After Valorant Patch 1.03 — which was considered disappointing by the community — Patch 1.04 was eagerly awaited to vary the meta that has remained unchanged since the official release of the game.
As announced by developer Morello at the beginning of the weekend, Raze, Cypher and Viper have undergone some changes. We also add an update of the weapons with the right-click as well as the classic bug fixes.
AGENT UPDATES
Viper
Viper's Pit
- Max time outside of her ult before it collapses changed from 5>>>12 seconds.
- Viper can hold the ability key to drop her ult early.
- Enemies in Viper’s Pit have their minimap obscured and do not provide minimap detection to their allies.
- Increased the brightness of the red enemy glow at the edge of Viper's near-sight.
Decay
- Enemy decay per second increased from 10 to 15 from all sources.
- After exiting Viper's smoke, enemy decay sustains for 2.5 seconds before starting to fade.
Fuel
- Having both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen active does not consume additional fuel beyond the cost of having one active.
Raze
- Showstopper ultimate Cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points
Brimstone
- Orbital Strike ultimate cost changed from 6 to 7 Ult points.
- Stim Beacon no longer Buffs enemies and no longer shows its effect radius to enemies.
- Brimstone’s Arms Fidelity.
Cypher
- Cyber Cage can now be picked up during the buy phase.
WEAPON UPDATES
Classic
- Fixed bug where running inaccuracy on the right-click was much higher than intended.
- Fixed bug where jumping had no inaccuracy penalty
- Running spread is changed from 3.4 >>> 2.1
- Jumping spread changed from 1.9 >>> 2.3
- Walking spread changed from 1.9 >>> 1.95
- Added a 10% bonus to accuracy when crouching and stationary.
HUD & UI
Replaced the previous Weapon Stats textbox in the pre-round shop with an easier-to-compare graphical representation of stats.
QUALITY OF LIFE
- Observer minimap vision cones are now colored by team.
- Replaced Reyna's Voice Over for Italian and Mexican.
ELDERFLAME SKINS
- Adjusted the volume on the Elderflame Operator equip animation.
- Fixed bug that would cause the volume to stack if you spam equipped the Operator.
- Enemy footsteps duck cosmetic bus properly.
- Elderflame Melee inspect animation now has sound effects for level 1 and 2.
PERFORMANCE UPDATES
- Gun pickup targeting and Sage Ultimate targeting unified with ally character highlights, saving VRam and GPU performance.
- Minor rendering performance fixes.
- Gun skin upgrade videos are now streamed instead of locally stored, reduced install size by 380MB.
BUG FIXES
- Fixed requirement for Reyna to look at Soul Orbs to activate them and maintain her healing, behavior should match that of patch 1.02.
- Fixed one-way Brimstone smokes when the player’s camera was around the top of the smoke.
- Fixed Breach’s Aftershock not properly applying damage to all characters if multiple are hit by it.
- Fixed jittering when reaching the max flight height of Sova’s drone.
- Fixed Marshall bug where the weapon maintained accuracy while walking.
- Fixed issues with some translucency effects being one frame behind (such as Jett's dash, when used by the player).
- Fixed ally highlights not showing up on some AMD GPUs when using MSAA, and some Intel GPUs.
- Fixed a bug where loading screens did not cover the entire screen when playing in certain resolution/aspect ratio combinations.
- Shortened the text on the photosensitivity warning screen.
- Fixed a bug where the “equip” button would stay greyed out when purchasing a skin variant that is being previewed.
- Fixed Brimstone smokes on Haven spawning offset of where intended.
- Fixed a typo in Brimstone’s biography (thanks mooonlimes for the report).
Valorant has a very active community, which likes to rummage through the game's files to find leads. However, she may have gotten a bit carried away with the so-called new agents Crusader and Shatter, which are actually abandoned projects.
