VALORANT will rework several key agents

Riot Games has released a list of changes coming to VALORANT with Update 5.01. The main emphasis is made by the developers on refining and changing the skills of several agents in order to balance the gameplay.

Phoenix

We believe Rolling Serve is Phoenix's key ability. After reviewing the possible balance changes to his character, we have come to the conclusion that the Rolling Serve buff will best unlock the potential of this agent. We wanted Phoenix's Rolling Serve to be more competitive with other skills in the game and to be visible to the naked eye. In our opinion, Phoenix is an aggressive assault agent, so the additional changes to Return and Inferno will highlight his ability to capture areas of the map at the beginning of rounds.

List of changes

Twisted feed:

• Increased maximum flash duration to 1.5 seconds.
• Reduced delay before flash to 0.5 sec.

Hell:

• After the wall appears, the agent will pick up weapons faster.

Return:

• The agent will respawn at the marked point with the same armor that he had at the time the skill was applied.

Yoru

We noticed that those who play Yoru have some difficulties with the implementation of the planned tactics during the application of the ultimate. We hope the changes will help fix this. Using flashes during the ultimate will become more profitable, and at the same time, the opponents will still be able to counter Yoru.

List of changes

Spatial Drift:

• Increased the duration of the ultimate to 12 seconds.
• Decreased deactivation time to 0.8 sec.

KAY/O

Past changes to KAY/O didn't really affect the game for him, so we decided to simplify the use of skills of this agent, which seemed rather inconvenient.

List of changes

Fragment:

• Reduced the diameter of the coverage area to 8 m.
• Enemies will take damage from the use of the skill even out of sight.

null/cmd:

• All sound effects of the resurrection of the defeated KAY/O are now only audible to teammates.

Error correction

• Fixed an issue where enabling the "Direct Mouse Connect Buffer" setting would cause the chat or friends list to scroll to the very beginning or end.
• Fixed an issue that caused Yoru's Dimensional Drift immunity to take effect a little later.
• Fixed an issue where Sova's Shock Arrow would not deal damage to enemy traps and objects other than players.
• Fixed an issue where Fade's Ghost would sometimes reveal the location of players who were on the other side of the wall.

At the same time, the developers will implement a smurf detection feature (applicable for North America). In addition, collisions have been improved when walking next to or behind another player.