VALORANT Patch 1.05

Overview

Your newest VALORANT Act has arrived! It’s true, it’s true. That means this patch comes with a new Agent ( have you met? ), a fresh Battlepass, and our new Deathmatch (beta) mode.

Act Ranks go live— and you can dive into our dedicated post for more —but competitive changes also include matchmaking adjustments that hope to better pair solo and solo/duo players against similar groups. You’ll get more info on how your rank was affected after a loss, too.

KILLJOY

Killjoy brings her killer robot buddies and round spectacles to VALORANT

A new contract has been added to unlock Killjoy and her associated rewards

RAZE

With the lethality of Raze’s Showstopper, we wanted to make some changes that will provide enemies more time to plan and acquire Raze when hearing “Fire in the Hole!” Additionally, we have adjusted her VFX so that players are able to notice Raze as she fires, increasing their ability to shoot a Raze that takes riskier plays.

Raze’s Blast Pack has been hitting players a bit too hard, able to kill a fully armored enemy in certain situations. We want to reduce this ability’s efficacy at damaging players while sharpening its ability at clearing enemy utility and obstacles.

• Equip Time increased 1.1 >>> 1.4
• Quick Equip Time increased 0.5 >>> 0.7
• VFX reduced when firing rocket
• VFX on rocket’s trail slightly reduced
• Damage decreased 75 >>> 50
• Damage to objects now consistently does 600

COMPETITIVE

• Act Ranks have been added to the game; read our deep dive for more info .
• Patch 1.05 marks the end of Competitive Act I—Competitive Act II starts
• Expect a conservative initial placement, ~2 rank tiers lower than your prior Act I rank, so we are confident you are at or above that skill in Act II. Performance will have a larger impact in your early games , so you will be able to quickly gain rank if you play well and win
• Competitive matchmaking now will have a higher chance to match solo and solo/duo players against similarly sized premade groups at the cost of queue times being slightly longer
• Rank indicators have been modified on a loss to provide more granularity into how your rank was changed— You can now receive:
• Rating decreased (2 down arrows)
• Rating greatly decreased (3 down arrows)
• We are also looking into ways to give additional transparency around rank changes in future patches
• Match History will now show the rank you went into the match with for that game, versus the rank you ended the game with
• You can now view your friends career tab via the context menu in the social panel. This means you can see your friends rank, Act Rank, and Match History.
• Custom Games now allow the leader to select your target game pod location and see players ping to that game pod.

GAME MODES

• Deathmatch drops! Hop in to hone your gunplay mechanics or warm up before you hit ranked
• First to 30 kills with a time limit of 6 minutes
• No abilities
• You’ll load in as a random Agent that you own
• Buy whatever weapons you want; heavy armor is given to you automatically
• Killing enemies drops health kits: picking one up fully restores your health/armor AND automatically reloads your weapon.
• All enemies are periodically revealed on the minimap
• Deathmatch is in beta as we continue to evaluate game performance and stability . Availability will be limited to specific windows upon deployment of 1.05, with the first window starting Wednesday, August 5 .

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Players who report other disruptive players will now receive an email if the reported player has been punished
• Arriving mid-patch : Your rotating store offers will stop including things you already own!

BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue causing Sova’s Owl Drone to rotate slower
• Fixed issue where Reyna did not get her full heal if it began right when her overheal started to decay
• Fixed nearsight not applying properly when going through smoke parts of Viper and Phoenix’s walls
• [1.04 Hotfix] Fixed a bug where Phoenix could plant the Spike off the bomb site if he finished planting after Run it Back ended
• Fixed a bug where ping in the scoreboard would not appear for Observers
• Fixed a bug where Phoenix could in rare cases begin to auto-defuse the Spike if he was defusing the Spike when Run it Back ended
• Fixed an exploit where spamming inspect with a macro could cause server lag
• Game modifiers/cheats now notify all-chat when any player toggles them
• General fixes to moderators, tournament mode, and game modifiers
• Fixed a minimap bug, where the minimap would not correctly rotate on side swap rounds, when using fixed minimap + rotate based on side settings
• Resolved inconsistencies and cleaned up UX with options present on the Match tab in the in-game settings screen
• Resolved issue with incorrect rank briefly, and possibly persisting, to show for players in Career tab
• Resolved issue where rating adjustment indicators would show on-hover in Agent Select
• Resolved issue where account # tag wasn’t correctly showing on-hover on the Match tab in the in-game settings screen
• Resolved issue where only one team was able to vote to surrender if both queued the vote at the same time
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to interact with the character selection UI through the Shooting Range loading screen
• When equipping a gun buddy, an unassigned buddy no longer gets selected
• Fixed a visual bug where the lobby would play an unwanted animation when a match is found