The first Valorant patch since the game’s official release has arrived, patch 1.01, and sees the ever-favorite Sage nerfed slightly. The healer agent’s Barrier Orb has had a 10m reduction, down from 20m. Riot Games also made some minor changes to the maps and included some new orbs in the Spike Rush game mode.
Sage gets the first nerf in Valorant since… well, last patch
When Valorant came out, the 1.0 patch saw many changes to agent skills. Sage was one of them and got some fairly significant nerfs at that. Riot Games decided to kick it up a notch and also nerf the range of how far she can place her barrier.
Riot promises it’s not picking on healers though: “Previous changes to Sage’s Barrier Orb helped give it more counterplay options in pistol/early round but it’s still having too much impact in any given round. Our hope is that the wall stays a powerful stalling tool, but asks you to think more about when in the round you want to use it.”
Another change that Riot brought to Valorant is the orbs placed around the map. Where before they only charged up your ultimate, on Spike Rush they are now chosen at random, though the Full Ultimate orb will always be available. They are described as follows:
- Health Orb – Grants teamwide health regen (instant)
- 20-second duration
- 12 HP per second (3HP per tick)
- Deception Orb – Applies “Paranoia” to the enemy team 3 seconds after capture
- 10-second debuff
- Vision is greatly reduced (and a small Field of Vision shift)
- Fake footsteps and gunfire play for affected players
- Minimap is disabled
- Golden Gun – Grants capturing player a Golden Gun
- One-shot, one-kill
- Perfectly accurate at all times
- Agent moves at knife speed
- Only has a single bullet in the chamber and 2 backup rounds
- Kills grant an additional round
Additional changes in patch 1.01 include map call-out names, performance improvements, quality-of-life features, and bug fixes. For the entire list, check out the official Valorant patch notes.
