Pushing forward into their rollout of the ranked mode, VALORANT devs just released a new patch to switch up the game, add some fixes and adjust some maps. You can find the full patch notes by Riot right here, but this will go over all of the noticeable changes you’ll find next time you log on.
The first thing that’s worth noting is that Rated is now live. Along with that is the option to surrender in game. This is going to be a viable choice when you have quitters on your team.
- You can call an early surrender vote by typing: “/ff” “forfeit” “concede” or “surrender”
- An early surrender vote requires all present players on the surrendering team to vote ‘yes’ to pass
- You can vote via “/yes” or “/no” along with the settings F5 and F6 (defaults)
- Each team can only call a vote once per half
- Early surrender votes cannot be called before reaching round 8.
- Once a vote is called the vote option will be queued to vote on for the next round, or if you call the vote early enough in the buy phase you can vote immediately.
- The winning team gets round win credit for every round necessary to bring them up to the victory condition (13 rounds). The surrendering team will get loss credit for every round necessary to bring them up to 13 rounds
Agent Changes
First up on the Agent changes is Viper, getting both a mechanic update, a buff and a nerf all in one. Toxic Screen, Viper’s wall, now passes through walls to make it a bit more viable. But that’s not all; her damage-dealing floor trap, Snake Bite, has been adjusted as well.
– Snake Bite, taking damage will make a player fragile for a short time
– Fragile is a debuff that increases damage taken
The final shift is an increase in cooldown for her orb from 5 seconds to 6.
Phoenix’s Run It Back ability has not been registering for Reyna or Jett as legitimate kills (regarding their abilities). Now Reyna will receive an orb and Jett will refresh her blades after defeating his Ultimate form.
The only weapon update is to the Bucky, the most underrated weapon of the game.
Bucky (right-click)
- Crouch-walking accuracy: 3.45 >>> 4.1
- Walk accuracy 6.4 >>> 4.4
- Run Accuracy 3.5 >>> 6.4
Map Changes
VALORANT players, including me, will have a tougher time holding cheeky angles. With the new patch, a good amount of corners that players hold will be adjusted to have objects that block it. The intent here is to make clearing rooms a bit easier. This is a solid fix, because it can be tiresome to clear 5 angles in a single room. Here are some of the new angles that you will have to play around in the new patch.
With these new map adjustments, it should give attackers a little less work when clearing out areas. But now that the maps continue to be fine tuned, players, myself included, are waiting for a new map to come into play. As you can imagine, four maps for a full game doesn’t feel very complete. Either way, with these four maps, it is time for gamers to climb and try and reach the top rank of Radiant! Patch 1.02 of VALORANT is live right now!
