Hey, look at us. Patch notes in a closed beta. Who would have thought? This short and sweet patch addresses the giant Raze in the room, cameras that somehow learned how to shoot, and some map updates.
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.
And we’re booting the phrase “camera-gun” back to English spy films where it belongs.
Here’s what the VALORANT devs have for you in patch notes 0.47+ (the number carries over from our alpha).
Gameplay and Balance
Melee damage
- Melee attacks now inflict double the damage per hit to destructibles, 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 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 secondary 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 were creating overly oppressive scenarios. Also, players should be supplied 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 air speed 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 zone. 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 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 footstep audible range would sometimes not appear on the minimap
- Fixed a bug where players could spam pings, causing frame rate drops for teammates
