VALORANT Patch Notes 1.01 - Sage Nerf, Spike Rush Changes and More
The VALORANT devs have dropped a surprise patch notes and update blog!
The major changes are to Sage's abilities, the Spike Rush game mode and some QOL changes.
SAGE
Although the devs "promise we’re not picking on healers", Sage has received a significant nerf.
Her Barrier Orb ability cast range has been reduced from 20 to 10 metres. The devs explain that "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."
Bad news for healer mains.
Spike Rush
The Spike Rush game mode now features 5 randomly selected orbs, with the Full Ultimate orb always being available. Four of the remaining 7 orb types will be chosen at random.
New Orb Types
These new orb types could link back to GGRecon's report about a leaked game mode for VALORANT, featuring health regens and weapon buffs.
Health Orb - Grants instant teamwide health regen, 20-second duration, 2 HP per second (3HP per tick), SFX/VFX only play while actually healing.
Deception Orb - Applies “Paranoia” 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 the chamber and 2 backup rounds, kills grant an additional round.
FPS/QOL
Riot rolled out a ton of performance updates for this patch, saying;
The game should feel even smoother in combat and many scenes will likely have higher average FPS depending on your spec.
Below are just a few of the Quality of Life changes.
- Added a setting that allows the inventory to always appear
- Pings will no longer draw over allies and enemies when placed behind them
- Missions on the end of game screen are now sorted by completion and by type
Check out the VALORANT patch notes here.
Images via Riot Games