Another Valorant patch brings with it, of course, another significant nerf to Sage. This time around the Sage nerfs are accompanied by some interesting updates, including a new set of Shotgun changes, various Agent tweaks, and hit impact VFX updates. So, let’s get to it.

Listed as Valorant update 1.07, the latest patch takes a rather heavy-handed approach to nerfing Sage, absolutely gutting her healing capabilities for both herself and for her teammates. Her ally heal is reduced from 100hp over 5 seconds to 60hp over 5 seconds, while her self heal has been reduced by the same amount over 10 seconds. If that’s not enough, Sage’s Slow Orb size has been reduced by 30%. Sage’s Barrier Orb has also been altered, with Riot dropping the ability’s cost to 300 while making it so that the wall initially forms at 400hp, only getting bumped up to 800hp after a 3 second delay.

Sage’s many nerfs did not appear without explanation, though, with Rioter rycoux recently taking to Reddit to provide some reasoning behind the changes. According to rycoux, Riot’s reasoning involve’s a combination of Sage’s consistent pick and win rate across all rosters and the fact that her healing is comparable to that of duelists, but at a significantly lower amount of risk. “Though this is where we have landed with all of our testing, there’s a chance we have hit Sage a bit hard so we will be keeping an eye on Sage for the next few patches,” rycoux said.

We will be tuning into all these channels so keep us honest with these changes. If we hit Sage too hard, trust that we will be working hard to ensure she finds the right tunings and finds the right balance on the roster.”

The latest Valorant Agent was also the subject of a couple nerfs, with Killjoy’s Nanoswarm DPS getting reduced from 60 to 40. Switching over to buffs, Viper can now set up her Toxic Screen ability during the buy phase and through spawn barriers, while Breach’s Flashpoint ability gained an extra charge with a reduced windup time. His Rolling Thunder ability now has a shorter delay between blasts, and his Concussion now de-scopes players and temporarily prevents re-scoping. Barely worth mentioning is that Sova’s cape will now wiggle outside his hitbox less frequently.

Here are the rest of the Valorant 1.07 patch notes:

Valorant Update 1.07

WEAPON UPDATES

• All shotguns aimpunch update
  • When getting headshot by a shotgun, the aimpunch will be lower than all the other weapons
• All shotguns tagging tuned for targets beyond 10 meters
  • Hitting an enemy past 10 meters will apply a different tagging value to them instead of the standard tagging
  • New tagging: 30% slow for .5s on a smooth curve going back to normal speed
  • The goal of these changes is to improve the feel of playing against shotguns and to ensure that they don’t end up doing odd things. For example, tagging or aimpunching people from longer than expected ranges and then a teammate ends up killing someone who’s debuffed, or makes it hard to fight back against a weapon that should be deadly up close but fairly non-threatening outside its effective range.)
• Shorty nerf
  • 1st falloff range reduced from 9m >>> 7m
  • Updated headshot multiplier from 3x >>> 2x (now the same as Judge and Bucky)
  • Our goal here is to make Shorty users work a little harder for the kills they get by requiring them to be a tad closer to their target.
• Judge Nerf
  • Price increased from 1500 >>> 1600
  • Desire here is to see if giving the Judge a little hit—paired with the other shotgun changes—moves the needle when playing against this gun. We’ll continue to monitor and make other changes if necessary
• Vandal buff
  • Increased firing rate from 9.25 >>> 9.75
  • Increased damage from 39 >>> 40
  • Goal is to bring the Vandal in closer competition with the Phantom. We believe these weapons aren’t that far off in competition and hope these changes will do that.

HIT IMPACT VFX UPDATE

• Server hit VFX confirms will now spawn at the location of the hit on the character and stay attached to that position (previously, it spawned at the game space location and stayed there)
  • We’ve had issues with hit registration clarity caused by players moving into hit VFX (i.e. a player crouches their head into the space of a body shot VFX), which caused confusion on where a shot landed. This change should make it clear where a shot hit, and where on the body, even if a character is moving.
• An additional client-predicted small spark VFX now spawns immediately at the game space location of a hit
  • With the change to attach our traditional server hit VFX, we wanted to add additional immediate bullet feedback so you can see the area where your bullet landed and adjust your aim accordingly. Think of this new VFX as an improved tracer. It’s important to note that a bullet is client-predicted: seeing this DOES NOT mean your shot has registered on the server (similar to tracers).
• Adjusted the sparks hit VFX coloring and shape adjusted to more closely resemble blood VFX shape
  • Context: We want players to be able to play with either of these options without feeling one gives better clarity than the other
• Adjusted the size of headshot VFX, where both blood and sparks are scaled down slightly
  • Especially at large ranges, headshot VFX would often cover up the head of a player and add additional difficulty in tracking players through the effect. We’ve scaled down this VFX slightly in an attempt to make it easier to keep track of targets.

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• Remake match: When a match in Valorant begins with a 4v5 (or more lopsided teams), players will now have the option to end the game they’re in and queue for a new one.
  • If any player is disconnected at the start of the match (beginning of buy phase) through the entire first round, a remake call may be triggered at the start of the second round by typing /remake in chat.
  • All connected players on the team that called the remake may vote to remake the game— It’s required that all connected players agree to remake the game
    • The remake vote will last for the duration of the buy phase, if the vote is not passed by the end of buy phase it will expire
  • If the vote is successfully passed and the game is remade, all players who voted do not receive any XP or MMR adjustments for the match. The match will also not show up in match history. All disconnected players not part of the vote will take a full MMR loss for the game, and receive a leaver penalty equivalent to disconnecting from a full match..
• Act Ranks visuals have been updated to better differentiate wins at different rank tiers
• Changed some potentially misleading verbiage in the restriction message for players who need to play more unrated games to unlock competitive play
  • This is to better reflect that Deathmatch and Spike Rush do not count towards unlocking Competitive.

INCOGNITO MODE

For anyone who’d rather keep their identity private in-game, we’ve added these features:

• Hide my name from non-party members (Agent name will be used)
• Hide the names of others in my game who aren’t in my party (Agent names will be shown)
• These features take effect from agent select to game end. We also added an option to hide + auto-reject friend requests.

The quality of life and bug fix sections of the Valorant 1.07 patch notes can be found right here. Valorant is now available free to play on PC.

So, thoughts on the latest Valorant patch? Let us know in the comments section below, and as always, stay tuned to Don’t Feed the Gamers for all the latest gaming and entertainment news! Don’t forget to follow DFTG on Twitter for our 24/7 news feed!