The Balance Has Shifted for the Valorant Squad

After going down for scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, Riot pushed through a new patch for Valorant. Patch 0.50 introduces new balance changes for multiple weapons, maps and agents, which should shake up the meta. While the notes are very detailed, we’re going to cover the most notable changes that you’ll see next time you hop in the server.

Let’s start with the agents.

SAGE

• Slow Orb
  • zone duration decreased from 9 seconds to 7 seconds
  • slowing amount decreased from 65% to 50%

Cypher

• Cyber Cage no longer slows enemies that move through it
• Spycam cooldown when destroyed increased 30 >> 45 seconds

OMEN

• Dark Cover
  • smoke duration increased 12 >> 15 seconds
  • smoke projectile speed increased
  • cooldown increased 30 >> 35 seconds

VIPER

• Snake Bite radius increased 350 >> 450

BRIMSTONE/PHOENIX/VIPER 

• Height required to jump out of all damaging area denial abilities 80 >> 120
• Snake Bite, Fireball, and Incendiary damage tick speed increased (total damage per second unchanged)

Along with Agents having their abilities adjusted, the cost of them is going through changes as well.

• Sage Barrier Orb increased from 300 to 400 credits
• Raze Blast Pack increased from 100 to 200 credits
• Phoenix Curveball increased from 100 to 200 credits
• Brimstone’s Incendiary increased from 200 to 300 credits
• Jett’s Updraft reduced from 200 to 100 credits

The increase in ability cost is also met with a lowered credit cap of 9,000 credits in order to prevent steamrolling teams from keeping too strong of an economy.

Valorant Shooters Shoot, More Accurately

Moving onto weapons, the Devs have adjusted the accuracy when it comes to players shooting in bursts or going for those tasty one-taps.

Vandal:

• Horizontal (Yaw) Recoil reduced by 15% while crouched and stationary
• Gun Recovery Time: .4s >> .375s
• Tap Efficiency: 4 >> 6

Phantom:

• Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended
• Gun Recovery Time: .55s >> .35s
• Tap Efficiency: 3 >> 4

Bulldog Automatic Fire:

• Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended
• Gun Recovery Time: .55s >> .35s

Guardian

• Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended
• Gun Recovery Time: .4s >> .35s

Riot is pushing the idea that the longer a machine gun is fired, the more accurate it will be.

Ares

• Price reduced from 1700 to 1600 creds
• Reduced the amount and intensity of horizontal (Yaw) Recoil after the first 8 bullets.

Odin

• Reduced the amount and intensity of horizontal (Yaw) Recoil after the first 8 bullets

Mapping Out New Changes

It’s no question that the map, Split, is heavily sided for the Defenders. Riot has adjusted the zone barriers for both the Attackers and Defenders to make it a more even match up. Most notably in this change is the barrier locations for Mid, which push Defenders back into Vents and the staircase in B Heaven.

Along with balance issues, Riot is also working to prevent gamers from finding exploits to get out of the map. There have also been changes to all maps in order to prevent Cypher from using camera exploits, gaining an unfair advantage over the enemy team.

Throughout the development and release of Valorant, the devs have been very open with their communication to the community. The constant updates to the game, even though it is unfinished, is refreshing, as a gamer. When a game takes the world by storm like Valorant has, transparency in the changes and efforts to eliminate exploits do not go unnoticed by the community. Whether or not these new patch notes will actually bring a balance to the game, however, is yet to be determined.