Valorant Patch 1.02 Rolls Out Major Features

Valorant has finally launched the much-anticipated patch 1.02, which adds back in the ranked system and Competitive mode that early access players got to test during the beta, after a slight delay involving a bug. The addition of ranked comes alongside numerous balance and quality of life changes, plus a few new features.

Competitive Mode will let you test your skills in a more competitively focused environment, where players are ranked after a series of placement matches and grouped with players in similar skill groups. Riot says that the skill disparity during placement matches has been tuned to better fit with players in your party. Patch 1.02 has also renamed the top rank to "Radiant" following player feedback. You can learn more about how this all works in our Valorant ranked play guide.

Another big addition in patch 1.02 is the ability to surrender matches, which will come in handy for ranked matches where teams are very clearly mismatched. Valorant games can take a long time to complete, with 14 rounds required to win. Teams can now start a surrender vote after eight rounds, and only vote once per round. If it succeeds, winning teams are rewarded based on how many rounds they require to win, while the losing team is penalized in the same manner.

Other changes include various balancing tweaks to several characters, as well as changes to movement speed penalties when being hit with enemy fire. You can read through the full patch notes below or on Riot's blog, and check out our Valorant review if you're still deciding on whether to invest time into it or not.

Valorant Patch 1.02 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 increases 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

Adjusted numerous locations to allow clearing angles to be a bit more straightforward in the following places:

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 and 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.
• Note that the Leave Match button is now displayed all the time, but will be locked in cases where leaving a match is not allowed. Previously the button was missing completely when leaving was not allowed, which looked like a bug rather than a restriction.
• 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 and 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. We will also be adding some light polish and functionality in future patches post 1.02.
  • 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 we know is intrinsically unfair. We’re actively working on replacing this with a more fair solution.
• We’ve 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 our Stockholm networking gear and we’re deploying the fix globally this week.