stop treating them as a death ability and start using them as a standard Controller tool.
Play mid, not entry. Clove should no longer be the first person on a site. Stay alive, use smokes proactively, and keep Meddle for defensive situations where the tighter radius still hits grouped enemies.
Death smokes are now for emergency cover only. Six seconds is enough to cover a teammate's retreat or a quick defuse tap. It's not enough to build a strategy around.

What Replaces Clove in the Meta?

Here's where it gets interesting. With Clove weakened and Miks just arriving, the Controller landscape is shifting fast:

Miks — The new option. Heals, stims, smokes, and crowd-controls. If teams want utility density, Miks might replace Clove in coordinated comps.
Omen — Always reliable. Omen's smokes and teleport haven't changed, and in a meta where other Controllers are getting nerfed, consistency matters.
Vyse — Currently sitting at a 55.6% win rate (higher than pre-nerf Clove). If Riot's nerfing based on win rate, Vyse might be next.

The Bigger Picture

Patch 12.05 also brought Fracture and Lotus back to the competitive map pool (replacing Abyss and Corrode), plus a Lotus A-site rework that blocks wallbang spam and adjusts plant zones. The meta is shifting on multiple fronts simultaneously.

Clove mains aren't going to like this patch. But if you're honest about it, an agent with a 54.4% win rate that functions at full capacity while dead probably needed to change. The question is whether 6 seconds is too harsh — or if Riot nailed the balance.

Give it two weeks. If Clove's win rate drops below 48%, expect a partial revert. If it settles around 50-51%, Riot got it right. Either way, the "die and still win" era of Valorant is officially over.