VALORANT Patch Notes 3.06

KAY/O, Skye, and Jett are on the balance block. Five maps get some stronger crates for safer planting.
Game Updates
Jeff Landa

This round of balance changes targets two Initiators: Skye and KAY/O. Skye’s benefitted from some quick movement shortly after her flashes and frequent Seekers, so we’ve slowed her down a tad and bumped the cost of her ult. For KAY/O, he should be better at hiding his FLASH/drive pitches.

And then there’s Jett. Simply put, these changes are about getting the most out of Blade Storm’s primary fire and creating matching damage rules for the alternate fire. In the same vein, there is one less smoke to work with, so choose wisely.

Five of the maps now come with sturdier crates, offering more protection for attackers on some planting sites, or safer positioning for defenders.

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AGENT UPDATES

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SKYE

We’ve liked that Skye has been able to play off her own flash more and more. But lately, there's a sense that it's become too effective and optimal to play off of herself in some situations. An increase to the unequip time should make it slightly more difficult for Skye to capitalize on Guiding Light bird flashes as quickly as before—making coordinated play or different styles of flashes more competitive.

The increased activation time aims to give prepared enemies a slightly larger window to react, without trivializing her main Initiator tool. Also, we’ve seen both the frequency of Skye’s ult and its effectiveness increase as players have become more skilled with the Agent. Looking at the recon and impact it can provide, it now seems more appropriate amongst the ults that cost seven points.

  • Guiding Light (E)
    • Unequip time after casting or bending Guiding Light’s projectile increased .5 >>> .75
    • Windup time after activation before the flash goes off increased .25 >>> .3
  • Seekers (X)
    • Cost increased 6 >>> 7

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KAY/O

When we first launched KAY/O, we had two big questions: “How strong is Suppression for initiation?” and “Can regular flashbangs exist against other flashes in VALORANT?” Although we believed the ability to lab out flashes was where the power could come in, we over-indexed on telegraphing the projectile, which is holding back its success.

These changes should help reward those of you that put in additional effort to throw clever pop flashes. As far as the ultimate goes, we wanted to increase the baseline value of the ultimate by ensuring a longer suppression window for those explosive site takes.

  • FLASH/drive
    • Duration of windup telegraph reduced 0.5s >>> 0.3s
    • Duration of windup telegraph reduced on Right Click 1s >>> 0.3s
    • The audio attached to the in-flight projectile has been removed
  • NULL/cmd
    • Does not stop pulsing after being downed

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JETT

  • Cloudburst charges reduced 3 >>> 2
    • Our feeling here is that Jett has one too many smokes, and it’s contributed to a sense that she could get away with using them at any time, have more to spare, or spam them without much thought.
    • The reduced charges for her smoke should hopefully make the choice on whether to smoke a choke point, smoke a path for a dash, or make a one-way, a more tactical one.
  • Bladestorm Right-click/Alternate Fire kills no longer recharge Jett’s kunai
    • By removing the recharge, we hope Jett mains will optimize for the single kunai kills in order to keep the Bladestorm going and really play into the high precision fantasy Jett is all about.
    • We want to incentivize the high skill primary fire kills while still allowing the low-risk-low-reward burst fire option.
  • Bladestorm Right-click/Alt. Fire damage changes are reverted, damage and multipliers will mirror the left-click
    • We’ve seen Jett’s right-click be very unpredictable and feel that it’s confusing to have different damage rules than the left-click. This change should unify how both modes of fire work and provide a little more predictability if Jett decides to go for the single kill as opposed to chaining.

MAP UPDATES

Fracture

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  • Tunnel to Generator/Canteen areas can no longer be bullet penned (a.k.a. wallbang)
  • One crate on B site is no longer pennable
    • This should create a safer planting option for attackers, while retaining a riskier, but more powerful option.

Icebox

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  • The crate stack on B site is no longer pennable, this is to create a safer planting option for attackers

Haven

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  • One stack of crates on C site is no longer pennable, this is to create a safer planting option for attackers

Ascent

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  • One crate on A site is no longer pennable, this is to create a safer position on site for defenders

Bind

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  • One stack of crates on A site is no longer pennable, this is to create a safer planting option for attackers

GAME SYSTEM UPDATES

  • For users of the Public Beta Environment (PBE), your settings for Live and PBE have been split, and your setting should no longer be wiped when going between the two environments

ESPORTS FEATURES

  • Coaches now default into all-chat rather than team chat where they're muted for competitive integrity reasons
    • This should fix some issues where calling timeouts did not work via text methods (/timeout or /to)

BUGS

Map

Social

  • Deathmatch penalties will no longer prevent you from getting banned for AFK-ing
    • Sorry about this bug! Penalties should have been reverted.