Riot Games has released the new update patch for Valorant. The biggest change in the current update patch is the nerfing of Raze and Brimestone. Both their ultras will now cost 7 ult points, as opposed to 6 before the update.
On the contrary, Viper has been massively buffed. Her ultra time has been increased from five to twelve seconds. Enemies trapped within Viper’s Pit will lose their minimap as well while they’ll be not visible on their allies’s minimap. Essentially, they’ll be completely obscured from the map. Enemy decay has also increased from 10 to 15 points and the effects last 2.5 seconds after exiting the smoke.
Just a few days ago, Riot had stated that they intended to nerf Raze as she was deemed to be overpowered. Sage the healer was also intended to be nerfed as her ultra could bring back a dead ally, essentially converting the game into a 6 v 5 situation. However, Sage’s abilities are untouched in the new update while Raze is ever so slightly nerfed. We don’t believe that Raze mains would be greatly affected by this particular change.
Riot games intended all the agents to be equally interesting and evenly picked by the player base. The nerfs and buffs are the supporting pillars for even distribution of agents that we can expect to see even in future updates.
The new update also fixed a few weapon issues, mainly nerfing jump shots while buffing crouch shots. The complete list of updates can be found below-
Agent updates
Viper
Viper’s Pit
- Max time outside of her ult before it collapses changed from five to 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
- Showstopper ultimate cost changed from six to seven ult points.
Brimstone
Orbital Strike
- Orbital Strike ultimate cost changed from six to seven ult points.
Stim Beacon
- Stim Beacon no longer Buffs enemies and no longer shows its effect radius to enemies.
Brimstone’s Arms Fidelity
- Riot has increased the fidelity of Brimstone’s arms to match the overall quality of the game.
Cypher
Cyber Cage
- 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 to 2.1, primarily a bug fix.
- Jumping spread changed from 1.9 to 2.3.
- Walking spread changed from 1.9 to 1.95.
- Added a 10 percent bonus to accuracy when crouching and stationary.
- Intent is to feel consistent with crouch providing an accuracy benefit.
HUD and UI
Riot 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.
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 one and two.
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 grayed 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).