Valorant Update 1.04 Patch Notes: Viper Buffed And Raze Nerfed

Valorant's next major update, patch 1.04, is now live. The update brings many changes including Agent and weapon updates, some HUD and UI tweaks, Elderflame updates, performance improvements, and of course, bug fixes all across the board.

Viper received some major changes. She can now drop her ult early by holding the ability weapon. Enemies who are caught in Viper’s Pit will have their minimap obscured and they won’t be able to provide minimap detection to their friends. The brightness of the red enemy glow is increased for Viper’s near-sight. She also won’t use additional fuel if both her Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen are active at the same time.

A few more heroes got a couple of changes as well. Raze’s Showstopper ultimate cost has been increased by one point. Brimstone’s Orbital Strike ultimate cost is also increased by one point. Enemies will not be buffed by Brimestone’s Stim Beacon anymore (thank you for this) and his overall Arm Fidelity is also increased.

You can read about all the changes made with today’s update below or on the official site.

Valorant Update 1.04 Patch Notes

AGENT UPDATES

VIPER

Viper's Pit

• Max time outside of her ult before it collapses changed from 5>>>12 seconds
• Viper can hold the ability key to drop her ult early
• Enemies in Viper’s Pit have their minimap obscured and do not provide minimap detection to their allies
• Increased the brightness of the red enemy glow at the edge of Viper's near-sight

Decay

• Enemy decay per second increased from 10 to 15 from all sources.
• After exiting Viper's smoke, enemy decay sustains for 2.5 seconds before starting to fade

Fuel

• Having both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen active does not consume additional fuel beyond the cost of having one active

RAZE

• Showstopper ultimate Cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points

BRIMSTONE

• Orbital Strike ultimate cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points
• Stim Beacon no longer Buffs enemies and no longer shows its effect radius to enemies
• Brimstone’s Arms Fidelity

CYPHER

• Cyber Cage can now be picked up during the buy phase

WEAPON UPDATES

Classic

• 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)