Free-to-play game Valorant received a major update yesterday. The update brings significant balancing changes, weapon tweaks, modes adjustments, quality-of-life features, and tons of bug fixes.
Viper received changes in almost every aspect. Players now get at least 50% decay the moment they cross through her Poison Cloud, Toxic Screen, or Pit. When in contact with Poison Cloud, decay over time is decreased to 10 from the previous 15. Delay before health regen time is also reduced to 1.5 from the previous 2.5. The equip time of her Snakebite is reduced to 0.8 from 1.1. You can read further buffs Viper received down below.
Yoru's blindside ability has been buffed with a new activation time of 0.6 seconds and a new duration of 1.5 seconds. His ultimate ability now only needs six points instead of seven. He can also enable Gatecrash when he is in Dimensional Drift, which got buffed too. You can read about it and other changes made by the update below.
Agent Updates
Viper
Poison Cloud (Q)
- Can now immediately be redeployed when picked up, but grants a temporary charge instead of a permanent charge.
- If active when Viper dies, Poison Cloud now remains up for an additional 2 seconds, or until Viper runs out of fuel.
- Pickup distance increased from 200 to 400.
Toxic Screen (E)
- If active when Viper dies, Toxic Screen now remains up for an additional two seconds before deactivating.
- Full blind distance from the wall increased to better match the blind distance from the edge of smokes.
Practice Tools
- In custom games with cheats and infinite abilities enabled, Viper can hold down “activate” on Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen to recall them.
- In custom games with cheats and infinite abilities enabled, Poison Cloud’s landing location is shown on the minimap while equipped.
Yoru
Gatecrash (E)
- Gatecrash is no longer refreshed on kills and is instead replenished every 35 seconds.
- Lifetime of the Gatecrash fragment increased from 20 to 30 seconds.
- The range at which the Gatecrash fragment is revealed from stealth decreased from seven to four meters.
- Visuals for visibility range added to the moving fragment.
Killjoy
Nanoswarm (C)
- Killjoy can now pick up deployed Nanoswarm grenades during the buy phase to get the charge back.
Weapon Updates
Bucky
- Primary fire (left-click) bullet spread decreased from 3.4 to 2.6.
- Decreased spread on Alt-fire (right-click) from 3.4 to 2.0.
- Updated damage curve for both primary and alt-fire:
- Zero to eight meters at 20 damage per pellet.
- Eight to 12 meters at 12 damage per pellet.
- Beyond 12 meters at nine damage per pellet.
- Reduced amount of pellets in a right-click shot from 15 to 5.
Modes Updates
Escalation
Abilities
- Raze’s Showstopper now comes with two Blast Pack Charges which refill when you touch the ground. Practice those boosts!
- Snowball Launcher now comes with Skates - the increased mobility should give you an edge against the generally more lethal weapons.
- Big Knife now comes with one Tailwind (Jett Dash) charge which refills on kill. Close all the gaps!
- Loadout variations will be a bit of a surprise, and they’ll show up rarely. Let us know which ones you like!
Competitive Updates
- You can now view a person's career from the in-game Leaderboard:
- We heard some of you asking for the ability to view more info around how the best of the best were doing in their games. So, you can now right-click on a leaderboard entry and view their career to check out their Match History, see details of their games, and look at their Act Rank progress.
- If you are on the Leaderboard but don’t want to give away who you are, you can leverage our in-client toggle to label yourself a "Secret Agent."
Quality of Life
- To improve legibility, the mega-map now consistently uses a mouse pointer instead of a crosshair for map pings.
Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF)
- Added an audio toggle located in the Audio settings panel to enable HRTF:
- HRTF allows players wearing headphones to play audio in a simulated surround sound audio space.
- Currently, only footsteps, reloads, and Deathmatch respawns will be rendered in 3D with HRTF enabled.
- It’s recommended that players please turn off any other “3D Audio” processing while using this feature.
The complete patch notes are available at the game's official site.
