Shroud Gives His Verdict On New Valorant Patch Update

Valorant closed beta is still under development, and right now, the game is trending worldwide. When it came out, we had no idea that it would hit the ground running with so much success. Pros, streamers are quitting their regular games to stream Valorant. People were literally selling off their drop keys on eBay. The game, denominated as one of those which would replace Counter Strike Global Offensive. For all its hype, the game definitely delivered and lived up to its promise. 

Right now, almost every major streamer on Twitch is streaming Valorant. To think that the game is still in its closed beta, it is a wonderful achievement. Although there is some controversy surrounding the overprotective anti-cheat system, we are quite certain that Riot Games will clear all the confusion soon enough. 

Recently the game director for Valorant tweeted the patch notes, which would be up in the North American and European servers. It seems like they have Shroud’s approval as he replied to the tweet with “perfect”.

What Are The New Tweaks In Valorant? 

“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.”

This came out along with the patch notes, and the last line shows us that the developers have given some thought behind this update. Usually, pro players always find a way to get past the abilities one way or the other. Furthermore, these changes will definitely give a chance for a new meta to be born. 

They also mentioned about removing the gun camera; it was anyway, not a popular feature. 

Valorant Patch Notes 0.47+

GAMEPLAY AND BALANCE

MELEE DAMAGE

• Melee attacks now inflict double the damage per hit to destructible, including
  • Sage’s Barrier
  • Haven’s metal double doors
• Why?
  • There weren’t enough options during low econ rounds—such as the first round and right after switching sides—to combat Sage’s Barrier Orb. Our intent is to add a high-risk, high-reward method for players to interact with her wall, while still being able to take it down, no matter their loadout

RAZE

• Reduced Paint Shells from 2 to 1
• Paint Shells now have a kill reset, requiring players to get 2 kills to refresh the cooldown
• Tuned and adjusted audio for Paint Shells, Blast Pack, and Showstopper so that they’ll be easier to hear in hectic scenarios
• Fixed an edge case where the second cluster of Paint Shells would explode quicker than intended. They now have a minimum duration before exploding.
• What’s up with that?
  • Raze’s goal is to be a highly-threatening duelist that punishes enemies posted in predictable positions, but we felt like the cluster grenades, and their number was creating overly oppressive scenarios. Also, players should be supplied with proper gameplay information, and the audio cues on all of Raze’s abilities didn’t match their threat, so we changed the audio of each. For example, when the Showstopper is equipped or fired from a distance, players should be able to clearly identify and interpret the threat.

SAGE

• Slow Orb now also slows the airspeed of players in the zone
• Players can now walk through the Slow Orb without making noise
• Why though?
  • Players were able to circumvent too much of Sage’s Slow Orb by bunny hopping through the zone. We want the minimum slow amount to be a bit more consistent with all movement in the zone, while still allowing for bunny hopping and walking to provide a slight benefit to traversing the region. Also, we feel adding a stealthy yet slow way to move through the field brings more nuance to playing against the zone and a bit more uncertainty for Sage, since she can’t necessarily hear people who move through.

MAP UPDATES

• Several exploits fixed on Bind, Haven, and Split
• Split: Orb moved from B Mid to B Main
  • The intent is to alleviate some pressure from mid and provide more incentive for players to control B Main.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Reduced outbound network traffic from a client for players running at high frames-per-second
  • Some ISPs and network setups were throttling game traffic, impacting gameplay by causing large spikes in network latency as FPS increased.
  • No impact to gameplay/responsiveness

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a rare server crash caused by packets occasionally being corrupted by some players’ networks
• Cypher’s Spycam can no longer use weapons
• Fixed a bug where audible footstep range would sometimes not appear on the minimap