Valorant's Delayed Update Is Now Live, and Here Are the Patch Notes

After a slight delay, Valorant's 1.11 patch is now live in the game. The patch was supposed to arrive last week, but it caused several issues in the game. On Twitter, Riot Games referred to the update as "a technical nightmare," but it seems like those issues are now a thing of the past, and the new changes have been implemented. The most significant of the changes to the game is a new agent, Skye. Additionally, the patch features changes to some of the game's existing characters, a new control option for left-handed players, and more. Full patch notes from Riot Games can be found below.

AGENT UPDATES:

SKYE

Skye will be available for use in official esports competition (e.g., First Strike) after two weeks in Competitive queue (November 9, barring any issues)

BREACH

Full flash time increased from 1.75 >>> 2

CYPHER

TRAPWIRE

• Disabled and revealed upon death

SPY CAMERA

KILLJOY

DEACTIVATION RANGE

• Alarmbot and Turret now deactivate if she is more than 40m away from them—reentering the 40m range reactivates her little friends.

TURRET

• Cooldown after pickup reduced from 20 seconds >>> 10 seconds

ALARMBOT

• Range at which Alarmbot can be detected decreased from 9m >>> 7m
• Cooldown after pickup reduced from 20 seconds >>> 7 seconds

NANOSWARM

• Range at which Nanoswarm can be detected decreased from 5m >>> 3.5m
• Damage increased from 40/s >>> 45/s
• Damage now ticks smoother and faster while in Nanoswarm, instead of in chunks of 10 every ¼ of a second

COMPETITIVE UPDATES:

• Icebox enters the Competitive map rotation
  • Icebox will be available for use in official esports competition (e.g., First Strike) after four weeks in Competitive queue (November 29, barring any issues)
• Shorter Unrated queue times for the highest-rank players
  • We've taken steps to further solve issues for elite players experiencing long queue times for Unrated. We're also further investigating improvements to reducing long queue times for all primary modes.
• Added location of the current gamepod to the loading screen for all modes
• Adjusted Combat Score to factor in non-damaging assists

GAME MODE UPDATES:

• "Play Out All Rounds" option now available in custom game lobby options

GAMES SYSTEMS:

Updates to Economy Ruleset

• Attackers who lose but survive the entire round without planting the Spike receive a reduced number of credits (1,000)
• Defenders who lose but survive the entire round after the Spike has detonated also receive reduced credits (1,000)
• Dying to the Spike will no longer count as a death in KDA statistics
• Additional economic information added as a tooltip when hovering over the exclamation mark next to "Min Next Round" in the shop

Other Changes

• Minor improvements to observer flashed indicator
• New setting for observers: 'Show Player Keybinds on Map'
• New Custom Game Option: 'Play Out All Rounds'
  • Both teams play a full 12 rounds on both attacker & defender sides, followed by overtime/endgame (if applicable)

QUALITY OF LIFE:

• Left-handed view model is now available for players. Players can swap their first person view-model to lefthanded by going to the settings menu and swapping their view model to "Left-Handed". Changing this will also show all other players as left-handed when spectating.
• You can now send a direct message by clicking a friend's name in chat instead of having to type their name out
• Players that have been AFK or alt-tabbed for more than 5 minutes will now appear as 'Away' in the Social Panel
• Adjusted team colors to remain fixed for the full duration of a game for observers instead of having the Attacking side always appear as red, and the defending side always appear as green
  • The experience of having teams switch colors at the half from a viewer perspective was a bit confusing, and also led to some difficulties for broadcasters to match their overlays to this behavior. This change will allow the viewers and tournament organizers to have a more consistent experience for the entirety of a game.
• [BETA] Experimental Sharpening
  

BUG FIXES

• Fixed one source of combat hitches we've seen from player reports
  • We're continuing to investigate the combat hitches that players have been reporting in recent patches. This patch includes a fix for one of the most common hitches that we've seen during combat. While we hope that this will resolve the issue for many of you, we're still actively tracking down a couple other hitches that we've seen from your clips.
• Jett now can't rope dash lel
• Fixed a bug where incoming Party invites would remain active in the Social Panel after being declined
• Players no longer see the spike location when reconnecting to a game
• Fixed issue where player corpses could cause collision issues
• Sage wall segments no longer breaks if a player dies on top of them
• Fixed a bug that would disable queueing for any mode if a player closed the client during the Match Found countdown.
• Fixed a bug that was displaying Act Rank badge on the MVP screen outside of Competitive Queue.

Valorant is now available on PC. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the game right here.

What do you think about these changes? Are you happy with Valorant's latest update? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!