Patch Notes 2.04: Astra released and more ranked changes

The latest VALORANT patch notes, 2.04, have been released. It's the start of Act II, and brings even more fine-tuning to the ranked system as well as the release of the new agent, Astra.

Don’t let the lighter notes fool you, this is the start of Episode 2: Act II, that drops our newest Agent, a fresh Battlepass, and the Prime//2.0 weapon skin line.

As our friend Max Grossman will tell you, this patch cycle is also to allow time for us to evaluate our recent changes while still getting the game in a good state for VALORANT Challengers moving forward.

Competitive matchmaking gets some fairly comprehensive adjustments to not only let you queue with more friends at different levels in the lower ranks, but make sure the highest levels are for the ones who can continue to prove they are VALORANT’s best.

Tactical VO is an addition that should help, not replace, in-game communication, and we shove a wrench in the works to jam the Bind TP doors for Escalation.

Agent Updates

Astra goes live!

• You can view her abilities on the Agents page.

Modes Updates

Escalation

• Bind Teleporter exit doors are now permanently jammed open—if you want to camp it, get ready to fight for it!
  • There was a frustrating strategy going around where a team would gain mid TP control and then...never leave. The opposite team couldn’t reliably contest it without doing a highly coordinated “5-person YOLO TP,” or by getting lucky and advancing to nade level and blasting away. We like the focus in this area (you'll always find a fight here!), but it can feel unfair if you’re not the team inside the TP. With this change, we’re looking to give you an avenue to contest the teleporter by preventing others from being able to stall a game.
• Bind’s pickrate is again evenly weighted
  • During Patch 2.03 we reduced Bind’s pick rate for Escalation. We’re returning it to normal levels, but if Bind continues to be frustrating to play, we’ll look into changing its pickrate again and go back to the drawing board.

Competitive Updates

This patch marks the start of Competitive Episode 2: Act 2!

Placements have changed for the start of an Act. Now, if you have already placed this Episode, then:

• Your rank will no longer be lowered at the start of an Act
  • If you were Radiant or Immortal rank you will keep your position on the leaderboard, but your Rank Rating(RR) will be reduced by 90% and all Radiant players will be bumped down to Immortal, because you will need to again prove that you are the best of the best in the new Act.
  • Achieving Radiant now requires both being in the top 500 players in your region, as well as having a minimum amount of RR (See below for details).
  • You must finish your placement game to display on the Leaderboard again for the new Act
• You’re only required to play 1 placement match to display your rank
  • Your RR (and potentially rank) may change based on how you perform in your placement game, but the maximum change will be based solely off of that game.
• Players who have not previously placed in Competitive this Episode will still need to play 5 placement games to earn their initial rank.

Radiant will be more challenging to earn. You must achieve a certain level of RR before being able to ascend to Radiant. This is adjusted per region based on rank population size and RR distribution.

• Regional requirements for Radiant cut off:

  • LATAM & KR: 100 RR
  • BR: 200 Rank Rating
  • NA & APAC: 300 RR
  • EU: 400 RR
• The web leaderboard will be disabled briefly for maintenance at the start of this patch, expect it to be re-enabled within 24–48 hours
• Later this patch, we’ll reduce the total amount of average RR per win/loss by 5
  • This is focused on reducing how often a player's Rank gets above their MMR and leads to inconsistent RR games and a wider delta between their displayed rank and MMR. These small math tweaks will be common as we try to find the correct balance for RR based on issues we are seeing in the community.
• During this patch we will change demotion logic for players to start at 70RR(Previously 80RR).
  • See context above
• Ranks will no longer be displayed in Agent select or in-game. You will still be able to see ranks on the end of the game screen.
• You can now queue with a wider group of friends and teammates if you are at the lower ranks (see below image)
  • At the lower ranks we have a very large number of you in our matchmaking pool, so we’re confident we can make balanced matches. As you rank up, you’ll find a tighter disparity to ensure we continue to maintain balanced matches and protect the competitive integrity of the higher ranks.
  • We also hope this helps combat smurfing by reducing the incentive to make a new account to play with lower rank friends.

Quality of Life

• Added Tactical Voice Over
  • In service of improving team coordination and information sharing, we've added more context to some of the automated Agent VO lines that play during the round.
  • Agent lines like "Spike spotted" or “Enemies spotted” will also say a map “Super Region” afterwards. (e.g., “Spike spotted C” or “Enemies spotted B”).
  • We hope to provide richer information to the player with these changes. Tactical VO is not meant to be a full replacement for voice comms, so callouts will be ducked in volume when a teammate is speaking over VOIP.
  • Overall, we hope this helps improve the quality of information that teams not heavily using voice comms are able to expect. We also believe this will improve the experience for those players who have muted another player for any reason.

Below is an example of the Tactical VO super regions on Ascent.

• Additionally, we’ve added an option to place Tactical VO messaging into the Chat window

  • The toggle for this option is available under Accessibility options. With this enabled, when Tac VO lines are triggered, a Chat message will be sent relaying the information. The text lines are modified to best communicate who said what. For example, instead of Sova verbally saying “Enemy spotted B”, the chat message will read “Sova spotted an ENEMY in B”.

• Tactical VO FAQ

  • Tactical VO will not be enabled in modes
  • Tactical VO can be disabled via toggle
  • Tactical VO being ducked by VOIP can be disabled via toggle
  • Tactical VO Chat messages can be enabled via toggle
• Improved Client framerate by 3% on average for medium to high spec machines in 10-player games, by optimizing inventory management

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused the Custom game server dropdown to loop infinitely
• Fixed parts of Reyna’s Soul Orb feedback triggering when assisting kills on non-players
• Fixed Reyna’s Soul Orb timer not properly syncing with its actual duration
• Fixed issues where teleporting into narrow areas created by Sage’s wall with Omen’s Shrouded Step pushed him into a wall
• Fixed ult active indicators not working for Killjoy, Cypher, Brimstone, Sage, Breach, Jett and Viper