There are changes incoming for Valorant, but don’t expect a hefty haul following the first week of the game’s release. There’s not too much happening with the latest changes, but Sage receives another nerf following the big one she received after the game released on June 2.

Spike Rush receives a new round of orbs to help liven up the gameplay. One of the examples provided in the patch notes details the Golden Gun orb, which allows a player to one-shot anybody. You can expect everyone in the game to use these orbs to their advantage, the and randomness of these orbs to make it interesting each round. You’ll need to remain on your toes.

While the patch notes are light, the next few weeks will determine quite a bit for Valorant.

GAMEPLAY AND BALANCE

SAGE

  • Barrier Orb cast range reduced 20 »> 10 metersAs a Sentinel, Sage is supposed to be most effective when defending territory that she already controls. The 20m cast range was allowing Sage to aggressively take control of neutral territory in a way that was inappropriate for her role in Valorant. This range reduction aims to keep her strong while defending territory but reduce her efficacy at taking ground.

MAP UPDATES

  • As a Sentinel, Sage is supposed to be most effective when defending territory that she already controls. The 20m cast range was allowing Sage to aggressively take control of neutral territory in a way that was inappropriate for her role in Valorant. This range reduction aims to keep her strong while defending territory but reduce her efficacy at taking ground.

Ascent

  • Fixed several spots where weapons were falling through the world and issues with wall penetration

All Maps

  • Modified several call out names to better match player terms

SPIKE RUSH UPDATE

  • Each game of Spike Rush now features a set of 5 randomly selected orbsThe Full Ultimate orb will always be available4 of the remaining 7 orb types will be chosen at randomChosen orb types will be shown in a description widget both in character select and during pre-round

New Orb Types

  • The Full Ultimate orb will always be available4 of the remaining 7 orb types will be chosen at random

  • Health Orb – Grants teamwide health regen (instant)20 second duration12 HP per second (3HP per tick)SFX/VFX only play while actually healingDeception Orb – Applies “Paranoia” to the enemy team 3 seconds after capture10 second debuffVision is greatly reduced (and a small Field of Vision shift)Fake footsteps and gunfire play for affected playersMinimap is disabledGolden Gun – Grants capturing player a Golden GunOne-shot, one-killPerfectly accurate at all timesAgent moves at knife speedOnly has a single bullet in chamber and 2 backup roundsKills grant an additional round

Misc.

  • 20 second duration12 HP per second (3HP per tick)SFX/VFX only play while actually healing

  • 10 second debuffVision is greatly reduced (and a small Field of Vision shift)Fake footsteps and gunfire play for affected playersMinimap is disabled

  • One-shot, one-killPerfectly accurate at all timesAgent moves at knife speedOnly has a single bullet in chamber and 2 backup roundsKills grant an additional round

  • New pre-round HUD element that shows the weapon & potential orb types for the current round.Players now get 1 ultimate point for collecting any orb.

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

Our performance work this patch primarily focuses on improving performance during combat and general performance improvements for high spec machines. The game should feel even smoother in combat and many scenes will likely have higher average FPS depending on your spec.

  • Combat Perf : We were able to fix a number of things causing dips during combat.Skins for 9/10 players were failing to pre-load in the game. The first time you’d come across these skin in-game you’d experience a drop in framerate.Reduced frame dips that would occur when a kill callout was added or removed to the hud.Improved the performance of the Viper specific HUD elements which had some performance issues.+FPS on Mid to High Spec : We were able to improve CPU bottlenecks in a few places across the code as well. Lower spec machines may still benefit from some of these improvements but would only see the gains during combat.Added multithreaded rendering support for high end machines. If your machine meets the requirements to benefit from multithreaded rendering, you’ll see a new option to turn it on or off in the Graphics Quality menu. It’s on by default for these machinesMultithreaded rendering improves performance in scenes where the cost of managing objects that need to be rendered exceeds the cost of the game simulation and the cost of actually rendering the scene on the GPU. These conditions most commonly occur when moving through scenes with lots of objects visible (ex. Split attacker spawn) and in cases where the game simulation doesn’t require much work (ex. practice range, out of combat gameplay, etc.).

  • Multithreaded vision cones; minimap vision cones will now compute on another thread, if it’s able toLarge VFX passes across all maps, this reduced the CPU side cost of these particles by allowing the GPU to do more of the simulationReworked client performance Stats to include more detailed breakdown of frame times

QUALITY OF LIFE

  • Skins for 9/10 players were failing to pre-load in the game. The first time you’d come across these skin in-game you’d experience a drop in framerate.Reduced frame dips that would occur when a kill callout was added or removed to the hud.Improved the performance of the Viper specific HUD elements which had some performance issues.

  • Added multithreaded rendering support for high end machines. If your machine meets the requirements to benefit from multithreaded rendering, you’ll see a new option to turn it on or off in the Graphics Quality menu. It’s on by default for these machinesMultithreaded rendering improves performance in scenes where the cost of managing objects that need to be rendered exceeds the cost of the game simulation and the cost of actually rendering the scene on the GPU. These conditions most commonly occur when moving through scenes with lots of objects visible (ex. Split attacker spawn) and in cases where the game simulation doesn’t require much work (ex. practice range, out of combat gameplay, etc.).

  • Sova’s Recon Dart will behave more consistently and only reveal the portion of enemies behind a wallAdded a setting that allows the inventory to always appearPings will no longer draw over allies and enemies when placed behind themTransition out of game now shows the map you just played instead of Brimstone and Sage walking into a teleporterIn the shooting range, changing character now uses a lightweight and more performant UI than the flow going into a matchMissions on the end of game screen are now sorted by completion and by typeMinor visual improvements to Contract and Battlepass rewards in the progression widget located at the top of the screen

BUG FIXES

  • Fixed issue where translucent particles, like smoke layers, would show through Reyna’s Nearsight.Fixed VFX that obscured Reyna’s screen if she scoped while healingReyna’s overheal health no longer incorrectly shows 151 total when maxedCypher Spycameras placed on the teleporter door frames on Bind no longer teleport it’s view location undergroundCypher’s Cyber Cage no longer holds the teleporter doors on Bind openThe Area-of-Effect indicators for Sova’s Recon Bolt and Reyna’s Leer now only show up on the enemy’s minimap if the player or their allies are close to the affected areaFixed input and other various pieces of Agent control UI showing up for spectatorsFixed a bug where dead player’s 1st-person arms would appear to be floating in the airFixed a bug where activating a spray could exit ADS while firingFixed a bug with the Bullet Tracers setting, having this setting active used to also disable muzzle flash on some weapons in addition to tracersFixed an issue with the mouse cursor flickering when moving it over the scoreboardFixed an issue with milliseconds in the round timer not being accurateFixed an issue with some keybindings not displaying keybinding conflicts warnings correctlyFixed an Observer bug where the first person being observed in the game did not have a character portraitFixed an issue with automatic weapons rarely not displaying tracers or audio effects when fired in short burstsFixed a bug where the defuse bar was duplicatedFixed voice input/output devices and settings not persisting across sessionsFixed a slew of localization issues across end of game screensFixed a handful of visual issues across end of game screensFixed an issue whispering players of the same name/general DM improvementsImproved chat service error messagingSettings menu is now letterboxed as intendedWhile on the Agents page, clicking on COLLECTION now correctly navigates back to the Arsenal page