Valorant’s next Act arrives today, and as usual, Riot Games is dialing up the hype with another rockin’ trailer. Alongside that, the full details of Episode 3 Act 2 have been detailed in Patch notes for update 3.05, which adds a bunch of balancing changes and bug fixes in addition to a new map called Fracture.
First things first, feast your eyes on the trailer:
As for the list of changes made in Patch 3.05, the big news is balancing changes to several Agents, including Breach, Killjoy, Brimstone, and Sova. Also, the return of Immortal 1,2,3 in competitive play. Here’s the full list of changes:
Agent Changes
“Brimstone, Sova, and Breach are all receiving consistency changes to ability damage. We want to reward those of you who are creative with the ability sandbox, using your tools to solve the obstacles other Agents are creating. To ensure this, physical objects across VALORANT need to interact in a reliable and consistent manner, so you can properly plan and execute without knowing ability-specific interactions.“
Breach
Aftershock (C)
- Now deals damage to the following:
- Killjoy Alarm Bot
- Killjoy Nanoswarm
- Killjoy Lockdown
- Cypher Tripwire
- Reyna Leer
- Sage Barrier Orb
- Sova Recon Bolt
- KAY/O Zero/Point
Killjoy
Turret (E)
- Bullet tagging reduced 72.5% slow >>> 29.5% slow
Sova
Hunter’s Fury (X)
- Now deals damage to the following:
- Killjoy Nanoswarm
- Cypher Trapwire
- Sage Barrier Orb
- Sova Recon Bolt
- KAY/O Zero/Point
Brimstone
Orbital Strike (X)
- Now deals damage to the following:
- Killjoy Nanoswarm
- Cypher Trapwire
- Sage Barrier Orb
- Sova Recon Bolt
Map Updates
- NEW MAP: Fracture is live!
- See below for more info on the Fracture map rotation
Competitive Updates
- Immortal 1/2/3 rank tiers are back!
- The Leaderboard will update to distinguish between those of you in each Immortal tier.
- Updated Ranked grouping restrictions to accommodate return of Immortal 1/2/3:
- Diamond 1 → Immortal 1
- Diamond 2 → Immortal 2
- Diamond 3 → Immortal 3
- Adjusted Competitive ranked distribution as detailed in a previous article
- Fracture only queue!
- This queue is a standard, Unrated mode that will give players a chance to practice the new map before they see it in Competitive play.
- Fracture-only queue will be available for 2 weeks, afterwards Fracture will enter other modes, including Competitive.
Progression Updates
Premium Battle Pass XP
- Upgrading to the Premium Battlepass will grant a 3% XP boost toward Battlepass tier progression for all matchmade games until the end of Act II
- We believe the Battlepass experience is at its best when you’re able to earn hype rewards as you unlock tiers, hitting major milestones and feeling good about what you’ve earned.
- This is not retroactive, so upgrading early will give you access to the most amount of XP
- The XP boost does not apply toward Daily or Weekly Missions
Social Updates
- Updated AFK detection logic to deter players from farming Battlepass/Account Levels by AFKing in game modes like Deathmatch and Snowball Fight
Performance Updates
- Updated the ping calculation to exclude the server frame time.
- Updated markers used by NVIDIA Reflex
- NVIDIA Reflex is used to reduce and measure rendering latency. This update should allow Reflex to better pace frames by adding present markers as well as fixes on some older markers.
Bugs
Agents
- Fixed a bug where concurrent, overlapping ally and enemy Viper smoke could cause the nearsight and decay to never remove
- Fixed a bug where Omen could become stuck in other objects if they were blocking the return location of From the Shadows
- Omen will no longer equip his weapon slower than intended after casting Dark Cover
- Astra will no longer equip her weapon slower than intended after exiting Astral Form
- Fixed KAY/O’s NULL/cmd waves from destroying the glass on Ascent
Competitive
- Fixed a bug that would cause the Leaderboard to infinitely load when searching for a specific player.
Esports Features
- For Coaches, the Loading screen should now properly display all of the Agent select information (Agent compositions of both teams, etc)
- Fixed an issue where Observer Moderators could not see the pause match timer option if they disconnected and then reconnected during a round
If you haven’t yet seen the new skin bundle that launches with EP3 Act 2 then check them out here.
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