Changes to Agents are the major focus of Valorant’s v1.07 update, with Sage and Killjoy being nerfed, while Viper and Breach are being buffed.
(Picture: Riot Games)
Other changes include the introduction of a remake match feature which will allow teams to recreate games where one or more players have disconnected in competitive games. Riot has also promised visual hit detection which should make clearer when your shots have actually hit their intended target (or not as the case may be).
The update is now live on the servers and comes in at 1GB.
Agent changes
(Picture: Riot Games)
Sage has long been one of the game’s most powerful agents and a must pick for any team and that shows no signs of changing however her healing potential is being reduced in v1.07 with her Heal being nerfed. Her Slow Orbs, already subjected to a nerf previously, have also been made less effective with the frozen area being reduced in size. It isn’t all bad though for Sage mains, her Barrier Orb has been reduced in cost from 400 to 300, however, the Barrier itself works differently, starting from 400 HP and after 3 seconds going to 800 HP.
Killjoy’s Nanoswarm is also the subject of nerfs; it won’t activate as instantaneously and its damage per second has been reduced from 60 HP to 40 HP.
Buffs to Viper include her Toxic Screen’s being able to be placed in the buy phase, with the going faster to its full effect.
Breach’s flashes have been increased from 2 to 3 and the wind-up time has been reduced from 0.6 to 0.5, meaning players can return to their weapons once used quicker. Concussion from Rolling Thunder will now also de-scope players and prevent re-scoping meaning the Agent, which has been one of the least picked throughout the life of the game, may become the most feasible anti-Operator Agent in the game.
Valorant v1.07 patch notes
Agent updates
Sage
- Heal
- Heal reduced from 100 over five seconds to 60 over five seconds.
- Self heal reduced from 100 over five seconds to 60 over 10 seconds.
- Slow Orb
- Size reduced by 30 percent.
- Barrier Orb
- Cost reduced from 400 to 300.
- Fortifying Barrier: Wall forms at 400 HP. After a three-second delay, the wall becomes fortified to 800 HP.
Killjoy
- Nanoswarm
- Added a brief windup before damage begins.
- DPS reduced from 60 to 40.
- Visual effects have been added to make it easier to spot the grenade on the ground.
- Stealth audio range has been slightly increased.
- Turret
- No longer revealed by Sova’s Recon Bolt.
- More effectively shoots at an enemy’s last known location.
Viper
- Toxic Screen
- Can now be placed during the buy phase of rounds, through spawn barriers.
- Toxic Screen now goes up faster along its full length, once it starts to form.
- Decay
- Decay on all smoke abilities no longer affects allies.
- Viper’s Pit
- The area of Viper’s Pit is now shown on her team’s minimap when deployed.
Breach
- Flashpoint
- Off-screen flashes now match the behaviour of other flashes in the game and apply a minimum amount of flash more aggressively.
- Charges increased from two to three.
- Reduced windup time from 0.6 seconds to 0.5 seconds.
- Rolling Thunder
- Detonation delay between blasts decreased from 0.3 to 0.255.
- Concussion
- Concuss now de-scopes players and prevents re-scoping.
Sova
- Updated the physics on Sova’s cape so that it should wiggle outside his hitbox less frequently.
- Polish work on Sova’s 1P hands to bring them up to the fidelity bar of the rest of our agents.
Weapon updates
- All shotguns
- When getting headshot by a shotgun, the aimpunch will be lower than all the other weapons.
- Tagging tuned for targets beyond 10 meters.
- Hitting an enemy past 10 meters will apply a different tagging value to them instead of the standard tagging.
- New tagging: 30 percent slow for 0.5s on a smooth curve going back to normal speed.
- Shorty
- First falloff range reduced from 9m to 7m.
- Updated headshot multiplier from 3x to 2x (now the same as Judge and Bucky).
- Judge
- Price increased from 1,500 to 1,600.
- Vandal
- Increased firing rate from 9.25 to 9.75.
- Increased damage from 39 to 40.
- Hit impact VFX update
- Server hit VFX confirms will now spawn at the location of the hit on the character and stay attached to that position (previously, it spawned at the game space location and stayed there).
- An additional client-predicted small spark VFX now spawns immediately at the game space location of a hit.
- Adjusted the sparks hit VFX coloring and shape adjusted to more closely resemble blood VFX shape.
- Adjusted the size of headshot VFX, where both blood and sparks are scaled-down slightly.
- Competitive updates
- Remake match: When a match begins with a 4v5 (or more lopsided teams), players will now have the option to end the game they’re in and queue for a new one.
- If any player is disconnected at the start of the match (beginning of buy phase) through the entire first round, a remake call may be triggered at the start of the second round by typing /remake in chat.
- All connected players on the team that called the remake may vote to remake the game.
- The remake vote will last for the duration of the buy phase. If the vote isn’t passed by the end of buy phase, it’ll expire.
- If the vote is successfully passed and the game is remade, all players who voted don’t receive any XP or MMR adjustments for the match.
- The match also won’t show up in match history. All disconnected players not part of the vote will take a full MMR loss for the game, and receive a leaver penalty equivalent to disconnecting from a full match.
- Act Ranks visuals have been updated to better differentiate wins at different rank tiers.
- Changed some potentially misleading verbiage in the restriction message for players who need to play more unrated games to unlock competitive play.
- Quality of life
- Observers can toggle aim lines for players (default bind: R).
- Observers can change which teams outline are visible (defaults: H – All, J – Friendly to the spectated player, K – Enemies of spectates players, L – None).
- Corpse markers shown when corpses are disabled now obey colorblind settings.
- Hotkey order for selecting players for observers should no longer shuffle in overtime.
- Observers should now see the money on the HUD for the player they are spectating.
- Added a setting for disabling the in-game UI (General -> Hide User Interface In-Game).
- Added a setting for disabling the cross-hair (Crosshair -> Disable Crosshair).
- Observers can hide first-person character arms. (General -> Hide First Person Arms).
- Observers can toggle team-based crosshair coloring for spectated targets via the settings menu (General -> Use Team Color for Crosshair Color).
- Improved framerate by allowing a wider variety of VFX to be multi-threaded, examples include Brimstone’ Sky Smokes and Breach’s Rolling Thunder.
- For anyone who’d rather keep their identity private in-game, Riot has added these features:
- Hide my name from non-party members (agent name will be used)
- Hide the names of others in my game who aren’t in my party (agent names will be shown)
- Hit impact VFX improvements
Bug fixes
- Fixed a bug where if both teams try to call a surrender vote, the team who called it second wouldn’t get the option to vote.
- Fixed a bug that displayed the Act Rank tooltip in English only when another language was selected.
