Neon Goes Live with Valorant Update 4.0 – Patch Notes Revealed

Valorant’s update 4.0 is now live in the US and brings Neon to the agent pool. The new update will also offer a rank recalibration to all the players, including a new Batlepass and skinline. Furthermore, this update will balance the weapons, change some maps, and buff the melee in Valorant.

Bind and Breeze are the maps that are getting a reshape for a better balance between attackers and defenders. Now, these two maps should offer a much better dynamic and should no longer feel one-sided. The update also increases the map randomization, and players should no longer fall into a vortex of one-map queue simulator.

Regarding Valorant’s competitive stance and the vast number of smurfs, patch 4.0 will decline new accounts of playing Competitive before they reach level 20. This will indirectly help the newcomers to learn the game better without being obliterated from the get-go. Today, Riot Games revealed the complete patch notes for Valorant 4.0.

Valorant 4.0 Patch Notes

WEAPON UPDATES

MELEE

The melee’s been too tricky to aim with, making it tough to rely on. So we’ve updated both left and right click melee attacks for more reliable Agent-whacking action.

• Right click hitboxes are now 1.5x larger. Left click hitboxes are now larger than a right click and have a slightly longer range too.
• Targets closer to the center of your knife attacks will get hit first, so you still have precision if you need it.
• Bonus: Knifing walls now have instant feedback when slicing up walls (predicted on the client side)

SPECTRE

The Spectre’s versatility makes us happy, but it was over-performing in long range engagements and was too powerful even within its intended close range and mobile scenarios. By making the accuracy error come in a bit earlier and switching yaws more often, we hope it will make it more difficult to get kills when spraying over a long range. Likewise, the close range sprays will require more control to be effective.

• Firing error occurs at earlier bullet stages
  • For example, instead of errors occurring at bullets 4, 7, 10 (in terms of firing order) they will instead happen at bullets 3, 6, 8
• Increased pitch and yaw (vertical and horizontal) recoil multipliers when running/jumping/on ascender from 1.25 >>> 1.5
• Protected bullet count from yaw (horizontal) switching while spraying, decreased 8 >>> 5 bullets
• Lowering time to switch yaw from .24 >>> .18 seconds
  • While spraying, the time you have until you could switch yaws (horizontal movement) again is lower, meaning it can happen more often

ARES

Alongside changes to the Spectre, we hope to improve the feel and power of the Ares and take it out of the shadow of other weapons in its price tier.

• Removed spin up
• Firing rate increased from 10 >>> 13

GUARDIAN

The Guardian didn’t need the fire rate penalty compared to its fully-automatic counterparts, so we’re removing it. Adding another bullet before it starts to get unstable should make the weapon feel much more proficient at tapping shots, and improve its overall effectiveness in a fight.

• Removed firing rate penalty on ADS (Aiming Down Sight)
• Added an extra bullet before it enters a recovery curve

BULLDOG

We’re giving the Bulldog some love to help make it feel like a better buy in those situations when you might need a cheaper but versatile rifle option.

• Hip fire rate increased 9.5 >>> 10
• Recovery on burst fire improved from .4 >>> .35
  • Inaccuracy is accrued any time the weapon is re-fired prior to a complete duration of a weapon’s respective Gun Recovery Time. Lower recovery time should improve burst fire efficiency.

COMPETITIVE

As the map and Agent pool has increased, it’s become increasingly difficult for new players to effectively learn and play VALORANT. However, we haven’t made any changes to when players are able to access our most competitive experience. We believe everyone should take time to learn the ins and outs of core gameplay, and have ample exposure to all the maps and Agents VALORANT will throw at you before competing in our ranked experience. To force this learning period, we’ve decided to add an Account Level requirement to play in Competitive.

• Starting with Patch 4.0, accounts that have yet to play in Ranked are required to reach account level 20 level before they are able to enter the Competitive queue
  • For those that have not yet reached account level 20, but have already played in Competitive queue, you will still be able to play in ranked.

Reduced 5-stack Rank Rating penalty

After getting our initial data on 5-stacks in ranked, we’ve realized we may have been too harsh on the penalty you receive to your RR gains/losses while in a 5-stack. Match fairness for 5-stacks is equal to non-five stacks, meaning it’s difficult for you to bring in a higher ranking player and potentially boost a low rank player. Because of this data, we are reducing the penalties for lower ranks.

• Diamond 2 and below players will see their RR penalty reduced by 25% compared to the current balance. This means the new minimum penalty is 25% reduced gains/losses compared to the previous 50%
• We only made this change for ranks not breaking into, or on, the leaderboard to help maintain leaderboard integrity.

Increased Map Randomization

• Increased our map weights, which should lead to an increase in map variety and reduction in map duplicates from match to match

BUGS

Game Systems

• Fixed an issue where the Signature Kill Counter was not updating visually

Esports Features

• Coaches should no longer experience the issue where swapping targets with number keys + mouse clicks occasionally fails.
  • Thanks RobWiz for the report!