Games

Valorant Patch 1.02 Finally Adds Competitive Mode

Riot Games’ new update for Valorant brings a wealth of new features to the game, including changes to Agents like Viper, bug fixes, and even map updates. However, the biggest addition in the 1.02 patch is the release of Competitive Mode.

Not only has Riot finally added Competitive to Valorant, they’ve also made changes to the game’s ranks, including a new name for the top rank: Radiant. As with most patches, everyone’s also on the lookout for changes that may alter the way their favorite characters play.


Recommended: Elite Atlas Aero Wireless PC Gaming Headset

The Turtle Beach® Elite Atlas Aero is the ultimate high-performance wireless headset for PC gamers and streamers with customizable audio and unmatched comfort.

Shop Now

VALORANT RANKED IS ON

The Rundown

In the patch, the biggest character changes were made to Viper, Jett, and Reyna. The most notable improvement is for Viper’s Toxic Screen ability, which now is able to burn through walls, letting her open more areas which can be extremely useful for map control. For Jett and Reyna, they’ve received fixes with Jett’s Blade Storm ability now refreshing with Phoenix kills during Run It Back, and Soul Orbs now spawning when Reyna kills Phoenix during Run It Back. Cypher also saw changes in the 1.02 update, but these changers are primarily focused on resolving issues with his Spycam and smoke tuning.

The only weapon change this time around is for Bucky, which reduces its accuracy when a player is running with right-click.

Riot has implemented a number of map changes in the update as well, with the focus on making angles harder to clear in territory control areas. Of the maps, Haven has the most changes with new entrances to the A and C points. Other maps like Ascent and Bind are getting new entrance points as well.

Frustrated with the UI in Valorant? Riot is also working hard on UI changes with a whole bunch of them included in the 1.02 update. Specific additions to the UI include having a “back” button in all main section views. Exiting Valorant to your desktop will also be easier now. Riot is making it so that you’ll only need to press a single button to create a popup with the option to sign out and exit the game.

Additionally, you’ll now also have an Early Surrender option in Valorant for when all hope is lost, letting you surrender from a match that is unwinnable rather than having to see it through to the slow, bitter end. Other changes largely focus on bug fixes and general quality of life improvements.

Below, we’ve included the full 1.02 patch notes as provided by Riot Games on the Valorant Blog.

Valorant 1.02 Patch Notes

AGENT UPDATES

Viper

  • Toxic Screen now burns through walls, placing emitters at all valid locations (e.g., the ground) over its length.
  • Snake Bite, taking damage will make a player fragile for a short time.
  • Fragile is a debuff that doubles damage taken Note: the total damage is unchanged (the damage is lowered, but fragile increases it – it all evens out).
  • Poison Orb activation cooldown increased :: .5s >>> 6s.

Jett

  • Blade Storm now refreshes when used to kill Phoenix during Run It Back.

Reyna

  • Soul Orbs are now spawned when Reyna kills Phoenix during Run It Back.

Cypher

  • Fixed an issue where Spycam blocked Spike defusal.
  • Fixed an issue where players could place a Cyber Cage on a Trapwire.
  • Added prevention for Spycam going through teleporter doors on Bind when placed on the frame from the outside.

Smoke Tuning

  • Adjusted tuning around screen effects when exiting and entering smokes.
  • Decreased blind “falloff” value.
  • Decreased nearsighted intensity.

WEAPON UPDATES

Bucky (right-click)

  • Crouch-walking accuracy: 3.45 >>> 4.1
  • Walk accuracy 6.4 >>> 4.4
  • Run Accuracy 3.5 >>> 6.4

COMPETITIVE MODE UPDATE

Competitive Mode will be made available during this patch, changes since closed beta:

  • Updated rank iconography.
  • New name for top rank: Radiant
  • Expanded skill disparity range for playing with friends in rank placements.

MAP UPDATES

Haven

  • Garage Doors.
  • Entrance to C Long on Attacker Side.
  • Cover in A Lobby restructured to open up the space which allows for additional sight lines and traversal options.
  • C Link.
  • A Link.
  • The Entrance to A Sewer and the bottom of A Sewer.

Ascent

  • Defender spawn entrance.
  • Attacker side of A Main (Including a self-boost to gain an additional angle to peek A Main as an attacker).
  • Garden entrance.

Bind

  • A Bath entrance.
  • B Teleporter Exit and B Window entrance.

Split

  • Defender Spawn.

HUD & UI

  • All main sections views now have a “back” button in the upper left to return to the Home view (pressing Escape is also supported).
  • All details views (gun details, players cards, match details, etc.) have been converted to use the same back button in the upper left instead of a close button in the upper right.
  • Small popup dialogs still use the close button in the upper right where appropriate.
  • Slide-out options menu removed from the logo button in upper left.
  • New options button added to upper right, which opens the menu with Settings, Support, About, Leave Match, and Exit to Desktop buttons.
  • Circle progress elements for Battlepass and active contract removed from navigation; missions element remains throughout the experience.
  • Navigation reordered to accommodate the changes.
  • Exit to desktop flow converted to a single button with a popup that allows a player to exit or sign out and exit.
  • The Leave Match button is now displayed all the time, but will be locked in cases where leaving a match is not allowed.
  • Added a setting that allows players to always display the inventory in the lower right of the HUD.
  • Added a new HUD element that tells you when you haven’t been spawned in due to being AFK.

BATTLEPASS

  • Added Battlepass text button in the nav to make it easier to find.
  • Added small progress bar below text that shows progress for current level of the pass.
  • Hovering Battlepass in the nav shows a “peek” flyout of upcoming pass rewards.
  • Clicking either goes to a new Battlepass section.

