Valorant Episode 2 is here, and it brings with it a healthy dose of patch notes. As well as getting into the nitty gritty of how the new regional leaderboards work, we’re seeing rebalances to two agents and our usual slew of weapon changes and bug fixes.
There are also plenty of changes to Valorant ranked mode, and you can see every change affecting the ranking system here. There you can find a full breakdown of the new Rank Rating system, all-new rank rewards, and of course the changes to the ranks themselves. This constitutes the most radical change for Episode 2, however there are plenty more changes to keep games as balanced as possible ahead of the Valorant Champions Tour later this year.
The biggest addition in Episode 2 is the new agent, Yoru. The stealthy character has a cloaking device and the ability to teleport across the map, so we expect to see him quickly climb our Valorant tier list. Omen and Brimstone mains (are you out there?) will also need to read up on the balance changes to the Controllers.
Here’s all the changes in listed in patch notes 2.0:
Agent updates
Brimstone
- Stim Beacon will now quick cast (no equip time)
- Molotov cost reduced: $300 >>> $200
- Sky Smokes cast range increased: 4200 >>> 5000
- Smoke duration increased: 14.25 >>> 19.25
- Brimstone no longer makes a sound that enemies can hear when confirming the location of his smokes
Omen
- Paranoia cost increased: $200 >>> $400
- Dark Cover projectile speed decreased: 4000 >>> 2800
Viper
Riot Games feels that Viper is currently underpowered and are looking into balance changes, but she’s getting nothing this update.
Yoru
New agent Yoru has been added to the game.
Weapon updates
Here are the latest changes to Valorant guns:
Classic (alt. fire)
- Jumping error increased: 0.4 >>> 1.0
- Increased input queue on right-click: 0.065 >>> 0.225
- Firing consecutively now jumps in error, starting at 1.9 for the first burst, 2.5 for the second, and then the third/fourth burst will be at a 6.0
- Right-click now has a recovery curve starting at 0.1s
Social updates
- The “Add Friend” button has been removed from the in-game player list
Bugs
- Fixed an issue where Omen could sometimes teleport past the buy phase barriers
- Fixed an issue where Omen could plant the Spike while elevated on a Sage wall
- Fixed an issue where players on the opposing team could be seen on the minimap long after leaving line of sight
- Fixed an issue where the desktop resolution was not restored after alt-tabbing from the game when playing in fullscreen mode, at lower-than-native resolution
- Fixed an issue introduced in the 1.14 patch that incorrectly calculated client ping by including client frametime in the calculation
Known issues
- Preview videos for weapon levels currently don’t have audio
Due to the fact that we already knew about the major changes to Valorant ranked and we’ve all seen Yoru’s abilities in action, this is otherwise quite a small update to the game.