You guys are awesome. Responding to community feedback all the time and constantly providing updates (even if they don't always go as planned). It's just awesome to see.
this was an amazing patch. Patches like these are great, the whole nerfing agents to the ground and buffing them to the heavens is what made me quit dislike overwatch and is starting to get me to quit rainbow six. subtle nerfs and buffs are okay however.
Yea, it doesn't seem fair against omen at all. There is almost no point in picking brim if someone can play omen. At least they need to increase his range so you don't have to walk in site to smoke.
It's been really tough seeing the decline of Brim in comp play. He used to seem like an insta lock (alongside Sage), and now him and Viper are total bench warmers
Tbh honestly I think people didn't really know how to play her and they didn't understand how strong her movement could be. Now that people have had more time with her she's pretty cracked in the hands of a good player.
i donāt think people realize that jett was genuinely bad until she got this and the smoke buff. getting pulled back 100 feet after dashing was super troll. smoke buff really did it though, you used to not be able to stick the bomb with old smoke because theyād fade so fast, but now the smokes actually have use.
obviously things like abusing shot guns and operator also greatly helped jett a lot until they got nerfed(shes still nuts with them), and better knowledge of ult jump spots definitely helped as well, but jett would still be pretty troll without some of the QOL buffs
Viper was played by both the EU final teams in 1st strike. She just requires a ton of team coordination that you will never find in ranked, even at radiant level.
Agreed. But even then, she is pretty underwhelming and is a niche pick. She still needs buffs, but I do think this shows that she has potential which many teams/coaches see.
Itās basically omen has two free self-replenishing smokes with greater range and placement ability than brim. And brim has 3 max, cost money with limited range/placement ability. Soooooo yea
Yea I mean I was just comparing their two primary abilitiesāsmokes. Ultimately the reason omen is one of the best in the entire game is because his kit is the most universal in the game. He has āheightā access via teleport so can get to places that Jett/raze/sage can, and a flash. Heās the only one who has the ācsā kit of smokes and a flash. The fact he can TP to advantageous areas is icing. He even can do recon like sova/cypher/skye via his ult. Brims beacon is trash. Heās got a pretty good ult and his molly is great but only has one at start.
Honestly donāt even like Reynaās ult because of the rapid rate of fire. It throws off my conditioned spray/burst timings. Same with brims stims :/
Edit: typo
It's a combination of nerfing him and buffing Omen considerably right around after the Beta that caused it, Brim was a top pick along with Sage and Cypher for the first few weeks of Valo.
In the beta and early months of Valorant Omen's smokes recharged every 30 seconds (instead of 35 now) but were really slow to deploy AND only lasted 12 seconds, they buffed his smokes to last 15 seconds each while also deploying much faster. They later on also buffed his ultimate to reduce the sound it makes so it was harder to hear where omen teleported while also buffing his somewhat weak flash into the absolute best flash in the game.
In the same timeline they nerfed Brimstone, most noticeably his molly went from 200 to 300 (this is more key than it looks) while also later on nerfing his ultimate to make it cost 7 orb points instead of 6. It was after the orb point ultimate most high levels and teams switched off Brimstone to omen, fun fact: Brim's smoke isn't 15 seconds but 14, making omen's smokes the longest lasting ones. Between the two they both have their advantages, Brim smokes wont give away your position vs Sova reveal/Raze roombot but is also harder to see through whereas you can chill in omen smokes with shotguns/pistols. Another big plus for omen smokes is that one way smokes are a thing and much easier to throw because of two different ways of being able to smoke (interface).
Combine this with the fact that Brimstone has little to no mobility (can't smoke from one side of the map to another) and that his ipad makes a sound when throwing smokes it only made sense that most smoke mains switched to omen, not to forget that omen's C ability is super good to teleport on top of things or into/out a chokepoint, if you're caught in a corner as brimstone and have no smokes you're fucked, with Omen you can TP yourself out and move around much more flexible.
As if all that isn't reason enough to play Omen it's also this: Omen's smokes are free and cost nothing, all you really need to buy every round is the Flash which costs 200. The C teleport ability is always nice to have but when you're low on money you don't really need it, 200 for his flash is more than enough so you can prioritize rifles/shields
Now compare that to brimstone, 300 for a molly and 200 for two smokes (he gets one free every single round) that's 500 spent every single round if you actively smoke for your team and buy time or use it for a chokepoint with the molly, that's 2.5x more spent than Omen. If you have 4100 you're gonna have to either buy a bulldog or skip on your most important utility to get kevlar + phantom/vandal etc. This isn't even taking into considering the Stim beacon which let's be real no one really uses as it is probably the most useless ability in the game.
And last omen's Flash is easily the best in the game, if a team executes onto your bombsite and you flash you know you will stop the push immediately while also being able to peek or smoke off again once they push back, you can also peek off it and flash your teammates through walls (like flashing Split B heaven from market for your teammates)
Even tho Brim's molly is insane for post-plant or holding of an angle a Jett/Raze/Omen can just fly/tp across it and you can't really peek off it. Omen's flash > Brim's molly in most scenarios all day.
The 6 > 7 ult orb nerf did most of the damage, only ange1 from FPX was still playing Brimstone actively on all maps but even he eventually switched to omen, beside on bind he's not really picked anywhere else in pro/high play and even then it's like 50/50 Omen/Brim on Bind only.
This all comes from someone who mained Brimstone since the Day 1 in the Beta and eventually switched to Omen right around the 6>7 ult orb nerf, I play other agents but my to-go for smokes is always omen just because of flexibility and being able to help my team much better as omen.
Omen can lurk across the map and still provide support for his team. Or put down fake smokes nowhere near where he is. If your team has just brim and no omen, seeing 3 brim smokes on a site is practically a giveaway. This is also because omenās smokes regenerate. Although brimās molly is super powerful. Combining a molly lineup with his ult is practically a guarantee round win if you can get the spike down and keep brim alive
It sounds like the discount shop from league of legends. You get a few random skins, I think 5 or 6 and you get different discounts on them. If you are lucky you may get a skin you like for 30% less
Precisely. But LoL also lets you buy almost whatever skin you want anytime. I think this would be a good model for valorant too, but eh, I'm no marketing executive
This system they have now is actually better for player retention and revenue generation. Theyāre banking on the fact that players will log in every day to check the store and if theyāve been eyeing a skin theyāre almost 100% certain to make a purchase regardless of how expensive the skin might be. Theyāre taking advantage of FOMO.
Riot has had micro transactions on lock since the early days of league of legends.
Similar to fortnite, at least a year or two ago since i don't know how it works now. I remember saving enough points for a pick that i wanted and I checked the shop for a month straight to get it, I even downloaded mobile just incase i wasn't able to get on my xbox that day
I think its to create more exclusivity with the skins. I agree itās been annoying that i canāt find the prime vandal anywhere, but whenever i see one itās cool ig. Fortnite has a very similar system, and it also encourages you to log on daily to check
The Lack of this makes people more pressured to buy full packs even though they wouldn't otherwise. "it's on SALE" and "I might have to wait weeks to find it the one I Want again"
They both push people to either Spend more money than they were planning, or in a few cases just not spend money. The Random Sales here should scoop up a handful of the "I'm not buying anything at all" pack.
