Valorant

Easier reading this go around; the first patch of Rated queue is looking fairly stable thus far, so we’ve opted to keep our balance changes light in order to let the meta evolve naturally.

Invest in Guardian stocks, as the weapon is beginning to find itself! These updates should help the weapon better carve its own gameplay niche as a heavy-hitting and affordable precision rifle. Also, Spike Rush lovers continue to get spoiled with yet another new orb.

The recently added Surrender option gets a dedicated button to help cast your vote. And the vote threshold is changing for Unrated—surrender votes will pass up to 1 no vote from voting participants, whereas Competitive will still require a unanimous Yes to surrender.

You can also surrender sooner now, for when it feels like your opponent has a 141 2/3% chance of winning.

WEAPON UPDATES

Guardian

• Price reduced from 2700 >>> 2500
• Rate of Fire reduced from 6.5 >>> 4.75
• Penetration power increased from Medium >>> Heavy
• Input queue updated from 0.083 >>> 0.1175
  • Up until now, the Guardian has lived in a strange position in the arsenal. Price-wise, it remained close to the premium rifles while not adequately competing with their power, making it too pricey as an alternate economic option, but not powerful enough to be considered as a premiere weapon choice. Its fast fire rate made it more powerful in close range situations than we’d like, given our goals for the weapon’s long-range, precision shot fantasy, and—despite its semi-automatic, heavy-hitting firing style—it matched other rifles in terms of penetrating power. We hope these changes will sharpen the Guardian’s identity as a long-range, versatile weapon, with its heavy penetration values and lower price providing some more nuanced choice competition to the rifle category of the arsenal.

MAP UPDATES

Haven

• Removed spot where Spike was unable to be retrieved once dropped.

All Maps

• Fixed multiple spots where players were able to clip inside level geometry
• Removed more locations where Sova’s sensor arrow was able to go through walls

MODE UPDATES

Spike Rush

• New Orb: Twin Hunters
  • Capturing the orb releases two hunting wolves to track down the two nearest enemies (from orb location, they will not change targets after spawning).
    • Wolves speed up when they spot an enemy and dash at them when close, slowing and near-sighting for 4 seconds upon impact.
    • Wolves have 100 HP and can be damaged
    • Wolves will time out at 15 seconds, or when their target is killed

• Split: Orb Location
  • Mid defender side orb has been moved onto mid platform to make it slightly less defender favored

QUALITY OF LIFE

Surrender changes

• Unrated Mode vote requirements to pass changed from 100% to 80%
• AFK players who are not spawning in are NOT counted as voting participants. So if a player is not spawning on your 5-person team, you don't need a yes. For example, you can surrender with 3/4 votes in unrated, in cases where the 5th team member does not spawn in.
• Competitive Mode vote requirements to pass remains at 100%
• You can now call a surrender vote starting with round 5 versus round 8
• A new button in the in-game menu has been added to call a surrender vote
  • We know it can be at times challenging to get a surrender vote to pass given it has historically required an unanimous vote. For Unrated Mode , which is meant to be lower stakes than Competitive (no rank on the line), we have made adjustments so if the vast majority of the team wants to surrender (80%) they can now opt out of that match and find a fairer fight sooner.
  • For Competitive Mode we plan to keep the vote requirement as unanimous, because surrendering has an impact on your rank (all unplayed rounds count as loss credit), we want to make sure the team is in full agreement before a decision is made that will negatively impact a player’s rank. We’ve also slightly reduced the minimum rounds needed to be played so that if players have a particularly bad start, they can opt out of that match earlier.
• Competitive matches have a new win-by-two overtime format with automated votes on whether the game should continue or end in a draw.
• Instead of playing a single sudden death round, teams will alternate playing rounds on attack and defense until a team claims victory by being up by 2 rounds.
• Each round will have a full reset, setting all players at 5000 credits and 4 points short of their ultimate.
• After every two rounds of overtime, an automated vote will trigger to determine if the match should continue or end in a draw
• The threshold for continuing the match will become stricter as more rounds have been played:
  • First vote: 6 players needed to end match in a draw
  • Second vote: 3 players needed to end match in a draw
  • Third vote and on: 1 player needed to end match in a draw
• If the vote fails, the match will end in a draw.
• Players might gain rank off a draw but will never lose rank
• Unrated will still use the original Sudden Death format
• Custom games now have an option to launch with win-by-two overtime rules
• In the Collection screens, there is now a checkbox to toggle between showing all items or only owned ones (additional options and improvements for managing your collection will be coming in future patches)
• Fixed a bug where the mission “You or your ally plant/defuse spikes” sometimes did not take into account plants and defuses by allies
• Transition screens and startup screens are now letterboxed
• Fixed text overlap issues in the Battlepass and Contract screens in some languages
• Players in custom games with cheats enabled can select a different Agent to use on the next round in the cheats menu.
• Removing a friend will now prompt a confirmation dialogue
• Pressing Escape while typing in the chat box will clear the message
• Revised layout of confirmation dialogs to make primary action larger and always on the left; applied color in various places, like using red for destructive actions; revised the locations of some confirmation and cancel buttons for consistency
• Minor fixes for visual artifacts on Bind on Intel GPUs
• Minor render improvements for modern hardware
• Added an error popup for crashes on startup linking to troubleshooting guide for crashes
  • https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050789953
• Patch notes and payment windows will scale correctly on 4K monitors
• IME input on payment windows will now work correctly (Japanese/Chinese)
• Players can now view individual skin levels in the collections and store view
• Updates to censored hit impact effects for better readability
• Added Agent silhouettes for observers
• Improved render performance for silhouettes
• Agent health bars are now visible to observers
• Fulfilling a buy request while moving will no longer interrupt your movement
• Custom Games Tournament Mode:
  • Custom games can now be set to Tournament Mode. This allows every player in the game to have access to the Toggle Match Timer cheat in game without having all other cheats enabled. It also allows observers to be flagged as moderators, which grants them access to additional cheats that they can use as necessary. Regular observers cannot use cheats anymore.
  • We'll be looking at expanding the list of moderator cheats in future patches.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a Cypher bug where traps that were placed such that they were on the inside of a doorway, would not trigger when someone walked through them
• Fixed an issue with the Match Timer hitching under unstable network conditions
• Fixed an issue where players couldn’t jump off ascenders if jump was bound to the mousewheel
• Fixed some visual issues that could occur when reconnecting to the game while dead
• Fixed Barrier phase announcement showing up in normal games for observers
• Fixed various UI issues on observer scoreboard

