The Valorant 1.02 patch notes

Riot released another update for Valorant with patch 1.02. It features agent, weapon and map changes while also adding some new features.

We’ve already predicted a good portion of what Valorant’s patch 1.02 will contain. Today we’ll take a look at some of the most important changes in the latest update.

Agents

Viper

Toxic Screen now burns through walls, placing emitters at all valid locations (e.g., the ground) over its length

Viper Toxic screen is a potentially-strong vision slicing tool, but its access was well...terrible, making it only useful in a few spots on most maps. This should allow Viper to cut up sights, maps, and other unique areas to either fake or help take ground.

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)

With Viper applying decay on her smokes, but only providing moderate chip damage on her area-damage skill, pushing through it was hard to punish. With Fragile, Viper’s team should have a big advantage on anyone if they fire on pushing enemies

Poison Orb activation cooldown increased :: .5s >>> 6s

We like Viper’s unique ability to do “one-way” smokes, but some of the locations could create places where it was suicide to push through. An increased window should keep this viable without eliminating the strategy.

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

The previous tuning for smokes made it far too punishing for players to push through and take a calculated risk—really encouraging them to be used as a powerful defensive stall tool. Pushing through a smoke will still be risky, just more reasonable.

Weapon Updates

Bucky (right-click)

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

We discovered an accidental discrepancy in how we were applying movement inaccuracy to the Bucky's right-click, one we introduced during closed beta when we added a delay for players to receive walking accuracy when slowing down from a running state. This was making it so that the right-click was much more accurate on the run that intended. We've fixed this now so that running with the right-click is significantly more inaccurate than walking or standing still. We've also increased the inaccuracy for crouch-walking to more appropriately match the amount of evasion it provides.

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