Another new Valorant update from Riot Games is upon us and it’s one to keep an eye on, especially if you main Deadlock. Not only does Valorant patch 7.10 introduce an interesting buff for the Sentinel agent in question, it also makes several specific changes to both Reyna and Fade – but, only if you’re playing as them in Team Deathmatch. If you hop between modes, this is going to be important information.
We know Valorant update 7.09 – which saw new agent Iso introduced and Episode 7 Act 3 kick off – saw some interesting changes to Sentinel agent Cypher, but that isn’t the last of Riot Games’ attempts at shaking up the meta for this role. In an effort to maintain Valorant as one of the best FPS games available and offer players balanced multiplayer action moving forward, Riot Games’ Valorant patch 7.10 is implementing a Deadlock buff that – while seemingly minor – could actually bump them up in our Valorant tier list and make them a fantastic option for climbing the Valorant ranks moving forward.
As the latest Valorant patch notes explain, Deadlock’s GravNet (C) is going to be a lot more effective following the update. If you’re caught in a GravNet, you’re going to actually have to “manually remove the net” to escape before it expires; before, all you had to do was move outside of its radius to escape its effects.
In addition to this, any enemy player caught in a GravNet cast will “be debuffed indefinitely” and “now be affected by increased gravity and a reduction in mobility” until they can remove it manually. These changes will undoubtedly make Deadlock even deadlier in Valorant – with enemies having a tougher time to escape GravNet and GravNet itself now more impactful than ever. It also makes it much more effective against mobility-based agents like Jett and Raze.
This update also increases the GravNet removal time from 0.85s to 1.5s – a dramatic increase that will feel like a lifetime when you’re caught in one under enemy fire – and the GravNet radius by 2m. So, it’s going to affect an area with an 8m radius moving forward. So, catching your enemies in GravNet will be even easier than before and then they’ll have a harder time getting out of it while you shoot them. It really does seem like a win-win for Deadlock players, even though Riot Games is hoping these changes will make this “a more interesting interaction on both sides”.
On top of all this, Reyna is being nerfed in Team Deathmatch specifically while Fade is actually being buffed in the game mode. There’s nothing to say that the following changes won’t roll out to the other modes at some point, but for now, they’re just limited to the respawn-based mode.
Reyna’s Leer (C) will have an increased cooldown – now up to 51s – and Empress (X) will charge 14% slower than it did before. On the other side of things, both Fade’s Prowler (C) and Sieze (Q) will have shorter cooldowns in Team Deathmatch – now 36s and 48s respectively. We can’t imagine this will make Reyna any less popular in the game mode moving forward, even though it is a little frustrating to see, but this could be huge for Fade fans. She should be able to track and close-in on her enemies much more efficiently moving forward, effectively enabling more aggressive gameplay using this agent.
If you want to make sure you’re taking full advantage of all these changes, you should make sure you’re using the best Valorant crosshair codes available right now. It might not sound like something important, but tweaking this and making sure you have the best Valorant FOV settings set-up will improve your game. Fresh skins, though, probably won’t. Although, you can check out the next Valorant Night Market dates here all the same.