Valorant

Hey, we’re back with Patch 1.14, if you’re wondering what happened to Patch 1.13, we used it to roll out some Unreal upgrades. So there’s that.

This one’s light on the Agents, big on Icebox. This round of Icebox changes is focused on getting the A site and verticality just right.

To help combat smurfs/AFKers, you must now win 10 Unrated matches before you can unlock Competitive. Speaking of which, the slew of Observer additions should make it better to follow the competition. Rank distribution has also been adjusted to help those at lower levels in their climb.

The limited Snowball Fight mode arrives and the Night.Market is open.

AGENT UPDATES

Sage

MAP UPDATES

Icebox

The changes to Icebox in this update are centered around simplifying the A Site and reducing the height of some of the most vertical areas on the map.

• Reduced the height of the A Belt area and connected it via a ramp to the platform below
  • This puts the upper A Belt area more in line with the rest of the verticality in the site
  • Acquiring targets up top also requires less vertical movement of the crosshair

• Added a see-through gate here that can’t be passed from the ground level
  • Pathing should hopefully be more predictable from attackers approaching the site and defenders retaking the site

• Sloped the wall (first image) and replaced the double stack of Radianite crates in the site with a smaller object (second image)
  • This should allow attackers to approach the site more safely, and a quicker retake of the site for defenders

• Reduced the height of the yellow container.
  • This allows the top of the container to be fully cleared from several angles as well as reduces the amount of crosshair displacement required when aiming at targets on top of the container

MODE UPDATES

Ready to have a Snowball Fight with your friends (and likely your foes)? The limited mode goes live on Dec.15 and will last for two weeks, on Dec. 29. Play a match of Snowball Fight and you’ll also nab a themed Gun Buddy, delivered at a later date.

• 5v5: Team Deathmatch
  • The first team to 50 kills wins
  • Respawns are enabled, so get back in there
• The snowball launcher is your weapon of choice
  • Killjoy has rigged a custom version of Brimstone’s molotov launcher
  • Projectile based snowballs have travel time and an arc (make sure to lead that shot!)
  • Infinite snowballs—don’t stop shooting!
• The gift that keeps on giving: Power ups!
  • Gifts spawn around the map, sometimes a portal appears and gifts come pouring out
  • Each gift contains a power up when opened (shoot to open)
  • You can only have one of each power up at a time, so make sure to share with your teammates
  • If you die, you drop your power ups and someone else can snag them
• Gift types
  • Rapid Fire: fire even faster
  • Growball: grows over time while traveling in the air
  • Ricochet: for all those snowball trick shots off the ground and walls
  • Skates: skate around quickly and in style. Jump higher!
• Maps
  • Week 1: Check out the festivities on the newly updated holiday version of Icebox (Snowball Fight only!)
  • Week 2: Snowball Fight can be played on all current maps
• Progression
  • Get 750 XP for each game completed, and 150 bonus XP for a win
  • Snowball mode does not progress missions

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks
• Act Rank Badge display has been re-enabled on in-game player cards.
  • Performance issues, such as hitches, have been fixed along with on death performance optimizations
  • These were previously disabled due to performances hitches
• Career page: Match History and Act Ranks have been split out into their own specific sections.
  • You can still view both your friends Match History and Act Rank progress

STORE UPDATES

• Check out our newest feature with the introduction of the Night.Market
  • Each player will get 6 chances to receive a random Select, Deluxe, or Premium weapon skin at a discount
  • Opens December 10th

SOCIAL UPDATES

• Requirements to unlock Competitive play have been changed from Play 20 Unrated matches >>> Win 10 Unrated matches
  • We hope this will lower the amount of AFKs and INTing we see in unrated games caused by players rushing to unlock ranked mode.
• A text field has been added to the Report Player menu so that players can now provide more information on their reason for reporting, if they choose to
• Players can now add friends in-game via the player list in the escape menu
  • Add teammates and opposing players to your friends list to play with again in the future if you enjoyed their company!

GAME SYSTEMS UPDATES

• Manual Game State Recovery
  • In cases where tournament organizers need to roll back or replay from a given round, they can now remake any tournament match from that point with our manual recovery tool.
• Cinematic Cameras
  • We have added cinematic camera locations across all maps for observers to use.
  • Observers can press Shift + player number to jump to the best cinematic camera to capture the action.
  • Observers can immediately leave a Cinematic Camera to move to Free camera
  • We have a lot more ideas for additional functionality, so stay tuned for that in the future.
• Projectile Follow
  • Observers can now follow a projectile fired by a player character (Default keybind is F).
  • Observer camera will remain at the destination of the projectile and will transition to a free camera from this point.
• Minimal Broadcast HUD
  • Observer perspectives that are meant to be used for broadcasting can turn on Minimal Broadcast HUD from the custom game lobby to retain as clean of a HUD experience as possible for custom overlays
• Observer Follower
  • Observers can now lock their view to match another observer (Be the passenger instead of the driver)
  • Default keybinds for following previous / next observer: ‘[‘ and ‘]’
• Observers can use player numbers on the minimap to jump directly to a specific player

BUG FIXES

• Fixed an issue where Killjoy’s turret could be placed underneath the ground in some maps
• Fixed an issue where Omen could teleport past the Buy phase barrier
• Fixed a bug where pressing a push-to-talk key while typing in chat would trigger voice chat
• Fixed a bug where AFKer queue restrictions would keep resetting for some players

As mentioned in the recent Ask VALORANT, the problematic release of Patch 1.11 is forcing us to reevaluate what it takes to raise the quality bar for patch days going forward. So, while we’re not skipping Patch 1.12, we’re giving it a light touch.