You can stop spamming us now, because Competitive Mode goes live this patch. Most obvious change is that our top rank is now “Radiant” and we’ve added a surrender option, which will come in handy when you start losing to Radiant players.

Tagging, the slowing effect you feel when hit by bullets, has been adjusted, in part to up your chances of escape if you’re near cover. We can’t help you much if you’re dancing in the open.

Lots of love has gone into improving the Menu UI—might be jarring at first, but we believe it’s for the better. It’s worth studying the tweaked areas for all maps, which should relax the desire to exhaust abilities at certain locations.

AGENT UPDATES

VIPER

Viper Toxic screen is a potentially-strong vision slicing tool, but its access was well...terrible, making it only useful in a few spots on most maps. This should allow Viper to cut up sights, maps, and other unique areas to either fake or help take ground.

With Viper applying decay on her smokes, but only providing moderate chip damage on her area-damage skill, pushing through it was hard to punish. With Fragile, Viper’s team should have a big advantage on anyone if they fire on pushing enemies

We like Viper’s unique ability to do “one-way” smokes, but some of the locations could create places where it was suicide to push through. An increased window should keep this viable without eliminating the strategy.

JETT

REYNA

CYPHER

SMOKE TUNING

The previous tuning for smokes made it far too punishing for players to push through and take a calculated risk—really encouraging them to be used as a powerful defensive stall tool. Pushing through a smoke will still be risky, just more reasonable.

WEAPON UPDATES

Bucky (right-click)

• Crouch-walking accuracy: 3.45 >>> 4.1
• Walk accuracy 6.4 >>> 4.4
• Run Accuracy 3.5 >>> 6.4
  • We discovered an accidental discrepancy in how we were applying movement inaccuracy to the Bucky's right-click, one we introduced during closed beta when we added a delay for players to receive walking accuracy when slowing down from a running state. This was making it so that the right-click was much more accurate on the run that intended. We've fixed this now so that running with the right-click is significantly more inaccurate than walking or standing still. We've also increased the inaccuracy for crouch-walking to more appropriately match the amount of evasion it provides.

COMPETITIVE MODE UPDATE

• Competitive Mode will be made available during this patch, changes since closed beta:
  • Updated rank iconography.
  • New name for top rank: Radiant
  • Expanded skill disparity range for playing with friends in rank placements

MAP UPDATES

Adjusted numerous locations to allow clearing angles to be a bit more straightforward in the following places:

Haven

• Garage Doors
• Entrance to C Long on Attacker Side
• Cover in A Lobby restructured to open up the space which allows for additional sight lines and traversal options
• C Link
• A Link
• The Entrance to A Sewer and the bottom of A Sewer

Ascent

• Defender spawn entrance
• Attacker side of A Main (Including a self-boost to gain an additional angle to peek A Main as an attacker)
• Garden entrance

Bind

• A Bath entrance
• B Teleporter Exit and B Window entrance

Split

• Defender Spawn

We’re peeling back a bit on the amount of locations that require ability usage, thorough angle checking or teamwork to clear safely.

The intention is that angles that are more difficult to clear are most commonly found in areas meant to reinforce existing territory control. This is to emphasize ability usage and teamwork in order to reliably gain control of these locations. An added benefit is that this encourages ability usage and combat engagements to be spread out across the map which can help prevent the frequency of scenarios where all of the players expend all of their abilities and ultimates in the same place at the same time.

We’ll continue monitoring how the maps are playing and make adjustments as necessary.

• Collision and Nav Mesh (playable terrain) improvements

HUD & UI

We’ve included a set of menu UI changes as part of our ongoing work to clarify the client experience coming out of Closed Beta. This is only a small portion of the improvements, but should push overall usability in a positive direction.Navigation and UI changes are disruptive, so we appreciate your patience adjusting to the new approach and we hope you find the changes to be upgrades after you settle in.

As always, thank you for your continued feedback. We have a long way to go, but we’ll keep hammering on the client UI until it’s a stellar experience for everyone.

• All main sections views now have a “back” button in the upper left to return to the Home view (pressing Escape is also supported)
• All details views (gun details, players cards, match details, etc.) have been converted to use the same back button in the upper left instead of a close button in the upper right
• Small popup dialogs still use the close button in the upper right where appropriate
• Slide-out options menu removed from the logo button in upper left
• New options button added to upper right, which opens the menu with Settings, Support, About, Leave Match, and Exit to Desktop buttons
• Circle progress elements for Battlepass and active contract removed from navigation; missions element remains throughout the experience
• Navigation reordered to accommodate the changes
• Exit to desktop flow converted to a single button with a popup that allows a player to exit or sign out and exit.
• Note that the Leave Match button is now displayed all the time, but will be locked in cases where leaving a match is not allowed. Previously the button was missing completely when leaving was not allowed, which looked like a bug rather than a restriction.
• Added a setting that allows players to always display the inventory in the lower right of the HUD
• Added a new HUD element that tells you when you haven't been spawned in due to being AFK

Battlepass

• Added Battlepass text button in the nav to make it easier to find
• Added small progress bar below text that shows progress for current level of the pass
• Hovering Battlepass in the nav shows a “peek” flyout of upcoming pass rewards
• Clicking either goes to a new Battlepass section

