Valorant patch notes for Act 2: Act Ranks goes live with Killjoy contract
THE Valorant patch notes for Act 2 are now live and includes news on Ranks and the release of the new Killjoy contract.
Valorant Act 2 is rolling out today and developers Riot Games have provided detailed patch notes on what’s changing.
As revealed prior to the big launch, gamers can buy a new Battle Pass, unlock a new Agent and expect the launch of a new mode later this week.
Killjoy is the latest agent to join the Valorant roster and comes with her own unique set of abilities.
It’s unclear how popular or loathed she will become until gamers have had a chance to test out her nano swarms and turrets, but they will first need to complete her new contract, or directly purchase access.
Killjoy’s abilities
- Alarmbot: Equips a covert Alarmbot that hunts down enemies that get in range and explodes, applying Vulnerable.
- Turret: Deploy a turret that fires at enemies in a 180-degree cone.
- Signature Ability Nanoswarm: Equip a Nano Swarm grenade which activates a Nanoswarm and deploys a damaging swarm of nanobots.
- Ultimate Ability Lockdown: The Lockdown device detains all enemies caught in its radius but can be destroyed by enemies.
The new Deathmatch mode is also part of the new Valorant update and is set to go live on August 5.
FFA Deathmatch allows ten players to enter the game with no abilities and infinite money.
Players respawning after death have the objective to be the first to 30 kills or most kills at 6 minutes.
As a rough rundown, Free-For-All deathmatch will include ten players. No abilities. Infinite money.
It should also be noted that FFA deathmatch is going to launch in a BETA test window on August 5, meaning it is subject to change.
Riot Games will be monitoring server performance and game stability, with the hope that they can leave everything in place if everything remains steady.
Full patch notes for today’s Valorant update can be found below, courtesy of Riot Games:
Valorant release teaser for new agent ‘Killjoy’
COMPETITIVE
Act Ranks have been added to the game
Patch 1.05 marks the end of Competitive Act I—Competitive Act II starts
If you earned a rank in Act I, play 3 more games to show your rank again in Act II. If you are a new player you will still need to play 5 initial placement matches so we have more time to calibrate to your skill
Expect a conservative initial placement, ~2 rank tiers lower than your prior Act I rank, so we are confident you are at or above that skill in Act II. Performance will have a larger impact in your early games, so you will be able to quickly gain rank if you play well and win
Competitive matchmaking now will have a higher chance to match solo and solo/duo players against similarly sized premade groups at the cost of queue times being slightly longer
Regardless of premade sizes, match balance is sitting fairly close to 50 / 50 for which team wins, but there is often a larger skill disparity between the best and worst players in the games with large premade sizes. This change should reduce the chance of solo players getting into games where there is high skill disparity.
Rank indicators have been modified on a loss to provide more granularity into how your rank was changed— You can now receive:
Rating decreased slightly e (1 down arrow)
Rating decreased (2 down arrows)
Rating greatly decreased (3 down arrows)
Previously we showed very little info around how much rank you lost on a loss to limit the already painful experience of a loss. However, this was leading to issues where a player may have had a really rough game (think decisively lost the game and played poorly) and then would win several games and not rank up. This should help alleviate this problem somewhat by providing more transparency on a loss and your amount of rank lost.
We are also looking into ways to give additional transparency around rank changes in future patches
Match History will now show the rank you went into the match with for that game, versus the rank you ended the game with
You can now view your friends career tab via the context menu in the social panel. This means you can see your friends rank, Act Rank, and Match History.
You can now see how awesome your friends have been doing in their matches and their rank gains...or reach out and console them if they have had some rough games.
Custom Games now allow the leader to select your target game pod location and see players ping to that game pod.
For custom games, when all players are opting in to the game, we wanted to allow the leader more agency around what latency players will have.Hopefully your custom game leader will try and find the best DC for the game for all players, but if they are greedy you can always leave without penalty.
GAME MODES
Deathmatch drops! Hop in to hone your gunplay mechanics or warm up before you hit ranked
10-player free-for-all
First to 30 kills with a time limit of 6 minutes
No abilities
You’ll load in as a random Agent that you own
Buy whatever weapons you want; heavy armor is given to you automatically
Killing enemies drops health kits: picking one up fully restores your health/armor AND automatically reloads your weapon.
All enemies are periodically revealed on the minimap
Deathmatch is in beta as we continue to evaluate game performance and stability. Availability will be limited to specific windows upon deployment of 1.05, with the first window starting Wednesday, August 5.
QUALITY OF LIFE
Players who report other disruptive players will now receive an email if the reported player has been punished
Arriving mid-patch: Your rotating store offers will stop including things you already own!
BUG FIXES
Fixed issue causing Sova’s Owl Drone to rotate slower
Fixed issue where Reyna did not get her full heal if it began right when her overheal started to decay
Fixed nearsight not apply properly when going through smoke parts of Viper and Phoenix’s walls
[1.04 Hotfix] Fixed a bug where Phoenix could plant the Spike off the bomb site if he finished planting after Run it Back ended
Fixed a bug where ping in the scoreboard would not appear for Observers
Fixed a bug where Phoenix could in rare cases begin to auto-defuse the Spike if he was defusing the Spike when Run it Back ended
Fixed an exploit where spamming inspect with a macro could cause server lag
Game modifiers/cheats now notify all-chat when any player toggles them
General fixes to moderators, tournament mode, and game modifiers
Fixed a minimap bug, where the minimap would not correctly rotate on side swap rounds, when using fixed minimap + rotate based on side settings
Resolved inconsistencies and cleaned up UX with options present on the Match tab in the in-game settings screen
Resolved issue with incorrect rank briefly, and possibly persisting, to show for players in Career tab
Resolved issue where rating adjustment indicators would show on-hover in Agent Select
Resolved issue where account # tag wasn’t correctly showing on-hover on the Match tab in the in-game settings screen
Resolved issue where only one team was able to vote to surrender if both queued the vote at the same time
Fixed a bug where it was possible to interact with the character selection UI through the Shooting Range loading screen
When equipping a gun buddy, an unassigned buddy no longer gets selected
Fixed a visual bug where the lobby would play an unwanted animation when a match is found