Updates to the Observer and the social panel are the stars this time around, along with some bug fixes. The in-match display of Act Rank Badges will continue to be suspended while we figure out what’s contributing to the performance hitches.

As a head’s up, it’s very likely we’ll skip the next patch and get back in the swing of things on or around Dec. 8.

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• Act Rank Badges are disabled in-game while we investigate a potential issue where they may be causing performance hitches in-game. Your Act Rank Badge will still display in Competitive lobbies, map load in, and on the end-of-game screen.
  • The Competitive team will continue to investigate the system to work towards a holistic fix in a future patch.
  • Big shout out to Kevin.

GAME SYSTEMS UPDATES

Observer

• Observers no longer hear ping audio
• Improved sightline visibility in well-lit areas
• Added Game State Modification cheat to allow moderators to adjust various aspects of the game (player stats, money, etc.) in a tournament setting
• Rolled back fixed team colors change from 1.11
  • This was causing some confusion as people have started to associate red with attack, and green with defense
  • There were a couple bugs causing certain UI elements to display in the wrong color
  • We plan to bring this feature back in the future, when we finish adding support for custom team colors.

SOCIAL UPDATES

• We have redesigned the Open/Close Party toggle to make it easier for players to understand whether they are in an open or closed party
• Observers will now appear as “in game” in the social panel
• Observers can now view and type in /all chat in custom games

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Added a new user interface for custom game observers during character select

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a bug where leaving/disconnecting from a Custom Game would result in a VAL-51 error, requiring the game to be remade in order for the player to rejoin
• Fixed a bug in the end-of-game screen after an Icebox match that displayed Haven’s map, and would incorrectly display timeline markers
• Fixed issue where players could target mid-air (dropped) weapons with some abilities
• Left handed mode: fixed recoil animation being incorrectly mirrored (mismatching actual weapon recoil)
• Fixed overlapping Observer UI when a player is planting/defusing
• Fixed inconsistent team coloring on minimap pings
• Fixed rare issue where Observer camera transition visuals could get stuck when swapping between player views

[UPDATE: Patch 1.11 is currently on hold for all regions until further notice. VALORANT will roll back to Patch 1.10 until we can redeploy later in the week with a solution, and at a less disruptive time for the VALORANT First Strike Qualifiers . If you started the Skye character contract, you won't be able to progress until we patch again. Thanks for sticking with us.]

Skye enters VALORANT and will be available to play in all queues.

(Recently, one of you asked, “how can she be ‘Skye’ if she’s on the ground?” Well, just repeat to yourself, “it’s just a game, I should really just relax.”)

All of our Sentinels and Initiators are getting role and abilities-specific tuning, with the start of First Strike in mind. Read the deeper dive below for our thinking here. Updates to our match economy ruleset (the way credits are distributed after a round) should alter decision-making when the round or your loadout is on the line.

Did anyone even want this? Anyway, here's the Left-hand view model.

AGENT UPDATES

SKYE joins the VALORANT roster!

You already know about our latest map, Icebox. You’ve even stuck your head in the freezer to run scrims. Hopefully, you’ll be happy to learn we’ve weighed Unrated queue to favor getting Icebox (at least for the first part of this patch).

Competitive folks, you’ll have to hold on for at least two weeks before you can earn rank on Icebox. But right off the bat, you can benefit from preferred server select, tighter rank matchmaking, and working on your Act Rank Badge.

Don’t sleep on these FFA Deathmatch improvements!

MAP UPDATES

New Map: Icebox

Each Icebox site is a complex combat space that features plenty of cover and verticality. This map emphasizes skirmishes, sharp aim, and adaptive play. There’s also a zipline that amplifies the feeling of quick action and verticality.

As we’re releasing Icebox ahead of schedule, we are going to be releasing it in a “beta” state for at least two weeks. During this time, the map will be available to play in Unrated, Spike Rush, and Deathmatch modes. We’re going to continue to optimize the performance on the map as well as continue to fix any bugs that might appear. If all goes well, Icebox will then become available for play in the Competitive queue on October 27th.

Ascent, Bind

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

Competitive Act II will end with Patch 1.10 and roll into the start of Act III. This means progress towards your Act Rank for Act II will be saved and you'll be put back into placement matches for Act III. Let’s see how you stack up with the new content and changes in Act III.Good luck on the climb!

Competitive players will receive their Act Rank Badge for Act II and can start making progress on their badge for Act III. The center of your Act Rank Badge is your ninth best ranked win, but you’ll also be able to see your highest rank achieved at the top of the badge.The badge displays only for Competitive games and is displayed on the player card in: Competitive lobbies, map load, in-game combat report, and End-of-Game: MVP. This is a new system we are trying out, so we look forward to hearing your feedback.

