Valorant 2.04 patch notes: Astra, tactical VO, ranked changes, more

Valorant 2.04 patch is here and comes with a set of changes for ranked play, new agent Astra, tactical voice over, and more.

As with any major Valorant patch, the 2.04 update brings both new content and various changes aiming to improve the overall experience for players of all levels.

The highlight of the new update is a new agent, called Astra, which is the 15th agent added to the game.

Other important parts of the update are several changes to ranked play, Bind’s Teleporter balance update, and advanced tactical voice-over, a system that additionally improves communication for players who aren't using the voice chat function.

Valorant Ranked changes

(Picture: Riot Games)

When it comes to Ranked play, by far the biggest change is that with the start of Episode Two, Act Two’s competitive season, players will no longer lose their current rank, but will still lose over 90% of their Ranked Rating.

This means that Radiant players will remain Radiant at the start of the new Act, but will quickly fall if they aren't able to bring back their old Ranked Rating.

Riot also introduced Ranked Rating(RR) requirements which represent minimum RR in order for players to achieve the Radiant rank.

They vary depending on the region:

• Latin America and South Korea: 100 RR
• Brazil: 200 RR
• North America and Asia-Pacific: 300 RR
• Europe: 400 RR

Escalation mode: Bind changes

One of the bigger balance changes coming with the 2.04 update is Bind’s Teleporter change, which will have its doors locked, preventing players from camping inside.

This also comes with a reverted Bind’s pick rate, which was changed with patch 2.03, specifically for the new Escalation mode.

Agent voiceover improvements

Maybe not so flashy as the other changes, but Agents' voice-overs are getting some improvements as well, which should significantly help those players who aren't using voice chat communication or are simply playing in regions with many different languages.

Riot has introduced several advanced voiceover functions which build upon basic VO to further improve communication.

This means that the basic agent VO such as "spike spotted" or “enemies spotted” will now include additional information based on the location, for example: “Spike spotted B” or "enemies spotted A".

Riot emphasises that this is not meant to be a full replacement for voice communication but simply to "provide richer information to the player".

This function can be turned on and off at any point, and you can even choose for messages to appear in chat instead of just as a voice of an agent.

You can check the full 2.04 patch notes here.