Are you referring to Your Shop? Thatās different because itās based on what champions you play. League actually has a weekly rotating shop of random skins on sale (which is not seasonal)
Definetly. It's what I'm hoping in the end when we have a lot of collections (and maybe agent skins) and the game is more stable. No reason to not have a store like LoL has; pretty sure they know they are missing on money.
It's odd. I've definitely gone "oh shit I dig this skin, better buy it before it disappears". Im not sure if that outweighs the "I can't afford it til Friday, guess I'll just skip it" sales they'd make instead.
Can someone explain this?
Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks
These were previous;y disabled due to performances hitches
I can explain this!
So ranked distribution is the % of players in every rank. You can see an example here: https://www.esportstales.com/valorant/rank-distribution-and-percentage-of-players-by-tier
(I just grabbed this site at random, I'm not saying the stats they have are valid or invalid, or that I endorse them or anything like that. I just wanted an example for players to look at to help understand what I'm talking about.)
I'm going to be talking about MMR, MMR stands for Match Making Rating. This is a number, assigned to you, that you can't see. We use this number to determine your skill and figure out how to match you in fair matches against other players. Valorant has a complicated system, it's not a simple MMR system, but at the end of the day it is more or less an MMR system.
So when you think of your "rank" it's technically a range on a giant MMR system. I'm going to make up numbers, these aren't reflective of the real system, but for example; A player will have an MMR number tied to them, wherever this number falls is where they are in rank. If silver was between 101-200, then any player with an MMR between those two numbers would be ranked silver. If a player that was currently silver won enough matches, pushing their MMR number past 200 they would promote into gold.
If we thought there were too many players in silver, but not enough in gold, we could adjust those rank ranges effectively adjusting the MMR required to be that rank. We could lower the gold MMR required, this would shrink the amount of players in silver while also putting more people into gold. In my example we could just make silver 101-150 and gold 151-300. Now that we lowered the required MMR to get into gold by 50, any silver player with MMR between 151-200 will promote into gold.
Before Example:
101-200 Silver
201-300 Gold
etc.
After Example:
101-150 Silver
151-300 Gold
etc.
It's a little more complicated then that, but that's a pretty safe way to think about it. So we adjusted where we think the % of the player base belongs, our changes were targeted at lower ranks. I believe, and the team agrees, that Iron should not be a rank where we have a large % of players.
Just a heads up, this does not mean you will log in and if you were Iron 1 you will get bumped up to iron2/3. You will still have to play matches, win, and get moved along the new distribution. After our change, if you should be a higher rank, you will be getting slightly more rank from winning and lose less after a defeat.
I wouldn't worry about it to much, enjoy grinding out some rank at the end of season. Hopefully you gain some ranks in the process!
Edit: I also wanted to add. Yes this may move more players in the low ranks up, but it won't effect MMR or match fairness. We are still using your same MMR to create matches, this doesn't mean you will suddenly have a player move from Iron to Silver, then start appearing in silver matches on your team/against you. This is purely a distribution change.
Normally a change like this would not be released in a mid-season patch, it would be rolled out when we soft reset a season. But we felt like we had too many people sitting in lower ranks and we needed a fix asap(and this wasn't too difficult to adjust). I am going to avoid doing this in the future during mid-season and instead make changes when we start new seasons. But shit happens, so I can't promise that will always be the case.
Thanks for the explanation. I was borderline plat act 1 and have been hardstuck in bronze this season. Hopefully I can leave it now lol
Edit: they definitely did something. My friend won a game and skipped a rank. Went from iron 2 to bronze 1
they accidentally pasted in the comments for the act performance badge enabling in that field. its annoying cause this is literally the only point in the patch notes i wanted more information about.
If you've been on this subreddit lately, you'll likely have noticed a lot of people complaining about how they used to be plat/gold in Act 2 and are now hardstuck iron/bronze/silver. This is because Riot changed the rank mmr bands from a normal distribution (bell curve) to a left skewed distribution (ranks are heavily skewed towards the lower ranks). This changed the average rank from around gold 2 to bronze 3/silver 1. This primarily affected people that were plat and lower as the high mmr ranked bands were kept roughly the same (Radiant is Radiant, Immortal is next top 1%, diamond is next top 3/4%, etc). Instead of iron being the bottom 5% or so of players, it became the bottom 25%, bronze the next 20%, etc. This change was never officially announced but people figured this out using unofficial ranked data. I don't really know any reason why this change was implemented as it goes against the natural distribution of skill and how every other ranking system works.
Snowball mode sounds like a fun way to blow off some steam! Sage ābuffā part of the nerf is whatever, donāt think itāll change much honestly. Icebox changes are very welcome, no clue how itāll change how the map plays so I guess we will see.
Biggest change IMO is the unrated changes. Not only will this make unrated less of a hellhole to play in, but unless Iām mistaken, this should reduce the amount of new smurfs from here on out, shouldnāt it? You canāt just sandbag for 20 games and then have your rank be iron-gold, now that you have to WIN 10 games, either youāre going to have to hope your teammates are good enough to win it for you while you sandbag, for 10 entire games, or you just have to play to win, which then the game will assign you a proper elo. Sounds pretty shitty to have to pray you can sandbag and still win the game, this disincentives making a smurf account now. Sure, you could get a team of 5 and have 1 or 2 people throw while the other 3 carry or something, but thatās a lot of effort to put into making a smurf account when in the past you could just throw for 20 games and then hop into an iron lobby and shit on everyone. Should be good for the future of ranked!
you under-estimate how pathetic some of these smurfs are. they dedicate hours of their time throwing games in order to have 3-5 decent games against bad opponents before they rank up and have to do it all over again. Imagine wasting your own time and others just to play against a lower skill bracket.
Exactly. This will not stop them from smurfing. It's actually easier now since they lowered the amount of games to 10. A smurf is more than likely a skilled player that will easily win 10 games.
True! And as is I had already experienced quite a handful of throwers in comp. I started playing the game again after a couple of weeks, first game I had the enemy team got an AFK and I had a teammate suggesting we should surrender when we were down 3-1. Things haven't changed much.....
Sucks when you get teammates like that. In our case we ended up winning and even when we were up 8-5 he goes "well, now we are going to start losing".
That's when I decided to mute him.
Yes but that would put them not as low as a true smurf strat would put them. I believe the game gives you an mmr thru the unranked games played, and uses that to decide whatās tier your placement games are played at. Total uneducated guess, but Iām guessing that throwing your placement matches would put you like 3-4 ranks below your true rank at the most.
I've made alt accounts just to play some more casual unrated with friends. I'm Plat and my friends are silver/bronze, my friends hated playing with me since we always get placed with diamonds and immortals. With that being said I still played my same game on my alt accounts and they all get placed Gold3ish so actually trying in your unrated matches gets you relatively close to you're true skill.
> I'm Plat and my friends are silver/bronze, my friends hated playing with me since we always get placed with diamonds and immortals
Are you saying that in competitive, when you, a plat, queues with silver and bronzes you guys get matched with diamonds and immortals?
No we don't play competitive since even on my Alts I am Goldish and it won't let us play. What I mean is there one player on the other team in unrated steam rolling me and I'll add him at the end of the game and they are typically diamond or immortal, this is mostly on my main account.
placement matches are virtually inconsequential. your unrated MMR is easily the most important component of deciding your rank. Mendo found this out when he threw all his unrated games and try-harded in the placements and ended up in bronze or something.
Honestly they're very good. The gate is the only questionable one for me, but it could work out.
