Gamers are incredibly crafty. No matter how prepared a developer thinks it is, when it puts a game in the hands of players, they always find ways to exploit tiny imperfections in maps. The second Valorant closed beta patch has taken some measures to tidy up these imperfections. It also makes changes to Sage that will prevent her from creating unintended boosts, while Omen has become even more sneaky.
Sage patch changes
The major change is that Sage’s Barrier Orb will now only spawn a chunk of the barrier if it is supported by a solid piece of ground. So, no more placing it on tiny pieces of geometry. This change also means the barrier may spawn fewer blocks.
The reasoning behind these changes to Barrier Orb is to prevent players from getting into places they really shouldn’t be able to. The Valorant team likes players being creative with boosting, but not when the creativity slips into exploitation.
Omen patch changes
The changes to Omen in the Valorant patch are designed to make it clear when you can kill him vs. send him back while he’s using his Ultimate ability. To that end, the moment Omen leaves his alternate shadow form, he will become vulnerable and will not appear dark.
The other change to Omen has decreased the radius in which opponents can hear him arrive in an area when using From the Shadows. If you catch Omen using his Ultimate, it is very easy to kill him. As such, this update makes it a little harder for opponents to catch the shadowy hunter being sneaky.
And everything else
This update has added ranked matchmaking to the game. However, players will need to wait a little longer before they will actually be able to jump into the mode. The Valorant team has simply said it will “go live in the near future.”
The patch has also done a lot of tidying up around the maps. Some curtains have been added, geometry has been recalculated, and materials have been made more consistent to prevent exploits.
There’s a long list of bugs that have been caught and squashed. The most prominent of these is a couple of fixes to Phoenix’s Run It Back. The particularly annoying bug that caused the Spike to get stuck in the map has also been fixed. You can check out the list of fixes, changes, and improvements in the complete patch notes on the Valorant website.
