A new Valorant Law is upon us and, with it, comes a whole series of new content. Patch 2.04 will introduce the new Astra Agent to the game, as well as some changes to the Escalation Mode and rating updates.
Valorant Episode 2, Act 2 has become highly anticipated by players worldwide. With Astra finally being presented in its full cosmic glory, there is a lot to break in this patch.
Due to complaints about camping on teleporters in Bind in Escalation mode, a number of corrections have been introduced to ensure that the map is playable. In addition, he returned to the normal choice rate after being cut to avoid this problem.
Finally, a series of rating updates have been implemented for Radiant and Immortal players arriving in the new season.
Valorant Patch 2.04: Complete patch notes
AGENT UPDATES
UPDATES MODES
Lineup
- The exit doors of the Bind Teleporter are now permanently open – if you want to camp, get ready to fight for it!
- There was a frustrating strategy in which a team would gain control in the middle of the TP and then … never leave. The opposing team couldn’t reliably challenge you without making a highly coordinated “YOLO TP of 5 people”, or being lucky and advancing to the swim level and exploding. We like the focus in this area (you will always find a fight here!), But it may seem unfair if you are not the team within TP. With this change, we are looking to give you a way to challenge the teleporter, preventing others from stopping the game.
- Bind’s pickrate is again weighted uniformly
- During Patch 2.03, we reduced the rate of choice of Bind for scaling. We are returning to normal levels, but if Bind continues to be frustrating to play, we will try to change his pick rate again and go back to the drawing board.
COMPETITIVE UPDATES
This patch marks the beginning of Competitive Episode 2: Act 2!
- Placements have been changed to the beginning of an act. Now, if you have already posted this Episode, then:
- Your rating will no longer be downgraded at the start of an act
If you were Radiant or Immortal, you will maintain your position on the leaderboard, but your Rating Rating (RR) will be reduced by 90% and all Radiant players will be taken to Immortal, because you will need to prove again that you are the best of the best in new law.- Reaching Radiant now requires you to be among the top 500 players in your region, as well as having a minimum amount of RR (see details below).
- You must finish your placement game to display on the Leader Board again for the new Act
- You only need to play a placement game to display your ranking
- Your RR (and potentially the ranking) may change based on how you perform in your placement game, but the maximum change will be based solely on that game.
- Players who have not previously qualified for the Competitive in this Episode will still need to play 5 placement games to earn their initial ranking.
Radiant will be more difficult to win. You must reach a certain level of RR before you can ascend to the Radiant. This is adjusted by region based on the size of the RR classification and distribution population.
- Regional requirements for radiant cutting:
- LATAM and KR: 100 RR
- BR: 200 Classification
- NA and APAC: 300 RR
- EU: 400 RR
- The web scoreboard will be deactivated shortly for maintenance at the beginning of this patch, it is expected to be reactivated within 24-48 hours
- Later in this patch, we will reduce the total amount of average RR per win / lose by 5
- The goal is to reduce the frequency with which a player’s rating is above his MMR and leads to inconsistent RR games and a wider delta between his displayed rating and MMR. These small mathematical adjustments will be common as we try to find the right balance for RR based on the problems we see in the community.
- During this patch, we will change the relegation logic for players to start at 70RR (previously at 80RR).
- The ratings will no longer be displayed in the agent selection or in the game. You will still be able to see the ratings at the bottom of the game screen.
- You can now queue up with a larger group of friends and teammates if you are in the lower categories (see image below)
- In the lower categories, we have a large number of you in our matchmaking pool, so we are confident that we can make balanced matches. As you move up the rankings, you will encounter a greater disparity to ensure that we continue to maintain balanced matches and protect the competitive integrity of the higher rankings.
- We also hope that this will help combat smurfing by reducing the incentive to sign up for a new account to play with lower ranked friends.
QUALITY OF LIFE
- Added tactical voice
- To improve team coordination and information sharing, we added more context to some of the automated VO Agent lines that are reproduced during the round.
- Announcer lines like “Spike spotted” or “Spotted Enemies” will also say a “Super Region” map later. (for example, “Pico spotted C” or “Enemies spotted B”).
- We hope to provide the player with richer information with these changes. Tactical VO should not be a complete substitute for voice communications, so calls will be reduced in volume when a teammate is speaking via VOIP.
- Overall, we hope this helps to improve the quality of information that teams that do not use voice communications a lot can expect. We also believe that this will improve the experience of players who have left another player speechless for whatever reason.
- In addition, we have added an option to place tactical VO messages in the chat window.
- The switch to this option is available in Accessibility options. With this enabled, when the Tac VO lines are activated, a chat message will be sent relaying the information. The lines are modified to better communicate who said what. For example, instead of Sova saying verbally “Enemy spotted B”, the chat message will be “Sova spotted an ENEMY in B”.
- Tactical VO Frequently Asked Questions
- Tactical VO will not be activated in modes
- Tactical VO can be disabled via toggle
- Tactical VO being dodged by VOIP can be disabled via switch
- Tactical VO Chat messages can be enabled by switching
- Improved client frame rate by 3% on average for medium to high spec machines in 10-player games, optimizing inventory management
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a bug that caused the custom game server’s drop-down menu to loop endlessly
- Parts of Reyna’s Soul Orb feedback that were triggered when helping to kill non-players have been fixed
- Fixed Reyna’s Soul Orb timer that didn’t sync correctly with actual duration
- Fixed issues where teleporting to narrow areas created by Sage’s wall with Omen’s Shrouded Step pushed him against a wall
- Fixed last active indicators that did not work for Killjoy, Cypher, Brimstone, Sage, Breach, Jett and Viper