A new VALORANT patch will arrive on the live servers today. The new patch will apply changes to Vanguard and Duelist agents' flash abilities and reshape their Fracture.
The developers overhauled both Fracture regions with quality-of-life updates and changed the flash capabilities of Skye, KAY/O, Reyna, and Yoru. Riot realizes that Duelists with flash abilities like Yoru and Reyna are being overtaken by lead agents like Skye and KAY/O as they try to get kills for themselves, so the balance is shifting. The updates are aimed at making duelists evolve and stand out a bit in this scenario, as the agent designers initially intended.
Alongside the Fracture map and agent changes, Riot has also fixed a few agent bugs. Everything that has changed in VALORANT with Patch 5.07 is here.
VALORANT Patch 5.07 Agent Updates
Skye
Instead of being a reasonable counterplay mechanic, the Guide Light being destructible caused Skye to be heavily penalized when used from long ranges. With these changes, we're aiming to increase the efficiency of the Guide Light and reward Skye for guiding her birds to the right places so that the ability is more in line with team play and specifically different from Duelists' blinding abilities.
- Changed the blinding increase mechanic of the Guide Light (E).
- Skye's Guiding Light's blinding duration now scales with a minimum of 0,75 to a maximum of 1 seconds based on how long it's held during the 2,25 second window after the ability is cast.
- Guidance Light can no longer be destroyed by shooting.
- Added new interface, visual and sound effects to suit gameplay.
- Guide Light's ability release time increased: 0,75 sec. >>> 0,85 sec.
KAY / O
We were seeing KAY/O's FLASH/Memory ability when thrown low (right click) was more effective than other blinding abilities (such as Phoenix or Yoru's abilities). We felt that the high launch mechanic wasn't rewarding enough given the difficulty of specializing in getting it right. Believing that KAY/O's versatility must come at a price, we're weakening his low-throwing ability compared to Duelists' ability to blind.
- FLASH/Memory (Q)
- Decreased maximum blinding time of low-launched blinding grenade: 2s. >>> 1,25 sec.
- Increased maximum blinding time of blinding bomb thrown from height: 2s. >>> 2,25 sec.
- Ability release time increased: 0,6s. >>> 0,85 sec.
Queen
We feel that Reyna's blinding is not strong enough, especially at high skill levels, as a skill that Reyna can exploit on her own rather than coordinating with the team. With the changes we made, we are giving Reyna more freedom in her entries after using Evil Eye. With these changes, we're also enabling Evil Eye to better cover angles where there are Operators in long spaces. Apart from that, we noticed that as long as each eye is not destroyed, it stays longer than necessary on the map. Now that Reyna will perform better on her own with Kem Göz, we had to cut down on the aspects that she could contribute to the team.
Evil Eye (C)
- Ability release delay decreased: 0,7s. >>> 0,5 sec.
- Removed the ability's release delay.
- Ability duration decreased: 2,6 sec. >>> 2 sec.
- Decreased duration of vision restriction effect: 0,6s. >>> 0,4 sec.
- Removed Evil Eye's range restriction.
yoru
We needed to balance Yoru's ability to use his blinding ability while in his ultimate. Looking at the counterplay capacity of his Blind Spot ability, we came to the conclusion that we need to slightly increase the duration of the Blind Spot ability.
- Blind Spot (Q) duration increased: 1,5 sec. >>> 1,75 sec.
- Visual Updates to Blind Abilities
- Third-person effects for blinded enemies and teammates will appear behind the player's head as soon as the blinded effect begins to wear off. So it will be understood whether others are completely or partially blind.
- Changed the first-person blindness effect when fully blinded to shrink over time to better express when the blinded period ends.
- Increased the range of assist rewards from blinds, vision restrictions, and stuns: 1 sec. >>> 3 sec.
- The assist reward range did not accurately reflect the duration and impact of these abilities. Such a change has been made so that players who play the game from a supportive perspective can also be rewarded.
VALORANT: MAP UPDATES
FRACTURE
In Fracture, we're seeing larger updates to the Bowl, A Ramp, and A Rope regions, along with many quality-of-life changes. Let's go from small to big.
- Courtyard – We are expanding this corridor in order to make it easier for the attacker to work against the defender in both ways.
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- B Generator – We're narrowing this area down a bit to make it somewhat easier to cover with smoke. We've also removed one of the corners to make it easier to clean this area again.
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- B Generator – We're narrowing this area down a bit to make it somewhat easier to cover with smoke. We've also removed one of the corners to make it easier to clean this area again.
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- Defending Party Start – Removed one of the corners to make it easier to retake the area.
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- A Hall – Removed one of the corners to make it easier to move around and simplify the space.
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- Zone A – Minor simplifications have been made to match the changes made around the region.
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- A Dish – Although the dish is still on the map, it has been moved to the side a little to make it easier for both sides to move around. We realized that controlling these areas simultaneously is quite difficult for both parties. We hope this route will be used more often with changes to Bowl and Ramp.
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- A Ramp – The jump point has been changed to make it easier for the attacking side to attack Zone A from both sides, so that players do not have to control both sides during entry.
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- A Rope – We saw that the attacking side could easily pass this road with a single smoke. With our changes, we've made it easier for the defender to hold or retake this place. Watch your step.
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PROGRESS UPDATES
We will talk about some of the features that we have wanted to be added to the game for a long time as much as you. We must admit that we still have a lot of work to do to improve these features. We are talking about the introduction of additional filtering options and the search feature, the implementation of the random selection feature for other content, and much more. Our team wants these changes to be made and is working on them. But we didn't want to wait for all possible options to be considered to bring the changes into play. After all, it would be better to at least offer an upgradeable version of these features instead of not using them in the game at all.
Our team works with the "live service" approach adopted by everyone working on VALORANT, which allows us to develop the game with you and continuously. This is also why some of the new features seem unfinished. We continue this mentality that we've embraced in many quality-of-life updates, including favourites, filters, and random overlays. Your feedback is very important to us so that we can improve the game together. —Micah Worsham, Executive, Game Producer
- You can now choose your favorites in your collection. The favorite content you choose is not reset until you change it, and this feature allows you to use it easily by filtering the most compatible content with your style.
- Weapon Skins
- Player Cards
- sprays
- Weapon Charms
- Account Level Frameworks
- Added "Random Favorite" feature for all weapon types.
- When you use this option, one of your favorite skins (including the styles you own) will be randomly selected for each match you enter.
- Added filtering feature to Collection.
- Weapon Skins
- Favorites / Non-Favorites
- Haves / Don'ts
- steps
- Player Cards, Sprays, Weapon Charms, Level Frames
- Favorites / Non-Favorites
- Haves / Don'ts
- Weapon Skins
BUGS FIXED
agents
- Fixed a bug that caused KAY/O's CANCEL/Command to disable it if it hits Killjoy's turret without touching Killjoy.
- Fixed a bug that caused Killjoy's turret to constantly fire in a straight line after he was out of sight of the enemy he was shooting at.
- Fixed a bug where Killjoy's turret was disabled while firing at a target, causing the turret to fire randomly when used again.
- Fixed a bug that prevented her from automatically equipping her weapon after using her Phoenix Incandescent ability.
- Fixed a bug that caused already dead enemies to also appear in the combat report when Breach cast Earthquake.
- Fixed a bug that caused the initial deafness effect to wear off after the player was deafened by multiple abilities, while other deafness effects would disappear as well.
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