VALORANT Patch Notes 3.0

Aside from the below, don’t forget the rest that is coming as part of Episode 3 Act I, which you can read about in our summary. Now a word from our design leads:

While there are a lot of changes with this patch, they are focused around refining two critical components of the game: Increasing the importance of precise gunplay and expanding the tactical sandbox. 

When we think of VALORANT, we consider every map, weapon, and character to be a part of an ever-changing sandbox where you can use your skill and creativity to overcome any challenge you face. We believe VALORANT is at its best when you face a wide variety of unique challenges and are forced to make hard choices about tools and strategies you’ll use to overcome them. To that end, we have taken a pass at the entire economy of the game, changing weapon and ability prices so they better suit their impact on a match and allow players to create more dynamic, varied loadouts, and strategies. 

Game-spanning changes like these can be painful as we are asking you all to relearn many things that you’re now comfortable with. There will be times when you are forced to make harder choices about what you bring into battle each round or forced to engage with an opponent differently—but just know that your enemies are facing the same challenges.

—Max Grossman and Sal Garozzo, Co-Lead Designers

AGENT UPDATES

To hit our goal of creating a more dynamic sandbox, we have adjusted ability pricing, cooldown rates, and ultimate costs on every Agent. Generally, we noticed that certain agents were able to have too much impact with their abilities without making any significant tradeoffs. Our goal here is to create a healthier pace of abilities throughout a round and force you to think more critically about your purchase decisions.

ALL AGENTS

• Signature abilities now only provide a minimum of one charge per round instead of accumulating a charge every round.
  • For example, if you have a two charge signature ability and you end the round with one charge remaining, you will not gain an additional charge
• Charges gained from cooldowns are now always temporary
• Visibility returns faster during the fadeout period of all flashes

ASTRA

Astra is incredibly popular at higher levels of play and we felt that a few of her play patterns are difficult to respond to round over round. We want Astra to be potent at applying map-wide pressure, but she’s able to do that much too frequently and without much counterplay or cost. These changes aim to add more counterplay on barrier drop, and provide much longer and clearer cooldown windows after Astra uses or recalls her Stars.

BREACH

The introduction of KAY/O, warrants a tuning pass on our other Initiators. 

For Breach, we’re removing his third flash charge and attempting to spread impact across his kit. The updates to his other abilities should provide more reliable outputs for Breach and his allies. Along with this, some abilities are getting shorter cast commitments and the speed of his Flashpoint projectile is being slowed to give Breach a chance to re-equip his weapon and work off his tools.

BRIMSTONE

CYPHER

JETT

We’ve reverted the Jett/Cypher trapwire interaction. When we initially made this change, there was a strong sentiment about Jett feeling weak and Cypher feeling oppressive to play against.As players have gotten better at dealing with Cypher’s traps and Jett has carved out strong value in the game, we think that Jett should have to play and plan around Cypher's deliberate setup instead of being able to bust through it without thought.

KILLJOY

OMEN

PHOENIX

RAZE

REYNA

SAGE

SKYE

Skye will lose her third flash charge, but she’ll now regain charges on a cooldown for her signature. We’ve made it so Skye no longer needs to put her gun down to activate Guiding Light and made some quality of life improvements when guiding the projectile or letting it fly free. We’ve felt Trailblazer’s vision radius has been slightly too small to clear the medium size rooms—where it should excel—and that the concuss could use a little more bite given how difficult it is to land. We hope these changes will help push Skye’s viability in solo queue and help her carve out a competitive spot in organized play.

SOVA

VIPER

YORU

WEAPON UPDATES

Since launch, run-and-gun has been a hot topic. While we believe that there are certain situations that moving and shooting should be powerful, it is currently more potent than we’d like. This patch targets a piece of the puzzle that we haven’t touched before which is what we call “tag into accuracy.” 

“Tag into accuracy” is our internal name for a phenomenon where a fully running player starts firing at you without slowing down; then, you shoot and hit them, applying the tagging debuff and slowing them down. This inadvertently drops their speed enough to make their bullets more accurate, even if they aren’t trying to come to a stop. This behavior is a root cause of a lot of the run and gun clips we see and the changes this patch should mitigate the effectiveness of this, particularly at longer ranges. All in all, our aim is to better reward proactive and precise movement.

With slightly reduced tagging, tighter deadzones and overall less accuracy in movement states, we aim to tighten up combat while trying to maintain as much intuition and muscle memory as possible.

Walk Shooting (not Run Shooting) has been reasonably accurate in VALORANT, allowing players to get off semi-accurate shots even at mid-range. With the changes to walk accuracy, shooting while walking will be significantly less effective at medium ranges, rewarding players who proactively stop before they shoot.