Contract & Agents section

• Moved Agents section out from under Collection to make it easier to find and to provide a home for contract progress in the nav
• Added small progress bar below text that shows progress for current level of the active contract
• Hovering Agents in the nav shows a “peek” of upcoming contract rewards
• Clicking Agents goes to the Agents section, and clicking the contract flyout navigates to Agents and opens the associated contract details
• Removed secondary navigation from Collection view since Agents no longer lives there and the navigation is no longer needed

QUALITY OF LIFE

• An Early Surrender option has been added. You can now opt to surrender out of a match ahead of the match’s completion if you do not want to continue playing. We will also be adding some light polish and functionality in future patches post 1.02.
  • You can call an early surrender vote by typing: “/ff” “forfeit” “concede” or “surrender”
  • An early surrender vote requires all present players on the surrendering team to vote ‘yes’ to pass
  • You can vote via “/yes” or “/no” along with the settings F5 and F6 (defaults)
  • Each team can only call a vote once per half
  • Early surrender votes cannot be called before reaching round 8.
    • Once a vote is called the vote option will be queued to vote on for the next round, or if you call the vote early enough in the buy phase you can vote immediately.
  • The winning team gets round win credit for every round necessary to bring them up to the victory condition (13 rounds). The surrendering team will get loss credit for every round necessary to bring them up to 13 rounds

• Added a setting that to allow players to permanently mute text from enemy players

Update to Tagging (slowdown effect when hit by enemy fire)

• Effect of tagging on movement speed reduced:
  • Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Standard) 80% >> 70%
  • Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Wall Penetration) 35% >> 25%
• Increased the time it takes to reach desired slow amount when tagged by 100%

Tagging is intended to reward the player with better positioning and the player that successfully lands a shot on the enemy first. When tagged, you will now more gradually transition to the reduced tagging speed. In addition, the reduced tagging speed is slightly more forgiving. If you are positioned close to cover, this should allow you to potentially escape when tagged more frequently than before. Also, the effects of being tagged should feel less jarring especially when playing with higher ping.

Tagging through walls has been further reduced which should enable reliable escapes when being shot through walls.

MODE UPDATES

Spike Rush

• New Orb Type - Tracer Orb
  • Team-wide buff that grants 2x wall penetration and reveals enemies for .75s when they are hit
  • Duration: Entire round

• Speed Boost changed to Combat Stim
  • Movement speed and durations unchanged
  • Reload time decreased by 30%
  • Weapon draw time decreased by 30%
  • Spread recovery time decreased by 30%
  • Rate of Fire increased by 30%
  • Jump force increased by 25%

• Plague Orb now shares a pool with Paranoia Orb
  • Only one of these will be chosen per game
  • Only one Plague Orb can spawn per round
  • Health reduction decreased from 90 to 50

• Deception Orb now shares a pool with Plague Orb
  • Only one of these will be chosen per game
  • Only one Deception Orb can spawn per round
  • Duration decreased from 10s to 8s (now matches Plague Orb)
  • Tunnel vision decreased by 20% (meaning you see more on your screen)

Practice Mode

• Reyna: Killing practice bots now properly spawns Soul Orbs
• Jett: Killing practice bots now properly refreshes Blade Storm

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

The team primarily focused on smoothing out framerates in certain scenarios. Mostly this helps out mid to high spec machines.

• Optimized a worst case performance scenario that occurred when multiple players are moving close to one another.
• Optimized multi-kill streak banners.
• Optimized player health bars
• Optimized creation of pings (z-ping, ping wheel, when an ally dies, etc)
• Optimized Spawn Barrier audio causing periodic framerate dips.
• [1.01 Hotfix] Resolved an issue that was causing low memory systems with slow HDDs to perform especially poorly.

BUG FIXES

• Levels 2-7 for the Sovereign Ghost skin are now fixed and unlockable
  • As we’ve stated, we never intend for skins to be pay-to-win or pay-to-lose . In this case, the Sovereign Ghost was playing unsilenced audio in third-person on Levels 2-7, so it was totally pay-to-lose and we didn’t want any of you to experience that. It’s fixed now, so go ahead and upgrade that baby and enjoy your custom effects, finisher, kill banner, and variants!
• Fixed Toggle Walk, you can once again use this setting
• Fixed the Return from AFK message only displaying the name of the last player to rejoin
• Fixed an issue where the defuse bar would duplicate
• Fixed several localization strings and text overlaps
• Fixed several crashes
• Fixed a bug where the Spike could automatically plant when you walked onto a plant site while it was in your inventory
• Fixed a bug where the Spike would float in the air if it had been placed on a Sage wall
• Fixed a bug where the dropped Spike's model could be invisible to defenders on while it was on the ground
• Fixed a bug where gun buddies were squished on the Arsenal page
• Fixed a bug where trying to open the Character Select UI while the megamap in the Shooting Range would result in a deadlock
• Improved GPU performance of most out of game menu screens
• Fixed a bug where sometimes players got stuck on the transition into game and never successfully transitioned into game
• Fixed a bug where the spread on the Bucky's alt fire was higher when walking than was when running or standing still
• Fixed a bug where dead players could appear standing when you reconnect to a match
• Fixed a bug where you could get stuck grabbing orbs
• Fixed a bug where enemy players would appear on the minimap while watching the Spike, once your team was dead

KNOWN ISSUES

• Competitive match overtime on this patch will be resolved using Sudden Death, which we know is intrinsically unfair. We’re actively working on replacing this with a more fair solution.
• We’ve discovered issues in our routing software causing some players in Sweden to be incorrectly placed on our Istanbul game servers, and this is likely causing a small number of players elsewhere to also end up on the incorrect game servers. The fix is deployed to our Stockholm networking gear and we’re deploying the fix globally this week.

