VALORANT Introduces ''Temporary Charges'' With Patch 1.11

Whoops, that one wasn't in the patch notes! As VALORANT Game Designer "rycou" has shared on his personal Twitter account, one new system that had been introduced with patch 1.11 had not made it into the patch notes. "Temporary Charges" as rycou calls them, is a system that makes specific abilities deplete after they had been used in the prior round after the buy phase. The change had not made the patch notes as they were provided too late and failed to make it in time for localisation.

According to the developer, abilities like "Killjoy's Alarmbot, Cypher's Trapwires, and Skye's heal" will all lose a charge in the following round if a charge has been used in the previous round. A practical example to illustrate how this works would be that if a Cypher was to set up a Tripwire that is in play during round 1, the charge would be lost for the second round despite having picked up the device during the previous round. Only when the Cypher picks up the Tripwire during the setup phase of round 1 will the charge be refunded.

The change appears to be a measure to crank up the economic strain on those agents while also getting rid of weird gameplay interactions in which a Cypher player would rush towards their set up Tripwires in order to save additional resources for the next round. 

For Skye's heal, the temporary charge will activate as soon as used in a round so rycou suggests to "use it or lose it!" The same is true for an already placed Alarmbot of Killjoy. Other abilities like for example Cypher's Camera will be covered by the signature ability system which gives players a charge each round anyway, thus not changing the interaction.


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