VALORANT Patch 1.02: Full notes and updates

Competitive mode is coming to VALORANT in Patch 1.02, along with updates to agents, maps, tagging, and more.

Agent updates

Viper

Toxic Screen

Toxic Screen now burns through walls, placing emitters at all valid locations (e.g., the ground) over its length.

Snake Bite

Snake Bite will now make players fragile for a short time.
Fragile is a debuff that increases damage taken.
The total damage is unchanged (the damage is lowered, but fragile increases it).

Poison Orb

Poison Orb activation cooldown increased from five to six seconds.

Jett

Blade Storm

Blade Storm now refreshes when used to kill Phoenix during Run It Back.

Reyna

Soul Orbs

Soul Orbs are now spawned when Reyna kills Phoenix during Run It Back.

Cypher

Fixed an issue where Spycam blocked Spike defusal.
Fixed an issue where players could place a Cyber Cage on a Trapwire.
Added prevention for Spycam going through teleporter doors on Bind when placed on the frame from the outside.

Smoke tuning

Adjusted tuning around screen effects when exiting and entering smokes.
Decreased blind “falloff” value.
Decreased nearsighted intensity.
This applies to all agents with smokes.

Weapon updates

Bucky (right-click)

Crouch-walking accuracy: 3.45 to 4.1
Walk accuracy 6.4 to 4.4
Run accuracy 3.5 to 6.4

Competitive mode updates

Competitive mode will be made available during this patch. The changes will include:
- Updated rank iconography
- New name for the top rank: Radiant
- Expanded skill disparity range for playing with friends in ranked and placements

Map updates

Riot adjusted numerous locations to allow clearing angles to be a bit more straightforward in the following places:

Haven

Garage Doors
Entrance to C Long on Attacker Side
Cover in A Lobby restructured to open up the space which allows for additional sight lines and traversal options
C Link
A Link
The Entrance to A Sewer and the bottom of A Sewer

Ascent

Defender spawn entrance
Attacker side of A Main (including a self-boost to gain an additional angle to peek A main as an attacker)
Garden entrance

Bind

A Bath entrance
B Teleporter Exit and B Window Entrance

Split

Defender Spawn

Riot is peeling back on the number of locations that require ability usage, thorough angle checking, or teamwork to clear safely. The intention is that angles that are more difficult to clear are most commonly found in areas meant to reinforce existing territory control. This is to emphasize ability usage and teamwork to reliably gain control of these locations. An added benefit is that this encourages ability usage and combat engagements to be spread out across the map, which can help prevent the frequency of scenarios where all of the players expend all of their abilities and ultimates in the same place at the same time.

Collision and Nav Mesh (playable terrain ) improvements

HUD and UI

All main sections views now have a “back” button in the upper left to return to the Home view (pressing Escape is also supported).
All details views (gun details, players cards, match details, etc.) have been converted to use the same back button in the upper left instead of a close button in the upper right.
Small popup dialogs still use the close button in the upper right where appropriate.
Slide-out options menu removed from the logo button in upper left.
New options button added to upper right, which opens the menu with Settings, Support, About, Leave Match, and Exit to Desktop buttons.
Circle progress elements for Battlepass and active contract removed from navigation; missions element remains throughout the experience.
Navigation reordered to accommodate the changes.
Exit to desktop flow converted to a single button with a popup that allows a player to exit or sign out and exit.
Note that the Leave Match button is now displayed all the time, but will be locked in cases where leaving a match is not allowed. Previously the button was missing completely when leaving was not allowed, which looked like a bug rather than a restriction.
Added a setting that allows players to always display the inventory in the lower right of the HUD.
Added a new HUD element that tells you when you haven’t been spawned in due to being AFK.

Battleplay

Added Battlepass text button in the nav to make it easier to find.
Added small progress bar below text that shows progress for current level of the pass.
Hovering Battlepass in the nav shows a “peek” flyout of upcoming pass rewards.
Clicking either goes to a new Battlepass section.

Contract and agents section

Moved Agents section out from under Collection to make it easier to find and to provide a home for contract progress in the nav.
Added small progress bar below text that shows progress for current level of the active contract.
Hovering Agents in the nav shows a “peek” of upcoming contract rewards.
Clicking Agents goes to the Agents section, and clicking the contract flyout navigates to Agents and opens the associated contract details.
Removed secondary navigation from Collection view since Agents no longer lives there and the navigation is no longer needed.

