Valorant v2.06 patch notes: Viper, Yoru, Killjoy buffs, Bucky buff, and more

It seems Riot Games has interestingly targeted the Bucky with the latest v2.06 patch, as its secondary fire has taken a major hit while considerably buffing its primary one.

Both will have less bullet spread, helping the new damage scaling feel smoother, however, the right-click will now shoot five pellets instead of 15.

Moving to hero changes, Viper, Yoru, Killjoy, all underutilized Agents, have received buffs, with the first two possibly being in contention to become meta sooner rather than later as they are currently two of the worst characters in the game.

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Let's take a closer look at the Valorant v2.06 patch notes courtesy of Riot Games.

Valorant v2.06 patch notes

(Picture: Riot Games)

Agent Updates

Viper

Toxin (passive)

• Enemies that cross through Viper's Poison Cloud, Toxic Screen, or Viper's Pit are instantly inflicted with at least 50 decay. Their decay level increased the longer they remain in contact with toxin
• While in cloud, Decay over decreased from 15 to 10.
• When out of Viper's cloud, delay before health regen decreased from 2.5 to 1.5.

Poison Cloud (Q)

• Can now immediatly be redeployed when picked up, but grants a temporary charge instead of a permanent charge
• If active when Viper dies, Poison Cloud now remains up for an additional 2 seconds, or until Viper runs out of fuel
• Pickup distance increased from 200 to 400.

Toxic Screen (E)

• If active when Viper dies, Toxic Screen now remains up for an additional 2 seconds before deactivating.
• Full blind distance from the wall increased to better match the blind distance from the edge of smokes.

Snakebite (C)

• Equip time decreased from 1.1 to .8 seconds.

Yoru

Blindside (Q)

• Flash activation time decreased from .8 to .6 seconds
• Flash duration increased from 1.1 to 1.5 seconds

Gatecrash (E)

• Gatecrash is no longer refreshed on kills and is instead replinished every 35 seconds
• Liftime of the Gatecrash fragment increased from 20 to 30 seconds
• The range at which the Gatecrash fragment is revealed from stealth decreased from 7m to 4m.
• Visuals for visibility range added to the moving fragment.

Dimensional Drift (X)

• Ult Points reduced from 7 to 6
• Yoru can now reactivate Gatecrash while in Dimensional Drift

Killjoy

Nanoswarm (C)

• Killjoy can now pick up deployed Nanoswarm grenades during the buy phase to get the charge back

Weapon updates

Bucky

• Primary fire (left-click) bullet spread decreased from 3.4 to 2.6.
• Decreased spread on Alt-fire (right-click) from 3.4 to 2.0.
• Updated damage curve for both primary and alt-fire
  • 0-8m is 20dmg per pellet
  • 8-12m is 12 dmg per pellet
  • Beyond 12m is 9dmg per pellet
• Reduced amount of pellets in a right click shot from 15 to 5.

(Picture: Riot Games)

MODES UPDATES

ESCALATION

We’ve taken a pass on a couple abilities to add depth to their gameplay and create some more dynamic combat situations, as well as added some spicy loadout variations to the mix.

Abilities

• Raze’s Showstopper now comes with two Blast Pack Charges which refill when you touch the ground. Practice those boosts!
• Snowball Launcher now comes with Skates—the increased mobility should give you an edge against the generally more lethal weapons.
• Big Knife now comes with one Tailwind (Jett Dash) charge which refills on kill. Close all the gaps!
• Loadout variations will be a bit of a surprise, and they’ll show up rarely. Let us know which ones you like!

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

• You can now view a person's career from the in-game Leaderboard
  • We heard some of you asking for the ability to view more info around how the best of the best were doing in their games. So you can now right click on a leaderboard entry and view their career to check out their Match History, see details of their games, and look at their Act Rank progress.
  • If you are on the the Leaderboard, but don’t want to give away who you are, you can leverage our in-client toggle to label yourself a ‘Secret Agent’.

QUALITY OF LIFE

•  To improve legibility, the megamap now consistently uses a mouse pointer instead of a crosshair for map pings

HEAD RELATED TRANSFER FUNCTION (HRTF)

What direction did those Raze footsteps come from? Is she moving from in front or behind you? With HRTF on and a pair of headphones, you’ll be able to better pinpoint other players based on certain sounds.

HRTF processing relies on a profile that contains measurements such as head size and ear shape, among other things. This implementation uses a profile based on a single set of measurements, and may not feel natural at first to all listeners depending on how closely the profile matches their own measurements. We encourage users to give HRTF a few tries as it may take some getting used to. Focused ear training outside a high pressure game environment may pay off in better ability to interpret the HRTF processing. We suggest a custom game or training for this! Watch our video demo below.

• Added an audio toggle located in the Audio settings panel to enable HRTF
  • HRTF allows players wearing headphones to play audio in a simulated surround sound audio space.
  • Currently, only footsteps, reloads, and Deathmatch respawns will be rendered in 3D with HRTF enabled.
  • It’s recommended that players please turn off any other “3D Audio” processing while using this feature.

BUGS

Agents

• Fixed Raze’s Boombot blowing up when it hit the Spike if she was on defender side
• Fixed unintentional delay when deactivating Viper’s Poison Orb or Toxic Screen
• Fixed Yoru’s 1P audio on Gatecrash sometimes playing twice when casting the teleport
• Fixed issue where it looks like Astra is casting a Star but doesn’t actually create one when targeting close to another Star
• Fixed issue with Astra’s Star targeting being unreliable on stairs and slopes
• Fixed players not being removed from possessables when their base Agent is detained
• Fixed issue where Cypher’s Spycam broke Sage’s Barrier Orb when placed close to it. We see your tricks.
• Fixed issue where Omen’s targeting world could have Astra’s materials if he had spectated her
• Fixed Reyna and Yoru taking decay damage while intangible

QoL

• Fixed an issue where spectating Astra could cause Omen’s Dark Cover Phased World map to display as pink.

Competitive

• Fixed a bug that was causing Act Rank badges to show your top wins out of order
• Fixed a bug that was showing the “Hide Act Rank” button when viewing a friend’s career
• Fixed a bug where Party leaders couldn’t kick Observers from a Custom Game lobby
• Fixed a bug that caused the last round’s Combat Score to not properly display sometimes

Social

• Fixed a bug where AFK warnings were not being displayed at the end-of-game screen.
• Fixed a bug where comms-banned players were not receiving the explanatory message indicating that they will not be able to queue for ranked while the comms ban is in effect
• A timer has been added to indicate how long until queue restricted players can queue in ranked games again after receiving a penalty
• Fixed a bug where team voice chat indicators sometimes did not appear at the end of the round
• Fixed a bug where players previously could not type special characters and certain punctuation in the comment field on the Report a Player menu
• Fixed a bug where matches that ended through vanguard’s cheater detection would wrongfully penalize innocent players for being AFK
  • We apologize for this and have removed penalties from affected player accounts.