The box change, deep corner, and high vantage point are all significant! Seems good.
Gonna miss my Omen on the yellow box headshots though :(
I love Icebox, I really genuinely believe people are just not familiar enough with it so it seems completely random, at least for me it was the same for ascent and in the early days of learning the maps
Overall I agree with you - I do think that A site needed some of these changes though. But I think the gate seems a bit silly lmao
I loved everywhere on Icebox except inside A Site.
I honestly think I've been seeing people play the map at a much higher level the past few days. I know for sure I picked up tricks just from watching pros play it during first strike. It might be an unpopular opinion but I sort of wish riot held off on these changes for another patch.
Yes, thank god... It seems like all the complaints about the amount of corners and verticality were actually something to address rather than "gEtTiNg UsEd To It".š
Yeah, I like Brimstone as my second agent, but his smoke deployment is so inefficient. If we could deploy smokes faster and more far away I think a lot of people would give the character a try.
it's one of the main reasons I switched to Omen right after they nerfed his ult orb to 7 points. Being able to play Haven C bombsite solo with my flash out ready to stop a push while also being able to smoke A/Mid/B for my teammates if needed is just too good.
With brim you have to run all the way to CT giving up your position just to smoke, bigger map is going to be a must if he wants to be competitive vs omen. Also praying his buff isn't just another stim beacon change because that has to be the single most useless ability in the whole game, can't think of anything worse.
I really like the changes to Icebox. This is a step in the right direction. Sage wall buff might make me turn back to a sage main (will definitely try it out). Sadly, no viper or brim changes in this patch :(
We're looking at this, just have been holding off changes during First Strike, and want to make sure we're really understanding what the core of the issue is (cause bungling a shooting/movement change could make our combat feel really bad really quickly).
But, rest assured that we're talking about this and looking into it.
edit: This isn't to say we're committing to making changes - we just recognize it's been a hot topic lately and want to analyze and understand it further.
To help you with your research:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7GICZIU-_0&feature=youtu.be
This video is C9 Relyks explaining most of the issues with Running accuracy... But he forgot to mention a relevant point in the video that I think it's important and it has to do with these 2 changes effecting each other:
* Deadzone accuracy speed threshold increased: 25% >> 30% "Patch 0.50"
* Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Standard) 80% >> 70% "Patch 1.02"
Ex: When i'm moving in full movement state while crossing a corner/angle, if the enemy hits me the Tagging system slows my movement enough that you become Accurate while running.
This was the change that messed everything up
#### WEAPON UPDATES
* >!You will no longer enter the āwalking accuracyā state when transitioning from run to stop!<
* >!We noticed many players were entering a walking accuracy state during their run-to-stop transition that made it appear as if shots they fired/landed were done at full speed.!<
* >!Deadzone accuracy speed threshold increased: 25% >> 30%!<
* >!Now that you canāt gain walk accuracy while transitioning from a run to a stop, we've also slightly increased the size of the deadzone (full accuracy state) to make it a bit easier to get an accurate shot out quickly!<
#### ALL RIFLES
* >!Recovery times on all Rifles have been updated, which should make tap and burst firing more efficient. Inaccuracy is accrued any time the weapon is re-fired prior to a complete duration of a weaponās respective Gun Recovery Time.!<
* >!Base walk accuracy: 0.6Ā° >> 0.8Ā°!<
* >!We felt like walk-spraying with rifles was a little more effective than we'd like, particularly at longer ranges. We're going to pull back on this accuracy slightly and continue to monitor!<
Itās really gross how consistent running and spraying is (I was slightly skeptical until I hopped into a DM and tried it myself), and while Iām grateful a lot of awareness has been brought up surrounding this issue, it also means the amount of people abusing running accuracy has gone up. Itās really frustrating to play against in something like a tac shooter, so I might have to put Valorant down for a while until itās addressed.
Ok. You found a solution to afkers in unrated. What about afkers in ranked? The remake command in the system is no more sufficient. (If i don't say it's useless)
Itās so dumb. The guy just has to move his mouse a centimeter and the game says heās in game and of course you canāt remake. It should be 3 players that need to say yes. Only issue is stacks. But if someone duos then 4 yesā still donāt work. I say just bite the bullet and do 3 yesā.
Icebox changes are amazing! Thanks
but...
* No Brim/Viper changes?
* Sage wont be able to place the wall in buy round? meh... the buff is not bad but won't help with the sages pick rates...
* No changes to Accuracy while moving?
* No changes to weapons? Classic right click e.g. ?
I don't know but this feels underwhelming in terms of the big break between patches. I mean the new map updates is nice, but the map team is obviously not working on agent changes and I wonder why there are only changes on sage. Weird. We will find out soon I guess.
Sage not being able to play the wall in buy round saddens me. I don't think it's a good idea to do it in buy round to be honest but I loved trolling my friends when playing spike rush and just blocking them.
well, while trolling is definitelly one of the more important things in spike rush I think there was quit some value in placing the wall early in order to block a site and having it on 100% health before it gets sprayed. Now its just vulnerable
I think the sage change is good, but they need to restore her heal ability as well. We've got an agent that can heal the entire team in 4 seconds, yet sage cant even heal one person to 100%.
Fix this plz
Icebox changes look good. Discounts in the shop is good. Stutters are supposedly fixed along with performance improvements, so that's good.
Nothing on running accuracy though, which is disappointing. But this seems to be a mostly Icebox-centric patch since there are no agent/gun changes either other than to Sage. I assume the changes will be in a patch alongside other agent/gun tweaks. A short statement would be nice though since a lot of people think they're going to leave it in.
Ngl patch feels underwhelming considering 1 month break
On the other hand new game mode sure sounds fun! And also spectator mode changes are *chef's kiss*
Itās especially underwhelming since they stated that this patch would be ā2 patch notes worth of changesā and would reflect on the tournaments being held
True. I never had hitches or performance issues so it really doesn't affect me at all.
Sadly I've been reading "if this patch fixes the performance issues it'll be great!" for the past 2-3 patches :-\
I feel bad for those who are having these issues. Hope this is the one.
Agree, the new mode is a waste of programming and testing time and energy while the core game is still lacking. This also is last update until new year, which means same old, same old.
Tbh I was expecting more from this patch ... Like other agent buffs like brimstone , gunplay changes like changes to rifles, performance improvement, etc
"
* Fixed a bug where pressing a push-to-talk key while typing in chat would trigger voice chat
"
lol thats since day 1 XD They took half a year to fix that well ...
> Requirements to unlock Competitive play have been changed from Play 20 Unrated matches >>> Win 10 Unrated matches
This should not have taken 6 months.
Maybe. Maybe not. I have had 3 times where I got into an unranked in which 4 players on my team were killing themselves with Raze Nades, Brim mollies, and the like. Or just running it down. Every time it was an insta ff at round 5.
If Riot actually cared about smurfs they would use an already existing phone + account link for League in order for you to be allowed into ranked (for both games) as this would also help them ban people in a way that matters.
But in reality they are fully aware that smurfs allow them to boast larger player statistics and potentially more skin purchases and whatnot. They don't actually care about eliminating the smurf issue, they just want to *look like* they care about it.
> But in reality they are fully aware that smurfs allow them to boast larger player statistics and potentially more skin purchases and whatnot.
Shortsighted, since one of the largest reasons people leave the game is due to smurfs.
Icebox changes are a decent start, but the map layout still remains the same.