We’ve also reduced the running accuracy of Sidearms and SMGs in an attempt to tighten up engagements with those weapons while maintaining some of their identity in terms of mobility by being able to to move and shoot somewhat accurately at shorter ranges.

ALL WEAPONS

• Bullet tagging changed from 75% slow >>> 72.5% slow
  • “Tagging” is the slowing effect you feel when hit by bullets
• Weapon Deadzones changed from 30% >>> 27.5%
  • “Deadzone” in VALORANT refers to the movement speed a player becomes inaccurate

ALL RIFLES

• Walking inaccuracy changed from 1.3 >>> 2.0
• Running unchanged at 5.0

ALL HEAVIES

• Walking Inaccuracy changed from .5 >>> 2.4
• Running unchanged at 6.0

ALL SMGs

• Walking inaccuracy changed from .3 >>> 1.0
• Running inaccuracy changed from 2.0 >>> 2.5

CLASSIC

• Walking inaccuracy changed from .25 >>> .84
• Running inaccuracy changed from 1.5 >>> 2.1

FRENZY

• Price decreased 500 >>> 450
• Walking inaccuracy changed from .25 >>> .8
• Running inaccuracy changed from 1.0 >>> 2.0

GHOST

• Walking inaccuracy changed from .25 >>> .92
• Running Inaccuracy changed from 1.85 >>> 2.3

SHERIFF

• Walking inaccuracy changed from .25 >>> 1.2
• Running inaccuracy changed from 2.0 >>> 3.0

JUDGE

• Price increased 1600 >>> 1850
• Damage falloff at 10m changed from 13 per pellet >>> 10 per pellet
• Damage falloff at 15m changed from 10 per pellet >>> 7 per pellet
  • We want the Judge to be a devastating, multi-fragging, close range option and believe it’s a bit more premium than we had previously given it credit for. It was also performing better than expected at range so we’re taking that down a notch.

BULLDOG

• Hip-fire (full auto mode) firing rate increased from 9.15 RPS >>> 9.5 RPS
• Price decreased 2100 >>> 2050
  • The bulldog was feeling just slightly underpowered in close/mid range situations where hip fire was the go-to. So we’re giving it a bit more of a firing rate to compete, and lowering the price to make it more enticing to buy.

SHORTY

• Price decreased 200 >>> 150

STINGER

• Price decreased 1100 >>> 950

BUCKY

• Price decreased 900 >>> 850

MARSHAL

• Price decreased 1000 >>> 950

ARES

• Price decreased 1600 >>> 1550

OPERATOR

• Price decreased from 5000 >>> 4700

GUARDIAN

• Price decreased 2400 >>> 2250

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

For Episode 3, our major focus for Ranked is matchmaking accuracy and fairness. We’ve evaluated our system and have made a few significant changes that should improve these key areas across a wide range of players. Without getting too much into the secret sauce of things, we want to share some of what you can expect in Episode 3. 

Here’s our primary player experience goals:

• We want winning games to matter most—at all skill levels.
• We want to improve individual performance evaluation because we believe it helps identify more fair and balanced matches.
• We want you to see your rank as an accurate representation of your current skill level.
• We want you to have fewer motivations for playing on different accounts and to get to your proper rank faster.

Here’s some of what you can expect from our changes:

• Reduced the possibility of feeling “hard stuck” on older accounts. If your skill improves, your rank should properly reflect that, regardless of account age.
• Matchmaking accuracy will improve across all ranks, which should lead to a smoother ranked climb and reduce how hard you may swing up and down in rank
• While winning games is still the most important factor, individual performance will also be accounted for to improve matchmaking at Immortal+
  • This should result in better matches at the highest levels.
• Close games will have a smaller effect on rank rating gains and losses
• Adjusted our Rank Rating curves, so climbing (or falling) should feel less volatile
• Updated Rank distribution
• Placements raised to Diamond 1
  • This should help reduce the grind for our players at the top

Our plan is to continue to monitor these changes after they’ve reached our live servers, and we’ll certainly make more adjustments where appropriate. We’re looking forward to getting these changes into your hands, and please continue to provide us with feedback on your experiences throughout Episode 3!

AFK Penalties

• Increased maximum AFK penalty to -12 RR
• Minimum AFK penalty at -8RR
• AFK Rank Rating penalty can still go above the -30 RR Loss barrier, allowing you to lose over -30 RR if you AFK and lose a match
• AFK penalties start at 3 rounds and escalate for each round you are AFK, for up to 6 rounds
• If you are AFK for 6 or more rounds, and your team wins, you gain no RR for the win and are penalized the maximum -12 RR
  • We agree, it feels bad to carry an AFK player and have them gain RR. We want to incentivize those who disconnect to return to the match. Yes, you will not be able to gain RR from a game where you were AFK for 6+ rounds, but if you return and help win the match, you will only get hit with -12RR instead of -12RR on top of the RR decrease for the loss.