Surprise! Don’t lie, you didn’t think you’d get patch notes this week.

These are lighter, sure, but Patch 1.01 continues our effort to improve performance, this time focused on a smoother combat experience as well as additional support for high spec machines.

Our new mode, Spike Rush, gets an injection of new Orb types to play with. For example, a Golden Gun Orb that lets you one-shot anybody with the quickness.

Also, Sage gets a nerf. Promise we’re not picking on healers.

GAMEPLAY AND BALANCE

SAGE

• Barrier Orb cast range reduced 20 >>> 10 meters
  • As a Sentinel, Sage is supposed to be most effective when defending territory that she already controls. The 20m cast range was allowing Sage to aggressively take control of neutral territory in a way that was inappropriate for her role in Valorant. This range reduction aims to keep her strong while defending territory but reduce her efficacy at taking ground.

MAP UPDATES

Ascent

• Fixed several spots where weapons were falling through the world and issues with wall penetration

All Maps

• Modified several call out names to better match player terms

SPIKE RUSH UPDATE

• Each game of Spike Rush now features a set of 5 randomly selected orbs
  • The Full Ultimate orb will always be available
  • 4 of the remaining 7 orb types will be chosen at random
• Chosen orb types will be shown in a description widget both in character select and during pre-round

New Orb Types

• Health Orb - Grants teamwide health regen (instant)
  • 20 second duration
  • 12 HP per second (3HP per tick)
  • SFX/VFX only play while actually healing

• Deception Orb - Applies “Paranoia” to the enemy team 3 seconds after capture
  • 10 second debuff
  • Vision is greatly reduced (and a small Field of Vision shift)
  • Fake footsteps and gunfire play for affected players
  • Minimap is disabled

• Golden Gun - Grants capturing player a Golden Gun
  • One-shot, one-kill
  • Perfectly accurate at all times
  • Agent moves at knife speed
  • Only has a single bullet in chamber and 2 backup rounds
  • Kills grant an additional round

Misc.

• New pre-round HUD element that shows the weapon & potential orb types for the current round.
• Players now get 1 ultimate point for collecting any orb.

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

Our performance work this patch primarily focuses on improving performance during combat and general performance improvements for high spec machines. The game should feel even smoother in combat and many scenes will likely have higher average FPS depending on your spec.

• Combat Perf : We were able to fix a number of things causing dips during combat.
  • Skins for 9/10 players were failing to pre-load in the game. The first time you’d come across these skin in-game you’d experience a drop in framerate.
  • Reduced frame dips that would occur when a kill callout was added or removed to the hud.
  • Improved the performance of the Viper specific HUD elements which had some performance issues.

• +FPS on Mid to High Spec : We were able to improve CPU bottlenecks in a few places across the code as well. Lower spec machines may still benefit from some of these improvements but would only see the gains during combat.
  • Added multithreaded rendering support for high end machines. If your machine meets the requirements to benefit from multithreaded rendering, you'll see a new option to turn it on or off in the Graphics Quality menu. It's on by default for these machines
  • Multithreaded rendering improves performance in scenes where the cost of managing objects that need to be rendered exceeds the cost of the game simulation and the cost of actually rendering the scene on the GPU. These conditions most commonly occur when moving through scenes with lots of objects visible (ex. Split attacker spawn) and in cases where the game simulation doesn't require much work (ex. practice range, out of combat gameplay, etc.).

• Multithreaded vision cones; minimap vision cones will now compute on another thread, if it's able to
• Large VFX passes across all maps, this reduced the CPU side cost of these particles by allowing the GPU to do more of the simulation
• Reworked client performance Stats to include more detailed breakdown of frame times

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Sova's Recon Dart will behave more consistently and only reveal the portion of enemies behind a wall
• Added a setting that allows the inventory to always appear
• Pings will no longer draw over allies and enemies when placed behind them
• Transition out of game now shows the map you just played instead of Brimstone and Sage walking into a teleporter
• In the shooting range, changing character now uses a lightweight and more performant UI than the flow going into a match
• Missions on the end of game screen are now sorted by completion and by type
• Minor visual improvements to Contract and Battlepass rewards in the progression widget located at the top of the screen

BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue where translucent particles, like smoke layers, would show through Reyna’s Nearsight.
• Fixed VFX that obscured Reyna’s screen if she scoped while healing
• Reyna’s overheal health no longer incorrectly shows 151 total when maxed
• Cypher Spycameras placed on the teleporter door frames on Bind no longer teleport it’s view location underground
• Cypher’s Cyber Cage no longer holds the teleporter doors on Bind open
• The Area-of-Effect indicators for Sova’s Recon Bolt and Reyna’s Leer now only show up on the enemy’s minimap if the player or their allies are close to the affected area
• Fixed input and other various pieces of Agent control UI showing up for spectators
• Fixed a bug where dead player's 1st-person arms would appear to be floating in the air
• Fixed a bug where activating a spray could exit ADS while firing
• Fixed a bug with the Bullet Tracers setting, having this setting active used to also disable muzzle flash on some weapons in addition to tracers
• Fixed an issue with the mouse cursor flickering when moving it over the scoreboard
• Fixed an issue with milliseconds in the round timer not being accurate
• Fixed an issue with some keybindings not displaying keybinding conflicts warnings correctly
• Fixed an Observer bug where the first person being observed in the game did not have a character portrait
• Fixed an issue with automatic weapons rarely not displaying tracers or audio effects when fired in short bursts
• Fixed a bug where the defuse bar was duplicated
• Fixed voice input/output devices and settings not persisting across sessions
• Fixed a slew of localization issues across end of game screens
• Fixed a handful of visual issues across end of game screens
• Fixed an issue whispering players of the same name/general DM improvements
• Improved chat service error messaging
• Settings menu is now letterboxed as intended
• While on the Agents page, clicking on COLLECTION now correctly navigates back to the Arsenal page

If you’re reading this, it’s too late—VALORANT is launching.