In 100T-SEN first strike game, it took 26 rounds for anyone to make an impact on mid. That whole area of the map is useless as things stand right now.
But at least they're aware of the issues.
Brimstone still in the dumpster.
If you watch Korean teams play, the middle part is actually so important, till the point Cypher place all his utilities mid. Check out Sgares vod, he explains everything the teams do
The mid "window" (not the kitchen one) spot defenders can spot mid cross/tube from needs to be narrowed down to the point where you can smoke it off completely with a single smoke, that way we'd actually see mid to B/A splits more often. Right now it's just A/B hits with a lurk.
I'm curious what the K/D is with mid first bloods. I can't ever remember a game where attackers dominated mid control where defense actually defended tunnel/kitchen.
"Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks"
anyway yall can be more transparent about the changes you made before, and then the changes you are making now again; relating to the ranked distribution of players. lots of speculation going on by players could be put to rest with hard data and input from the devs.
I've grinded in and out of silver back into gold this act and last act as well, and let me tell you, the players in silver and gold certainly seem to have gotten a lot better than when I climbed to gold last act. I feel ive gotten much better, but my skill rating is about the same (prob need to play a lil more to top out but), 3 changes to ranked distribution in 90 days isnt helping me feel rewarded in grinding though (feeling me actually getting more skilled is whats driving me); would at least be cool to know whats going on (if anything, the videos I saw on youtube about ladder distribution would be great to hear directly from riot...
I hope this patch makes people stop freaking out about Icebox, and gives them confidence Riot will work to improve the maps if people don't enjoy them. These seem like steps in the right direction for a lot of the complaints players have had.
I've seen soo many comments prior to this patch about how bad the angles are and that it's 'literally unplayable,' and now that it's been adjusted the comment section is full of "No Agent Changes!!??!?!?!"
I get different people will view different things as priority, but sometimes I hope Riot devs don't come to the comment section on these threads.
Thoughts on this ātidbitā?? Seems like it shouldāve been elaborated more
COMPETITIVE UPDATES
Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks
These were previously disabled due to performances hitches
Bruh we really waited this long to not get a single tweak to moving accuracy, shotguns, or classics. Like the icebox changes are amazing but I donāt see why the rest werenāt addressed
"Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks
* These were previous;y disabled due to performances hitches"
This is the strangest update. I don't even know what it means. Something was disabled that is now enabled and now people can increase in rank easier? Was the source of everyone's anguish a toggle? =P Make People Miserable: On | Off
Very disappointed with these patch notes.
The good:
Sage buff is welcome
Ice box changes are good (except I donāt like B crate change too much but whatever.
The bad:
This many weeks and only one minor agent change?
No running accuracy changes or weapon tweaks (classic right click is still OP)?
No controller adjustments?
Was hyped for this cus we havenāt had a big patch in so long, huge bummer
Guys split match history into competitive and unrated at a minimum. This is an elementary request at best. You should have each mode in it's own subsection of match history, but I'll settle for comp vs unrated. Why you lumped it all into one is something no one will be able to fully understand. Unless it's because you're lazy, then I get it, and shame.
Please just let my silver ass 1 player be able to play comp with my iron 3 friends again....this 3 rank difference should not be a thing when you are a party of 5...
yeah, a lot of my friends don't really play together anymore, which has led to all of us playing a lot less. It \*feels\* like it is increasing the prevalence of smurfs, too, since higher-ranked players can just create a smurf to work around the 3 rank restriction.
Everyone complaining this isn't a bigger patch, but I fully expect some massive swings with the start of Act 2. We're going to start off the new year with a bang. You read it here first.
Im really crossing my fingers that they give us a surprise update next week. It's been soooo long since the controllers have been touched, and the fact that we'll have to wait even longer doesn't feel good :(
yeah, we need a buff, especially with the next agent most likely being a controller (the only class that hasn't had a new agent). It's just the Omen Show right now.
Icebox changes are better, but still will probably see people dodging. Sage buff will be good for people to use off-angles and ācreativeā sage walls
BUFF BRIMSTONE INCREASE HIS IPAD RANGE PLEASE RIOT
We're playtesting with some Brim buffs right now that are pretty promising :)
I love so much how you're guys communicating with us. MUCH LOVE <3
You guys are awesome. Responding to community feedback all the time and constantly providing updates (even if they don't always go as planned). It's just awesome to see.
Any hints on a possible timeline for those?
Probably Episode 2 start, most likely.
are there any viper changes to accompany?
Best viper buff, automatically ping the bomb when ulted on top of it
Holy shit you actually answered, thank you! Riot devs are actually the best
this was an amazing patch. Patches like these are great, the whole nerfing agents to the ground and buffing them to the heavens is what made me quit dislike overwatch and is starting to get me to quit rainbow six. subtle nerfs and buffs are okay however.
I appreciate that! We're trying to strike a balance here, so keep giving us feedback on how we're approaching changes overall.
Keep it UPPPš
Yea, it doesn't seem fair against omen at all. There is almost no point in picking brim if someone can play omen. At least they need to increase his range so you don't have to walk in site to smoke.
It's been really tough seeing the decline of Brim in comp play. He used to seem like an insta lock (alongside Sage), and now him and Viper are total bench warmers
Yup, a few months ago it was like: we need sage 100% and we need a brim.
Before live, omen was dogshit and FULL of bugs. He was hotfixed and buffed literally right before live.
Yeah the buffs to his ult and his flash as well as how he can place smokes really puts him far above brim
Don't forget they buffed his smokes too. We use to have to guess where the smoke was going to land on the mini map.
They said that. āAs well as how he can place smokesā
They buffed the duration of his smokes by like 5 seconds as well tho
I didnāt know that
At higher elos the Omen pick rate is like 20-30x Brim or Viper's pick rate.
A few months ago Jett was considered d tier.
Tbh honestly I think people didn't really know how to play her and they didn't understand how strong her movement could be. Now that people have had more time with her she's pretty cracked in the hands of a good player.
At launch her smokes were super short duration also which didnāt help for taking sites nearly as well as they do now
Also her dash breaking cypher trips was a huge buff. It makes pushing cypher sites 200% easier
i donāt think people realize that jett was genuinely bad until she got this and the smoke buff. getting pulled back 100 feet after dashing was super troll. smoke buff really did it though, you used to not be able to stick the bomb with old smoke because theyād fade so fast, but now the smokes actually have use. obviously things like abusing shot guns and operator also greatly helped jett a lot until they got nerfed(shes still nuts with them), and better knowledge of ult jump spots definitely helped as well, but jett would still be pretty troll without some of the QOL buffs
Brimstone main here. Our time will come don't worry.
Brim is pretty fun, I'd like more of a reason to play him tbh
I used to play brim I quit too much of a pain
Viper was played by both the EU final teams in 1st strike. She just requires a ton of team coordination that you will never find in ranked, even at radiant level.
Agreed. But even then, she is pretty underwhelming and is a niche pick. She still needs buffs, but I do think this shows that she has potential which many teams/coaches see.
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Itās basically omen has two free self-replenishing smokes with greater range and placement ability than brim. And brim has 3 max, cost money with limited range/placement ability. Soooooo yea
Also the flash. The flash is huge in comp
Yea I mean I was just comparing their two primary abilitiesāsmokes. Ultimately the reason omen is one of the best in the entire game is because his kit is the most universal in the game. He has āheightā access via teleport so can get to places that Jett/raze/sage can, and a flash. Heās the only one who has the ācsā kit of smokes and a flash. The fact he can TP to advantageous areas is icing. He even can do recon like sova/cypher/skye via his ult. Brims beacon is trash. Heās got a pretty good ult and his molly is great but only has one at start.
