Everything Valorant Episode 2 So Far

Lets break down what we know so far about Episode 2 of Valorant, which begins on January 12th!

Quick list:

  • Classic burst fire update
  • Omen Nerfs
  • Brimstone Buffs
  • New Battle Pass
  • New Agent Yoru

Classic pistol burst fire gets a small nerf, it seems the recoil just increases if you spam the right click a lot, but it doesn’t look like it should affect gameplay that much.

Here are changes to Omen and Brim. Omen has been a long time high pick hero, while Brim has become one of the least picked heroes since most teams only end up with 1 smoke hero and Omen being preferable almost every time. These new changes could shakeup the pick with 2 big nerfs to omen and brim getting a buff on almost all his skills.

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This video shows you a rundown of the entire battle pass:

Lastly we have the new agent’s abilities:

Valorant Patch 1.03

Another week another patch.

Lets dive into the big changes

  • Guardian
    • Price down to 2500
    • Fire rate reduced
    • More penetration power
  • Map bug fixes
  • Surrender will have a real button now
  • New Sudden Death Format
    • Must win by 2
    • Credits reset to 5000 every round
    • Every round alternates sides
    • If teams don’t win by 2, they may vote to call a draw
  • Some Spike Rush changes, but who cares.

Lets talk about these changes.

The guardian brings an interesting change. Essentially this nerfs its close range quickfire potential which used to be able to off someone quite fast. The price reduction is a decent buff, and with the increased penetration power, it can still be a solid choice for holding long positions. I imagine people who can get head shots off will be buying this gun a lot. The fire rate reduction doesn’t matter much, as firing it at full speed made it useless at mid to long range anyway.

The new sudden death will be MUCH MORE fair. After just coming off a 12-13 loss today, I welcome this change greatly. Especially since maps are often very bias towards either attacking or defending. Giving the teams a chance on both sides makes a lot more sense. The option for calling a draw is pretty cool too.

The patch should release soon. Here are the full notes

Valorant 1.02 Released, Rank Mode Delayed

Valorant patched today to 1.02 with quite a change log.

However, it was quickly announced that rank/competitive mode will be delayed for a little bit. They caught some bugs that could affect it. The delay is predicted to be just a couple days, but no confirmation aside from a tweet.

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Here are some notable changes in the new patch.

  • Viper’s toxic screen now goes through walls
  • When Phoenix dies in his ult, Jett will get her blades refilled and Reyna will get a soul orb drop
  • Some Cypher Spy cam glitch fixes
  • New Rank icons
  • Able to play ranked with friends at more skill disparity
  • Map tweaks
  • SURRENDER option

I am shook that there are no nerfs to Reyna yet, although people are learning to play against her a little more nowadays. The surrender option is a double edged sword, you’ll find yourself in a ton of games where you make a huge comeback in the 2nd half. Some people play better on one side than the other. I wouldn’t be too trigger happy to surrender games.

Full Patch Notes

Valorant Ranked Update

Details on Valorant Patch 1.02 released by Riot

Riot released some pre-patch notes for the upcoming ranked patch. We mentioned last week that ranked should be releasing very soon. They are already teasing us with some details with many welcome changes.

Most importantly, they are making playing with friends easier than it was in beta in terms of rank disparity. A lot of people were finding it hard to keep playing with friends because someone only 6 ranks away was unable to queue up with their friends due to matchmaking restrictions. It didn’t help that people could rank up faster than their own squad mates by getting top frag and high combat scores.

Riot will still block players who have HUGE skill disparity, but for the most part it should be balanced out well enough to not make you lose your squad mates.

There has also been an update to the rank icons! I think people made a big stink at how ugly they were in beta, so they finally put some effort into them. They also swapped the top rank from Valorant into Radiant to avoid confusion.

No definite balance fix yet for solo vs 5 stacks, but they are still working on ways to balance that out as well. The release of ranked might come a few days after the patch, similar to beta, but we don’t know for sure. Either way its coming VERY soon, so ya’ll better get your aim good now.

Pre-Patch Notes here.