The big news in the latest Valorant patch is that running accuracy with rifles has been significantly reduced. There’s been a feeling in the tactical shooter for some time that players can hit headshots far too often while on the run. Something that would hardly ever happen in CS:GO. With this patch, Riot Games is beginning to address this issue.
The guns affected by the update to movement accuracy are the Bulldog, Guardian, Phantom, and Vandal. The Running Error across these rifles has been increased from 3.75 to 5.0. The Walking Error has also been increased slightly from 0.8 to 1.1. Finally, the Crouch-moving Error has more than doubled to 0.8, up from 0.3.
The goal of these changes is to significantly reduce the chances of landing a headshot while running. Particularly at long range. The rifle running accuracy nerf will make pushing towards enemy Operators significantly tougher when using rifles. The change also separates the role of SMGs and rifles a little more, which is always a good thing.
Valorant patch makes more ranked changes
Valorant Episode 2 includes massive changes to the Ranked system. However, the switch to Rank Rating hasn’t been entirely smooth. So, along with the changes to running and gunning, Riot is once again tweaking the Competitive Matchmaking system. Senior Designer Jon ‘EvrMoar’ Walker shared his thoughts on the updates to Ranked and detailed some more changes that will come with Episode 2 Act II. You can read the whole article if you like, but I’ll give you the most important bits of info.
The biggest change relates to how long it takes for players to get to their true ranking. If you’re below your skill level, you should receive more Rank Rating to help you climb back to where you belong faster. Additionally, if you perform exceptionally well compared to your own abilities in a Ranked match, you can earn as high as 50 Rank Rating for a win.
An interesting change the Valorant team has made to Ranked with this patch is to make Diamond 3 and higher ranks only for solo and duo queues. This is in contrast to Riot’s insistence that Valorant is a team game and queuing with five players is how the tactical shooter should be played. Personally, I like the change. However, I suspect there will be a lot of five stacks out there that are going to be upset.
Episode 2 Act II Ranked plans
In his blog post, Walker also discussed some changes that will be coming to Valorant in the next Act. Firstly, players won’t need to play as many Ranked matches to recalibrate. The team acknowledges that this can become exhausting. In Episode 2 Act II, you will only need to play one placement match. Rank resets between Episodes will still be more significant than those between Acts.
Another oft-requested feature is the ability to hide your rank before and during games. This is to discourage toxicity towards players with lower ranks during matches. Conversely, it will prevent the highest-ranked players from getting abused if they perform poorly. Riot agrees this is a good idea and will be moving the visibility of ranks to the end screen only. That way, you will still be able to see how you stacked up against everyone else in the match once it’s all over.
Lastly, Valorant Episode 2 Act II will ease in terms of group restrictions. There are enough players at lower ranks to keep the games even. So, if you want to play with your friends, go right ahead.
Making changes to the running accuracy with rifles was the main goal of this Valorant patch. However, there’s also a long list of bugs that have been fixed. If you’d like to check them all out, you can do so at the end of the official patch notes.