What’s new? Reyna is the latest Agent to join VALORANT—straight from the heart of Mexico. Ascent, an open playground for small wars of position and attrition, enters the map pool. Spike Rush (beta) also arrives to deliver a fresh and more hectic flavor of VALORANT.

Sage, Omen, Phoenix, Raze and Jett all received a decent share of buffs and nerfs respectively to get them ready for launch. This patch also targeted the framerate drops some of you were getting during combat. The devil’s in the details, but know that getting performance where we want for all players is an ongoing process we hope to nail down in the next few patches.

Improvements to hit registration, and a rework of Split’s mid chokepoint joins the healthy list of fixes and updates below.

Good game, mad patch notes.

Coming at you faster than my Iron rank placement, it’s Patch Notes .50. These are the kind that send wiki writers squirming, so let's get to it.

All rifles have been updated to make single-tap and burst fire more efficient. The idea here is to support the viability of all rifle shooting styles (tap, burst, spray) when used in optimal situations. This is tied to “Gun Recovery Time,” which we’ll touch on more in the notes below.

Sage, Cypher, Omen, Viper, Brimstone, and Phoenix have all undergone changes, in part to better align them with their intended roles and to balance abilities that we found to be either too weak or too powerful in common situations.

Other highlights: The cost of some Agent abilities have been tuned to better reflect their impact on the game. We also lowered the cap on the amount of credits a team can bank during a match to help opposing teams catch up—so, you can’t go over 9,000. And the Spike now automatically falls when it gets stuck in an elevated location (you can stop bugging your tall friend now).

You’ll notice each map got some love as well, to remove some exploits and reposition a few barriers.

GAMEPLAY AND BALANCE

Weapon Updates

• You will no longer enter the “walking accuracy” state when transitioning from run to stop
  • We noticed many players were entering a walking accuracy state during their run-to-stop transition that made it appear as if shots they fired/landed were done at full speed.
• Deadzone accuracy speed threshold increased: 25% >> 30%
  • Now that you can’t gain walk accuracy while transitioning from a run to a stop, we've also slightly increased the size of the deadzone (full accuracy state) to make it a bit easier to get an accurate shot out quickly

All Rifles

• Recovery times on all Rifles have been updated, which should make tap and burst firing more efficient. Inaccuracy is accrued any time the weapon is re-fired prior to a complete duration of a weapon’s respective Gun Recovery Time.
• Base walk accuracy: 0.6° >> 0.8°
  • We felt like walk-spraying with rifles was a little more effective than we'd like, particularly at longer ranges. We're going to pull back on this accuracy slightly and continue to monitor
  • Tap Efficiency Changes (Phantom & Vandal only)
    • Tap Efficiency determines the rate that inaccuracy is accrued when re-firing prior to waiting for the complete duration of a weapon’s respective Gun Recovery Time. The higher the Tap Efficiency, the lower the rate of inaccuracy accrual.
• Vandal:
  • Horizontal (Yaw) Recoil reduced by 15% while crouched and stationary
    • This was intended to be the case and now properly matches the crouch benefits of other rifles
  • Gun Recovery Time: .4s >> .375s
  • Tap Efficiency: 4 >> 6
• Phantom:
  • Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended
  • Gun Recovery Time: .55s >> .35s
  • Tap Efficiency: 3 >> 4
• Bulldog Automatic Fire:
  • Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended
  • Gun Recovery Time: .55s >> .35s
• Guardian
  • Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended
  • Gun Recovery Time: .4s >> .35s

Machine Guns are significantly underperforming other weapons at their price points. Machine Guns are meant to be bullet hoses—powerful once they get going. This is a difficult balance to strike in a game where a single bullet from the Vandal will put you down. Our hope here is to make Machine Guns better at what they do (shoot lots and lots of bullets) while also increasing the power of the Ares relative to weapons at a similar price point.

• Ares
  • Price reduced from 1700 to 1600 creds
  • Firing Error (this value is a curve that has intermediate values between each bullet; bullet 2 has slightly less error than bullet 1, and so on)
    • Bullet 1: 1.0° >> 0.8°
    • Bullet 5: 0.85° >> 0.75°
    • Bullet 10: 0.75° >> 0.7°
  • Reduced the amount and intensity of horizontal (Yaw) Recoil after the first 8 bullets.
• Odin
  • Reduced the amount and intensity of horizontal (Yaw) Recoil after the first 8 bullets

Agent Updates

Sage

• Slow Orb zone duration decreased from 9 seconds to 7 seconds
• Slow Orb slowing amount decreased from 65% to 50%
  • We all know Sage is OP. We’ve decided to try to reduce some of her stopping power while still allowing her to fulfill her role as the premier staller in VALORANT. These changes aim to reduce the overall efficacy of her Slow Orb, especially if they are chained back-to-back.

Cypher

• Cyber Cage no longer slows enemies that move through it
  • We’ve always envisioned Cypher as a premier sentinel gathering info on his enemies and picking them off, but the slow on the cage was allowing him to move into Sage’s territory by stalling an entire enemy team. We still think this will be a tool he uses to buy some time, but enemies will now have more options when pushing his defenses, especially when coordinated.
• Spycam cooldown when destroyed increased 30 >> 45 seconds
  • Spycams have been flying into enemy territory like Sova darts at the start of rounds because the punishment for losing one to an enemy is so low. Hopefully this change pushes you to find a safe hiding place for your initial camera (please not inside a box).

Omen

• Dark Cover smoke duration increased 12 >> 15 seconds
• Dark Cover smoke projectile speed increased
• Dark Cover cooldown increased 30 >> 35 seconds
  • Especially at high-tier play, we’ve seen Brimstone become the dominant controller and we wanted to give his peers a boost to make them more viable while hopefully maintaining their unique playstyles.