—Ian Fielding, Senior Producer

• You can now select your preferred server(s), increasing the chance you will play on a server you want
• Rank disparity for parties capped at 3 tiers (from 6).
• We have also tightened our competitive matchmaking to reduce skill disparity.
• Immortal+ ranked changes will only be impacted by winning and losing and the decisiveness of the game outcome (how many rounds won or lost by) and not factor individual performance into the calculation
• We’ll be testing and monitoring this change in Act III for potential future implementation in all ranks.

[Editor’s Note: Remember! Act III’s new map, Icebox, has been disabled for Competitive until the next patch to give us time to fix any bugs or issues that may arise before enabling it for ranked play.]

MODE UPDATES

Deathmatch

• Increased player count 10 >>> 14 players
• Updated spawning algorithm to encourage safer spawns
• Now that we’ve fixed some tech on the backend, we can support up to 14 players without compromising on our commitment to 128 tick-rate servers. With 10 players, you’d sometimes have to run 10 or 15 seconds to even find a fight, which can really kill your flow. Sometimes you’d also spawn way too close to enemies. This was because we had to artificially increase spawn density because of the low player count. Now that the player count has increased, we’ve re-tuned our spawning algorithm to try and give more consistently safer spawns.
• Removed periodic location pulse, and you’ll now only receive a pulse right when you respawn
• Now that there are 14 players on the map, the pulse feels completely unnecessary. We’re keeping a single pulse for players right when they respawn so that they can help get their bearings and find a quick fight without getting caught off guard.
• Increased match length, first to 40 kills (was 30), time limit upped to 9 minutes (was 6)
• We felt like the match length was a little too short to get into a real groove, especially now with more players, so we’re bumping the duration and kill limit up a bit.
• Kill Reloads: On every kill, players get an automatic, immediate full reload of their active weapon (Ares & Odin get 30 bullets back)
• It already felt a little frustrating to have to reload in Deathmatch, and now that player count is higher, reloading feels like even more of a deathwish.
• XP gain increased from 500 to 900 XP
• Honestly, 500 XP felt a little low for Deathmatch. We’re bumping this up to 900 to account for the increased match length with some extra on top.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Players now have the ability to choose their own Variant as opposed to having to level them sequentially
• The Battlepass now has upgrade Variants for the Surge skin line, including the free track Surge Sheriff
• Minimap performance increased
• Tournament mode enabled custom games can now fit up to 12 observers
• Requested guns can now be sold back to the shop, doing so will refund the player who fulfilled the request
• Observer can now hold walk when in freecam mode to reduce speed (fast and slow speed can be configured in settings menu)
• In-world pings are now team-colored for observers
• Reyna and Phoenix ult timers correctly update for observers
• The keybind text in the current spectate target widget has been removed for observers
• Flashed indicator for observers has been updated with new art
• Crosshair setting added that allows crosshair colors to be locked to team color for observers
• Players no longer get stuck trying to descend vent ropes while walking (leaving A-Tower)
• Added new modifier keybind for observers to jump straight to freecam when jumping to a player (left shift by default)
• Plant/defuse progress UI is now always visible to observers, and includes which player is taking the action
• Observer player no longer see player-specific hud indicators (e.g. taking damage indicator) when in freecam
• Ability timers now work for dead / spectating players & observers (e.g. reyna & phoenix ult durations)

SOCIAL UPDATES

• Players will now be able to add and view friend notes. Notes from League of Legends will transfer over to VALORANT as well. Players will be able to edit these notes from VALORANT
• Social panel will now pause sorting for a short time while you’re interacting with it

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a Shooting Range bug in the plant/defuse module in the shooting range where players couldn’t buy abilities
• Various Shooting Range UI bug fixes in the plant/defuse module, including incorrect text in the buy phase announcement, also adding a halfway tick to the defuse progress bar
• Fixed a bug where other players’ messages would be forcefully filtered out of chat after you sent a message
• Fixed a bug where the text box would not fade away in game

The Operator is experiencing it’s coming-of-age movie. But before you get all “look how they massacred my boy” on us, let one of our lead designers walk you through our analysis. There’s also some systemic weapon updates to change your accuracy after landing from a jump.

Five Agents get the squeeze, including ongoing updates to make Viper a more flexible threat, and some parity across the fire rate buffs from Brimstone and Reyna.

What’s in a name? Reported players caught with an offensive name are now forced to change their Riot ID.

AGENT UPDATES

OMEN

We’re keeping an eye on the overall power level of Paranoia, but as a first step wanted to resolve visual issues where players hit with Paranoia appear outside of its impact on their screen.

JETT

While we continue to investigate some of her outsized strengths, we think the burst fire on her Blade Storm has been over-performing at long ranges. The burst fire is intended to be a close range attack, but we found it frequently getting frags at over 20 meters away. These changes aim to rein in its effective range while retaining its close range potency.

VIPER

While Viper is stronger than ever, her overall impact is lower than we’d like. This round of changes continues in the same vein as patch 1.07—increasing her flexibility, especially when trying to play with teammates.

Now that Viper can place her wall pre-round, we want her to be able to act with her team right at barrier drop without the tension of also trying to maximize her fuel for an initial move.

Immediately dropping the vulnerable debuff upon exit wasn’t creating the threat we’ve hoped for when we added it. This change should make the Viper (and team) advantage window more realistic, as well as project a unique threat on opponents playing around it.

