Riot Games have revealed the upcoming flash changes and adjustments to Reyna, Yoru, Skye and KAY/O, progression and visual updates, along with changes to Fracture on Valorant’s Patch 5.07 PBE.

Through a descriptive Reddit post on the official Valorant PBE subreddit, Riot Designer Dan ‘Penguin’ Harrison revealed the upcoming adjustments to agents within the current meta, and discussed the team’s plan to sharpen some of the Agents and role definitions within the meta.

Valorant Patch 5.07 PBE  Complete List of Agent Changes

“We’re in a more stable state since Champions, and Game Changers teams will have decent time to acclimate before the Game Changers World Championships takes place.“When it comes to Duelists with a flash ability, many of them have been outclassed by some of our Initiators when it comes to generating kills for themselves off their flashes. Skye and KAY/O are often better at taking aggressive 1v1s than Agents that we expect to be able to thrive in those scenarios like Yoru, Phoenix, or Reyna.” said the Valorant Designer.

“The following changes are intended to increase the total teamplay output of Skye and KAY/O when they coordinate plays with their teammates, and decrease some of their efficacy when played alone. We  hope to increase the reward for putting more time into mastering their flash abilities. In our opinion, Initiators should still be able to make solo plays, but they should ideally be weaker than their Duelist counterparts in these scenarios” said Dan “Penguin” Hardison.

Initiators

SKYE

Guiding Light’s destructibility didn’t feel like meaningful counterplay, instead overtly punishing when Skye tried to throw them at a longer range. By increasing the top-end output and rewarding Skye for bending her birds into the right spots, Riot intends to foster more teamwork and differentiate her Guiding Light from the rest of agent flashes in the game—especially when compared to Duelists.

Guiding Light (E) flashbang scaling paradigm changed
The max flash duration of Skye’s Guiding Light now scales from 1.25s to 2.25s over a .75s charge up after being cast
Guiding Light can no longer be shot and destroyed
New VFX, UI, and sounds added to communicate new gameplay intent
Unequip Delay out of Guiding Light increased from .75seconds  >>> .85s

KAY/O

KAY/O’s underhanded FLASH/DRIVE (left-click) has been overperforming relative to other “pop” flashes (example, Phoenix’s flash or Yoru’s flash). And we feel as though labbed out left overhand throws aren’t generating a powerful enough reward for the mastery required to get them to pop in the right place. This tuning weakens the right-click when compared to pop flashes from Duelists, with the belief that KAY/O should pay a cost for his versatility.

FLASH/DRIVE (Q)

Underhand (right-click) flashbang max duration decreased from  2seconds to 1.25 seconds
Overhand (left-click) flashbang max duration increased from 2 seconds to 2.25 seconds.
[Not in PBE] Unequip Delay out of both flashes decreased from .6s to.85 seconds

Duelists

Through a Twitter post, Riot’s Valorant team revealed their goal of ‘making sure’ the game’s Initiators aren’t outclassing Duelists when it comes to generating kills for themselves off their flashes. “As always, we’ll keep on eye on how the changes perform and adapt.” read the tweet.

Reyna

Reyna’s flash underperforms as a selfish entry-tool, especially at higher skill levels. This set of changes is intended to give Reyna more agency around how she decides to peek after casting Leer. Also, it should sharpen Leer as a powerful angle-breaking tool against Operators on maps with longer sightlines. We’ve also felt like individual casts of the eye remain in the world for too long when the eye isn’t destroyed. If Reyna is now able to make more selfish plays off her Leer, we then wanted to reduce some of the value it has when thrown for teammates.

Leer

Wind-up of nearsight effect increased from .6s to .4s
Range Restriction removed
Nearsight unequip delay decreased: 7 decreased to .5
Nearsight unequip delay set to “Instant”
Duration decreased 2.6s >>> 2.0s

Yoru

Riot intends to balance his capability to throw flashes during Yoru’s ultimate. Being a ‘tricky agent’, Riot opted to go with a simple duration increase for Blindside as they feel the turning counterplay around his flash and clone is important to avoid excessively frustrating situations.
BLINDSIDE (Q) duration increased from 1.5 seconds to 1.75 seconds

PBE Fracture Changes

Dataminer and Leaker floxxayy gave Valorant fans a glimpse of the tweaked map currently live on PBE servers. The video displays that Riot have significantly reworked A site Satellite, A Drop, and A Rope, alongside adding a ramp outside B site. It seems that the satellite dish is no longer there, and instead, has been moved further right to allow players to pass through. The Arcade side of the B entrance has been opened up, with some boxes. Also, there is a ramp replacing the earlier existing stairs, right behind the Radiantite boxes on B site.

What Fracture looks like on the 5.07 PBE. pic.twitter.com/7JSt8fKGi2

— floxay (@floxayyy) September 24, 2022

Valorant Patch 5.07 PBE Visual Updates

3P visuals for flashed enemies and allies now render behind the player’s head the moment that the flash starts to fade. This should give a clearer indication if players are full flashed or if the flash has started to fade.
1P visuals when fully flashed now shrink overtime to give a better indication of when the full flash will end and the flash fading out will begin.
Increased the window for awarding assists on flashes, nearsights and concusses from 1 to 3 seconds after the debuff starts to fade.
The developers realized the assist window on these debuffs didn’t reflect their actual duration of impact, and want to make sure the supportive players are more often recognized and rewarded for setting up situations their teammates capitalize on.
Riot’s Valorant team have also reduced the size of the hologram on the body marker that shows up when dead bodies are turned off.

Valorant Patch 5.07 PBE Bug Fixes

Fixed issue where KAY/O’s NULL/CMD disabled Killjoy’s Turret if the turret is hit by a pulse but Killjoy is not
Fixed issue where Killjoy’s Turret fires straight forward after firing at an enemy and then losing sight of them
Fixed issue where Killjoy’s Turret would fire with no target when coming online if it was disabled while firing at a target
Fixed a bug where Phoenix would not automatically re-equip a weapon at the end of Run It Back
Fixed Breach’s Rolling Thunder showing dead enemies hit in the combat report
Fixed issue where if a player was deafened by multiple sources, when the first deafen ended it removed the deafening effect completely

Valorant Patch 5.07 PBE Progression Updates

Favorites & Filters
New ability added to favorite gun skins, Player cards, Sprays, Gun Buddies and level borders (favorites persist until un-favorited)
New ability added to filter your collection (the filters will persist until next login)
Gun skins: Owned/Unowned, Favorites/Non-Favorites, Tiers (Select, Deluxe, Premium, Ultra, Exclusive)
All others: Owned/Unowned, Favorites/Non-Favorites

When will Riot release the new flash changes?

Players can experience the upcoming adjustments on Valorant’s PBE servers until 11am PDT, September 26. As detailed by Riot Designer, two of the changes including Skye’s Guiding Light unequip Delay and KAY/O’s flash unequip delay are not included in th current PBE build. Riot expects to release these two flash changes in the final live-server Valorant patch.
Fans should note that the changes aren’t final and may change in the official release as Riot gathers player feedback upon testing these changes on PBE. Also, the practice range would remain disabled for the entirety of this week starting from Friday, September 23. The next update, Patch 5.07 is scheduled to arrive on servers in October, next month.

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