Riot Games has released a brand new Valorant update that balances two crucial agents that greatly impact both the pro and pug scene. Competitively speaking, Raze and Astra will find firmer ground in professional matches. Even though Raze’s change is considered to be a slight nerf, the agent remains the same, while Astra is getting a utility buff.
Astra’s Gravity Well is probably the biggest change in this update and now pulls players that are also attempting a defuse. The Spike won’t be considered as a savior any longer, as those who try to cling to it will still be pulled away. This could cause some distorted yet clutch outcomes in the professional scene because once the player is pulled out of the spike range, its diffuse will stop.
On the other side, Raze’s Blast Pack will now queue a different sound. The sound is louder and more distinctive, so it gives the defending side advantage and knowledge if Raze is trying to boost jump with her Blast Pack. But it’s not only these two that get the changes, but Viper is also getting one. Viper, one of the best defensive agents, is also getting a fix to one of its abilities. The fix evolves around the ammo damage taken after players are being damaged by her poison and is considered as a slight buff as well.
Other Quality of Life changes and bug fixes have also been addressed, and you can find them below:
Valorant Patch 2.07 Patch Notes
AGENT UPDATES
ASTRA
Astra gets a quick boost this patch focused on removing a counterintuitive rule where her Gravity Well doesn’t affect those defusing the Spike. We want to try and keep our ability interactions as consistent and easy to learn as possible and allow you to explore ways to leverage Agent abilities without running into unexpected walls. We think this update can create some interesting interactions post plant where enemies try to bait out the Gravity Well and play around its cooldown. As always, we’ll keep an eye on her new post-plant impact overall.
Gravity Well
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RAZE
Raze mains have learned to fly (like a butterfly in the sky) so far and so fast with their Blast Packs that it’s not uncommon to hear an explosion in the distance and then suddenly have an enemy Raze fly around the corner. Similar to Jett’s Tailwind, we’re adding a sound attached to Raze as she flies through the air that should help you better track her movement, and give you some heads up that danger might be on the way. Along with that, we’ve taken a pass on some of her ability VFX, in an attempt to reduce how much they obscure combat when exploding on the battlefield.
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VIPER
After digging into reports about Marshal shots not killing enemies that had taken 50 decay, we discovered a bug tied to the way the game determines if taking damage should be lethal on decayed targets with armor at specific health breakpoints. We think the bugged interaction with the Marshal was by far the most common, but we’ll watch how this bug fix affects the recently buffed Viper’s overall power.
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QUALITY OF LIFE
- Improved feel of ping wheel selection tool; this should now feel more predictable to use
- Cypher Tripwires now display to Observers with associated team color
BUGS
- Fixed issue where spectators and observers could sometimes see incorrect aim vectors for scoped-in sniper rifles when switching between views. The incorrect view would settle to the correct position over about 1 second. The correct view now immediately shows.
AGENTS
- Yoru can no longer plant the Spike after using Gatecrash while his Dimensional Shift is active
- Fixed an unintended dome in the sky that Astra saw if she came out of Astral form while Omen is ulting
- Fixed a bug where placing Killjoy’s turret next to Sage’s Barrier Orb would sometimes break it
- Cypher can no longer place Spycam in Cyber Cage projectiles
- Fixed issue where Killjoy’s disbabled Alarmbots would chase far away targets that ran by them when it was re-enabled
- Fixed issue where Skye’s Guiding Light appeared to go underground when thrown directly down
COMPETITIVE
- Fixed various localization issues with the server selector and the promotion screen
- Fixed a bug that was causing the Match History filter to function incorrectly
- When viewing a friend’s Match History, it’s possible to get an error message as the result of viewing too many filters too quickly. This limit is in place to help with performance, but should only happen when viewing a friend’s career.
SOCIAL
- Fixed a bug where players would have to restart client to rid themselves of their competitive queue restriction after their restriction ended
- Fixed a bug where some players were not penalized for being AFK after a match ended during remakes
- Fixed a bug where players using a Russian keyboard were having issues with party push to talk
- Fixed a bug where players who swapped to Thai keyboard had their voice chat settings reset