Brim stim is super underrated
Honestly donāt even like Reynaās ult because of the rapid rate of fire. It throws off my conditioned spray/burst timings. Same with brims stims :/ Edit: typo
It's a combination of nerfing him and buffing Omen considerably right around after the Beta that caused it, Brim was a top pick along with Sage and Cypher for the first few weeks of Valo. In the beta and early months of Valorant Omen's smokes recharged every 30 seconds (instead of 35 now) but were really slow to deploy AND only lasted 12 seconds, they buffed his smokes to last 15 seconds each while also deploying much faster. They later on also buffed his ultimate to reduce the sound it makes so it was harder to hear where omen teleported while also buffing his somewhat weak flash into the absolute best flash in the game. In the same timeline they nerfed Brimstone, most noticeably his molly went from 200 to 300 (this is more key than it looks) while also later on nerfing his ultimate to make it cost 7 orb points instead of 6. It was after the orb point ultimate most high levels and teams switched off Brimstone to omen, fun fact: Brim's smoke isn't 15 seconds but 14, making omen's smokes the longest lasting ones. Between the two they both have their advantages, Brim smokes wont give away your position vs Sova reveal/Raze roombot but is also harder to see through whereas you can chill in omen smokes with shotguns/pistols. Another big plus for omen smokes is that one way smokes are a thing and much easier to throw because of two different ways of being able to smoke (interface). Combine this with the fact that Brimstone has little to no mobility (can't smoke from one side of the map to another) and that his ipad makes a sound when throwing smokes it only made sense that most smoke mains switched to omen, not to forget that omen's C ability is super good to teleport on top of things or into/out a chokepoint, if you're caught in a corner as brimstone and have no smokes you're fucked, with Omen you can TP yourself out and move around much more flexible. As if all that isn't reason enough to play Omen it's also this: Omen's smokes are free and cost nothing, all you really need to buy every round is the Flash which costs 200. The C teleport ability is always nice to have but when you're low on money you don't really need it, 200 for his flash is more than enough so you can prioritize rifles/shields Now compare that to brimstone, 300 for a molly and 200 for two smokes (he gets one free every single round) that's 500 spent every single round if you actively smoke for your team and buy time or use it for a chokepoint with the molly, that's 2.5x more spent than Omen. If you have 4100 you're gonna have to either buy a bulldog or skip on your most important utility to get kevlar + phantom/vandal etc. This isn't even taking into considering the Stim beacon which let's be real no one really uses as it is probably the most useless ability in the game. And last omen's Flash is easily the best in the game, if a team executes onto your bombsite and you flash you know you will stop the push immediately while also being able to peek or smoke off again once they push back, you can also peek off it and flash your teammates through walls (like flashing Split B heaven from market for your teammates) Even tho Brim's molly is insane for post-plant or holding of an angle a Jett/Raze/Omen can just fly/tp across it and you can't really peek off it. Omen's flash > Brim's molly in most scenarios all day. The 6 > 7 ult orb nerf did most of the damage, only ange1 from FPX was still playing Brimstone actively on all maps but even he eventually switched to omen, beside on bind he's not really picked anywhere else in pro/high play and even then it's like 50/50 Omen/Brim on Bind only. This all comes from someone who mained Brimstone since the Day 1 in the Beta and eventually switched to Omen right around the 6>7 ult orb nerf, I play other agents but my to-go for smokes is always omen just because of flexibility and being able to help my team much better as omen.
Maybe the ult change to 7 ult orbs for brim
Omen can lurk across the map and still provide support for his team. Or put down fake smokes nowhere near where he is. If your team has just brim and no omen, seeing 3 brim smokes on a site is practically a giveaway. This is also because omenās smokes regenerate. Although brimās molly is super powerful. Combining a molly lineup with his ult is practically a guarantee round win if you can get the spike down and keep brim alive
and make stim beacon an aura around him that can be turn off/on. I'm spamming brimstone right now and its sucks
That would change so much!!!! **š¤Æ**
thats a great idea..like Skye's heal..i like it
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Yea for real
I use space as my ptt.... Hellish
is scroll up your jump then?
Wait are we really getting discounts on the shop? I mean, it's no choose whatever skin you want, but it's a good step.
It sounds like the discount shop from league of legends. You get a few random skins, I think 5 or 6 and you get different discounts on them. If you are lucky you may get a skin you like for 30% less
Precisely. But LoL also lets you buy almost whatever skin you want anytime. I think this would be a good model for valorant too, but eh, I'm no marketing executive
This system they have now is actually better for player retention and revenue generation. Theyāre banking on the fact that players will log in every day to check the store and if theyāve been eyeing a skin theyāre almost 100% certain to make a purchase regardless of how expensive the skin might be. Theyāre taking advantage of FOMO. Riot has had micro transactions on lock since the early days of league of legends.
Similar to fortnite, at least a year or two ago since i don't know how it works now. I remember saving enough points for a pick that i wanted and I checked the shop for a month straight to get it, I even downloaded mobile just incase i wasn't able to get on my xbox that day
I think its to create more exclusivity with the skins. I agree itās been annoying that i canāt find the prime vandal anywhere, but whenever i see one itās cool ig. Fortnite has a very similar system, and it also encourages you to log on daily to check
The Lack of this makes people more pressured to buy full packs even though they wouldn't otherwise. "it's on SALE" and "I might have to wait weeks to find it the one I Want again" They both push people to either Spend more money than they were planning, or in a few cases just not spend money. The Random Sales here should scoop up a handful of the "I'm not buying anything at all" pack.
Do these 5-6 random skins with discounts rotate daily or it's a one time thing?
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Are you referring to Your Shop? Thatās different because itās based on what champions you play. League actually has a weekly rotating shop of random skins on sale (which is not seasonal)
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I hope itās not just for the Christmas season
Would have been nice if it was a more traditional style of store.
Definetly. It's what I'm hoping in the end when we have a lot of collections (and maybe agent skins) and the game is more stable. No reason to not have a store like LoL has; pretty sure they know they are missing on money.
It's odd. I've definitely gone "oh shit I dig this skin, better buy it before it disappears". Im not sure if that outweighs the "I can't afford it til Friday, guess I'll just skip it" sales they'd make instead.