CONTRACT & AGENTS SECTION

  • Moved Agents section out from under Collection to make it easier to find and to provide a home for contract progress in the nav.
  • Added small progress bar below text that shows progress for current level of the active contract.
  • Hovering Agents in the nav shows a “peek” of upcoming contract rewards.
  • Clicking Agents goes to the Agents section, and clicking the contract flyout navigates to Agents and opens the associated contract details.
  • Removed secondary navigation from Collection view since Agents no longer lives there and the navigation is no longer needed.

QUALITY OF LIFE

  • An Early Surrender option has been added. You can now opt to surrender out of a match ahead of the match’s completion if you do not want to continue playing.
  • You can call an early surrender vote by typing: “/ff” “forfeit” “concede” or “surrender.”
  • An early surrender vote requires all present players on the surrendering team to vote ‘yes’ to pass.
  • You can vote via “/yes” or “/no” along with the settings F5 and F6 (defaults).
  • Each team can only call a vote once per half Early surrender votes cannot be called before reaching round 8. Once a vote is called the vote option will be queued to vote on for the next round, or if you call the vote early enough in the buy phase you can vote immediately.
  • The winning team gets round win credit for every round necessary to bring them up to the victory condition (13 rounds). The surrendering team will get loss credit for every round necessary to bring them up to 13 rounds.
  • Added a setting that to allow players to permanently mute text from enemy players.

Update to Tagging (slowdown effect when hit by enemy fire).

  • Effect of tagging on movement speed reduced:
  • Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Standard) 80% >> 70%
  • Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Wall Penetration) 35% >> 25%
  • Increased the time it takes to reach desired slow amount when tagged by 100%

MODE UPDATES

Spike Rush

  • New Orb Type – Tracer Orb.
  • Team-wide buff that grants 2x wall penetration and reveals enemies for .75s when they are hit.
  • Duration: Entire round.
  • Speed Boost changed to Combat Stim.
  • Movement speed and durations unchanged.
  • Reload time decreased by 30%.
  • Weapon draw time decreased by 30%.
  • Spread recovery time decreased by 30%.
  • Rate of Fire increased by 30%.
  • Jump force increased by 25%.
  • Plague Orb now shares a pool with Paranoia Orb.
  • Only one of these will be chosen per game.
  • Only one Plague Orb can spawn per round.
  • Health reduction decreased from 90 to 50.
  • Deception Orb now shares a pool with Plague Orb.
  • Only one of these will be chosen per game.
  • Only one Deception Orb can spawn per round.
  • Duration decreased from 10s to 8s (now matches Plague Orb).
  • Tunnel vision decreased by 20% (meaning you see more on your screen).

Practice Mode

  • Reyna: Killing practice bots now properly spawns Soul Orbs.
  • Jett: Killing practice bots now properly refreshes Blade Storm.

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

  • Optimized a worst case performance scenario that occurred when multiple players are moving close to one another.
  • Optimized multi-kill streak banners.
  • Optimized player health bars.
  • Optimized creation of pings (z-ping, ping wheel, when an ally dies, etc).
  • Optimized Spawn Barrier audio causing periodic framerate dips.
  • [1.01 Hotfix] Resolved an issue that was causing low memory systems with slow HDDs to perform especially poorly.

BUG FIXES

  • Levels 2-7 for the Sovereign Ghost skin are now fixed and unlockable.
  • Fixed Toggle Walk, you can once again use this setting.
  • Fixed the Return from AFK message only displaying the name of the last player to rejoin.
  • Fixed an issue where the defuse bar would duplicate.
  • Fixed several localization strings and text overlaps.
  • Fixed several crashes Fixed a bug where the Spike could automatically plant when you walked onto a plant site while it was in your inventory.
  • Fixed a bug where the Spike would float in the air if it had been placed on a Sage wall.
  • Fixed a bug where the dropped Spike’s model could be invisible to defenders on while it was on the ground.
  • Fixed a bug where gun buddies were squished on the Arsenal page.
  • Fixed a bug where trying to open the Character Select UI while the megamap in the Shooting Range would result in a deadlock.
  • Improved GPU performance of most out of game menu screens.
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes players got stuck on the transition into game and never successfully transitioned into game.
  • Fixed a bug where the spread on the Bucky’s alt fire was higher when walking than was when running or standing still.
  • Fixed a bug where dead players could appear standing when you reconnect to a match.
  • Fixed a bug where you could get stuck grabbing orbs Fixed a bug where enemy players would appear on the minimap while watching the Spike, once your team was dead.

KNOWN ISSUES

  • Competitive match overtime on this patch will be resolved using Sudden Death, which is intrinsically unfair. Riot is actively working on replacing this with a more fair solution.
  • Discovered issues in our routing software causing some players in Sweden to be incorrectly placed on our Istanbul game servers, and this is likely causing a small number of players elsewhere to also end up on the incorrect game servers. The fix is deployed to Riot’s Stockholm networking gear and they are deploying the fix globally this week.

After reviewing the full 1.02 patch notes, we’re eager to hear your thoughts. Are you excited for Competitive Mode, are you happy about the changes made to Viper? What about the improvements to maps like Haven?


Read More: PS5 Games Confirmed So Far

It is always an exciting time in the video game community when a new generation of consoles usher in a whole new age of gaming with never-before-seen graphics and performance. You have to have great games to be a good console, and fortunately for prospective PS5 players there already been a handful of games confirmed to be coming to the console in the future.


Morgan is a writer, metalhead, horror lover, and indie game enthusiast. When it comes to games, they love nothing more than to wax poetic about all the latest and greatest indies to anyone who’ll listen. On a typical day, you’ll find Morgan perched in front of the computer like a gargoyle browsing through Steam’s new releases with a large cup of coffee. You can find them on Twitter@Author_MShaver