Riot Games’ tactical multiplayer first-person shooter game, Valorant, has made huge steps competitive-wise, with consecutive and stable update releases, to an entirely new shape that supports multiple game styles. Patch 1.03 confirms that the Guardian’s price, a high caliber weapon that echoes the one-shot one-kill philosophy, has been tuned down to meet player’s demands.
While its rate of fire has been reduced from 6.5 to 4.75, the Guardian still tends to define a new meta followed by the players. With the Guardian price lowered from 2700 to 2500, Riot Games aims to make this a primary choice in a rough economic situation, which may resonate in more players being attracted to this semi-automatic rifle.
Furthermore, Valorant’s Patch 1.03 brings a lot of map changes, including Quality of Life tweaks which involve enhancement of the new surrender feature, and a couple of bug fixes. For a more detailed view as per Riot Games’ statement, check the full list of patch notes below:
Valorant 1.03 Patch Notes
WEAPON UPDATES
Guardian
- Price reduced from 2700 >>> 2500
- Rate of Fire reduced from 6.5 >>> 4.75
- Penetration power increased from Medium >>> Heavy
- Input queue updated from 0.083 >>> 0.1175
MAP UPDATES
Haven
- Removed spot where Spike was unable to be retrieved once dropped.
All Maps
- Fixed multiple spots where players were able to clip inside level geometry
- Removed more locations where Sova’s sensor arrow was able to go through walls
MODE UPDATES
Spike Rush
- New Orb: Twin Hunters
- Capturing the orb releases two hunting wolves to track down the two nearest enemies (from orb location, they will not change targets after spawning).
- Wolves speed up when they spot an enemy and dash at them when close, slowing and near-sighting for 4 seconds upon impact.
- Wolves have 150 HP and can be damaged
- Wolves will time out at 15 seconds, or when their target is killed
Split: Orb Location
- Mid defender side orb has been moved onto mid platform to make it slightly less defender favored
QUALITY OF LIFE
- Surrender changes
- Unrated Mode vote requirements to pass changed from 100% to 80%
- Competitive Mode vote requirements to pass remains at 100%
- You can now call a surrender vote starting with round 5 versus round 8
- A new button in the in-game menu has been added to call a surrender vote
- In the Collection screens, there is now a checkbox to toggle between showing all items or only owned ones (additional options and improvements for managing your collection will be coming in future patches)
- Fixed a bug where the mission “You or your ally plant/defuse spikes” sometimes did not take into account plants and defuses by allies
- Transition screens and startup screens are now letterboxed
- Fixed text overlap issues in the Battlepass and Contract screens in some languages
- Players in custom games with cheats enabled can select a different Agent to use on the next round in the cheats menu.
- Removing a friend will now prompt a confirmation dialogue
- Pressing Escape while typing in the chat box will clear the message
- Revised layout of confirmation dialogs to make primary action larger and always on the left; applied color in various places, like using red for destructive actions; revised the locations of some confirmation and cancel buttons for consistency
- Minor fixes for visual artifacts on Bind on Intel GPUs
- Minor render improvements for modern hardware
- Added an error popup for crashes on startup linking to troubleshooting guide for crashes
https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050789953 - Patch notes and payment windows will scale correctly on 4K monitors
- IME input on payment windows will now work correctly (Japanese/Chinese)
- Players can now view individual skin levels in the collections and store view
- Updates to censored hit impact effects for better readability
- Added Agent silhouettes for observers
- Improved render performance for silhouettes
- Agent health bars are now visible to observers
- Fulfilling a buy request while moving will no longer interrupt your movement
- Custom Games Tournament Mode:
- Custom games can now be set to Tournament Mode. This allows every player in the game to have access to the
- Toggle Match Timer cheat in game without having all other cheats enabled. It also allows observers to be flagged as moderators, which grants them access to additional cheats that they can use as necessary. Regular observers cannot use cheats anymore.
- We’ll be looking at expanding the list of moderator cheats in future patches.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed a Cypher bug where traps that were placed such that they were on the inside of a doorway, would not trigger when someone walked through them
- Fixed an issue with the Match Timer hitching under unstable network conditions
- Fixed an issue where players couldn’t jump off ascenders if jump was bound to the mousewheel
- Fixed some visual issues that could occur when reconnecting to the game while dead
- Fixed Barrier phase announcement showing up in normal games for observers
- Fixed various UI issues on observer scoreboard