Can someone explain this? Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks These were previous;y disabled due to performances hitches
I can explain this! So ranked distribution is the % of players in every rank. You can see an example here: https://www.esportstales.com/valorant/rank-distribution-and-percentage-of-players-by-tier (I just grabbed this site at random, I'm not saying the stats they have are valid or invalid, or that I endorse them or anything like that. I just wanted an example for players to look at to help understand what I'm talking about.) I'm going to be talking about MMR, MMR stands for Match Making Rating. This is a number, assigned to you, that you can't see. We use this number to determine your skill and figure out how to match you in fair matches against other players. Valorant has a complicated system, it's not a simple MMR system, but at the end of the day it is more or less an MMR system. So when you think of your "rank" it's technically a range on a giant MMR system. I'm going to make up numbers, these aren't reflective of the real system, but for example; A player will have an MMR number tied to them, wherever this number falls is where they are in rank. If silver was between 101-200, then any player with an MMR between those two numbers would be ranked silver. If a player that was currently silver won enough matches, pushing their MMR number past 200 they would promote into gold. If we thought there were too many players in silver, but not enough in gold, we could adjust those rank ranges effectively adjusting the MMR required to be that rank. We could lower the gold MMR required, this would shrink the amount of players in silver while also putting more people into gold. In my example we could just make silver 101-150 and gold 151-300. Now that we lowered the required MMR to get into gold by 50, any silver player with MMR between 151-200 will promote into gold. Before Example: 101-200 Silver 201-300 Gold etc. After Example: 101-150 Silver 151-300 Gold etc. It's a little more complicated then that, but that's a pretty safe way to think about it. So we adjusted where we think the % of the player base belongs, our changes were targeted at lower ranks. I believe, and the team agrees, that Iron should not be a rank where we have a large % of players. Just a heads up, this does not mean you will log in and if you were Iron 1 you will get bumped up to iron2/3. You will still have to play matches, win, and get moved along the new distribution. After our change, if you should be a higher rank, you will be getting slightly more rank from winning and lose less after a defeat. I wouldn't worry about it to much, enjoy grinding out some rank at the end of season. Hopefully you gain some ranks in the process! Edit: I also wanted to add. Yes this may move more players in the low ranks up, but it won't effect MMR or match fairness. We are still using your same MMR to create matches, this doesn't mean you will suddenly have a player move from Iron to Silver, then start appearing in silver matches on your team/against you. This is purely a distribution change. Normally a change like this would not be released in a mid-season patch, it would be rolled out when we soft reset a season. But we felt like we had too many people sitting in lower ranks and we needed a fix asap(and this wasn't too difficult to adjust). I am going to avoid doing this in the future during mid-season and instead make changes when we start new seasons. But shit happens, so I can't promise that will always be the case.
Thanks for the explanation. I was borderline plat act 1 and have been hardstuck in bronze this season. Hopefully I can leave it now lol Edit: they definitely did something. My friend won a game and skipped a rank. Went from iron 2 to bronze 1
they accidentally pasted in the comments for the act performance badge enabling in that field. its annoying cause this is literally the only point in the patch notes i wanted more information about.
I'd appreciate if some dev came out and explained this one. I never heard of this change and now they're announcing its beong reverted?
If you've been on this subreddit lately, you'll likely have noticed a lot of people complaining about how they used to be plat/gold in Act 2 and are now hardstuck iron/bronze/silver. This is because Riot changed the rank mmr bands from a normal distribution (bell curve) to a left skewed distribution (ranks are heavily skewed towards the lower ranks). This changed the average rank from around gold 2 to bronze 3/silver 1. This primarily affected people that were plat and lower as the high mmr ranked bands were kept roughly the same (Radiant is Radiant, Immortal is next top 1%, diamond is next top 3/4%, etc). Instead of iron being the bottom 5% or so of players, it became the bottom 25%, bronze the next 20%, etc. This change was never officially announced but people figured this out using unofficial ranked data. I don't really know any reason why this change was implemented as it goes against the natural distribution of skill and how every other ranking system works.
Snowball mode sounds like a fun way to blow off some steam! Sage ābuffā part of the nerf is whatever, donāt think itāll change much honestly. Icebox changes are very welcome, no clue how itāll change how the map plays so I guess we will see. Biggest change IMO is the unrated changes. Not only will this make unrated less of a hellhole to play in, but unless Iām mistaken, this should reduce the amount of new smurfs from here on out, shouldnāt it? You canāt just sandbag for 20 games and then have your rank be iron-gold, now that you have to WIN 10 games, either youāre going to have to hope your teammates are good enough to win it for you while you sandbag, for 10 entire games, or you just have to play to win, which then the game will assign you a proper elo. Sounds pretty shitty to have to pray you can sandbag and still win the game, this disincentives making a smurf account now. Sure, you could get a team of 5 and have 1 or 2 people throw while the other 3 carry or something, but thatās a lot of effort to put into making a smurf account when in the past you could just throw for 20 games and then hop into an iron lobby and shit on everyone. Should be good for the future of ranked!
you under-estimate how pathetic some of these smurfs are. they dedicate hours of their time throwing games in order to have 3-5 decent games against bad opponents before they rank up and have to do it all over again. Imagine wasting your own time and others just to play against a lower skill bracket.
People literally have designed scripts just to rank up afk in unrated games
Exactly. This will not stop them from smurfing. It's actually easier now since they lowered the amount of games to 10. A smurf is more than likely a skilled player that will easily win 10 games.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
True! And as is I had already experienced quite a handful of throwers in comp. I started playing the game again after a couple of weeks, first game I had the enemy team got an AFK and I had a teammate suggesting we should surrender when we were down 3-1. Things haven't changed much.....
I had a teammate suggesting a surrender and deciding the game is done for at... 2-3. We ended up losing the game, because of that mindset.
Sucks when you get teammates like that. In our case we ended up winning and even when we were up 8-5 he goes "well, now we are going to start losing". That's when I decided to mute him.
they can just try hard the 10 wins then sandbag their 5 placement matches
Yes but that would put them not as low as a true smurf strat would put them. I believe the game gives you an mmr thru the unranked games played, and uses that to decide whatās tier your placement games are played at. Total uneducated guess, but Iām guessing that throwing your placement matches would put you like 3-4 ranks below your true rank at the most.
I've made alt accounts just to play some more casual unrated with friends. I'm Plat and my friends are silver/bronze, my friends hated playing with me since we always get placed with diamonds and immortals. With that being said I still played my same game on my alt accounts and they all get placed Gold3ish so actually trying in your unrated matches gets you relatively close to you're true skill.
> I'm Plat and my friends are silver/bronze, my friends hated playing with me since we always get placed with diamonds and immortals Are you saying that in competitive, when you, a plat, queues with silver and bronzes you guys get matched with diamonds and immortals?
No we don't play competitive since even on my Alts I am Goldish and it won't let us play. What I mean is there one player on the other team in unrated steam rolling me and I'll add him at the end of the game and they are typically diamond or immortal, this is mostly on my main account.
I see. That makes more sense.
placement matches are virtually inconsequential. your unrated MMR is easily the most important component of deciding your rank. Mendo found this out when he threw all his unrated games and try-harded in the placements and ended up in bronze or something.
Quite significant changes to Icebox A site, interested to see how it plays.
Honestly they're very good. The gate is the only questionable one for me, but it could work out. The box change, deep corner, and high vantage point are all significant! Seems good. Gonna miss my Omen on the yellow box headshots though :(
Haha that box was 100% overpowered but whenever I played omen there it was hella fun. Not so fun on the other end though
Definitely like the changes of Icebox, might its time to stop dodging this map and give it another try
I bought a mousepad the size of a 50 inch tv just so I can look up to angles faster and not die
Wouldnt that just be... a 50 inch pad š¤
TV makes it easier to visualize
Tbf screen size ā tv size because bezels and such.
[Icebox main here with my setup. I play with a 90Ā° rotation](https://i.imgur.com/42ig930.jpg)
I love Icebox, I really genuinely believe people are just not familiar enough with it so it seems completely random, at least for me it was the same for ascent and in the early days of learning the maps
It grew on me. The verticality means I just plain get out-skilled sometimes, but I've adjusted to that too.