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

We’re excited to deliver major improvements with 3.0! This work is the culmination of significant effort and collaboration over the last several months involving many teams across VALORANT. Performance is a war won in the margins, and we’re generally able to provide small, incremental changes. This time, however, many of our smaller items came together all at once.

Players with medium to high spec machines (CPU bound systems) may see up to 6% performance improvements as a result of the following work:

• Improved clipping plane calculations using multithreading
• Improved thread utilization across multiple cores for distributed tasks
• Optimized camera calculations
• Optimized ambient audio for each map
• Fix for Character Ability HUD invalidation box
• General optimizations for all ability animations

SOCIAL UPDATES

• Hover Cards have been added to the social panel
  • Hover over your friends list to quickly learn more about the players you have added. 
• You can now invite to party with Riot ID in custom game

GAMEPLAY TECHNOLOGY

Killfeed

• Your kills will get an additional highlighted border to make them stand out

• Kill assists will also be shown to the left of the killfeed entries

• The killfeed will also display a highlighted border for your assist portrait

• The killfeed will display certain ultimate abilities when players on either team are killed in a second-life state or revived
  • For example: Sage’s player resurrection or Phoenix’s death during his Run It Back ability.

• Added multi-colored killfeeds in cases where kills would result in the same team color appearing side by side

“Round Rollback” feature for Tournament Mode Custom Games

• This feature allows you to set the game back to the start of a previous round and re-play the game starting from there
• To enable the feature, go to “Options” while setting up a Custom Game and toggle “On” Tournament Mode
  • Moderators can activate a rollback
  • If Cheats are enabled as a Custom Game option, all players can activate a rollback.
• During the match, the Round Rollback feature can be found in the “Cheats” section of the Menu.

• Added the ability to toggle on and off the outer crosshair lines!
• Adjusted assist timings and thresholds for utility-based assists to make them more consistent across different Agent abilities.

PROGRESSION UPDATES

• Happy anniversary VALORANT! To celebrate we have added a new Year One Event Pass—this is similar to a Battlepass but it's completely free and has some really cool goodies.
  • This will be active for the duration of Patch 3.0 and will only last till 3.01 goes live. So remember to get your goodie bag before the party ends.
• What's a party without friends? We’ve also added a Squad Boost: You will get extra XP when you play in a premade group.
  • +8% boost for one additional player, +12% for two, +16% for three, and +20% for a full squad.
  • This will also be active for the duration of 3.0.
• We’re also permanently adding Account Leveling: A new way to recognize and reward you for your time playing in all VALORANT game modes.
  • Your account Player Card will now display a numeric level based on how much you play.
  • In addition to that, you will also be boosted to a certain level based on how many games you’ve played before Patch 3.0.

  • For more details, check out our full breakdown.

BUGS

Agents

• Characters blocked by Sage’s Barrier Orb when resurrected now break the wall to ensure they don’t get pushed inside map geo
• Fixed Skye’s Seekers showing up on the minimap even when they aren’t visible to an enemy
• Fixed Viper’s ultimate not showing as active on the team UI when Viper’s Pit is up
• Fixed bug where Cypher’s Spy Camera could be placed inside the map on mid Icebox
• Fixed a bug where Reyna’s Dismiss ability could not be rebought if the Buy Menu is closed and reopened during the same Buy Phase
• Fixed a bug where cancelling Sova’s Hunter’s Fury while charging the shot allows player to skip unequip animation by equipping a weapon, ability, or Spike
• Fixed a bug where picking up Cypher’s TrapWires/Cages and Killjoy’s Nano Swarms during the Buy phase would prevent you from purchasing a second charge

Competitive

• Fixed a bug that was causing a delay in recent Competitive game’s Ranked Rating updates in Match History
• Fixed a Career screen visual bug that would show up for those who dropped out of Immortal
• Fixed a bug that caused a friend’s career to infinitely load

Social

Fixed a bug where friends' names were merging together in the social panel when interacting with them, jumbling them together at times. Word scramble no longer!

Content Support

• Fixed an issue causing a hitch when viewing skins in the Collection

Gameplay Technology

• Fixed a bug where the inner crosshair toggle feature wasn't working
• Fixed a bug where AOE kills were not rewarding the appropriate character if the enemy was in a debuffed state
• Fixed a bug where the Spike icon pulse and beeping sound were not in sync
• Fixed a bug where Ally defuse progress bar sometimes fails to appear
• Fixed a bug where Observer’s Killfeed has no team colors
• Reverted our fix for the “swirly arms” in the last patch, since it was causing significant animation snapping