VALORANT Patch 8.01

Overview

January 2024 is almost over, but we’ve still got one more patch before we say goodbye to the first month of the new year. Below, you’ll see some Agent updates as well as one update to Breeze. Keep reading and I’ll see you all back in A Hall.

One last note: we’re always listening to your feedback so please let us know what you think.

MAP UPDATES

• A Hall reopened

SKYE

In the latter half of 2023, Skye became an increasingly dominant force within the Initiator role and began to clearly overshadow her peers in pick rate both in solo queue and coordinated play. Her core ability, Guiding Light (E), has been a main factor in her prominence, as it offers strong combat advantage, valuable recon and provided Skye with the only recharging flash amongst the Initiators. While we like Skye’s position having a mix of flash and recon and the diversity that can be brought to team comps, she’s lacked clear downsides to balance out this broad power.

These changes are centered around pushing Skye to be more intentional with Guiding Light (E). They should create a clearer opportunity cost when taking Skye in comps while also maintaining her uniquely powerful combination of combat advantage and recon within the Initiator role. We hope this update will land Skye in a spot where she is still viable in solo queue and coordinated play, but give room for other flash Agents to thrive. We'll be sure to keep a close eye to see if further changes are needed.

• Removing the recharge on Guiding Light (E) sharpens the decision point of when to commit one throughout the round and balances the power of it providing both combat advantage and recon as a signature. This should create clear tradeoffs with use cases like early round info gathering and push Skye to be more deliberate while maintaining her unique optionality.
• Skye’s flash activating at the end of the duration pushes her to be more intentional when throwing fake flashes while also making it easier for Skye to fly Guiding Light (E) to its max distance and still get its output.
• Guiding Light (E)
• Guiding Light now automatically activates the flash at the end of its lifetime.
• Seekers (X)

ISO

We’re updating Iso to push the agency and combat advantage that you get from Double Tap (E).

We’ve reduced the cost of Contingency to better reflect the value we see it generating in game.

• The increase to energy orb duration provides a slightly larger time window to deal with threats around you and still get your shield.
• Increasing the buff and shield duration should give you slightly more time to find the right engagements to take.
• Reduction in the visual width of the Double Tap (E) shield should increase the combat advantage you have when entering space by providing enemies less telegraph that you are swinging around the corner.
• Double Tap (E)
• Initial buff and shield duration increased 15 >>> 20
• Shield width reduced 120 >>> 100
• Contingency (C)

RAZE

With her Blast Pack (Q), Raze is often able to traverse a vast amount of space and suddenly become a threat to enemies. This audio update is meant to make it clearer when Raze is potentially Blast Packing (Q) into your area, especially when a lot of other action is going on at the same time.

• Blast Pack (Q)

GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS UPDATES

We have implemented a feature to make jump throw lineup behavior more consistently reproducible. If you press the throw projectile input within 100 ms of jump start, the projectile will consistently have the same amount of velocity imparted from the thrower and as a result land consistently in the same location.

Most existing jump throw lineups should still behave as they have in the past while being more consistent in output. In some cases, some minor adjustments may need to be made.

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

• Improved boot and match load times by optimizing file IO performance.

PLAYER BEHAVIOR UPDATES

• Added additional details to our behavioral messaging system in order to improve clarity and visibility into our Terms of Service and our Penalties and Bans FAQ .

BUG FIXES

• Gekko
• Iso
• Reyna
• Fixed an issue when transitioning from inspect to scope using the Outlaw.
• Fixed bullet tracers with Chamber’s Tour De Force (X) and the Operator when penetrating through corners.
• Fixed a minimap visual issue where when you first load into a match, it showed a similar VFX to Omen’s From The Shadows (X).
• Fixed an issue where the Spike’s white circle indicator on the minimap did not appear when Spike was dropped on the edge of someone’s minimap.
• Breeze
• Lotus
• Icebox
• Split
• Team Deathmatch
• Fixed a bug that was causing Premier Standings to not load your zone/division the first time you click into it.
• Fixed a bug that was causing teams to not appear on the Standings tab right after their Season Match.