The combination of a slow placement and re-equip time was resulting in Viper players getting too hurt or killed while casting ults in a situation we felt should be pretty safe. This change should increase the positional options available while casting, and get your weapon up sooner.

REYNA

At its previous fire rate, we felt Empress was too effective when using heavies/smgs, AND too fast to master the change in spray pattern on rifles. We hope this change allows us to address both issues at once, while also giving us a chance to have a unified fire rate increase (matching Brimstone’s stim below) that players can learn and master.

BRIMSTONE

Paired with Reyna’s change (above), we felt Brimstone’s stim could use a little more punch. This also unifies our two fire rate increase buffs, making them easier to learn.

WEAPON UPDATES

Before you jump to press that “send” button, please read our thinking behind the Operator changes below. The Operator's been a frequent talking point around the community in the last few patches, so bear with us.

The Operator serves an important role in VALORANT: It provides the most difficult tactical challenge for teams to overcome, requiring strategic planning and clever utility use. We’ve been taking a long look at the weapon to try to understand the best way to adjust some of its outsized strengths while ensuring it remains the most powerful angle-holding weapon in the arsenal.

For you Aggressive Operators—dry peeking angles with an Operator is noticeably more effective than we’d like (especially when jump peeking). Additionally, pushing an Operator off of an angle with utility feels less valuable since the user is able to re-peek and kill their opponent at a reliable rate. This suite of mechanical changes (deadzone, scoped move speed, firing rate, equip time, jump land inaccuracy) targets these issues, increasing counterplay around high-mobility Operator play. The Operator is still quite potent at peeking angles but predictable repeeks should be easier to punish.

Regarding Operator access—we're seeing some of you obtain the Operator+Armor combo as early as round 3 and snowballing that lead into additional Ops throughout the half. The new price point delays the Operator’s appearance and increases the penalty for dying with one in hand. We hope to better balance the risk/reward of using this premium weapon.

A related note on breaking angles with abilities: Many abilities in the game are built to aggressively take angles, especially when a powerful weapon like the Operator is posted on that angle. The recent changes to Breach have given players access to more powerful angle-breaking utility, but it still feels like there’s more to be done. We’re looking at a few changes for a couple of Agents, but they’ll need some additional reps internally to build confidence around them. Expect more from us in the future!

—Max “Orcane” Grossman, Lead Agent Designer

Operator

• Increased price from 4500 >>> 5000
• Decreased scoped movement speed from 76% >>> 72%
• Adjusted weapon deadzone from becoming inaccurate at 30% movement speed >>> 15% (become inaccurate sooner, become accurate later when stopping)
• Firing rate reduced from .75 >>> .6
• Instant equip time adjusted from 0.3 >>> 0.5 (instant equip plays after tapping orb, bomb defuse/plant tap, Jett Cloud Burst, and Phoenix Curveball)
• Leg shot damage decreased from 127 >>> 120

All Weapons

We’ve noticed a trend where players landing from a jump are able to shoot accurately sooner than is reasonable. While this issue is most pronounced on the Operator, it is something that we’ve noticed across all weapons. Jump peeking is valuable for the mixup potential it provides but it was proving too difficult for players to reasonably deal with. These changes retain that mixup potential while slightly increasing the time before the peeker can fire with perfect accuracy.

• Jump land inaccuracy state changed from gradual >>> binary
• Jump land inaccuracy duration increased from .2 >>> .225
• Jump land inaccuracy value increased from 5.0 >>> 7.0 (more inaccurate for .225s after a land)

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• During this patch, the chances of being in an hour+ queue should be notably reduced
  • This is already a very rare occurrence, but it can happen more often for high rank players—especially in premade groups. We are also doing some tuning behind the scenes to keep high rank matches found after long queue times reasonably balanced and fair.

SOCIAL UPDATES

• Riot ID Reviews
  • Players that have been reported for inappropriate Riot IDs will now be reviewed automatically after the match has ended. If their name is flagged as inappropriate, they will be forced to change their Riot ID the next time they log in to the Riot Client.
• Removed Multi-line Breaks in Chat
  • Some sneaky people were impersonating system messages to troll others into quitting a match. Enough!
• Changes to party push to talk settings will now take effect immediately
• The chat window can now be pinned to stay open across menus
• Social Panel Sorting Logic
  • Sorting algorithm for the social panel has been updated to make it more intuitive for players as they interact with it.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue where Sova’s hitbox was incorrect while using his Owl Drone
• Fixed bug where Omen’s glowing eyes weren’t properly removed when he cancelled his ult
• Fixed a bug where Custom Game preferences would be wiped after navigating away from the Custom Game lobby

After a heavy duty patch last time, this one will be a little light. Raze mains should study the Blast Pack changes, guardians of the Guardian might appreciate the buff, and you'll soon have a lower chance of going back to back on the same map in any queue.

This intro is brought to you by Orcane, with the big picture:

This patch is quite a bit lighter than the last but we want to take some time to better understand the impact of our changes. We have already seen some shifts to the meta: Sage and Killjoy are seeing a bit less play, Breach and Viper are making a strong showing, and the Vandal is performing more reliably (especially at close ranges).

While these major Agent changes settle, we have turned our eye on a more pressing issue: the Operator. We know that this weapon can feel very oppressive to play against, often leaving players feeling like there is no hope when attacking. We agree that the Operator is likely having an outsized impact on match outcomes and are testing a suite of changes to address this issue.

