VALORANT's Public Beta Environment, or PBE, updated to Patch 5.07 with changes to flashes and a feature that players have been requesting since release.
Reyna and Yoru will receive some nice buffs on their respective blinds and flashes, with Reyna's Leer no longer having a distance restriction and Yoru's Blindside having a longer duration, among other changes. On the other side of the coin, the Initiators Skye and KAY/O will have their effectiveness by themselves tuned down. Skye's Guiding Light will receive a rebalance, and KAY/O's pop flash will receive some nerfs while his overhand flash receives buffs.
On the less gameplay side of things, you can now set some gun skins as your Favorite. Equipping a Random Favorite skin on a gun will give you a random skin from your selected favorites, including all of the variants that you own. This is a feature that has been increasingly requested as the number of the skins in the game increased.
Note that these changes were all taken from the VALORANT 5.07 PBE Patch Notes and may not reflect Patch 5.07 once it hits live servers in a couple of weeks.
Agent Updates
“The VALORANT character design team is constantly discussing the state of the Agent meta, and wanted to make some changes to sharpen some of our Agents and role definitions. 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,” explained Designer Dan “penguin” Hardison.
“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.
These 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 also hope to increase the reward for putting more time into mastering their flash abilities. We believe that Initiators should still be able to make solo plays, but they should ideally be weaker than their Duelist counterparts in these scenarios,” Hardison added.
Skye
Dev note: 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, we intend to foster more teamwork and differentiate her Guiding Light from other 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
- [Not in PBE] Unequip Delay out of Guiding Light increased .75s >>> .85s
KAY/O
Dev note: KAY/O’s underhanded FLASH/DRIVE 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 2s>>>1.25s
- Overhand (left-click) flashbang max duration increased 2s>>>2.25s
- [Not in PBE] Unequip Delay out of both flashes increased.6s >>> .85s
Reyna
Dev note: 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 (Q)
- Wind-up of nearsight effect decreased.6s >>> .4s
- Range Restriction on Leer removed
- Nearsight unequip delay decreased: .7 >>> .5
- Nearsight unequip delay set to “Instant”
- Duration decreased 2.6s >>> 2.0s
Note that the changes to the Nearsight unequip delay seems contradictory. This is assumed to be a typographical error, but no clarification has been posted by Riot Games as of the time of publishing.
Yoru
Dev note: Yoru is a tricky agent, as we need to balance him around his capability to throw flashes during his ultimate. We opted to go with a simple duration increase for Blindside as we feel the turning counterplay around his flash and clone is important to avoid excessively frustrating situations.
- BLINDSIDE (Q) duration increased 1.5s >>>1.75s
- Flash 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 >>> 3 seconds after the debuff starts to fade.
- Context: We felt 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.
- Reduced the size of the hologram on the body marker that shows up when dead bodies are turned off.
Agent 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
Progression Updates
This VALORANT PBE Patch adds a feature that players have been asking for since the game's release. Now, you can have more flexibility while viewing your skins and cosmetics. You can set weapon skins as a “favorite,” which you can then get at random every time you enter a game.
- Favorites & Filters
- Added the ability to favorite gun skins, Player cards, Sprays, Gun Buddies and level borders (favorites persist until un-favorited)
- Added the ability to filter your collection (filters persist until next login)
- Gun skins: Owned/Unowned, Favorites/Non-Favorites, Tiers (Select, Deluxe, Premium, Ultra, Exclusive)
- All others: Owned/Unowned, Favorites/Non-Favorites
- Random Favorites
- In addition to being able to sort through your weapon collection and set your favorite weapons, you can now equip the Random Favorite for every weapon type. This will make it so that each game you play, you get one of your favorite weapons (along with one of the variants that you own) at random each time you enter a match.
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