Valorant 2.0 Update Now Available, Full Patch Notes Revealed

Riot Games officially released Valorant Episode 2 earlier today, giving players a compelling new agent to choose from. However, Valorant's latest update has a few more things to offer than just that, including tweaks to some of the game's existing characters, such as Brimstone and Omen. It's a little too soon to gauge how players are feeling about the game's new update, but it will be interesting to see how fans react and adapt to these changes. Those looking to get a better idea of what's been changed can do so by checking out the patch notes, straight from Riot Games, which can be found below.

AGENT UPDATES:

YORU

YORU JOINS THE VALORANT ROSTER

CONTROLLERS

This patch we have a small update that should clarify and differentiate the strengths of our Controllers. Omen and Brimstone have been in competition since beta and usually only one of them is considered viable. By giving each more clear strengths, we hope to make both Agents strong in different situations. Viper is on our radar as well, we believe she is underperforming and are looking at ways to help her out in the future.

BRIMSTONE

Stim Beacon

Will now quick cast (no equip time)

Molotov

Cost reduced: $300 >>> $200

Sky Smokes

• Cast range increased: 4200 >>> 5000
• Smoke duration increased:14.25 >>> 19.25

Sound

Brimstone no longer makes a sound that enemies can hear when confirming the location of his smokes

OMEN

Omen's role as a Controller is to bring consistent pressure. We needed to introduce some tradeoffs in exchange for the consistent pressure his recharging smokes provide. The projectile speed decrease here is meant to give Omen more pressure and responsiveness when smoking nearby targets, while taking a bit longer to get smokes to far away parts of the map that he isn't actively covering. Paranoia has been quite strong for a while, and rather than reduce its effectiveness and take away some of the most exciting plays Omen can make, we decided to up the cost. On the whole, this brings Omen's full utility price up to a level that's more comparable with other Agents as well as making it more important to get value out of Paranoia when you cast it, so that big $400 chunk of cash isn't wasted.

Paranoia

Cost increased: $200 >>> $400

Dark Cover

Projectile speed decreased: 4000 >>> 2800

WEAPON UPDATES

Classic (Alt. Fire)

• Jumping error increased: .4 >>> 1.0
• Increased input queue on right-click: 0.065 >>> .225
• Firing consecutively now jumps in error, starting at 1.9 for the first burst, 2.5 for the second, and then the third/fourth burst will be at a 6.0
• Right-click now has a recovery curve starting at .1s
  • The Classic is proving to be a master-of-none choice in pistol rounds, with the exception of jump right-clicks and spamming right-clicks. The spread changes aim to pull the effective range of the jump bursts and the firing error/recovery aim to put some more finesse into how effective you can be while spamming it out. Input queue will help shots between bursts come out more smoothly.

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• New Competitive regional leaderboards (Jan. 12)
• Rank system updated, including rank progress bar, numerical progress, and further distribution changes to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks
• Immortal and Radiant ranks are now capped at a premade size of two
• New ranked rewards for Episode 1 (pair of Gun Buddies based on your highest Act Rank achieved during Episode 1)
• Many more changes!

SOCIAL UPDATES

The "Add Friend" button has been removed from the in-game player list

BUGS

• Fixed an issue where Omen could sometimes teleport past the buy phase barriers
• Fixed an issue where Omen could plant the Spike while elevated on a Sage wall
• Fixed an issue where players on the opposing team could be seen on the minimap long after leaving line of sight
• Fixed an issue where the desktop resolution was not restored after alt-tabbing from the game when playing in fullscreen mode, at lower-than-native resolution. Thank you to player fl0m for bringing this to our attention!
• Fixed an issue introduced in the 1.14 patch that incorrectly calculated client ping by including client frametime in the calculation

KNOWN ISSUES

• Preview videos for weapon levels currently don't have audio.
  • Rest assured, the skins still have respective audio in-game, we just have some issues with audio for preview videos found in the Store and Collections.

The addition of Yoru could have a big impact on the game! The character has a lot of potential, and readers can find out more about what he can do by checking out our write-up on the character right here. More information on the competitive changes to Episode 2 can be found at Riot Games' official website, right here.

What do you think about Valorant's new update? Are you interested in playing as Yoru? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!