VALORANT Patch 0.50

Overview

Coming at you faster than my Iron rank placement, it’s Patch Notes .50. These are the kind that send wiki writers squirming, so let's get to it.

All rifles have been updated to make single-tap and burst fire more efficient. The idea here is to support the viability of all rifle shooting styles (tap, burst, spray) when used in optimal situations. This is tied to “Gun Recovery Time,” which we’ll touch on more in the notes below.

Weapon Updates

• You will no longer enter the “walking accuracy” state when transitioning from run to stop
• Deadzone accuracy speed threshold increased: 25% >> 30%

All Rifles

Machine Guns are significantly underperforming other weapons at their price points. Machine Guns are meant to be bullet hoses—powerful once they get going. This is a difficult balance to strike in a game where a single bullet from the Vandal will put you down. Our hope here is to make Machine Guns better at what they do (shoot lots and lots of bullets) while also increasing the power of the Ares relative to weapons at a similar price point.

• Recovery times on all Rifles have been updated, which should make tap and burst firing more efficient. Inaccuracy is accrued any time the weapon is re-fired prior to a complete duration of a weapon’s respective Gun Recovery Time.
• Base walk accuracy: 0.6° >> 0.8°
• Tap Efficiency Changes (Phantom & Vandal only)
• Vandal:
• Gun Recovery Time: .4s >> .375s
• Tap Efficiency: 4 >> 6
• Phantom:
• Gun Recovery Time: .55s >> .35s
• Tap Efficiency: 3 >> 4
• Bulldog Automatic Fire:
• Gun Recovery Time: .55s >> .35s
• Guardian
• Gun Recovery Time: .4s >> .35s
• Ares
• Firing Error (this value is a curve that has intermediate values between each bullet; bullet 2 has slightly less error than bullet 1, and so on)
• Bullet 5: 0.85° >> 0.75°
• Bullet 10: 0.75° >> 0.7°
• Reduced the amount and intensity of horizontal (Yaw) Recoil after the first 8 bullets.
• Odin

Sage

• Slow Orb zone duration decreased from 9 seconds to 7 seconds
• Slow Orb slowing amount decreased from 65% to 50%
• Cyber Cage no longer slows enemies that move through it
• Spycam cooldown when destroyed increased 30 >> 45 seconds

Omen

• Dark Cover smoke duration increased 12 >> 15 seconds
• Dark Cover smoke projectile speed increased
• Dark Cover cooldown increased 30 >> 35 seconds

Viper

• Snake Bite radius increased 350 >> 450

Brimstone/Phoenix/Viper

• We see you b-hoppers out there, jumping through Incendiary, Fireball, and Snake Bite while taking no damage. We don’t want to completely negate this skill but we also don’t want it to trivialize a whole set of character abilities.
• Height required to jump out of all damaging area denial abilities 80 >> 120
• Snake Bite, Fireball, and Incendiary damage tick speed increased (total damage per second unchanged)

Agent Ability credit cost tuning

• We felt the credit cost of some abilities did not match the impact those abilities brought to a match, and made adjustments for a more accurate reflection
• Raze Blast Pack increased from 100 to 200 credits
• Phoenix Curveball increased from 100 to 200 credits
• Brimstone’s Incendiary increased from 200 to 300 credits
• Jett’s Updraft reduced from 200 to 100 credits

Agent Armor

• Armor carried over from prior rounds is no longer destroyed when new armor is purchased, allowing you to sell newly purchased armor and return to your previous armor status (instead of having no armor)

Max Credit Cap

• Total credit cap is is reduced from 12,000 to 9,000

CHARACTER UPDATES

• Sova 's Owl Drone now includes a layer of sound for engine rotors

Split

Attacking teams have been having difficulty finding a foothold in territory control across the map. We’ve made a few changes that should allow attackers better opportunities to contest A Main, Mid Top, and B Tower.

• Barrier locations (those clear blue walls) have been adjusted across the map to provide attackers more of a foothold into territory control across the map
• Defender barrier has been pulled back at A Ramps
• Attacker barrier has been pushed forward at A Main
• Attacker barrier has been pushed forward slightly at B Main
• Angled the wall on the left interior of B Tower when pushing up the stairs from Mid
• Radianite crate in B has been changed to a metal crate to provide more cover when planting the Spike
• Revised art to improve performance throughout the map

Haven

• A new map exploit system is in effect which will have negative effects on anyone trying to escape the playspace
• Updated several floor sections so that they now have appropriate material sounds

Split/Haven/Bind

• Added fixes for Cypher Spy Camera exploits to all three maps— a huge thanks to everyone who has helped us track these down, including clutch stream’s we lurked in for two days, writing down every camera placement and fixing them in real time
• Backside of spawn barriers are now opaque to prevent some abuse cases
• Added ability for Spike to automatically fall from elevated boost positions
• Fixed multiple spots where Sova ’s Recon Dart could over-penetrate map geometry—another shout out to everyone that helped with these as well!

