Valorant Act 2 update patch notes 1.05: Killjoy, Deathmatch, Raze nerfs

Valorant Episode 1: Act 2 is going live around the world over August 4 and 5, but while you wait for the update to hit your region, you can now check out the full patch notes for everything included.

The headline addition is Killjoy, the twelfth Agent joining the lineup. Immediately after her reveal, there were concerns that her abilities might be a touch overpowered, or at the very least frustrating to play against.

Valorant’s character design lead Ryan ‘Morello’ Scott has assured players that there are plenty of ways to counter the new Agent and her abilities. We’ll be able to put this to the test very soon.

Other major additions in this Act 2 update include FFA Deathmatch, a mode players have been asking for since beta. The mode will feature no abilities and unlimited creds, so you can get practice with all the weapons freely.

Of course, there’s also a new battle pass, boasting a wide variety of cosmetics to unlock, including the new Glitchpop collection.

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The full patch notes are now available, detailing all the new additions, bug fixes, buffs and nerfs, and more.

Valorant Act 2 update: patch notes

AGENT UPDATES

KILLJOY

Killjoy brings her killer robot buddies and round spectacles to VALORANT

A new contract has been added to unlock Killjoy and her associated rewards

RAZE

With the lethality of Raze’s Showstopper, we wanted to make some changes that will provide enemies more time to plan and acquire Raze when hearing “Fire in the Hole!” Additionally, we have adjusted her VFX so that players are able to notice Raze as she fires, increasing their ability to shoot a Raze that takes riskier plays.

Raze’s Blast Pack has been hitting players a bit too hard, able to kill a fully armored enemy in certain situations. We want to reduce this ability’s efficacy at damaging players while sharpening its ability at clearing enemy utility and obstacles.

COMPETITIVE

• Act Ranks have been added to the game; read our deep dive for more.
• 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