For how important the Operator is to the game, we want to make sure we are making the right call, so we’re giving these changes a bit more time to soak internally to make sure we get them just right.

—Max “Orcane” Grossman, Lead Agent Designer

AGENT UPDATES

RAZE

Raze’s Blast Pack has been dishing out damage without giving enemies much counterplay. This change should help make it very clear when Blast Pack’s damage poses a threat while maintaining the utility aspects of the Blast Pack that players have begun to master. The blast pack now does not ‘fizzle’ when shot and will still do damage, meaning it should still be approached carefully if in lethal range.

WEAPON UPDATES

Guardian buff

• Price reduced from 2500 >>> 2400
• Improved Rate of fire from 4.75 >>> 5.25 RPS (rounds per second)
• Improved weapon recovery from .35 after 3 bullets to .2925 after 3 bullets
  • We don’t think the Guardian can (or should) compete directly with the Phantom or Vandal but we’d like it to have a place where players can feel good opting into the gun at the new price, is a competitive purchase in certain economic circumstances or map scenarios, and isn’t as punishing when an enemy gets close!

MAP ROTATION CHANGES

It’s happening! The possible pool of maps you can get placed on is now ‘pseudo-random’ rather than pure random. What that means is if you just played, say, Haven, the matchmaker will deprioritize that map in your next game.

• Matchmaking queue for all modes has been updated to measure all your recently played maps, throughout all modes, so that for any given queue you:
  • Have a better chance of playing on a map you haven’t played recently
  • Are much less likely to play on the same map several games in a row

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Observers will now see a timer rather than their screen being obscured when observing a player who is blinded
  • Full screen blind for observers can be turned back on in the options, for all you masochists
• Minimap performance improvements
• The social panel will now pause sorting while you’re hovering or interacting with it
• Updated verbiage in the All Ranks modal in the Career page to be more consistent with Competitive overtime rules

BUG FIXES

• Prime Classic VFX fixed
  • There was a bug in which upgrade Prime levels (2–4) were not playing the correct tracers, sound fx, and other VFX
• Fixed a bug where the End of Game screen would display a “Still processing” message, and then wouldn’t show that match in your Career tab
• Fixed a bug where “High Skill Disparity” would display in Custom Game Lobbies

Alright, a full patch this time.

Killjoy gets her first major update, which should empower more counterplay against her Nanoswarm, as well as reduce its damage. Viper, Breach, Sova, and Sage also get some worthy changes.

All shotguns get their aimpunch and tagging tuned, you can choose to remake a match (under certain conditions), lots of tweaks to the observer tool, and you get some new features that should help keep your identity private in-game.
This patch is also part of an ongoing follow through on a promise to improve hit registration clarity, with several changes coming to the VFX of hit impact markers.

AGENT UPDATES

SAGE

Our goal is to reduce the amount of healing done throughout the round. Disincentivize Sage from self healing and make it more expensive to do so.

This should slightly reduce the power of Slow Orb and increase intentionality. Right now, slow orb unintentionally covers a lot more ground than it should if aimed properly.

Our hope is to increase counterplay on Barrier and reduce the strength of the wall during reactive use.

KILLJOY

Killjoy’s Nanoswarm has been a terror to play against. It’s meant to be a strong stalling and post plant tool—but we feel it’s currently dealing far too much damage and players aren’t able to engage in the desired counterplay.

VIPER

This change should allow Viper, in many situations, to get her wall placed pre-round and then join her team before the barrier drops—or create uncertainty about her location when the round begins. Increasing the speed of the wall rising should reduce the awkward period that occurs after it starts to rise but isn’t covering all the angles Viper and her allies would expect.

This is mainly targeted towards Viper’s Pit, and should help reduce some of the unintentional collateral damage she can cause to her team, while also opening new strategies for playing around her ult as a team.

BREACH

(Note: These are not all the potential Breach changes we want to do, but as part of our ease-in, intentional-balance philosophy, we want to be measured. Stay tuned for more...potentially.)

Breach should be a choice pick in offensive entry and breaking utility. While the flash’s power was pretty good, too few charges were holding him back on being able to provide this value for his team. Considering he needs teammates to capitalize on his flashes, this should make up for that cost by simply having more of them.

SOVA

WEAPON UPDATES

• All shotguns aimpunch update
  • When getting headshot by a shotgun, the aimpunch will be lower than all the other weapons
• All shotguns tagging tuned for targets beyond 10 meters
  • Hitting an enemy past 10 meters will apply a different tagging value to them instead of the standard tagging
  • New tagging: 30% slow for .5s on a smooth curve going back to normal speed
  • The goal of these changes is to improve the feel of playing against shotguns and to ensure that they don’t end up doing odd things. For example, tagging or aimpunching people from longer than expected ranges and then a teammate ends up killing someone who’s debuffed, or makes it hard to fight back against a weapon that should be deadly up close but fairly non-threatening outside its effective range.)
• Shorty nerf
  • 1st falloff range reduced from 9m >>> 7m
  • Updated headshot multiplier from 3x >>> 2x (now the same as Judge and Bucky)
  • Our goal here is to make Shorty users work a little harder for the kills they get by requiring them to be a tad closer to their target.
• Judge Nerf
  • Price increased from 1500 >>> 1600
  • Desire here is to see if giving the Judge a little hit—paired with the other shotgun changes—moves the needle when playing against this gun. We’ll continue to monitor and make other changes if necessary
• Vandal buff
  • Increased firing rate from 9.25 >>> 9.75
  • Increased damage from 39 >>> 40
  • Goal is to bring the Vandal in closer competition with the Phantom. We believe these weapons aren’t that far off in competition and hope these changes will do that.