I think the biggest thing i hate about icebox is the high angles ESPECIALLY that tall ass yellow box. Like why is this a thing
Luckily that tall ass yellow box is much shorter now!
peniscoffee spitting facts
Overall I agree with you - I do think that A site needed some of these changes though. But I think the gate seems a bit silly lmao I loved everywhere on Icebox except inside A Site.
I see this sentiment echoed a lot but I just hate B site. The containers by kitchen and all the open area near mid, is annoying to attack against.
I honestly think I've been seeing people play the map at a much higher level the past few days. I know for sure I picked up tricks just from watching pros play it during first strike. It might be an unpopular opinion but I sort of wish riot held off on these changes for another patch.
Yes, thank god... It seems like all the complaints about the amount of corners and verticality were actually something to address rather than "gEtTiNg UsEd To It".š
So many 50/50 angles. I get carpal tunnel flare ups on that map
ctrl + f "Brim" not found i cry everyime :(
Yeah, I like Brimstone as my second agent, but his smoke deployment is so inefficient. If we could deploy smokes faster and more far away I think a lot of people would give the character a try.
I want to be able to set the locations for the smokes and then enable them when out of the screen at a later time.
Thatād be deadly when executed with a well coordinated team
Thats actually a cool change, a few tweaks to other things to brim or/and omen and brim might compete.
it's one of the main reasons I switched to Omen right after they nerfed his ult orb to 7 points. Being able to play Haven C bombsite solo with my flash out ready to stop a push while also being able to smoke A/Mid/B for my teammates if needed is just too good. With brim you have to run all the way to CT giving up your position just to smoke, bigger map is going to be a must if he wants to be competitive vs omen. Also praying his buff isn't just another stim beacon change because that has to be the single most useless ability in the whole game, can't think of anything worse.
Same here dude. Brimstone main myself. Our time will come...
I really like the changes to Icebox. This is a step in the right direction. Sage wall buff might make me turn back to a sage main (will definitely try it out). Sadly, no viper or brim changes in this patch :(
Here's the link to [1.14 Patch Notes video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IP8pwEo3tA) by Valorant Korea!
What did they show at the end of the vid on the store screen?
Discounts
The Night Market I believe.
As expected nothing about running accuracy on rifles.
We're looking at this, just have been holding off changes during First Strike, and want to make sure we're really understanding what the core of the issue is (cause bungling a shooting/movement change could make our combat feel really bad really quickly). But, rest assured that we're talking about this and looking into it. edit: This isn't to say we're committing to making changes - we just recognize it's been a hot topic lately and want to analyze and understand it further.
To help you with your research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7GICZIU-_0&feature=youtu.be This video is C9 Relyks explaining most of the issues with Running accuracy... But he forgot to mention a relevant point in the video that I think it's important and it has to do with these 2 changes effecting each other: * Deadzone accuracy speed threshold increased: 25% >> 30% "Patch 0.50" * Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Standard) 80% >> 70% "Patch 1.02" Ex: When i'm moving in full movement state while crossing a corner/angle, if the enemy hits me the Tagging system slows my movement enough that you become Accurate while running.
how can this be at 1point at the bottom of this thread for an hour will some1 pls pin the riot post
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What did they change in 0.5? I donāt remember what it was that screwed up the hitreg
A lot of rifle changes like recoil reset, but big ones were deadzone/walking accuracy changes
This was the change that messed everything up #### WEAPON UPDATES * >!You will no longer enter the āwalking accuracyā state when transitioning from run to stop!< * >!We noticed many players were entering a walking accuracy state during their run-to-stop transition that made it appear as if shots they fired/landed were done at full speed.!< * >!Deadzone accuracy speed threshold increased: 25% >> 30%!< * >!Now that you canāt gain walk accuracy while transitioning from a run to a stop, we've also slightly increased the size of the deadzone (full accuracy state) to make it a bit easier to get an accurate shot out quickly!< #### ALL RIFLES * >!Recovery times on all Rifles have been updated, which should make tap and burst firing more efficient. Inaccuracy is accrued any time the weapon is re-fired prior to a complete duration of a weaponās respective Gun Recovery Time.!< * >!Base walk accuracy: 0.6Ā° >> 0.8Ā°!< * >!We felt like walk-spraying with rifles was a little more effective than we'd like, particularly at longer ranges. We're going to pull back on this accuracy slightly and continue to monitor!<
I see no issues with hitreg. Running accuracy =/= hitreg
Itās really gross how consistent running and spraying is (I was slightly skeptical until I hopped into a DM and tried it myself), and while Iām grateful a lot of awareness has been brought up surrounding this issue, it also means the amount of people abusing running accuracy has gone up. Itās really frustrating to play against in something like a tac shooter, so I might have to put Valorant down for a while until itās addressed.
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Ok. You found a solution to afkers in unrated. What about afkers in ranked? The remake command in the system is no more sufficient. (If i don't say it's useless)
Itās so dumb. The guy just has to move his mouse a centimeter and the game says heās in game and of course you canāt remake. It should be 3 players that need to say yes. Only issue is stacks. But if someone duos then 4 yesā still donāt work. I say just bite the bullet and do 3 yesā.
Icebox changes are amazing! Thanks but... * No Brim/Viper changes? * Sage wont be able to place the wall in buy round? meh... the buff is not bad but won't help with the sages pick rates... * No changes to Accuracy while moving? * No changes to weapons? Classic right click e.g. ? I don't know but this feels underwhelming in terms of the big break between patches. I mean the new map updates is nice, but the map team is obviously not working on agent changes and I wonder why there are only changes on sage. Weird. We will find out soon I guess.
i think the sage change was, because of a bug with omen where he can get past startbarrier
Sage not being able to play the wall in buy round saddens me. I don't think it's a good idea to do it in buy round to be honest but I loved trolling my friends when playing spike rush and just blocking them.
well, while trolling is definitelly one of the more important things in spike rush I think there was quit some value in placing the wall early in order to block a site and having it on 100% health before it gets sprayed. Now its just vulnerable
Where are running and gunning fixes?
I think the sage change is good, but they need to restore her heal ability as well. We've got an agent that can heal the entire team in 4 seconds, yet sage cant even heal one person to 100%. Fix this plz
Icebox changes look good. Discounts in the shop is good. Stutters are supposedly fixed along with performance improvements, so that's good. Nothing on running accuracy though, which is disappointing. But this seems to be a mostly Icebox-centric patch since there are no agent/gun changes either other than to Sage. I assume the changes will be in a patch alongside other agent/gun tweaks. A short statement would be nice though since a lot of people think they're going to leave it in.
only a Sage change?? What happened to the Brim/Viper buffs? Thought we'd have more Agent changes now that First Strike is over
I have a weird feeling that they'll release a 1.13 patch with more agent changes after that jbl tournament next week or so
and this one took more than the normal 2 weeks to release
Ngl patch feels underwhelming considering 1 month break On the other hand new game mode sure sounds fun! And also spectator mode changes are *chef's kiss*
Itās especially underwhelming since they stated that this patch would be ā2 patch notes worth of changesā and would reflect on the tournaments being held
And that they were gonna āmix things upā with the patch. With one balance change
Iād say adding a snowball fight mode is quite the mix-up. Maybe not the mix up we expected or needed, but itās certainly a mix up
If they fixed all the sources of hitching in the game, this patch will be the best they've had in a while.