Viper

• Snake Bite radius increased 350 >> 450
  • We’re increasing Snake Bite’s radius to match other area denial abilities

Brimstone/Phoenix/Viper

• We see you b-hoppers out there, jumping through Incendiary, Fireball, and Snake Bite while taking no damage. We don’t want to completely negate this skill but we also don’t want it to trivialize a whole set of character abilities.
• Height required to jump out of all damaging area denial abilities 80 >> 120
• Snake Bite, Fireball, and Incendiary damage tick speed increased (total damage per second unchanged)

Agent Ability credit cost tuning

• We felt the credit cost of some abilities did not match the impact those abilities brought to a match, and made adjustments for a more accurate reflection
  • Sage Barrier Orb increased from 300 to 400 credits
  • Raze Blast Pack increased from 100 to 200 credits
  • Phoenix Curveball increased from 100 to 200 credits
  • Brimstone’s Incendiary increased from 200 to 300 credits
  • Jett’s Updraft reduced from 200 to 100 credits

Agent Armor

• Armor carried over from prior rounds is no longer destroyed when new armor is purchased, allowing you to sell newly purchased armor and return to your previous armor status (instead of having no armor)

Max Credit Cap

• Total credit cap is is reduced from 12,000 to 9,000
  • We’re noticing that players/teams who manage to bank a high amount of credits are maintaining a rich economic state for too long, and it becomes a monumental challenge for the opposing team to dethrone their economy

CHARACTER UPDATES

• Sova's Owl Drone now includes a layer of sound for engine rotors
  • Audio should better reflect thematics, while maintaining how noticeable the previous version of Owl Drone audio was for allies and enemies, as heard in 3rd-person

MAP UPDATES

Split

Attacking teams have been having difficulty finding a foothold in territory control across the map. We’ve made a few changes that should allow attackers better opportunities to contest A Main, Mid Top, and B Tower.

• Barrier locations (those clear blue walls) have been adjusted across the map to provide attackers more of a foothold into territory control across the map
  • Defender barrier in B Mid has been pulled back. New barriers are in the entrance to Vent and atop the staircase in B Tower
  • Defender barrier has been pulled back at A Ramps
  • Attacker barrier has been pushed forward at A Main
  • Attacker barrier has been pushed forward slightly at B Main
• Angled the wall on the left interior of B Tower when pushing up the stairs from Mid
  • This removes a 50/50 angle check when pushing into this space, which should make it more approachable for you to try and gain control of B Tower
• Radianite crate in B has been changed to a metal crate to provide more cover when planting the Spike
• Revised art to improve performance throughout the map

Haven

• A new map exploit system is in effect which will have negative effects on anyone trying to escape the playspace
• Updated several floor sections so that they now have appropriate material sounds

Split/Haven/Bind

• Added fixes for Cypher Spy Camera exploits to all three maps— a huge thanks to everyone who has helped us track these down, including clutch stream’s we lurked in for two days, writing down every camera placement and fixing them in real time
• Backside of spawn barriers are now opaque to prevent some abuse cases
• Added ability for Spike to automatically fall from elevated boost positions
• Fixed multiple spots where Sova’s Recon Dart could over-penetrate map geometry—another shout out to everyone that helped with these as well!

HUD & UI

• Teammate armor is now shown on the scoreboard
• When the Spike is planted, the Spike icon in the upper middle UI now pulses with the audio beeps
• New artwork for pings to increase readability in the world
• Portraits
  • Re-enabled portrait for player’s minimap icon
  • Reduced size of portraits and icons by several pixels
  • Added color to the player’s own minimap icon with a slightly thicker border to aid in finding oneself (on the minimap, not in life)
• Added regulation of chat messages when using the radio menu or radio wheel
• Slight increase to broken armor text size to make it easier to notice
• Relocated flyout menu for Titles dropdown so it opens in a more sensible location
• Moved Leave Match button closer to the other “Exit” buttons in the menu
• Made Logout button red to match Exit button, since they both exit
• Shifted location of Skip button on MVP screen so players do not accidentally press Play Again button when slamming the Skip button
• Adjusted radio wheel behavior so that mouse wheel up and down always select the other wheels regardless of other keybinds
• Icon for Need Help changed from the little bug thing to a flag
• Enabled attack/defend icons in the upper middle game info UI for all players, not just observers
• Hooked up “Ult Almost Ready” VO when character uses the Ult Status radio command and are within 1 ult point of being fully charged

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Cheaters are no longer referred to as “Hackers”
• Profanity filter setting added; when enabled, will filter out profanity from chat
• Added a setting that allows toggling between walking and running
• Viper’s Poison Cloud no longer enters cooldown when picked up during the buy phase
• Added foe coloring for Sova’s Hunter’s Fury
• Added Contract level-up animation when unlocking free characters or purchasing contract levels
• Added tooltips and explanations guiding new players towards activating their first contract
• Unowned skin levels now list their individual cost (in Radianite Points) and description in the collection pages
• Made performance optimizations to address FPS drops when you or allies are shooting
• Various social panel improvements to support better error handling and messaging
• “Keep Player Centered” minimap setting is now a default setting
• Renamed “First Person Enhanced Visuals” graphics setting to “Bloom”
  • As discovered by u/Far_OW on reddit, this setting affects more than just first-person visuals—it’s actually a visual bloom, or glow effect, which primarily affects weapon renders
• Renamed “Shadows” graphics setting to “First Person Shadows”
  • This setting only affects shadows cast on a player’s weapon, hands and arms
• Observer HUD
  • Dead players will now appear greyed out on the HUD rather than hidden
  • Team colors on the HUD will swap when switching sides, rather than the teams on the HUD changing position

