Every couple of weeks, Valorant likes to bring out a whole host of new changes in order to spice things up. As you might expect, this week is no different. What is different though is the sheer size of the patch. If you’re unsure of exactly what’s coming or want a quick refresher, here’s everything you can expect from today’s Valorant patch!
The Galaxy Wielding Astra is Now Available
Following several weeks of teases, the 15th agent to join the Valorant roster has finally arrived. Astra is a galaxy-wielding agent from the country of Ghana, seeking to bring a little more cosmic disruption to the game. Through her stars, she seeks to displace, disorient, and cause chaos with the enemy team on a global scale. She’s easily the most complex agent to join the game, and thus will take some getting used to before you can properly use her. If you need some help, we should have a guide up soon enough to show how you can fully utilize her. Be sure to keep an eye out.
Valorant Ranked Sees Fresh Reworks
With today marking a new season for Valorant, a slew of changes have been made to further improve the game’s competitive mode. The biggest change of all is the removal of the rank reduction at the start of the next season. This means you powerful Radiant players will no longer match with lower-ranked opponents once you begin Episode 2 Act 2’s season. You will still be bumped down to Immortal though (at least technically speaking) and will need to play matches to prove you still deserve a place in the top 500. That’s not even mentioning the increased requirement to belong in Radiant, which changes depending on the region. Needless to say, you’ll need to work even harder if you think you deserve a top spot.
Escalation’s Variant of Bind Sees Much Needed Changes
If you’ve found yourself the victim of trolling when playing on Bind in the new Escalation mode, today’s changes should be a welcome addition. Starting today, Bind’s doors will be locked to open in the mode to stop those pesky teleporter campers from snagging free kills. To go with this, the map’s pick rate has been reverted to normal levels after its reduction in Patch 2.03. All around, some great changes if you’re a fan of the desert map.
Tactical Voice Over Changes
The Valorant team is looking to improve the voice lines of each of the game’s characters in order to improve accessibility and ease of play. To explain what this means, Valorant agents would before say “enemy spotted” if they did that action. Now, the agents will say things like “Enemy spotted on A” or wherever they are depending on their location. You can also toggle this to show in chat if you prefer chat messages over voice.
That’s all the big changes coming to Valorant with today’s patch. If you’d like a full list of changes, including the many bug fixes, check out the official patch notes. Are you excited to see what’s new in Patch 2.04? What is your goal for ranked this season? Let us know in the comments below.
Valorant is available on PC.
