Valorant 1.03 Patch Notes Include Guardian and Competitive Overtime Changes

Valorant Patch 1.03 sees balance changes to the Guardian, a new orb in Spike Rush, dedicated surrender button and quality of life changes.

Valorant Patch 1.03 comes with Several changes to adjust the power level of the Guardian to make it a more affordable heavy-hitting weapon. Quality of life changes seek to make it easier to surrender with dedicated button and earlier surrender vote-casting. Competitive Matches must now be won-by-two with the potential for a draw.

Valorant Patch 1.03 Weapon Updates

Guardian

• Price reduced from 2700 to 2500
• Rate of Fire reduced from 6.5 to 4.75
• Penetration Power increased from Medium to Heavy
• Input queue updated from 0.083 to 0.1175

Map Updates

Haven

• Removed spot where spike was unable to retrieved once dropped

All Maps

• Fixed multiple spots where players were able to clip inside level geometry
• Removed more locations where Sova's sensor arrow was able to go through walls

Mode Updates

Spike Rush
New Orb: Twin Hunters

• Capturing the orb releases two hunting wolves to track down the two nearest enemies (from orb location, they will not change after spawning)
• Wolves speed up when they spot an enemy and dash at them when close, slowing and near-sighting for 4 seconds upon impact.
• Wolves have 100 HP and can be damaged
• Wolves will time out at 15 seconds, or when their target is killed

Split: Orb Location

• Mid defender side orb has been moved onto mid platform to make it slightly less defender favored

Quality of Life

Surrender changes

• Unrated Mode vote requirements to pass changed from 100% to 80%
• AFK players who are not spawning in are not counted as voting participants. So if a player is not spawning on your 5-person team, you don't need a yes. For example, you can surrender with 3/4 votes in unrated, in cases where the 5th team member does not spawn in.
• Competitive Mode vote requirements to pass remains at 100%.
• You can now call a surrender vote starting with round 5 versus round 8
• A new button in the in-game menu has been added to call a surrender vote
• Competitive matches have a new win-by-two overtime format with automated votes on whether the game should continue or end in a draw.
• Instead of playing a single sudden death round, teams will alternate playing rounds on attack and defense until a team claims victory by being up by 2 rounds.
• Each round will have a full reset, setting all players at 5000 credits and 4 points short of their ultimate.
• After every two rounds of overtime, an automated vote will trigger to determine if the match should continue or end in a draw.
• The threshold for continuing the match will become stricter as more rounds have been played.
• First vote: 6 players needed to end match in a draw
• Second vote: 3 players needed to end match in a draw
• Third vote and on: 1 player needed to end match in a draw
• If the vote fails, the match will end in a draw
• Players might gain rank off a draw but will never lose rank
• Unrated will still use the original Sudden Death Effect
• Custom games now have an option to launch with win-by-two overtime rules.
• In the Collection screens, there is now a checkbox to toggle between showing all items or only owned ones (additional options and improvements for managing your collection will be coming in future patches)
• Fixed a bug where the mission "You or your ally plant/defuse spikes" sometimes did not take into account plants and defuses by allies
• Transition screens and startup screens are now letterboxed
• Fixed text overlap issues in the Battlepass and Contract screens in some languages
• Players in custom games with cheats enabled can select a different Agent to use on the next round in the cheats menu.
• Removing a friend will now prompt a confirmation dialogue.
• Pressing Escape while typing in the chat box will clear the message
• Revised layout of confirmation dialogs to make primary action larger and always on the left; applied color in various places, like using red for destructive actions; revised the locations of some confirmation and cancel buttons for consistency
• Minor fixes for visual artifacts on Bind on Intel GPUs
• Minor render improvements for modern hardware
• Added an error popup for crashes on startup linking to troubleshooting guide for crashes
• Patch notes and payment windows will scale correctly on 4K monitors
• IME input on payment windows will now work correctly (Japanese/Chinese)
• Players can now view individual skin levels in the collections and store view
• Updates to censored hit impact effects for better readability
• Added Agent silhouettes for observers
• Improved render performance for silhouettes
• Agent health bars are now visible to observers
• Fulfilling a buy request while moving will no longer interrupt your movement
• Custom Games can now be set to Tournament Mode.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a Cypher bug where traps that were placed such that they were on the inside of a doorway, would not trigger when someone walked through them.
• Fixed an issue with the Match Timer hitching under unstable network conditions
• Fixed an issue where players couldn't jump off ascenders if jump was bound to the mouse wheel
• Fixed some visual issues that could occur when reconnecting to the game while dead
• Fixed Barrier phase announcement showing up in normal games for observers
• Fixed various UI issues on observer scoreboard