Riot Games has updated the public beta environment (PBE) with a preview of what is to come in Valorant’s 5.10 patch, which brings with it major changes to two of the games agents, Cypher and Fade. Frequent balance updates are a way of life for most games, but Valorant is one of the most popular FPS games in the world, which adds an extra level of scrutiny to ever choice Riot Games makes to maintain its online shooter. Fortunately for fans, Riot Games posted directly to the Valorant sub-reddit explaining the patch notes and reasons behind every change.
Riot JoEllenPDF, the Valorant Community Manager, explains that Fade is receiving nerfs due to her Prowlers ability. Fade’s Prowlers “have been a versatile and difficult-to-play-against ability” according to Riot JoEllenPDF, which Riot intends to fix with nerfs to the duration of her Prowlers. By decreasing the duration, the design team intends for “Fade to be more deliberate in the areas that she chooses to sweep,” while further adjustments to the ability makes it easier for the opposing team to counterplay. In addition to the Prowler nerfs, Fade’s ultimate ability, Nightfall, is receiving a minor cost increase from 7 to 8.
Moving on to Cypher, the buffs are intended to “address the predictability of Cypher’s Trapwire setups as well as the lack of reward for pulling off his ultimate.” Trapwire is receiving a significant buff to its maximum length, going from 1,000 to 1,500, which should allow for new setups. Cypher’s ultimate, Neural Theft, allows the agent to see the location of all living enemies by targeting a corpse. Changes to the ability include revealing enemies twice with four seconds between each ping, removal of the cast time, and an increase in cast distance from 1,200 to 1,800. The long-awaited Cypher buffs are being received with lots of fanfare by long-suffering Cypher players, who are citing allied area of effect damage no longer removing Cypher’s traps as the best change in the patch.
Changes with no direct impact on gameplay include quality-of-life menu navigation updates. Moving among Home, Battlepass, Agents, Career, Collection, and Store can now be done with just one click from anywhere. One click move was originally in Valorant before being removed and now returned thanks to the community outcry. A similar quality-of-life update comes in the form of tooltips explaining what an icon is by hovering the mouse before clicking on a selection. Both of these navigational changes are especially helpful for new players still learning where everything is and what different selections mean on the game’s multiple menu screens.
Finally, PBE patch 5.10 fixes some bugs, most significantly with the latest agent to join the roster, Harbor. The water-based controller agent from India had a few bugs that impacted the cascade ability, including causing the projectile to spawn under the map. That problem has been fixed along with the range indicator incorrectly displaying a shorter distance than what the projectile would actually travel. As always with PBE patches, the exact numbers can change before the patch goes live on Valorant’s servers.
