Riot Games has revealed Valorant’s next update, and the big news is that the Guardian is getting a much-needed buff that makes even more powerful at a sharper price. Elsewhere, Patch 1.03 notes reveal some quality of life improvements, bug fixes, and a new orb for Spike Rush. Unfortunately, there’s no firm release date as yet — though if the previous patch is anything to go by, it shouldn’t be more than a few days away.
The developer admits that up until now, the Guardian has occupied a strange place in the overall weapon meta — too expensive in comparison to premium rifles, while not offering enough wall penetration to reflect its harder hitting bullets. That’s now been rectified with the following buff:
- Price reduced from 2700 >>> 2500
- Rate of Fire reduced from 6.5 >>> 4.75
- Penetration power increased from Medium >>> Heavy
- Input queue updated from 0.083 >>> 0.1175
Elsewhere, there are a few map changes to appreciate:
Haven
- Removed spot where Spike was unable to be retrieved once dropped.
All Maps
- Fixed multiple spots where players were able to clip inside level geometry
- Removed more locations where Sova’s sensor arrow was able to go through walls
Spike Rush also has a new orb and some balancing adjustments:
Spike Rush
- New Orb: Twin Hunters
- Capturing the orb releases two hunting wolves to track down the two nearest enemies (from orb location, they will not change targets after spawning).
- Wolves speed up when they spot an enemy and dash at them when close, slowing and near-sighting for 4 seconds upon impact.
- Wolves have 150 HP and can be damaged
- Wolves will time out at 15 seconds, or when their target is killed
- Capturing the orb releases two hunting wolves to track down the two nearest enemies (from orb location, they will not change targets after spawning).
- Split: Orb Location
- Mid defender side orb has been moved onto mid platform to make it slightly less defender favored
Quality of Life
Finally, onto general improvements and bug fixes. The big news here is that the surrender option, added in the Patch 1.02, has been reduced from a unanimous vote to an 80% vote for Unrated play. Competitive play remains as it was before.
Surrender changes
- Unrated Mode vote requirements to pass changed from 100% to 80%
- Competitive Mode vote requirements to pass remains at 100%
- You can now call a surrender vote starting with round 5 versus round 8
- A new button in the in-game menu has been added to call a surrender vote
- In the Collection screens, there is now a checkbox to toggle between showing all items or only owned ones (additional options and improvements for managing your collection will be coming in future patches)
- Fixed a bug where the mission “You or your ally plant/defuse spikes” sometimes did not take into account plants and defuses by allies
- Transition screens and startup screens are now letterboxed
- Fixed text overlap issues in the Battlepass and Contract screens in some languages
- Players in custom games with cheats enabled can select a different Agent to use on the next round in the cheats menu.
- Removing a friend will now prompt a confirmation dialogue
- Pressing Escape while typing in the chat box will clear the message
- Revised layout of confirmation dialogs to make primary action larger and always on the left; applied color in various places, like using red for destructive actions; revised the locations of some confirmation and cancel buttons for consistency
- Minor fixes for visual artifacts on Bind on Intel GPUs
- Minor render improvements for modern hardware
- Added an error popup for crashes on startup linking to troubleshooting guide for crashes
- Patch notes and payment windows will scale correctly on 4K monitors
- IME input on payment windows will now work correctly (Japanese/Chinese)
- Players can now view individual skin levels in the collections and store view
- Updates to censored hit impact effects for better readability
- Added Agent silhouettes for observers
- Improved render performance for silhouettes
- Agent health bars are now visible to observers
- Fulfilling a buy request while moving will no longer interrupt your movement
- Custom Games Tournament Mode:
- Custom games can now be set to Tournament Mode. This allows every player in the game to have access to the Toggle Match Timer cheat in game without having all other cheats enabled. It also allows observers to be flagged as moderators, which grants them access to additional cheats that they can use as necessary. Regular observers cannot use cheats anymore.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a Cypher bug where traps that were placed such that they were on the inside of a doorway, would not trigger when someone walked through them
- Fixed an issue with the Match Timer hitching under unstable network conditions
- Fixed an issue where players couldn’t jump off ascenders if jump was bound to the mousewheel
- Fixed some visual issues that could occur when reconnecting to the game while dead
- Fixed Barrier phase announcement showing up in normal games for observers
- Fixed various UI issues on observer scoreboard
