Within a week of release, Riot Games is already pushing out patches to keep up with the demanding Valorant community in its early beginnings. That’s where patch 1.01 comes into play, with some new small changes responding to the community’s recent concerns with this Valorant 1.01 patch.
So what’s new?
Summary
- Spike Rush Update – 5 randomly selected orbs, with three new orbs – Health Orb, Deception Orb and Golden Gun
- Agent: Sage – nerfed Barrier Orb cast range from 20 to 10 metres
- Map updates – all maps updated with new call outs with Ascent restitched to avoid falling through the map or walls
- New pre-round HUD
- Performance: small fixes to reduce dropping frames during gunfights and key moments
- An array of bug fixes and quality of life changes
Valorant’s patch 1.01 patch notes features changes entail some Sage nerfs, Spike Rush changes and a couple of bug fixes
Let’s start with the changes made to Valorant’s main healing agent, Sage:
- Barrier Orb cast range reduced 20 >>> 10 meters
- The 20m cast range was allowing Sage to aggressively take control of neutral territory in a way that was inappropriate for her role in Valorant. This range reduction aims to keep her strong while defending territory but reduce her efficacy at taking ground.
Sage has received quite a few nerfs over the past few weeks. Back when the closed beta first released Sage was one of the strongest characters in the game. She was so strong that not picking her during agent select would probably result in a loss. So it’s definitely refreshing to have developers that are working off community feedback to balance the agents in the best way possible.
Spike Rush Changes:
- Each game of Spike Rush now features a set of 5 randomly selected orbs
- The Full Ultimate orb will always be available
- 4 of the remaining 7 orb types will be chosen at random
- Chosen orb types will be shown in a description widget both in character select and during pre-round
New Orb Types
- Health Orb – Grants teamwide health regeneration
- 20 second duration
- 12 HP per second (3HP per tick)
- Sound Effects and Visual Effects only play while actually healing
- Deception Orb – Applies “Paranoia” (Omen flash) to the enemy team 3 seconds after capture
- 10 second debuff
- Vision is greatly reduced (and a small Field of Vision shift)
- Fake footsteps and gunfire play for affected players
- Minimap is disabled
- Golden Gun – Grants capturing player a Golden Gun
- One-shot, one-kill
- Perfectly accurate at all times
- Agent moves at knife speed
- Only has a single bullet in chamber and 2 backup rounds
- Kills grant an additional round
Spike rush has only been introduced for a week or so, and many have found it as a very fun warm up mode before they head to play unrated or scrims.
Overall this update does not include many game changing adjustments, however it’s nice to see that Riot are also putting the casual community as a priority as well.
To check out the entire expansive list of changes, preview the official page here: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-1-01/.
Valorant will now begin to rub off of people comparing it to both CS:GO and Overwatch, and hence, the community may push for changes in either direction. My personal hope is that Riot Games listens to both sides and in doing so, carves a new and fresh path for Valorant.
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