Riot Games has released yet another beta patch for its up and coming free-to-play FPS, Valorant. Debuting via closed beta a few weeks ago, Valorant recently received an update that threw some nerfs at Raze and Sage, while also tweaking the game’s melee damage and offering some bug fixes. Now, releasing just a little over a week later, Valorant update 0.49 is live featuring some Sage and Omen changes and the addition of competitive mode.

Riot recently took to its Valorant website to detail the full patch notes for update 0.49. Omen and Sage received the most work, with the former getting a visual update and a few ability tweaks and the latter receiving a few changers to her Barrier Orb. Competitive mode also makes its debut this patch just a few days after Riot detailed what players can expect from the new addition. Here are the bulk of the patch notes:

Valorant Update 0.49

GAMEPLAY AND BALANCE

Omen

• Omen now immediately becomes vulnerable and no longer appears dark after he leaves his alternate shadow form
  • If you were to find enemy Omen teleporting in, it was often confusing when you should shoot him to get the kill (vs. sending him back). This change is to both account for an invulnerability bug and score some extra points of clarity
• The attenuation radius of the arrival sound on Omen’s From the Shadows has been reduced to 2250
  • Attenuation is a big word, but the short of it is you have to be closer to Omen to echolocate where he’s teleporting to. We’re trying to give him some spook back since if you do find him, you should now have him dead to rights

Sage

• Barrier Orb will only spawn a chunk of the barrier if it is supported by the ground, this means it will sometimes only spawn 2 barrier chunks
• Barrier Orb can no longer be placed on “small” pieces of geometry, it must be placed on the ground or on top of boxes
  • We love supporting boost gameplay, especially when multiple characters combine their abilities (looking at you Jett and Omen). However, we felt with the current placement requirements, characters were able to boost to too many unintended spots. With this change, players can still boost into some unexpected positions, but they hopefully won’t be 30 feet in the sky and floating in the middle of the site to look through a tiny pinhole in the map.

CHARACTER UPDATES

• [Omen] Updated Omen’s visuals
• [Breach] Updated Breach’s visuals

MAP UPDATES

• Added curtains to the top of double doors on Haven to remove the Sage Barrier Orb boost that allowed players to see through a sliver of the door at the top
• Fixed issue with Cypher camera being placed on the Haven A Main boxes
• Multiple fixes to the geometry on Haven, Bind, and Split to fix exploits and help optimize gameplay—massive thanks to all of the folks who helped to identify these! We see you
• Updated materials on Bind and Haven to make surfaces more consistent overall
• Changed color of Radianite crates in order to unify overall visuals

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• Added Competitive mode and ranked matchmaking, to go live in the near future of the Valorant beta

OBSERVER MODE

• Added “Ghost cheat” as an option to custom games with cheats enabled, allowing you to fly around the map in no-clip mode
• Ability HUD no longer displays when entering drone camera as an observer
• Exiting drone camera will now swap back to the most recently viewed player if they’re still a valid view target
• Swapping through players to view will now iterate through an entire team before going to players on the other team

HUD & UI

• In-game
  • New directional damage indicator visual
  • New low health and low ammo visuals
  • Removed character portrait from player’s minimap icon to better distinguish player icon; icon will receive additional color and polish in the future
  • Voice activity is now shown above allies’ heads
  • Added color to spike icon above ally’s head to make it easier to see
  • Fixed the ultimate ability icon above teammates’ heads showing as charged after gaining 1 ult point instead of when actually charged
  • Ping elements now fade when under player aim; previously only text faded

• Out-of-game
  • Relocated Find Match button from social panel to Play screen; renamed to Start
  • Relocated Practice button from social panel to Play screen
  • Added Play Again button to End of Game screen
  • Made the flyouts on the nav progression widget clickable
  • Made main navigation button click targets easier to click
  • Added an option to orient the fixed minimap so that player’s starting side is always at the bottom
  • Adjusted all map assets so that full fixed orientations consistently place attackers at bottom and defenders at top
  • Added hover tooltips to thumbnails in the Collections view to show item name
  • Scroll speed tweaked to make scrolling social panel smoother
  • Made crosshair preview in Settings shorter to make more room for controls

The Valorant update 0.49 quality of life changes and bug fixes can be seen on the full patch notes, right here. Valorant is now in closed beta on PC.

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