A new day for VALORANT has arrived, with all the balance updates and gameplay changes from Patch 5.12 now officially going live in-game today.
The contents of Patch 5.12 were officially released at the end of last week, as part of this past weekend’s latest public beta environment (PBE) testing period. The latest patch is huge in terms of scale, affecting the abilities of 15 different VALORANT agents, among other changes.
The most notable is certainly the sweeping changes to Chamber.
For those unaware of the long-anticipated changes, here’s a brief synopsis. Rendezvous now uses one anchor instead of two, teleporting Chamber back to the anchor itself as long as they are in the radius. This has drastically reduced the distance he can teleport away, making it easier for opponents to chase him down and making aggressive Chamber players easier to punish.
Chamber can now, however, teleport at different heights from the anchor with that height restriction now removed.
His Trademark is now range-restricted, similarly to other sentinel utility, but it can now be recalled mid-round and redeployed after a 30-second cooldown. His Tour De Force fire rate has been greatly reduced, his Headhunter spray has been nerfed, and the Slow effect on Trademark and his ultimate has been reduced.
Chamber’s not the only agent getting changes either though.
Breach, KAY/O, and Viper’s ultimate costs have increased from seven to eight points. Several agents with deployable utility (like Chamber’s Trademark, Killjoy’s Nanoswarm, etc.) have gotten health boosts up to 20 points, given that now “abilities that output damage will now universally damage enemy objects that can be damaged.”
Harbor got buffs to his water walls, Viper got nerfs to her Viper’s Pit ultimate, and other agents received small cost or health updates to some of their abilities.
Patch 5.12 will also introduce the beta for a new game mode: Swiftplay. Swiftplay is a short version of the unrated gameplay experience, with the first team to win five rounds in halves of four being declared the winner.
The mode will be available in VALORANT until early January.