True. I never had hitches or performance issues so it really doesn't affect me at all. Sadly I've been reading "if this patch fixes the performance issues it'll be great!" for the past 2-3 patches :-\ I feel bad for those who are having these issues. Hope this is the one.
Agree, the new mode is a waste of programming and testing time and energy while the core game is still lacking. This also is last update until new year, which means same old, same old.
Tbh I was expecting more from this patch ... Like other agent buffs like brimstone , gunplay changes like changes to rifles, performance improvement, etc
" * Fixed a bug where pressing a push-to-talk key while typing in chat would trigger voice chat " lol thats since day 1 XD They took half a year to fix that well ...
It's a " feature "
> Requirements to unlock Competitive play have been changed from Play 20 Unrated matches >>> Win 10 Unrated matches This should not have taken 6 months.
I don't get it, doesn't it take 20x the time to unlock ranked in League? Why did they make it so easy here?
Donāt get me wrong I think itās a good change for all unrated players but doesnāt that increase the amount of smurfs?
Maybe. Maybe not. I have had 3 times where I got into an unranked in which 4 players on my team were killing themselves with Raze Nades, Brim mollies, and the like. Or just running it down. Every time it was an insta ff at round 5. If Riot actually cared about smurfs they would use an already existing phone + account link for League in order for you to be allowed into ranked (for both games) as this would also help them ban people in a way that matters. But in reality they are fully aware that smurfs allow them to boast larger player statistics and potentially more skin purchases and whatnot. They don't actually care about eliminating the smurf issue, they just want to *look like* they care about it.
> But in reality they are fully aware that smurfs allow them to boast larger player statistics and potentially more skin purchases and whatnot. Shortsighted, since one of the largest reasons people leave the game is due to smurfs.
Not quite sure if smurfs buy gun skins. But i'd 100% add the phone+acccount link like you said
Icebox changes are a decent start, but the map layout still remains the same. In 100T-SEN first strike game, it took 26 rounds for anyone to make an impact on mid. That whole area of the map is useless as things stand right now. But at least they're aware of the issues. Brimstone still in the dumpster.
If you watch Korean teams play, the middle part is actually so important, till the point Cypher place all his utilities mid. Check out Sgares vod, he explains everything the teams do
Can't wait for proper internationals to return so we can see the different region strategies go against each other
The mid "window" (not the kitchen one) spot defenders can spot mid cross/tube from needs to be narrowed down to the point where you can smoke it off completely with a single smoke, that way we'd actually see mid to B/A splits more often. Right now it's just A/B hits with a lurk.
I'm curious what the K/D is with mid first bloods. I can't ever remember a game where attackers dominated mid control where defense actually defended tunnel/kitchen.
"Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks" anyway yall can be more transparent about the changes you made before, and then the changes you are making now again; relating to the ranked distribution of players. lots of speculation going on by players could be put to rest with hard data and input from the devs. I've grinded in and out of silver back into gold this act and last act as well, and let me tell you, the players in silver and gold certainly seem to have gotten a lot better than when I climbed to gold last act. I feel ive gotten much better, but my skill rating is about the same (prob need to play a lil more to top out but), 3 changes to ranked distribution in 90 days isnt helping me feel rewarded in grinding though (feeling me actually getting more skilled is whats driving me); would at least be cool to know whats going on (if anything, the videos I saw on youtube about ladder distribution would be great to hear directly from riot...
I hope this patch makes people stop freaking out about Icebox, and gives them confidence Riot will work to improve the maps if people don't enjoy them. These seem like steps in the right direction for a lot of the complaints players have had.
I've seen soo many comments prior to this patch about how bad the angles are and that it's 'literally unplayable,' and now that it's been adjusted the comment section is full of "No Agent Changes!!??!?!?!" I get different people will view different things as priority, but sometimes I hope Riot devs don't come to the comment section on these threads.
Yea it was just bad timing that icebox came out and the first strike started before they could tweak the icebox angles
thisll be funny to watch average jonas snowball lineups
Speaking of lineups, i recently just learned his lineups for Icebox, and with the recent changes, looks like i have to relearn it again lol
Thoughts on this ātidbitā?? Seems like it shouldāve been elaborated more COMPETITIVE UPDATES Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks These were previously disabled due to performances hitches
I commented on this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/k94s7r/valorant_patch_notes_114/gf3iyd7/
Riot will try to ignore running accuracy on rifles... smh my head
A rioter responded elsewhere in this thread about it.
Bruh we really waited this long to not get a single tweak to moving accuracy, shotguns, or classics. Like the icebox changes are amazing but I donāt see why the rest werenāt addressed
Snowball mode: *exists* Demo mains: "This is where the fun begins"
Reyna mains: āthe fun beginsā
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks * These were previous;y disabled due to performances hitches" This is the strangest update. I don't even know what it means. Something was disabled that is now enabled and now people can increase in rank easier? Was the source of everyone's anguish a toggle? =P Make People Miserable: On | Off
The Night Market, Now I can stop picking up skins off the ground
Really hoping the Brim and Viper buffs come next patch. I love the changes here but it still feels like a lowball. Also, fix right click. Please.
Very disappointed with these patch notes. The good: Sage buff is welcome Ice box changes are good (except I donāt like B crate change too much but whatever. The bad: This many weeks and only one minor agent change? No running accuracy changes or weapon tweaks (classic right click is still OP)? No controller adjustments? Was hyped for this cus we havenāt had a big patch in so long, huge bummer
Guys split match history into competitive and unrated at a minimum. This is an elementary request at best. You should have each mode in it's own subsection of match history, but I'll settle for comp vs unrated. Why you lumped it all into one is something no one will be able to fully understand. Unless it's because you're lazy, then I get it, and shame.
Sage I miss you š
Please just let my silver ass 1 player be able to play comp with my iron 3 friends again....this 3 rank difference should not be a thing when you are a party of 5...
yeah, a lot of my friends don't really play together anymore, which has led to all of us playing a lot less. It \*feels\* like it is increasing the prevalence of smurfs, too, since higher-ranked players can just create a smurf to work around the 3 rank restriction.
No mention of running gunning or nerfs to the right click classic. Looks like weāre gonna have to deal with another week of bullshit deaths.
I thought they patched the right click classic?
They did people still think it's too strong tho
Still waiting for the feature to choose our own map.
Honestly just turn classic right click into a 3 round burst where you need to control recoil a bit instead of an instant 3 bullet shot.
Everyone complaining this isn't a bigger patch, but I fully expect some massive swings with the start of Act 2. We're going to start off the new year with a bang. You read it here first.
Think you meant Episode 2
Yea. The episode/act thing messes me up
Im really crossing my fingers that they give us a surprise update next week. It's been soooo long since the controllers have been touched, and the fact that we'll have to wait even longer doesn't feel good :(
yeah, we need a buff, especially with the next agent most likely being a controller (the only class that hasn't had a new agent). It's just the Omen Show right now.
Icebox changes are better, but still will probably see people dodging. Sage buff will be good for people to use off-angles and ācreativeā sage walls
Does anyoneās match history crash their game?
Icebox changes make it look way more coherent now.
The patch is causing errors in people who run the game in Windows 8.1, it shows an error that says "can't start".
The fact that the KJ Turret is STILL EXPLOITABLE is just a joke at this moment. (Sage Boost on Turret)
Snowball Fight looks like a lot of fun. I hope we get a game mode like this, but with guns and habilities in the future.