ValorantThe latest patch is here and Riot is still on a quest to make Viper a viable character. Along with Viper’s new new perks, this patch also brings little nerfs to Raze and Brimstone, as well as a nerf and slight rework to the classic default pistol.
The Viper change is the biggest adjustment to this patch, and the biggest change Riot has brought to the character so far. Viper’s maximum ability creates a massive cloud of toxic smoke that occupies a large area and obscures the vision of each player who enters. It is also the skill that caught the most attention this patch.
As long as Viper is in the cloud of smoke, he will stay awake and now has an even longer grace period to leave the smoke and return before it disappears. This patch increases the grace period from five seconds to 12. Now you also have the option to drop the hole whenever you want. Viper can also have its wall and poisonous cloud at the same time without using additional fuel.
Small changes also affected Raze and Brimstone, whose Ultimate skills now cost seven points to win instead of six. The Classic pistol also received a major overhaul, including the elimination of long-distance jump shots, which is probably for the best. To help balance that, the gun is now a little more accurate when running, stooping, or standing still.
To see everything that changed in Valorant patch 1.04 you can check the full patch notes.
Valorant patch 1.04 notes
Agent updates
Snake
Pit of the viper
- The maximum time outside its ult before it collapsed changed from 5 >>> 12 seconds
- Viper can hold the skill key to release his ult early
- The enemies in Viper’s Pit have their minimap hidden and do not provide minimap detection to their allies.
- Increased the brightness of the red enemy glow at the edge of Viper’s close-up view
By allowing Viper to break out of her maximum ability for such a short period of time, we felt that she was not only limited in the plays she could make, but also gave too much continuous information to her enemies. The ability to move beyond the ultimate smoke should provide some exciting new mind games for Viper to play, and hopefully he will put strategic pressure on the enemy. The other upgrades should boost Viper’s edge in her own smoke and help her avoid being traded by enemies using minimap vision to target her.
Decay
- The enemy’s decay per second increased from 10 to 15 from all sources.
- After exiting Viper smoke, the enemy’s decay is held for 2.5 seconds before beginning to fade
Viper’s decay so quickly depleting from enemies was limiting the advantage it provided and was not creating the threat we expected as a result. Adding a delay before it fades will hopefully expand the window where Viper and his team can capitalize and pair with Viper’s Pit updates (above) to provide new ways to play around their ultimate ability.
Fuel
- Having both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen assets does not consume additional fuel beyond the cost of having an active one
The reduction in total uptime when his two vision blockers were active was making it difficult for Viper to use both tools together. Since Viper Smoke is so committed and makes up a large part of your kit, we want to free it up for you to use together to create powerful options for your team to take sites.
Raze
Showtopper
- The final cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points.
Raze’s ultimate is one of the most shocking in the game and useful in almost any situation. As a result, it is used too often. So we are increasing the cost by 1, which should help reduce the frequency with which players have to face their Showtopper.
Sulfur
Orbital strike
- The final cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points.
Like Raze’s Ultimate, Brimstone’s Ult is highly impactful and useful in a wide variety of situations. We felt that it was affecting the rounds too often, so we decided to increase the cost slightly.
Stim beacon
- No longer improves enemies and no longer shows its radius of effect to enemies.
The Stim Beacon is meant to be a nice situational ability, but we felt that revealing Brimstone’s location and having the potential to accidentally buff enemies made this ability significantly weaker than we’d like.
Sulfur Weapons Loyalty
When you really think about an FPS, you will notice that you spend a horrible amount of time looking at your arms … like all the time. 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 weapons!
Code
Cyber Cage
- Can now be picked up during the purchase phase
Weapon upgrades
Classic
- Fixed the bug where the right click execution inaccuracy was much higher than expected
running added a penalty of 1.5 because it referenced our generalized run error curves for pistols
- Fixed bug where jumping Not penalty of inaccuracy
- The spread in execution changes from 3.4 >>> 2.1
mainly a bug fix
- The jump spread changed from 1.9 >>> 2.3
- Walking extension changed from 1.9 >>> 1.95
- Added a 10% bonus to stoop and crouch accuracy
The intention is to feel consistent with bending over providing a precision benefit
Classic right-clicking was the main bug fix here, but we saw an opportunity to make the weapon behave a little more consistently. Slightly fine-tune click efficiency, but (hopefully) have not taken away viability in short-range scenarios
HUD and UI
The previous Weapon Stats text box in the pre-round store was replaced with a graphical representation of stats that is easier to compare.
Quality of life
- Observer minimap vision cones are now team colored
- Replaced Reyna’s voiceover for Italians and Mexicans
Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, the talents we identified for the role were unable to register due to regional restrictions. Now you can find the voices we originally had for Italian and Mexican Reyna in the game!
Elder Flame Skins
- Adjusted volume in Elderflame Operator equipment animation
- Fixed a bug that caused volume to build up if spam equipped the operator
- The footsteps of the enemy dodge the cosmetic bus correctly
This means that the footsteps of the enemy will always decrease the volume of skin sound effects that are not important to the game, such as fire, roar of the dragon, etc.
- Elderflame Melee Inspect Animation now has sound effects for levels 1 and 2
Performance updates
- Weapon Gathering Target and Sage Ultimate Target were unified with allied character highlights, saving VRam and GPU performance
- Minor rendering performance fixes
- Gun mask update videos are now streamed instead of stored locally, reducing installation size by 380 MB
Error correction
- Fixed requirement for Reyna to look at Soul Orbs to activate and maintain healing, behavior should match patch 1.02
- Fixed one-way Brimstone smoke when player’s chamber was around top of smoke
- Fixed Breach’s replica not properly applying damage to all characters if hitting multiple.
- Fixed the concern when reaching the maximum flight height of the Sova drone
- Fixed Marshall bug where gun maintained accuracy when walking
- Fixed issues with some translucency effects when a box is behind (like Jett’s board, when used by the player)
- Fixed allied highlights not showing on some AMD GPUs when using MSAA and some Intel GPUs
- Fixed an issue where loading screens did not cover the entire screen when playing in certain resolution / aspect ratio combinations
- I shortened the text on the photosensitivity warning screen
- Fixed a bug where the “equip” button was grayed out when purchasing a skin variant that is being previewed
- Fixed sulfur smoke in Haven spawning scroll where intended
- Fixed a typo in Brimstone’s bio (thanks mooonlimes for the report)
