The newest VALORANT patch adds the newest Duelist to the roster. In this patch, Waylay will join the agent pool alongside some balance changes to the existing cast. This latest update is set to go live 9am PT / 11am CT / 5PM GMT on March 5th.
Thailand’s newest troublemaker
Unvailed on her home turf, Waylay hit the big screen with her announcement trailer and a showmatch at Masters Bangkok. She’s a movement style of duelist, with high speed crosshair breakers in the form of her Light Speed Dash ability and Refract recall. Coming with her is the new form of Crowd Control (CC) called Hinder which aims to add a new spin on causing problems.
Hinder applies a global slow to all actions an agent makes when affected, from movement to gun pull out time and even firing speed. If you hit the first shot then you’re still golden, but after that you’re a sitting duck more or less. Rather than being a toggle, affected players will linearly speed back up to their regular speed after being hit by the status.
Clove, Iso and Tejo Nerfed
It should really come as no surprise that the newest agent prior to Waylay’s release, Tejo, was on the hammering list. Players from day 1 figured out that the ease of use and obscene damage of Guided Salvo meant that you could point and click delete Killjoy’s Lockdown Ultimate if they put it in common spots.
Clove Changes
Clove is in an interesting spot because they haven’t been super dominant in the pro scene but have been a mainstay in ranked thanks to their general strength and ability to impact the game post death. Meddle has been reworked explode on contact with the ground rather than specific timer and ruse has had 10 seconds added to its Cooldown.
Pick me up now heals for 2 seconds longer but the movement speed buff has been cut in half, lasting just 3 seconds now.
Iso Changes
Iso has been a completely different story. He’s been a big part of the double duelist compositions that were able to take the first Masters Trophy alongside Yoru. The plan is to dial down his overal efficiency with the nerfs.
Undercut has been reduced down to a single charge per round and cost 300 to buy instead of 200 but now adds Suppression to its Vulnerability for 4 seconds.
Contingency has been reworked to have the option to make the wall move at half speed by clicking Alt Fire. And Double Tap now has Iso slowed more when the shield is broken; functioning more as Heavy Penetration rather than Wall Penetration.
Deadlock Rework
We’re still waiting for the wholesale changes to Harbour, but as players experiement more with Deadlock, Riot are looking to take those intrinsic strenghts and focus in on them. Her main change is the change of her GraveNet to being a signature. They’ve nerfed some of its overall stats to bring it in line with Signature abilities, droppping its range from 16m to 13 and changing the cooldown to 40 seconds. As its the main part of her toolkit, they wanted to have this be available more often as an option in hopes of encouraging the playstyle and pushing players to start using it with real intention. All players in audio range of a broken net will hear it now as part of these changes as well.
Her old signature, Barrier Mesh has gone from free to 400 credits.
Map Updates
Abyss and Bind are OUT and Ascent and Icebox are IN. These rotations affect both the Competitive and Deathmatch queues. Odin enjoyers will be unhappy with the new map changes with Ascent now having a large part of the B Main / B Lane walls no longer being penetratable. The aim is to try and prevent some of the more ridiculous rounds where the firing squad can light up this approach on defence without having much in the way of interaction.
VALORANT Console Patch
With the Console version of the game having a very different, contact heavy playstyle, 3 of the duelists have been adjusted.
- Neon actually has seen some buffs, standardising her values to her PC counterparts, initially playing it safe with her damage values on her ult and sprint drain rate in fears that she’d be too strong with aim assist. Now that the game has gotten its feet wet, the devs are happy to give her 1:1 parity to the PC version.
- Yoru’s kit has also been brought in line with his PC values, buffing his flash duration and Dimensional Drift delay. The only value to not match the PC version is his Flash explosion delay, which was increased from 0.6s to 0.8 to help with the generally slower console turning speed so that coutnerplay can still exist.
- Reyna, following the same theme has also seen buffs. Her Leer has been buffed from its paltry 40 HP to the 100 we see on PC, but maintains its slightly longer activation time for consoles just like Yoru’s flash.
