VALORANT Patch Notes 7.08: Smoke visual update is going live

Devs are here with another update and this one will bring a topic that has occupied the agenda in recent times, “smoke visual update.” From now on, players will get a “heads-up” before a smoke disappears. This new update has divided gamers into two, those who support it and those who don't. Plus, a couple more fixes and changes have also been revealed. Here is everything you need to know about VALORANT Patch Notes 7.08!

Hiya! Jo-Ellen here.

We’ve got some updates under the Agent Updates section regarding smoke visuals and ability equipping audio. Also, your Level Border and Player Card collections are going to look a little different. You can read about these and more below.

And we always welcome your feedback so don’t hesitate to send it our way. Thank you!

GENERAL UPDATES

We made a slight adjustment to the rows of Agents you can select from at the bottom of the screen in order to make room for future Agents.

AGENT UPDATES

Smoke Visual Update

• Some of the key smokes can manipulate the play space for a good chunk of time and we feel it is important to be able to make the right decisions in the moment. We’ve added audio and visual cues at the end of our longer lasting smokes to give you a bit of a heads up for when the smoke will disappear.
  • Smokes play an audio and visual cue 1.5 seconds before they are about to fade. The following Agents’ smokes have been affected:
    • Astra
    • Brimstone
    • Omen
• Ability equipping sounds are no longer audible to your Allies.
  • Previously, the sound of you equipping abilities as certain Agents could be heard by allies that were very close to you. Hearing this audio was inconsistent with equipping guns, which are silent to allies, and resulted in confusion around if enemies were able to hear these sounds. We hope this change will make the rules around equipping gun and ability audio more consistent and make what can be heard by enemies easier to learn and understand.

PREMIER UPDATES

PREMIER PLAYOFFS TOURNAMENT QUEUE CHANGES

• The Playoffs Tournament Queue is now only 15 minutes instead of 1 hour. If you don’t queue up and stay queued within the 15 minute window, your team will not be able to play in the Tournament.
• At the end of the waiting period, all teams that are still in the queue will be matched at one time into evenly distributed brackets seeded by Premier Score.
• This change ensures that having a better regular season record gives you a higher seeding in your tournament.

STORE UPDATES

Your Level Borders and Player Card collection UI is getting an upgrade! You’ll now be able to search, navigate, and equip your Level Borders and Player Cards using our grid UI.

BUG FIXES

AGENT

Deadlock

• Annihilation (X) can no longer open Bind’s automatic doors from outside the teleporter rooms.
• Annihilation (X) can no longer open Breeze’s Mid Chute trapdoor from below.

Neon

• Fast Lane (C) now more reliably fully extends through Fracture’s A Door when cast from the outside, behaving the same as when used from inside A Hall.

GENERAL

• Fixed a bug where the music would hitch/skip while loading into a map or the Range.
• Fixed a bug where shooting range bots would not reset their hitbox position properly when respawning.

PLAYER BEHAVIOR

• Fixed a bug so that you’ll receive the correct Ranked Rating penalties for disruptive behavior.

WEAPONS

• Fixed a bug where killbanner audio was playing too quietly.