HIT IMPACT VFX UPDATE

We've made some small adjustments to hit VFX to try and improve hit registration clarity. With how sensitive changes around hit registration can be, we'll be keeping an eye on player feedback on these changes and make adjustments accordingly.

See our recent article on hit registration for additional details on some of the issues we're trying to address with these changes:

• Server hit VFX confirms will now spawn at the location of the hit on the character and stay attached to that position (previously, it spawned at the game space location and stayed there)
  • We've had issues with hit registration clarity caused by players moving into hit VFX (i.e. a player crouches their head into the space of a body shot VFX), which caused confusion on where a shot landed. This change should make it clear where a shot hit, and where on the body, even if a character is moving.
• An additional client-predicted small spark VFX now spawns immediately at the game space location of a hit
  • With the change to attach our traditional server hit VFX, we wanted to add additional immediate bullet feedback so you can see the area where your bullet landed and adjust your aim accordingly. Think of this new VFX as an improved tracer. It's important to note that a bullet is client-predicted: seeing this DOES NOT mean your shot has registered on the server (similar to tracers).
• Adjusted the sparks hit VFX coloring and shape adjusted to more closely resemble blood VFX shape
  • Context: We want players to be able to play with either of these options without feeling one gives better clarity than the other
• Adjusted the size of headshot VFX, where both blood and sparks are scaled down slightly
  • Especially at large ranges, headshot VFX would often cover up the head of a player and add additional difficulty in tracking players through the effect. We've scaled down this VFX slightly in an attempt to make it easier to keep track of targets.

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• Remake match: When a match begins with a 4v5 (or more lopsided teams), players will now have the option to end the game they’re in and queue for a new one.
  • If any player is disconnected at the start of the match (beginning of buy phase) through the entire first round, a remake call may be triggered at the start of the second round by typing /remake in chat.
  • All connected players on the team that called the remake may vote to remake the game— It’s required that all connected players agree to remake the game
    • The remake vote will last for the duration of the buy phase, if the vote is not passed by the end of buy phase it will expire
  • If the vote is successfully passed and the game is remade, all players who voted do not receive any XP or MMR adjustments for the match. The match will also not show up in match history. All disconnected players not part of the vote will take a full MMR loss for the game, and receive a leaver penalty equivalent to disconnecting from a full match..
• Act Ranks visuals have been updated to better differentiate wins at different rank tiers
• Changed some potentially misleading verbiage in the restriction message for players who need to play more unrated games to unlock competitive play
  • This is to better reflect that Deathmatch and Spike Rush do not count towards unlocking Competitive.

INCOGNITO MODE

For anyone who'd rather keep their identity private in-game, we've added these features:

• Hide my name from non-party members (Agent name will be used)
• Hide the names of others in my game who aren't in my party (Agent names will be shown)
• These features take effect from agent select to game end. We also added an option to hide + auto-reject friend requests.

We’re back and we hope you’ve clocked many hours into Act II, are showing off your Act Rank and clicking heads with Killjoy.

Consider this the “Air Shotgun” patch. Some bug fixes below, too.

AGENT UPDATES

• The audio and visuals for blinding effects (Phoenix Curveball and Breach Flashpoint) should better indicate when to turn away, and when it's safe to look again

WEAPON UPDATES

• All shotguns updated to be less accurate when fired while in the air
  • Spread penalty when in air increased .5 >>> 1.25
  • While shotguns are doing well in situations they are supposed to, there's been overly frustrating moments where people are accurate with these weapons while in the air. We hope to curb some of those encounters while still making them possible if you catch an opponent at a short distance. We’ll also be investigating more potential changes to shotguns now that we’re rested.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• In Collection menu screens, the “Show Owned Only” toggle now persists between screens and client restarts.

BUG FIXES

• Potential fix for the bug where the player's HUD sometimes disappears.
• Fixed a bug in deathmatch match history & match details where ties between 3 or more players were not displaying as a tie, instead showing the lowest rank as if they were not tied (so a 3 way tie for 2nd would show 4TH PLACE instead of 2ND PLACE (TIED)).
• Fixed a bug that allowed progress towards competitive matchmaking for new players by forfeiting unrated games.
  • Forfeited games will not count towards the Competitive requirement for the team who forfeited.
• Fixed a bug where ‘<Missing String Table>’ would appear in the chat log.
• Fixed a bug where strange player names could appear in chat when managing party invites
• Fixed a bug where some players were missing rewards after reaching the end of Agent Contracts or the Act Battlepass. Playing a game should grant the missing rewards, including missing rewards from Act 1.

Your newest VALORANT Act has arrived! It’s true, it’s true. That means this patch comes with a new Agent (have you met?), a fresh Battlepass, and our new Deathmatch (beta) mode.