HUD & UI

• Teammate armor is now shown on the scoreboard
• When the Spike is planted, the Spike icon in the upper middle UI now pulses with the audio beeps
• New artwork for pings to increase readability in the world
• Portraits
• Reduced size of portraits and icons by several pixels
• Added color to the player’s own minimap icon with a slightly thicker border to aid in finding oneself (on the minimap, not in life)
• Added regulation of chat messages when using the radio menu or radio wheel
• Slight increase to broken armor text size to make it easier to notice
• Relocated flyout menu for Titles dropdown so it opens in a more sensible location
• Moved Leave Match button closer to the other “Exit” buttons in the menu
• Made Logout button red to match Exit button, since they both exit
• Shifted location of Skip button on MVP screen so players do not accidentally press Play Again button when slamming the Skip button
• Adjusted radio wheel behavior so that mouse wheel up and down always select the other wheels regardless of other keybinds
• Icon for Need Help changed from the little bug thing to a flag
• Enabled attack/defend icons in the upper middle game info UI for all players, not just observers
• Hooked up “Ult Almost Ready” VO when character uses the Ult Status radio command and are within 1 ult point of being fully charged

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Cheaters are no longer referred to as “Hackers”
• Profanity filter setting added; when enabled, will filter out profanity from chat
• Added a setting that allows toggling between walking and running
• Viper ’s Poison Cloud no longer enters cooldown when picked up during the buy phase
• Added foe coloring for Sova ’s Hunter’s Fury
• Added Contract level-up animation when unlocking free characters or purchasing contract levels
• Added tooltips and explanations guiding new players towards activating their first contract
• Unowned skin levels now list their individual cost (in Radianite Points) and description in the collection pages
• Made performance optimizations to address FPS drops when you or allies are shooting
• Various social panel improvements to support better error handling and messaging
• “Keep Player Centered” minimap setting is now a default setting
• Renamed “First Person Enhanced Visuals” graphics setting to “Bloom”
• Renamed “Shadows” graphics setting to “First Person Shadows”
• Observer HUD
• Team colors on the HUD will swap when switching sides, rather than the teams on the HUD changing position

BUG FIXES: IN-GAME

• Cypher and Sova will no longer float in the air if the Sage Barrier Orb wall they are standing on is destroyed while when using the Spycam or Owl Drone, respectively
• Cypher can no longer pick up his trap after an enemy has triggered it.
• Sova’s Owl Drone can no longer rapid-fire darts if the prior one hits an enemy
• Reduced collision size on Sova ’s arrows so they don’t get stuck on corners when fired near them
• Removed placeholder mesh from Viper ’s Toxic Screen projectile
• When using the ping wheel on the map, right clicking now correctly cancels the action and does not place a ping
• Fixed a bug where the Spike UI would sometimes overlap with the HUD
• Fixed a bug where a weapon’s ammo count on the HUD would disappear if swapping your knife, then back, while on low ammo.
• Removed Spike icon from being visible on enemy player minimap icons
• Spike can no longer be planted partially in map geometry
• Barriers on the minimap no longer adjust positions incorrectly during the buy phase if you open the megamap
• Fixed bug where various issues would occur after multiple players would fulfill a weapon buy request at the same time
• Fixed issue where the game would hitch/stutter when opening the in-game options menu
• Fixed issue where the game would hitch/stutter when opening the in-game shop
• Fixed rare movement bug where resurrected players who were tagged would have jittery movement in 1st-person perspective
• Fixed a bug where some weapons lost their muzzle flashes in 1st-person POV when tracers were disabled
• Fixed a rare bug where players appeared to be standing, when they were actually crouching
• Ability details in the combat report will now correctly appear in the buy phase of the round when teams switch sides
• Fixed miscellaneous Observer mode HUD issues
• Spectators can now see weapon inspect animations
• Fixed a bug where the camera could take an invalid position during character select
• Fixed an issue where the combat report would show 150 damage but the enemy player was still alive (in cases where healing was not involved)
• Fixed an issue where a teammate’s voice activity would incorrectly light up more than their own icon in the above-character UI element
• Selecting a ping on the ping wheel and canceling no longer incorrectly spawns the canceled ping next time the player uses the basic ping

BUG FIXES: GAME CLIENT

• Fixed incorrect location of text when hovering rewards in the contracts
• Fixed a bug where purchase refunds were not reflected in client until it was restarted
• Fixed a bug where player cards were cropped on the arsenal menu screen
• Fixed a bug where, in some languages, mission descriptions could appear truncated
• Fixed an issue where the Distortion Graphics setting was not properly enabled