VALORANT Patch Notes 4.03

Last patch before Act II, and we’re already looking to improve performance, Deathmatch and Agent bugs.
Game Updates
Jeff Landa

AGENT UPDATES

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Brimstone

  • Brimstone's ultimate now properly blocks gameplay visibility while active
    • You'll no longer see enemies on the minimap through the ultimate.
    • Abilities that require line of sight (flashes, Sova recon pulses) will no longer apply through the ultimate

MODES UPDATES

Deathmatch

We’ve been collecting player feedback on DM these past few months and are introducing a few changes to address some of the main points of frustration around the spawning system:

  • Removed and in some cases relocated “dangerous” spawn locations
  • Improved spawn logic and spawn placement to increase the likelihood that you will be facing each other players in an encounter
  • Spawning logic will now favor respawn locations farther away from where you are defeated
  • Fixed an issue where the Warm-Up Phase was not using spawn logic properly
  • Respawn Time Reduced: 3s >>> 1.5s

SOCIAL UPDATES

  • Updated AFK detection in game to deter players from exploiting game modes to farm EXP

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

Global Invalidation

Global Invalidation is a UI feature that improves performance for all UI in the game. It accomplishes this by significantly reducing the number of UI elements that need to update every frame. The Performance team will continue to monitor the impact of Global Invalidation, and we’ll have more details to share about the feature, our process, and the work needed to accomplish this in an upcoming article! —Aaron Cheney, software engineer

  • Global Invalidation provides up to 15% improvement to baseline performance for CPU-bound players
    • CPU-bound players are generally mid-to-high spec machines.
    • These numbers are based on data gathered from PBE over two weekends (Jan. 22–23, and Feb. 5–6).
    • Although we expect a large portion of the player base to benefit from these gains, your machine’s performance may vary.

COSMETIC UPDATES

  • Updates to the color of the tile used to display sprays in your Collections
    • Some sprays were too close to the color of the original tile and were hard to see properly before actually using them in-game.
  • You can now respray after a 5-second cooldown
  • Sprays now have lifetime duration of 15 seconds (reduced from 30 seconds)
    • Sprays still disappear immediately when the barrier drops (mid-round begins) and when the post-round phase begins
    • Same restrictions on mid-round sprays applies (no Agent faces, animations, or airhorns—sorry we're not sorry)

GAME SYSTEMS UPDATES

  • Added option to return to strongest weapon
    • You can now return to the strongest weapon when pressing the “Equip Last Used Item” key or when auto-equipping a weapon.
    • To toggle ON, go to Settings >> Controls >> Equipment under “Prioritize Strongest Weapon.”
    • This was released in 4.02 but did not make it into the patch notes. My bad!

ESPORTS FEATURES

  • Projectile follow is now fixed for observer followers
  • Added observer settings toggle to turn Agent portrait on/off

BUGS

Agents

  • Fixed a bug where Chamber’s Headhunter and Tour de Force could float away
  • Fixed an exploit where, using specific line-ups, it was possible to see inside Viper’s ultimate without being affected by the nearsighted debuff
  • Fixed a bug where Viper’s ultimate would sometimes fail to expand through doorways

Social

  • Fixed a bug where pressing enter in pre-game wouldn’t focus chat
  • Fixed a bug where right clicking a player portrait would not bring up a context menu

Performance

  • Fixed a bug where performance stats would be hidden while spectating the Spike

KNOWN ISSUES

Esports Features

  • There is a brief flash when swapping into free-cam mode as an observer follower