Valorant patch nerfs Raze, alters Sage’s Slow Orb

Riot Games’ Valorant received a patch on April 21 that addressed two of the most played agents. After several complaints about Raze being overpowered, the developers have finally issued a nerf, and Sage’s Slow Orb has been affected as well.

One of the biggest changes coming to the duelist affects her Paint Shell grenades. These paint-filled grenades break off into smaller explosions that cover a large area and do a significant amount of damage. Since the ability is refreshed after every round, the power they possess has been put into question. With the new patch, you can only have one Paint Shell grenade at a time. Before you were able to purchase another grenade from the shop, which gave you two at the start of the round. Another key change is the cooldown reset on the grenades. Now players will have to get two kills to refresh the cooldown. 

Valorant’s only healer is the other agent receiving changes in this patch. Sage’s abilities aren’t easy to use and effective on both the defending and attacking sides. One of the biggest changes comes to her Slow Orb, which will now slow the airspeed of the players in the zone. That means agents like Jett won’t be able to quickly dash over the Slow Orb to avoid being slowed. Additionally, players can now walk through the Slow Orb without making noise. 

The full Valorant 0.47 patch notes are listed below, but they can also be found on Valorant‘s website.

VALORANT GAMEPLAY AND BALANCE

MELEE DAMAGE

• Melee attacks now inflict double the damage per hit to destructibles, including
• Sage’s Barrier
• Haven’s metal double doors

Why?

• There weren’t enough options during low econ rounds—such as the first round and right after switching sides—to combat Sage’s Barrier Orb. Our intent is to add a high-risk, high-reward method for players to interact with her wall, while still being able to take it down, no matter their loadout

RAZE

• Reduced Paint Shells from 2 to 1
• Paint Shells now have a kill reset, requiring players to get 2 kills to refresh the cooldown
• Tuned and adjusted audio for Paint Shells, Blast Pack, and Showstopper so that they’ll be easier to hear in hectic scenarios
• Fixed an edge case where the secondary cluster of Paint Shells would explode quicker than intended. They now have a minimum duration before exploding.

What’s up with that?

• Raze’s goal is to be a highly-threatening duelist that punishes enemies posted in predictable positions, but we felt like the cluster grenades and their number were creating overly oppressive scenarios. Also, players should be supplied with proper gameplay information and the audio cues on all of Raze’s abilities didn’t match their threat, so we changed the audio of each. For example, when the Showstopper is equipped or fired from a distance, players should be able to identify and interpret the threat.

SAGE

• Slow Orb now also slows the airspeed of players in the zone
• Players can now walk through the Slow Orb without making noise

Why though?

• Players were able to circumvent too much of Sage’s Slow Orb by bunny hopping through the zone. We want the minimum slow amount to be a bit more consistent with all movement in the zone, while still allowing for bunny hopping and walking to provide a slight benefit to traversing the zone. Also, we feel adding a stealthy yet slow way to move through the field brings more nuance to playing against the zone and a bit more uncertainty for Sage, since she can’t necessarily hear people who move through

MAP UPDATES

• Several exploits fixed on Bind, Haven, and Split
• Split: Orb moved from B Mid to B Main
• The intent is to alleviate some pressure from mid and provide more incentive for players to control B Main.

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Reduced outbound network traffic from the client for players running at high frames-per-second
• Some ISPs and network setups were throttling game traffic, impacting gameplay by causing large spikes in network latency as FPS increased.
• No impact to gameplay/responsiveness

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a rare server crash caused by packets occasionally being corrupted by some players’ networks
• Cypher’s Spycam can no longer use weapons
• Fixed a bug where footstep audible range would sometimes not appear on the minimap

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