Arriving on Sept. 6, VALORANT Patch 7.05 is by no means as drastic as the 7.04 patch that kicked off Episode Seven, Act Two—unless you’re a scummy bot booster, Astra main, or definitive Sunset hater or lover.
Alongside a handful of bug fixes, there are three main focal points of Patch 7.05: new competitive restrictions aimed at stemming the tide of bots and boosters, a significant buff to one of ranked’s least popular agents, and the official introduction of the newest map into the competitive map pool.
Here’s everything that’s included in VALORANT’s latest update.
What’s coming in VALORANT Patch 7.05?
New competitive queue restrictions
Several reports and complaints later, Riot Games has finally addressed VALORANT’s bot problem and blatant rank boosting with a crucial competitive update in Patch 7.05.
Starting Sept. 6, players ranked Ascendant or higher will no longer be able to team up with players ranked below Platinum One, even for five-stack Competitive parties. Riot assured that it’ll continue to monitor “botting abuse” after these changes are deployed and ban any account suspected of embracing such behavior.
Previously, while there were restrictions on two and three-player parties, five-stack parties were allowed to queue regardless of the differences in their Elo. The lack of restrictions for full parties may not be the only gap in the system, but it was still significantly responsible for high Elo players being able to boost newbies in the game.
Besides rank boosting, low Elo VALORANT players were running into a lot of bot-only lobbies, which is definitely not healthy for a game that is technically bot-free. These ‘bot’ accounts are typically there to farm XP and level up to 20 before they can be sold as ranked-ready accounts.
Such practices fuel smurfing and boost the unethical business of paid rank push. Thankfully, with Patch 7.05’s changes, players can expect a significant reduction in rank-boosting instances, at least in five-stack lobbies.
Significant Astra buff to Astral form
It’s been a while since we saw any Astra changes, and Patch 7.04 changed that, bringing changes (buffs and nerfs) across her kit. But Riot wasn’t just done with our cosmic divider yet, and here we are, embracing another subtle Astra buff in the very next update.
Starting with Patch 7.05, Astra will be able to hear all sound cues around her physical body when she’s meditating (in Astral Form). Previously, the sound would be dampened for her upon entering Astra Form, leaving her vulnerable to enemies lurking close to her position.
With this minor change, Riot expects to give Astra back some agency and information for her to be able to react fairly to threats. But, for most, this buff may not even be significant enough.
Ever since her brutal nerf in Patch 4.04, Astra hasn’t been able to stand out in the controller meta, although she’s a popular pick in pro play where double-controller team comps dominate. While the recent Astra changes will improve her character, it isn’t expected to fix her kit’s high skill ceiling, which is why most players tend to avoid her.
Sunset joining the competitive map pool
Sunset, Riot’s love letter to its hometown of Los Angeles, will officially join the active competitive map pool in VALORANT Patch 7.05. Sunset has been playable up to this point in it’s separate, Swiftplay-only queue, as well as in other modes like Spike Rush and Deathmatch.
Mid control will be a very common focal point across all competitive maps, with a high chance that rounds and matches are resolved quicker, given how close the barrier drop locations are to each other.
VALORANT’s Competitive map rotation now includes Sunset, Breeze, Ascent, Haven, Bind, Split, and Lotus.
All bug fixes coming in Patch 7.05
Besides the ‘big’ changes, every VALORANT patch brings a list of inevitable bug fixes and improvements. Patch 7.05 is no different, and it’s set to target some of the game’s nastiest bugs.
Surprisingly, the patch doesn’t talk about fixing any of the weird Jett Updraft bugs players have encountered in Sunset and Breeze. Well, it’s possible they’ll be silently addressed.
Here are all the bug fixes included with VALORANT’s Patch 7.05.
General
- Fixed a bug where the SFX volume would default back to 100% volume when Alt-Tab-ing out of game.
Agents
- Fixed a bug where there was a small audio deadzone in Astra’s Cosmic Divide (X).
- Fixed a bug where Deadlock’s Sonic Sensor (Q) would trigger when Gekko’s Wingman (Q) walked near it.
- Fixed a bug where other Agents were not animating when they moved through Omen’s Dark Cover (E) ability.
- Fixed a bug where Cypher’s Trapwire (C) would sometimes fail to activate when placed on stairs.
Player behavior
- Fixed an issue where people who were chat-restricted by Real-Time Interventions were also disconnected from the text chat instead of just muted from text chat.
- Fixed an issue where there was no warning message when you had a conflicting keybind for team or party voice chat.
- Fixed an issue where switching between Unrated and Competitive queues would cause the restriction timer for the queue delay to replace the ranked restriction timer.
- Fixed an issue where creating an Agent Profile reverted Push-to-Talk keybinds back to their defaults.
Check out the full patch notes here.
