The newest Valorant patch is scheduled to hit the game’s servers today, March 22. In recent updates to the battle royale, Riot Games has been focused on improving gameplay rather than adding new content, and patch 4.05 is no different.
The only agent to be impacted by the update is Brimstone, who will see a pretty hefty nerf after a recent buff took things a little too far. Additionally, the Deterministic Map System is now available in all regions which will likely increase the variety of maps players find themselves in. Along with a handful of bug fixes, Valorant players will also be able to import and export unique crosshair settings through auto-generated codes.
See the full patch notes for Valorant Patch 4.5 below:
AGENT UPDATES
BRIMSTONE
Some call him “Brimmy with the stimmy.” And while it’s been exciting to see you all leverage Brimstone’s recent Stim Beacon balance in fresh ways, we think having two stims reduced the importance of deploying it at the right moment. The changes below are our attempt to address this while still retaining Brimstone’s refined identity as a “bursty” excellence of execution.
- Stim Beacon
- Charges reduced 2 >>> 1
- Cost increased 100 >>> 200
GAME SYSTEM UPDATES
Crosshair Import and Export feature added
- Added the ability to import and export different crosshair settings via auto-generated codes.
- To export and share your personal crosshair settings, go to Settings >> Crosshair tab >> click on the icon that looks like an arrow pointing up, found next to Crosshair Profile (it looks like an up arrow chilling in the middle of a bowl). Your auto-generated code will be copied to your clipboard.
- To import crosshair settings, go to Settings >> Crosshair tab >> click on the icon that looks like an arrow pointing down next to Crosshair Profile. Input or paste the code in the provided field and click the “Import” button.
- The crosshair preview at the top of the Settings Menu should reflect the imported settings. Make sure to give it a unique profile name!
Updated “Prioritize Strongest Weapon” setting
The goal behind this setting is to allow players to traverse quickly with melee equipped and be combat-ready after using an ability or interacting with the Spike, ult orbs, etc. Two changes were made.
- Reworked ‘Prioritize Strongest Weapon’ setting
- Renamed setting to Auto-Equip Prioritizes: Most Recent | Strongest
- Updated the priority system to support weapon-like abilities (previous priority: Primary > Secondary > Melee)
- New priority: (Ultimate & Primary) > (Secondary & Chamber Pistol) > Melee
- Resolve priority ties by selecting the more recently equipped weapon
- Added a new setting: Don’t Auto-Equip Melee
- Skips past the melee when finding the most recent weapon to auto-equip.
- Prevents pulling the melee back out after channeling or casting abilities, without changing any other auto-equip behavior.
Note that you can still queue up ‘equip’ inputs (e.g., pressing ‘1’ mid-dash to equip your primary once the dash completes). When you didn’t queue up a specific equip action, the default auto-equip behavior was to pull out the most recently equipped weapon. The new settings are meant to allow you to modify that behavior based on preference.
When considering how abilities fit in, deciding whether Jett’s knives or her primary weapon is ‘stronger’ depends on gameplay context and your preference. How many knives do you have left? How close is the enemy? How’s your aim feeling? In playtesting, we found that the best heuristic for which weapon is contextually stronger was whichever you had equipped previously.
COMPETITIVE UPDATES
- Deterministic Map System enabled for all regions
- This rollout should increase the variety of maps in your queue based on a system we tested in the LATAM region.
BUG FIXES
Competitive
- Fixed a bug that was causing the Leave Match button to function incorrectly for PBE players
Agents
- Fixed issue where Sova’s Recon Bolt was destroyed by Brimstone’s Orbital Strike even if the Recon Bolt was well out of the area
Social
- Fixed a bug where the mic icon on the scoreboard could not be interacted with after hovering over it with the mouse
KNOWN ISSUES
Icebox
- There are a handful of bug fixes prepped for Icebox, but the team ran into an issue that blocked us from shipping them right at 4.05 launch. We hope to ship these before the next patch and will list them here as soon as we do.
Valorant is available to play for free on PC. In June 2021, Riot Games announced its plans to develop a mobile version of the game to commemorate the game’s extremely successful first year, with over 14 million monthly active players since launch. The mobile version will also be the first step made to expand the game’s universe. In December 2021, Valorant‘s director Joe Ziegler stepped down to start a new project at Riot.