BUG FIXES: IN-GAME

• Cypher and Sova will no longer float in the air if the Sage Barrier Orb wall they are standing on is destroyed while when using the Spycam or Owl Drone, respectively
• Cypher can no longer pick up his trap after an enemy has triggered it.
• Sova’s Owl Drone can no longer rapid-fire darts if the prior one hits an enemy
• Reduced collision size on Sova’s arrows so they don’t get stuck on corners when fired near them
• Removed placeholder mesh from Viper’s Toxic Screen projectile
• When using the ping wheel on the map, right clicking now correctly cancels the action and does not place a ping
• Fixed a bug where the Spike UI would sometimes overlap with the HUD
• Fixed a bug where a weapon’s ammo count on the HUD would disappear if swapping your knife, then back, while on low ammo.
• Removed Spike icon from being visible on enemy player minimap icons
• Spike can no longer be planted partially in map geometry
  • This also fixes cases where the Spike camera was appearing inside the Spike
• Barriers on the minimap no longer adjust positions incorrectly during the buy phase if you open the megamap
• Fixed bug where various issues would occur after multiple players would fulfill a weapon buy request at the same time
• Fixed issue where the game would hitch/stutter when opening the in-game options menu
• Fixed issue where the game would hitch/stutter when opening the in-game shop
• Fixed rare movement bug where resurrected players who were tagged would have jittery movement in 1st-person perspective
• Fixed a bug where some weapons lost their muzzle flashes in 1st-person POV when tracers were disabled
• Fixed a rare bug where players appeared to be standing, when they were actually crouching
• Ability details in the combat report will now correctly appear in the buy phase of the round when teams switch sides
• Fixed miscellaneous Observer mode HUD issues
• Spectators can now see weapon inspect animations
• Fixed a bug where the camera could take an invalid position during character select
• Fixed an issue where the combat report would show 150 damage but the enemy player was still alive (in cases where healing was not involved)
• Fixed an issue where a teammate’s voice activity would incorrectly light up more than their own icon in the above-character UI element
• Selecting a ping on the ping wheel and canceling no longer incorrectly spawns the canceled ping next time the player uses the basic ping

BUG FIXES: GAME CLIENT

• Fixed incorrect location of text when hovering rewards in the contracts
• Fixed a bug where purchase refunds were not reflected in client until it was restarted
• Fixed a bug where player cards were cropped on the arsenal menu screen
• Fixed a bug where, in some languages, mission descriptions could appear truncated
• Fixed an issue where the Distortion Graphics setting was not properly enabled
  • Enabling this may have a performance impact on some older graphics cards

Can you believe we’re three weeks into the VALORANT Closed Beta? We wish it were four weeks so we can celebrate our one month anniversary, but we also don't want to seem clingy. Rejoice with a slew of patch notes full of quality of life updates.

Phoenix mains can look forward to the removal of two Run it Back bugs, you can now actually exit custom games with the click of a button, the rare cases where the Spike would get stuck in the map should be history, and Observer mode benefits from a few improvements (more on the way!).

You’ll see the addition of “Competitive mode” here and you’re gonna have to wait a little before it goes live. Yes, we’re excited too.

Read all the changes below.

Gameplay and Balance

Omen

• Omen now immediately becomes vulnerable and no longer appears dark after he leaves his alternate shadow form
  • If you were to find enemy Omen teleporting in, it was often confusing when you should shoot him to get the kill (vs. sending him back). This change is to both account for an invulnerability bug and score some extra points of clarity
• The attenuation radius of the arrival sound on Omen's From the Shadows has been reduced to 2250
  • Attenuation is a big word, but the short of it is you have to be closer to Omen to echolocate where he’s teleporting to. We’re trying to give him some spook back since if you do find him, you should now have him dead to rights

Sage

• Barrier Orb will only spawn a chunk of the barrier if it is supported by the ground, this means it will sometimes only spawn 2 barrier chunks
• Barrier Orb can no longer be placed on "small" pieces of geometry, it must be placed on the ground or on top of boxes
  • We love supporting boost gameplay, especially when multiple characters combine their abilities (looking at you Jett and Omen). However, we felt with the current placement requirements, characters were able to boost to too many unintended spots. With this change, players can still boost into some unexpected positions, but they hopefully won't be 30 feet in the sky and floating in the middle of the site to look through a tiny pinhole in the map.

Character Updates

• [Omen] Updated Omen’s visuals
• [Breach] Updated Breach’s visuals

Map Updates

• Added curtains to the top of double doors on Haven to remove the Sage Barrier Orb boost that allowed players to see through a sliver of the door at the top
• Fixed issue with Cypher camera being placed on the Haven A Main boxes
• Multiple fixes to the geometry on Haven, Bind, and Split to fix exploits and help optimize gameplay—massive thanks to all of the folks who helped to identify these! We see you
• Updated materials on Bind and Haven to make surfaces more consistent overall
• Changed color of Radianite crates in order to unify overall visuals

Competitive Updates

• Added Competitive mode and ranked matchmaking, to go live in the near future

Observer Mode

• Added “Ghost cheat” as an option to custom games with cheats enabled, allowing you to fly around the map in no-clip mode
• Ability HUD no longer displays when entering drone camera as an observer
• Exiting drone camera will now swap back to the most recently viewed player if they’re still a valid view target
• Swapping through players to view will now iterate through an entire team before going to players on the other team

HUD & UI

• In-game
  • New directional damage indicator visual
  • New low health and low ammo visuals
  • Removed character portrait from player’s minimap icon to better distinguish player icon; icon will receive additional color and polish in the future
  • Voice activity is now shown above allies’ heads
  • Added color to spike icon above ally’s head to make it easier to see
  • Fixed the ultimate ability icon above teammates’ heads showing as charged after gaining 1 ult point instead of when actually charged
  • Ping elements now fade when under player aim; previously only text faded