Act Ranks go live—and you can dive into our dedicated post for more—but competitive changes also include matchmaking adjustments that hope to better pair solo and solo/duo players against similar groups. You’ll get more info on how your rank was affected after a loss, too.

Raze’s Showstopper gets tuned and the Blast Pack damage drops.

AGENT UPDATES

KILLJOY

Killjoy brings her killer robot buddies and round spectacles to VALORANT

A new contract has been added to unlock Killjoy and her associated rewards

RAZE

With the lethality of Raze’s Showstopper, we wanted to make some changes that will provide enemies more time to plan and acquire Raze when hearing “Fire in the Hole!” Additionally, we have adjusted her VFX so that players are able to notice Raze as she fires, increasing their ability to shoot a Raze that takes riskier plays.

Raze’s Blast Pack has been hitting players a bit too hard, able to kill a fully armored enemy in certain situations. We want to reduce this ability’s efficacy at damaging players while sharpening its ability at clearing enemy utility and obstacles.

COMPETITIVE

• Act Ranks have been added to the game; read our deep dive for more info.
• Patch 1.05 marks the end of Competitive Act I—Competitive Act II starts
  • If you earned a rank in Act I, play 3 more games to show your rank again in Act II. If you are a new player you will still need to play 5 initial placement matches so we have more time to calibrate to your skill
  • Expect a conservative initial placement, ~2 rank tiers lower than your prior Act I rank, so we are confident you are at or above that skill in Act II. Performance will have a larger impact in your early games, so you will be able to quickly gain rank if you play well and win
• Competitive matchmaking now will have a higher chance to match solo and solo/duo players against similarly sized premade groups at the cost of queue times being slightly longer
  • Regardless of premade sizes, match balance is sitting fairly close to 50 / 50 for which team wins, but there is often a larger skill disparity between the best and worst players in the games with large premade sizes. This change should reduce the chance of solo players getting into games where there is high skill disparity.
• Rank indicators have been modified on a loss to provide more granularity into how your rank was changed— You can now receive:
  • Rating decreased slightly (1 down arrow)
  • Rating decreased (2 down arrows)
  • Rating greatly decreased (3 down arrows)
    • Previously we showed very little info around how much rank you lost on a loss to limit the already painful experience of a loss. However, this was leading to issues where a player may have had a really rough game (think decisively lost the game and played poorly) and then would win several games and not rank up. This should help alleviate this problem somewhat by providing more transparency on a loss and your amount of rank lost.
    • We are also looking into ways to give additional transparency around rank changes in future patches
• Match History will now show the rank you went into the match with for that game, versus the rank you ended the game with
• You can now view your friends career tab via the context menu in the social panel. This means you can see your friends rank, Act Rank, and Match History.
  • You can now see how awesome your friends have been doing in their matches and their rank gains...or reach out and console them if they have had some rough games.
• Custom Games now allow the leader to select your target game pod location and see players ping to that game pod.
  • For custom games, when all players are opting in to the game, we wanted to allow the leader more agency around what latency players will have.Hopefully your custom game leader will try and find the best DC for the game for all players, but if they are greedy you can always leave without penalty.

GAME MODES

• Deathmatch drops! Hop in to hone your gunplay mechanics or warm up before you hit ranked
  • 10-player free-for-all
  • First to 30 kills with a time limit of 6 minutes
  • No abilities
  • You’ll load in as a random Agent that you own
  • Buy whatever weapons you want; heavy armor is given to you automatically
  • Killing enemies drops health kits: picking one up fully restores your health/armor AND automatically reloads your weapon.
  • All enemies are periodically revealed on the minimap
• Deathmatch is in beta as we continue to evaluate game performance and stability. Availability will be limited to specific windows upon deployment of 1.05, with the first window starting Wednesday, August 5.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Players who report other disruptive players will now receive an email if the reported player has been punished
• Arriving mid-patch: Your rotating store offers will stop including things you already own!

BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue causing Sova’s Owl Drone to rotate slower
• Fixed issue where Reyna did not get her full heal if it began right when her overheal started to decay
• Fixed nearsight not applying properly when going through smoke parts of Viper and Phoenix’s walls
• [1.04 Hotfix] Fixed a bug where Phoenix could plant the Spike off the bomb site if he finished planting after Run it Back ended
• Fixed a bug where ping in the scoreboard would not appear for Observers
• Fixed a bug where Phoenix could in rare cases begin to auto-defuse the Spike if he was defusing the Spike when Run it Back ended
• Fixed an exploit where spamming inspect with a macro could cause server lag
• Game modifiers/cheats now notify all-chat when any player toggles them
• General fixes to moderators, tournament mode, and game modifiers
• Fixed a minimap bug, where the minimap would not correctly rotate on side swap rounds, when using fixed minimap + rotate based on side settings
• Resolved inconsistencies and cleaned up UX with options present on the Match tab in the in-game settings screen
• Resolved issue with incorrect rank briefly, and possibly persisting, to show for players in Career tab
• Resolved issue where rating adjustment indicators would show on-hover in Agent Select
• Resolved issue where account # tag wasn’t correctly showing on-hover on the Match tab in the in-game settings screen
• Resolved issue where only one team was able to vote to surrender if both queued the vote at the same time
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to interact with the character selection UI through the Shooting Range loading screen
• When equipping a gun buddy, an unassigned buddy no longer gets selected
• Fixed a visual bug where the lobby would play an unwanted animation when a match is found

How about those Elderflame weapon skins? At least they weren’t cake. Hope you caught some of that VALORANT fan art, too.

