We’re back with Patch Notes 5.10 and we’re addressing some of the larger issues players have had with Cypher and Fade in the past. Also included are a bunch of Agent bug fixes and a new feature called Real Time Text Evaluation so that players can feel safer engaging with their teammates and opponents.
AGENT UPDATES
Cypher
As the game has evolved, we’ve seen Cypher’s presence and relative impact on the roster fall off. While we attribute part of this to Chamber coming to dominate the Sentinel slot more than we think is healthy, we also have found that overtime Cypher’s Trapwire setups have become too predictable and easy to counter and that his Ultimate has felt lacking both in restrictions required to pull it off and the reward for doing so. The increase in Trapwire distance should open up a lot of new potential setups for Cypher and allow him to mix up his play patterns in a way that forces his enemies to slow down and move carefully through the map if they want to spot them without being caught.
Removing the time restriction on enemy corpses should make his Ultimate more accessible than it has been in the past and allow for Cypher to feel more agency when he initiates Neural Theft, while adding a second ping should create a clearer period of time where Cypher is pulling the strings, taking in the information on the enemies initial location and setting up strategic moves based on the pressure of the second. We hope that these updates get Cypher mains out there coming up with new setups for their information webs and that, when paired with upcoming updates to Chamber, help him reclaim a compelling spot amongst his peers.
| Trapwire Maximum Trapwire length increased 1000 >>> 1500. Neural Theft Now reveals enemies two times. There is a four second delay between the reveals. Time restriction to cast on enemy corpses has been removed. Maximum cast distance increased 1200 >>> 1800. Quality of Life Updated the yellow silhouette used for Cypher’s reveal on Spycam and Neural Theft. Yellow silhouette now disappears if the revealed enemy becomes visible to you to help reduce confusion of seeing two representations of the enemy in different places. Yellow silhouette now starts dimmer and fades faster to make it more distinguishable from an actual enemy. Cypher’s placed utility is no longer destroyed by allies’ AOE damage. |
Fade
Fade’s Prowlers have been a versatile and difficult-to-play-against ability that we’re looking to sharpen with these changes. The duration changes encourage Fade to be more deliberate in the areas that she chooses to sweep, while the other tweaks to the ability are meant to help enemies on the counterplay side of things.
The Nightfall cost is increasing in price, as we’ve found the baseline value of the Ultimate to be on the higher end compared to other Ultimates in the game.
| Prowlers Duration reduced from 3 >>> 2.5 seconds. (Time the prowler is alive without a trail). Delay on bite after reaching target increased .4 >>> .6 seconds. Hitbox improvements. Nearsight duration on hit reduced 3.5 >>> 2.75 seconds. Prowlers now fizzle out and no longer debuff instead of debuffing its target if they teleported away before it finished its animation. Nightfall Cost increased 7 >>> 8. |
Harbor
Harbor abilities all make a healthy round impact, but we saw some players new to Harbor not using their abilities enough and feeling too constrained. We hope these changes make it easier for players to hit the ground running with Harbor and for skilled Harbor players to achieve more flexibility when controlling the map.
| Cascade Number of purchasable charges 1 >>> 2 |
GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS UPDATES
Real Time Text Evaluation (NA only to start)
- In addition to our existing interventions, we are launching a new feature to begin muting players in chat who send disruptive text messages in game. Interventions for disruptive text will now be applied sooner rather than later as we continue updating our systems to evaluate more types of text communication.
- These improvements will be added to North America first and expanded to more regions in the near future.
- With the implementation of more immediate text evaluation, we hope to detect and reduce disruptive situations while players are still in game and help you feel safer to engage in VALORANT.
GENERAL UPDATES
- Menus Update: Having heard the pain caused by removing one-click access to most of our menus, we’ve returned that functionality in the form of icon buttons in the universal navigation at the top of the screen. You’ll now be able to jump from Home, Battlepass, Agents, Career, Collection, and Store with one click from anywhere. Not sure what icon is what? Give them a hover – we’ve added tool tips to help you familiarize yourself.
- Like most changes, this one isn’t final and we’ll adjust based on your feedback!
MAP UPDATES
- Doors will now destroy placeable objects as soon as they come into contact with them, as opposed to only the moment the door is closed
SOCIAL UPDATES
- Fixed an issue that caused the “Auto-Reject Friend Requests: On” notification to be misaligned in the Social Panel for some languages.
BUGS
Agents
Astra
- Fixed a bug where Astra could cast a fake Nebula right at the start of a round before her Star charged up.
Chamber
- Fixed a bug where Chamber would fail to equip a gun at the start of a new round.
Harbor
- Fixed Harbor’s Cascade being visible on Minimap for enemies with vision of it.
- Fixed a bug where Harbor’s Cascade would sometimes spawn under the map.
- Fixed a bug where Harbor’s Cascade targeter on the minimap would shorten when aiming up or down even though the Cascade would travel the same distance.
- Fixed a bug where Harbor’s Cascade targeter on the minimap was slightly shorter than the actual distance it would travel.
Neon
- Fixed a bug where Neon’s Slide could be used to boost upwards in specific map locations.
