Valorant's 1.04 patch is out, and it takes aim at several of the game's usual suspects. As with several previous patches--most recently 1.02--this one gives Viper some significant buffs, including adjusting the amount of time that she can remain outside of her ult Viper's Pit from 5 to 15 seconds. While in the pit, enemies will now have their minimap obscured, and they will not provide minimap intel to their allies, either.

　　In terms of other characters, Brimstone and Raze received minor nerfs, with the cost of both of their ultimate abilities changed from 6 points to 7 points. Given that they have two of the best ults in the game, this adjustment seems reasonable. However, Brimstone's Stim Beacon will no longer show its effect radius to enemies or buff them, meaning that it's significantly better in certain situations.

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　　As with almost all patches, 1.04 introduces several bug fixes to the game, most notably adjusting the Classic pistol's right-click spread-fire to its intended accuracy levels. It also includes a number of cosmetic changes to the game, such as making minimap vision cones color-coded depending on your team. Valorant's previous 1.03 patch rebalanced the Guardian rifle and changed the margins required for a team to surrender in unranked play.

　　

Valorant 1.04 Patch Notes

AGENT UPDATES

VIPER

Viper's Pit Max time outside of her ult before it collapses changed from 5>>>15 seconds Viper can hold the ability key to drop her ult early Enemies in Viper’s Pit have their minimap obscured and do not provide minimap detection to their allies Increased the brightness of the red enemy glow at the edge of Viper's near-sight

With Viper being allowed out of her ult for such a short period of time, we felt that she was not only limited in the plays she could make, but also gave too much continuous information to her enemies. The ability to move outside the ult smoke more freely should provide some new and interesting mind games for Viper to play—and hopefully puts the strategic pressure back on the enemy. The other improvements should push Viper’s advantage in her own smoke and help her avoid getting traded by enemies using minimap vision to target her.

　　

Decay Enemy decay per second increased from 10 to 15 from all sources. After exiting Viper's smoke, enemy decay sustains for 2.5 seconds before starting to fade

Viper's decay depleting so quickly from enemies was limiting the advantage it provided and wasn't creating the threat we had hoped for as a result. Adding a delay before it fades will hopefully widen the window where Viper and her team can capitalize and pair with the Viper's Pit updates (above) to provide fresh ways to play around her ult.

　　

Fuel Having both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen active does not consume additional fuel beyond the cost of having one active

The reduction in total uptime when both her vision blockers were active was making it difficult for Viper to use both tools together. Since Viper's smoke has so much commitment and makes up so much of her kit, we want to free her to use them in tandem to create powerful options for her team to take sites.

　　

RAZE

　　

Showstopper ultimate Cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points

Raze’s ultimate is one of the most impactful in the game and useful in almost any situation. As a result, it is being used a bit too often. So we’re upping the cost by 1, which should help reduce how often players have to face her Showstopper.

　　

BRIMSTONE

　　

Orbital Strike ultimate cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points

Much like Raze’s Ultimate, Brimstone’s Ult is very impactful and useful in a wide variety of situations. We feel like it was impacting rounds a little too frequently, so decided to up the cost slightly.

　　

Stim Beacon no longer Buffs enemies and no longer shows its effect radius to enemies

The Stim beacon is meant to be a pretty situational ability but we felt that revealing Brimstone’s location and having the potential to accidentally buff enemies was making this ability significantly weaker than we’d like.

　　

Brimstone’s Arms Fidelity

When you really think about an FPS, you’ll notice you spend an awful amount of time looking at your arms...like all the time. Before launch, we intended to increase the fidelity of Brimstone's arms to match the overall quality of the game. We did it—now look at those guns!

　　

CYPHER

　　

Cyber Cage can now be picked up during the buy phase

WEAPON UPDATES

　　Classic

　　The Classic right-click was the primary bug fix here, but we saw an opportunity to make the weapon behave a bit more consistently. We slightly tuned efficacy of jump right-clicks, but (hopefully) haven’t taken away their viability in close-range scenarios

　　Fixed bug where running inaccuracy on the right-click was much higher than intended running was adding a 1.5 penalty because it was referencing our generalized running error curves for pistolsFixed bug where jumping had no inaccuracy penaltyRunning spread is changed from 3.4 >>> 2.1 primarily a bug fixJumping spread changed from 1.9 >>> 2.3Walking spread changed from 1.9 >>> 1.95Added a 10% bonus to accuracy when crouching and stationary Intent is to feel consistent with crouch providing an accuracy benefit

　　

HUD & UI

　　Replaced the previous Weapon Stats textbox in the pre-round shop with an easier-to-compare graphical representation of stats

　　

QUALITY OF LIFE

　　Observer minimap vision cones are now colored by teamReplaced Reyna's Voice Over for Italian and Mexican Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 the talents we identified for the role were not able to record due to regional restrictions. You can now find in-game, the voices we originally intended for Italian and Mexican Reyna!

　　

Elderflame Skins

　　Adjusted the volume on the Elderflame Operator equip animationFixed bug that would cause the volume to stack if you spam equipped the OperatorEnemy footsteps duck cosmetic bus properly This means that enemy footsteps will always lower the volume of the skin sound effects that are not important to gameplay, like the flame whooshes, dragon roar, etc.Elderflame Melee inspect animation now has sound effects for level 1 and 2

　　

PERFORMANCE UPDATES

　　Gun pickup targeting and Sage Ultimate targeting unified with ally character highlights, saving VRam and GPU performanceMinor rendering performance fixesGun skin upgrade videos are now streamed instead of locally stored, reduced install size by 380MB

　　

BUG FIXES

　　Fixed requirement for Reyna to look at Soul Orbs to activate them and maintain her healing, behavior should match that of patch 1.02Fixed one-way Brimstone smokes when the player’s camera was around the top of the smokeFixed Breach’s Aftershock not properly applying damage to all characters if multiple are hit by itFixed jittering when reaching the max flight height of Sova’s droneFixed Marshall bug where the weapon maintained accuracy while walkingFixed issues with some translucency effects being one frame behind (such as Jett's dash, when used by the player)Fixed ally highlights not showing up on some AMD GPUs when using MSAA, and some Intel GPUsFixed a bug where loading screens did not cover the entire screen when playing in certain resolution/aspect ratio combinationsShortened the text on the photosensitivity warning screenFixed a bug where the “equip” button would stay greyed out when purchasing a skin variant that is being previewedFixed Brimstone smokes on Haven spawning offset of where intendedFixed a typo in Brimstone’s biography (thanks mooonlimes for the report)Valorant News & Announcements

　　Valorant's New Agent Skye Has A Healing Ability More Valorant Act 3 Details Revealed Valorant Ranked System And Competitive Mode Explained + Show More Valorant News & Announcements Links (2) Valorant Console Release Is "Definitely" Being Prototyped How To Download Valorant On PC