Valorant 0.47+ Patch Notes: Raze Nerfed, Sage Changes, Melee Damage Increase & Map Fixes

It looks like players prayers have been answered with the first major update to Valorant containing nerfs to two of the most powerful agents. 

Raze and Sage have been must picks for any team with Raze's Paint Shells proving to be absolutely lethal, with those coming up against them having a hard time countering grenade ability.

That has been tweaked now and it is pretty much how Ryan “Morello” Scott suggested he would do in a Twitch stream last week. Players will have one of the signature ability, with players needing to score two kills to be granted another.

The cluster grenades that act as a secondary round of explosives after the initial grenade have also been nerfed, with them now taking longer to explode, giving players a chance to get out the way before they take damage.

The audio cues for Raze have also been changed to help opposing players better understand when she is using her abilities, which may not appease those that feel that the Showstopper rocket launcher ability is too powerful.

• Read more: Valorant: Raze Agent Guide - Abilities, Strategies, Tips & Tricks and Lore

Sage, who many regard as the most powerful agent in the game on account of her healing, wall building, and Slow Orb abilities has also been nerfed.

Players trapped in the Slow Orb will no longer make that ice cracking noise that became an almost instant death sentence for those trapped in it - alerting nearby enemies to your predicament and making you an easy kill.

However, those who learned to bunnyhop over this, negating the speed decrease it is supposed to give will find that jumping over the ice will no longer work, with air speed now reduced when over the Slow Orb

Read more: Valorant: Sage Agent Guide - Abilities, Strategies, Tips & Tricks and Lore

Melee attacks have also been given a buff to destructibles such as the metal double doors in Haven mid and Sage's Barrier meaning players can slash at the wall to smash through, with the understanding that everyone will likely know they are doing so.

A change in Split could also drastically change the flow of the map, the ULT Orb that used to sit in B mid has now moved to B Main, meaning the defending team can't simply close off that bombsite from heaven and will need to push down and control the space if they want to gain more regular access to their ultimate abilities.

There has also been a number of map fixes to address players gaining access to areas that should have been unreachable giving them an unfair advantage. 

One bug that hasn't appeared though is the Prism Operator skin ADS bug, which gives players using the skin a greater field of vision.

The Valorant 0.47+ patch is now live on the servers.

Valorant 0.47+ Patch Notes Full Patch Notes

Gameplay and Balance

Melee Damage

• Melee attacks now inflict double the damage per hit to destructibles, including
  • Sage’s Barrier
  • Haven’s metal double doors
• Why?
  • There weren’t enough options during low econ rounds—such as the first round and right after switching sides—to combat Sage’s Barrier Orb. Our intent is to add a high-risk, high-reward method for players to interact with her wall, while still being able to take it down, no matter their loadout

Raze

• Reduced Paint Shells from 2 to 1
• Paint Shells now have a kill reset, requiring players to get 2 kills to refresh cooldown
• Tuned and adjusted audio for Paint Shells, Blast Pack, and Showstopper so that they’ll be easier to hear in hectic scenarios
• Fixed an edge case where the secondary cluster of Paint Shells would explode quicker than intended. They now have a minimum duration before exploding.
• What’s up with that?
  • Raze’s goal is to be a highly-threatening duelist that punishes enemies posted in predictable positions, but we felt like the cluster grenades and their number were creating overly oppressive scenarios. Also, players should be supplied proper gameplay information and the audio cues on all of Raze’s abilities didn’t match their threat, so we changed the audio of each. For example, when the Showstopper is equipped or fired from a distance, players should be able to clearly identify and interpret the threat.

Sage

• Slow Orb now also slows the air speed of players in the zone
• Players can now walk through the Slow Orb without making noise
• Why though?
  • Players were able to circumvent too much of Sage’s Slow Orb by bunny hopping through the zone. We want the minimum slow amount to be a bit more consistent with all movement in the zone, while still allowing for bunny hopping and walking to provide a slight benefit to traversing the zone. Also, we feel adding a stealthy yet slow way to move through the field brings more nuance to playing against the zone and a bit more uncertainty for Sage, since she can't necessarily hear people who move through

Map Updates

• Several exploits fixed on Bind, Haven, and Split
• Split: Orb moved from B Mid to B Main
• The intent is to alleviate some pressure from mid and provide more incentive for players to control B Main.

The patch notes can be seen on the Valorant official website.

Quality of Life

• Reduced outbound network traffic from client for players running at high frames-per-second
  • Some ISPs and network setups were throttling game traffic, impacting gameplay by causing large spikes in network latency as FPS increased.
  • No impact to gameplay / responsiveness

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a rare server crash caused by packets occasionally being corrupted by some players’ networks
• Cypher’s Spycam can no longer use weapons
• Fixed a bug where footstep audible range would sometimes not appear on the minimap