On to this patch. Four Agents get some polish, with Viper coming away with a series of buffs, including a per second increase of her decay against enemies. You’re also gonna have to work a bit extra now if you wanna use those powerful Brimstone and Raze ults.

A bug fix for the Classic gave us an opportunity to go in and tune the weapon’s behaviour. Hey while you’re in the pre-round buy menu, take a look at those new easier-to-compare stats!

AGENT UPDATES

VIPER

With Viper being allowed out of her ult for such a short period of time, we felt that she was not only limited in the plays she could make, but also gave too much continuous information to her enemies. The ability to move outside the ult smoke more freely should provide some new and interesting mind games for Viper to play—and hopefully puts the strategic pressure back on the enemy. The other improvements should push Viper’s advantage in her own smoke and help her avoid getting traded by enemies using minimap vision to target her.

Viper's decay depleting so quickly from enemies was limiting the advantage it provided and wasn't creating the threat we had hoped for as a result. Adding a delay before it fades will hopefully widen the window where Viper and her team can capitalize and pair with the Viper's Pit updates (above) to provide fresh ways to play around her ult.

The reduction in total uptime when both her vision blockers were active was making it difficult for Viper to use both tools together. Since Viper's smoke has so much commitment and makes up so much of her kit, we want to free her to use them in tandem to create powerful options for her team to take sites.

RAZE

Raze’s ultimate is one of the most impactful in the game and useful in almost any situation. As a result, it is being used a bit too often. So we’re upping the cost by 1, which should help reduce how often players have to face her Showstopper.

BRIMSTONE

Much like Raze’s Ultimate, Brimstone’s Ult is very impactful and useful in a wide variety of situations. We feel like it was impacting rounds a little too frequently, so decided to up the cost slightly.

The Stim beacon is meant to be a pretty situational ability but we felt that revealing Brimstone’s location and having the potential to accidentally buff enemies was making this ability significantly weaker than we’d like.

When you really think about an FPS, you’ll notice you spend an awful amount of time looking at your arms...like all the time. Before launch, we intended to increase the fidelity of Brimstone's arms to match the overall quality of the game. We did it—now look at those guns!

CYPHER

WEAPON UPDATES

Classic

The Classic right-click was the primary bug fix here, but we saw an opportunity to make the weapon behave a bit more consistently. We slightly tuned efficacy of jump right-clicks, but (hopefully) haven’t taken away their viability in close-range scenarios

• Fixed bug where running inaccuracy on the right-click was much higher than intended
  • running was adding a 1.5 penalty because it was referencing our generalized running error curves for pistols
• Fixed bug where jumping had no inaccuracy penalty
• Running spread is changed from 3.4 >>> 2.1
  • primarily a bug fix
• Jumping spread changed from 1.9 >>> 2.3
• Walking spread changed from 1.9 >>> 1.95
• Added a 10% bonus to accuracy when crouching and stationary
  • Intent is to feel consistent with crouch providing an accuracy benefit

HUD & UI

Replaced the previous Weapon Stats textbox in the pre-round shop with an easier-to-compare graphical representation of stats

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Observer minimap vision cones are now colored by team
• Replaced Reyna's Voice Over for Italian and Mexican
  • Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 the talents we identified for the role were not able to record due to regional restrictions. You can now find in-game, the voices we originally intended for Italian and Mexican Reyna!

Elderflame Skins

• Adjusted the volume on the Elderflame Operator equip animation
• Fixed bug that would cause the volume to stack if you spam equipped the Operator
• Enemy footsteps duck cosmetic bus properly
  • This means that enemy footsteps will always lower the volume of the skin sound effects that are not important to gameplay, like the flame whooshes, dragon roar, etc.
• Elderflame Melee inspect animation now has sound effects for level 1 and 2

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

• Gun pickup targeting and Sage Ultimate targeting unified with ally character highlights, saving VRam and GPU performance
• Minor rendering performance fixes
• Gun skin upgrade videos are now streamed instead of locally stored, reduced install size by 380MB

BUG FIXES

• Fixed requirement for Reyna to look at Soul Orbs to activate them and maintain her healing, behavior should match that of patch 1.02
• Fixed one-way Brimstone smokes when the player’s camera was around the top of the smoke
• Fixed Breach’s Aftershock not properly applying damage to all characters if multiple are hit by it
• Fixed jittering when reaching the max flight height of Sova’s drone
• Fixed Marshall bug where the weapon maintained accuracy while walking
• Fixed issues with some translucency effects being one frame behind (such as Jett's dash, when used by the player)
• Fixed ally highlights not showing up on some AMD GPUs when using MSAA, and some Intel GPUs
• Fixed a bug where loading screens did not cover the entire screen when playing in certain resolution/aspect ratio combinations
• Shortened the text on the photosensitivity warning screen
• Fixed a bug where the “equip” button would stay greyed out when purchasing a skin variant that is being previewed
• Fixed Brimstone smokes on Haven spawning offset of where intended
• Fixed a typo in Brimstone’s biography (thanks mooonlimes for the report)