Quality of life

Surrender option

An Early Surrender option has been added. You can now opt to surrender out of a match ahead of the match’s completion if you do not want to continue playing. Riot will also be adding some light polish and functionality in future patches post 1.02.
- You can call an early surrender vote by typing: “/ff” “forfeit” “concede” or “surrender”
- An early surrender vote requires all present players on the surrendering team to vote ‘yes’ to pass
- You can vote via “/yes” or “/no” along with the settings F5 and F6 (defaults)
- Each team can only call a vote once per half
- Early surrender votes cannot be called before reaching round 8.
  - Once a vote is called the vote option will be queued to vote on for the next round, or if you call the vote early enough in the buy phase you can vote immediately.
- The winning team gets round win credit for every round necessary to bring them up to the victory condition (13 rounds). The surrendering team will get loss credit for every round necessary to bring them up to 13 rounds

Added a setting that to allow players to permanently mute text from enemy players.

Update to Tagging (slowdown effect when hit by enemy fire)

Effect of tagging on movement speed reduced:
- Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Standard) 80 percent to 70 percent.
- Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Wall Penetration) 35 percent to 25 percent.
Increased the time it takes to reach desired slow amount when tagged by 100 percent.

Tagging is intended to reward the player with better positioning and the player that successfully lands a shot on the enemy first, according to Riot. When tagged, you will now gradually transition to the reduced tagging speed. In addition, the reduced tagging speed is slightly more forgiving. If you are positioned close to cover, this should allow you to potentially escape when tagged more frequently than before. Also, the effects of being tagged should feel less jarring especially when playing with higher ping.

Tagging through walls has been further reduced which should enable reliable escapes when being shot through walls.

Mode updates

Spike Rush

New Orb Type – Tracer Orb
- Team-wide buff that grants 2x wall penetration and reveals enemies for 0.75 seconds when they are hit
- Duration: Entire round
Speed Boost changed to Combat Stim
- Movement speed and durations unchanged
- Reload time decreased by 30 percent
- Weapon draw time decreased by 30 percent
- Spread recovery time decreased by 30 percent
- Rate of Fire increased by 30 percent
- Jump force increased by 25 percent
Plague Orb now shares a pool with Paranoia Orb
- Only one of these will be chosen per game
- Only one Plague Orb can spawn per round
- Health reduction decreased from 90 to 50
Deception Orb now shares a pool with Plague Orb
- Only one of these will be chosen per game
- Only one Deception Orb can spawn per round
- Duration decreased from 10 seconds to 8 seconds (now matches Plague Orb)
- Tunnel vision decreased by 20 percent (meaning you see more on your screen)

Practice Mode

Reyna: Killing practice bots now properly spawns Soul Orbs
Jett: Killing practice bots now properly refreshes Blade Storm

Performance updates

Optimized a worst case performance scenario that occurred when multiple players are moving close to one another.
Optimized multi-kill streak banners.
Optimized player health bars.
Optimized creation of pings (z-ping, ping wheel, when an ally dies, etc)
Optimized Spawn Barrier audio causing periodic framerate dips.
[1.01 Hotfix] Resolved an issue that was causing low memory systems with slow HDDs to perform especially poorly.

Bug fixes

Levels two to seven for the Sovereign Ghost skin are now fixed and unlockable.
Fixed Toggle Walk, you can once again use this setting.
Fixed the Return from AFK message only displaying the name of the last player to rejoin.
Fixed an issue where the defuse bar would duplicate.
Fixed several localization strings and text overlaps.
Fixed several crashes.
Fixed a bug where the Spike could automatically plant when you walked onto a plant site while it was in your inventory.
Fixed a bug where the Spike would float in the air if it had been placed on a Sage wall.
Fixed a bug where the dropped Spike’s model could be invisible to defenders on while it was on the ground.
Fixed a bug where gun buddies were squished on the Arsenal page.
Fixed a bug where trying to open the Character Select UI while the megamap in the Shooting Range would result in a deadlock.
Improved GPU performance of most out of game menu screens.

Fixed a bug where sometimes players got stuck on the transition into game and never successfully transitioned into game.
Fixed a bug where the spread on the Bucky’s alt fire was higher when walking than was when running or standing still.
Fixed a bug where dead players could appear standing when you reconnect to a match.
Fixed a bug where you could get stuck grabbing orbs.
Fixed a bug where enemy players would appear on the minimap while watching the Spike, once your team was dead.