Riot has released new patch notes for Valorant and we’re sure some players will be glad to hear that Raze is getting yet another nerf. Four of the agents are getting changes in patch 1.04 and The Classic, is getting some alterations too.
Raze is known as one of the most overpowered characters in Riot Games’ new FPS, as many of her abilities are damage focused. This means many Valorant players are frustrated with her position in the game, but good news folks, she’s getting nerfed. Although her changes aren’t extensive, Raze’s ultimate is going to cost one more point, costing seven rather than six.
Ultimate points are earned by eliminating other players or picking up orbs throughout the map. Raze’s ultimate Showstopper is also damage focused and the blast can catch several enemies at once, so Riot has decided to make it cost more so its occurrence is less frequent during games.
Brimstone is getting a similar treatment with his ultimate Orbital Strike changing it to cost seven points as well. Although there is a warning for when his ultimate is about to happen, it’s not just useful for eliminating players but also really powerful for protecting a spike or moving enemies out of hiding spots so its also getting nerfed.
Brimstone’s Stim Beacon, however, is getting buffed in return so now enemies don’t receive the buff by walking through the radius, nor can they see the Stim Beacon’s radius so Brimstone’s position isn’t given away.
Viper has the biggest rework in this patch – buffing her ultimate significantly. Enemies in Viper’s pit will now have their minimaps obscured, and be more visibly red when inside the smoke. She will also be able to spend up to twelve seconds outside of the cloud before it collapses, and she can drop cloud early if she so chooses.
You can find the full 1.04 patch notes below:
Agent Updates
Viper
Viper’s Pit
- Max time outside of her ult before it collapses changed from five to 12 seconds
- Viper can hold the ability key to drop her ult early
- Enemies in Viper’s Pit have their minimap obscured and do not provide minimap detection to their allies
- Increased the brightness of the red enemy glow at the edge of Viper’s near-sight
Decay
- Enemy decay per second increased from 10 to 15 from all sources.
- After exiting Viper’s smoke, enemy decay sustains for 2.5 seconds before starting to fade
Fuel
- Having both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen active does not consume additional fuel beyond the cost of having one active
Raze
- Showstopper ultimate Cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points
BrimStone
- Orbital Strike ultimate cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points
- Stim Beacon no longer Buffs enemies and no longer shows its effect radius to enemies
- Brimstone’s arms fidelity increased (“Before launch, we intended to increase the fidelity of Brimstone’s arms to match the overall quality of the game. We did it—now look at those guns!”)
Cypher
- Cyber Cage can now be picked up during the buy phase
WEAPON UPDATES
The Classic
- Running spread is changed from 3.4 to 2.1
- Jumping spread changed from 1.9 to 2.3
- Walking spread changed from 1.9 to 1.95
- Added a 10% bonus to accuracy when crouching and stationary
Hud and UI
- Replaced the previous Weapon Stats textbox in the pre-round shop with an easier-to-compare graphical representation of stats
Quality of Life
- Observer minimap vision cones are now colored by team
- Replaced Reyna’s Voice Over for Italian and Mexican
“Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 the talents we identified for the role were not able to record due to regional restrictions. You can now find in-game, the voices we originally intended for Italian and Mexican Reyna!”
Elderflame Skins
- Adjusted the volume on the Elderflame Operator equip animation
- Fixed bug that would cause the volume to stack if you spam equipped the Operator
- Enemy footsteps duck cosmetic bus properly
“This means that enemy footsteps will always lower the volume of the skin sound effects that are not important to gameplay, like the flame whooshes, dragon roar, etc.” - Elderflame Melee inspect animation now has sound effects for level 1 and 2
PERFORMANCE UPDATES
- Gun pickup targeting and Sage Ultimate targeting unified with ally character highlights, saving VRam and GPU performance
- Minor rendering performance fixes
- Gun skin upgrade videos are now streamed instead of locally stored, reduced install size by 380MB
BUG FIXES
- Fixed requirement for Reyna to look at Soul Orbs to activate them and maintain her healing, behavior should match that of patch 1.02
- Fixed one-way Brimstone smokes when the player’s camera was around the top of the smoke
- Fixed Breach’s Aftershock not properly applying damage to all characters if multiple are hit by it
- Fixed jittering when reaching the max flight height of Sova’s drone
- Fixed Marshall bug where the weapon maintained accuracy while walking
- Fixed issues with some translucency effects being one frame behind (such as Jett’s dash, when used by the player)
- Fixed ally highlights not showing up on some AMD GPUs when using MSAA, and some Intel GPUs
- Fixed a bug where loading screens did not cover the entire screen when playing in certain resolution/aspect ratio combinations
- Shortened the text on the photosensitivity warning screen
- Fixed a bug where the “equip” button would stay greyed out when purchasing a skin variant that is being previewed
- Fixed Brimstone smokes on Haven spawning offset of where intended
- Fixed a typo in Brimstone’s biography
And those are all the changes that are being made to Valorant in Patch 1.04. You can check what alterations have been already made in our reports on patch 1.03 and patch 1.02 and here’s our tier list of the best agents to play in Valorant, just in case you needed more of a reason for Viper’s buff.