• Out-of-game
  • Relocated Find Match button from social panel to Play screen; renamed to Start
  • Relocated Practice button from social panel to Play screen
  • Added Play Again button to End of Game screen
  • Made the flyouts on the nav progression widget clickable
  • Made main navigation button click targets easier to click
  • Added an option to orient the fixed minimap so that player’s starting side is always at the bottom
  • Adjusted all map assets so that full fixed orientations consistently place attackers at bottom and defenders at top
  • Added hover tooltips to thumbnails in the Collections view to show item name
  • Scroll speed tweaked to make scrolling social panel smoother
  • Made crosshair preview in Settings shorter to make more room for controls

Quality of Life

• Added the ability to abandon a multiplayer Custom Game. Using the “Leave match” button in the ESC menu will allow you to permanently leave the match without penalty. Leaving the custom game in any other way (exit client, alt+f4, etc.) will still allow you to return to the match
• Updated the audio occlusion system to help players better differentiate audio distancing cues. For example, Haven B to A short, you should perceive sounds from their correct distance and not as if they were right next to you
• Players who abandon matchmade games, or dodge agent selects, will now experience penalties that prevent them from queuing for a period of time. Frequent offenders will experience higher queue time penalties. Leaving ruins the match for everyone else, and should only be a last resort
• Enabled the ability to see VALORANT players online in Riot games
• Adjusted play flow UX moving queue buttons into lobby screens
• Adjusted social panel UX to accommodate additional space
• Adjusted End of Game UX to clean up design of various widgets
• Adjusted chat disconnect error state to be less… intimidating
• Spawn practice bots option in the shooting range moved from the F3 menu to an in-world shootable switch
• For all shotguns, moved the crosshair’s center dot by 1px to center it on the screen. The devs expect shotgun lethality to increase by 4,000% as a result (this is a joke)

Bug Fixes: In-Game

• [Phoenix] Fixed a bug where Phoenix would get teleported back to an ascender (rope ladder) after respawning, in cases where Phoenix died while Run It Back was active and he was attached to an ascender
• [Phoenix] Fixed a bug where, for a brief time after Run It Back ended, Phoenix could be damaged in the place where he fizzled
• [Viper] Updated the appearance of Viper's Toxic Screen on the minimap to show gaps in the wall
• [Viper] Fixed Viper being able to animation-cancel Viper’s Pit
• Prevent “Spike Planted” announcement from playing after a round has ended and hiding the round end announcement, which should clearly indicate the result of after-the-buzzer plant rounds
• [Cypher] Fixed a bug where Cypher's Cyber Cage would be selected at a larger range than intended causing overlapping interaction issues
• Fixed Spike Carrier Killed announcement from also showing Ally Defusing
• Fixed a rare issue where players’ weapons would float in front of them; too spooky
• Fixed a rare issue where third-person player models could get desynced from the server when double tapping a defuse, causing some shots to miss
• Fixed aim issue that caused some players who were using low sensitivity to have small mouse movements dropped
• Fixed issue where canceling a plant or orb pickup could sometimes play the wrong (slower) re-equip animation, making it look as if the player could fire too quickly after canceling (timing was correct, animation wasn’t)
• Fixed map region names as they appear below the minimap from not localizing properly
• Smoothed out movement during player-to-player collisions
• Fixed a bug where item UI prompt in the game world would appear to block bullets
• Fixed a bug where the Z ping wheel could be opened alongside the map ping wheel, creating a scenario where multiple ping wheels could be open at once
• Fixed a bug where ping wheel wouldn’t show disabled when direct bound pings were used to reach usage limit
• Fixed a rare bug where either team could win a round by elimination on the same frame that the spike was defused, granting two points for that round.
• Fixed overlap in ally planting announcement
• Fixed a bug where the VO radial wheel would hit the rate limit by opening and closing it without selecting a VO option
• Minimap will no longer randomly hide for all players in a game
• Update to Bucky’s alternate fire to instead apply instantaneous, hitscan damage
  • Alt. fire was previously a projectile that was able to kill enemies shortly after the user was killed. No other weapon works this way so now it performs as a hitscan.

Bug Fixes: Game Client

• Fixed an issue that allowed players to purchase items not available in their respective store
• Fixed an issue that let players equip content they didn't own
• Fixed issue where display settings would get re-applied when joining/leaving games, which could move the window or change display mode in rare cases
• Fixed network stability indicator sometimes appearing when setting was disabled
• Line of sight is no longer required to pick up the spike when overlapped by a player
• Fixed issue where the spike would sometimes become unretrievable
• Fixed an issue preventing some player reports from submitting
• Fixed various connection issues with voice chat
• Fixed various connection issues with text chat
• Fixed various issues with player state being incorrect in social panel
• Fixed an issue where some players could not requeue after a game without relogging
• Fixed issues with receiving party invitations
• Fixed transparent player card icons in Custom Game lobbies
• Fixed resetting controls for Voice Chat in settings
• Fixed voice defaulting to automatic transmission for Custom Games
• Fixed voice being interrupted when navigating Custom Game options
• Fixed a handful of localization issues across menu screens

Hey, look at us. Patch notes in a closed beta. Who would have thought? This short and sweet patch addresses the giant Raze in the room, cameras that somehow learned how to shoot, and some map updates.

Raze is lethal, no doubt, and we predict savvy players will perform better against her over time. Still, we made some light changes that should bring Raze’s offensive pressure closer to the other agents. We’re also buffing melee to give players in the early rounds a better way to deal with Sage’s Barrier Orb—while still making it a calculated risk. Don’t worry Sage mains, your Slow Orb now slows those bunny hoppers, too.

And we’re booting the phrase “camera-gun” back to English spy films where it belongs.

Here’s what the VALORANT devs have for you in patch notes 0.47+ (the number carries over from our alpha).