VALORANT Patch 4.04 was released today, with overwhelming changes to the entire controller category off agents, and the long-discussed overhaul of Yoru officially going live.
Viper and Astra, who have spent months at the forefront of the completive meta, have each received extensive nerfs. For Viper, the cooldowns on activating both Toxic Screen and Poison Cloud have been increased, her Fuel drains 50 percent faster when both are active, and her Snake Bite duration has decreased.
Astra’s max Stars has been reduced to four, and the cooldown for retrieving Stars has been greatly increased. The cooldown for each of her abilities has increased as well, the Gravity Well radius has decreased, and both Gravity Well and Nova Pulse no longer affect players caught underneath it.
Omen’s Dark Cover cooldown has decreased, and it reaches its target destination more than twice as fast, however, it now costs 150 credits instead of 100. Shrouded Step’s cost has decreased, and the delay prior to teleporting has decreased slightly as well.
Brimstone’s Sky Smoke deploy time has reduced, and both the height and width of individual smokes have increased. Stim Beacon also now applies a 15 percent speed boost on top of its other buffs.
The long-awaited changes to Yoru outlined in previous “State of the Agents” posts have finally been applied. Fakeout is now only one charge, but it’s a fully running version of Yoru that turns towards an enemy that damages it and explodes in a flash, hitting enemies in a cone in front of it. Gatecrash’s activation time and in-game audio level have been reduced, while its speed has been increased. Gatecrash can also be faked, and players get two charges instead of one. Yoru is no longer revealed to enemies during Dimensional Drift, which now lasts longer and lets him cast all of his other abilities while active.
The new patch will be applied at the start of Episode Four, Act Two, which begins March 1.
