Valorant Patch 1.04 full notes: Viper buffs, classic pistol and Brimstone updates
The bi-weekly Valorant patch notes are finally out, and it seems to be a rather small one that focuses itself around four particular Agents and the classic pistol.
Viper is set to receive yet another huge buff this time around, and the once C-tier Agent has been slowly climbing the meta ladder with each Valorant update. In 1.04, Viper will be receiving some upgrades to her ultimate ability, along with the decay passive and the fuel gauge.
Brimstone will be receiving some balance changes as well - his ultimate will cost a bit more and the enemies will no longer be able to use his Stim beacon.
Raze’s ultimate ability cost will be going up as well, while Cypher will now be able to pick up the Cyber Cage cage that he throws, but only during the buy phase.
The classic pistol will also be gaining some updates in the Valorant 1.04 update. Even for a starter weapon, the pistol is underperforming and is one of the least consistent weapons in Valorant at the moment.
The Valorant devs will be targeting the alternate right-click capabilities to bring in some much needed balance and amp up its potential when teams are forced to use it during econ rounds.
If you’re looking for a detailed look on all the updates and why the Valorant devs are bringing them, then here is a detailed view in Riot’s official website.
However, if a brief overview is what you seek, then we have got you covered:
Valorant Agent updates
1. Viper
Viper’s Pit:
- Max time outside of her ult before it collapses changed from five to 12 seconds.
- Viper can hold the ability key to drop her ult early.
- Enemies in Viper’s Pit have their minimap obscured and do not provide minimap detection to their allies.
- Increased the brightness of the red enemy glow at the edge of Viper’s near-sight.
Decay
- Enemy decay per second increased from 10 to 15 from all sources.
- After exiting Viper’s smoke, enemy decay sustains for 2.5 seconds before starting to fade.
Fuel
- Having both Poison Cloud and Toxic Screen active does not consume additional fuel beyond the cost of having one active.
2. Raze
Showstopper
- Showstopper ultimate cost changed from six to seven ult points.
3. Brimstone
Orbital Strike
- Orbital Strike ultimate cost changed from six to seven ult points.
Stim Beacon
- Stim Beacon no longer Buffs enemies and no longer shows its effect radius to enemies.
Brimstone’s Arms Fidelity
- Riot has increased the fidelity of Brimstone’s arms to match the overall quality of the game.
4. Cypher
Cyber Cage
- Cyber Cage can now be picked up during the buy phase.
Valorant Weapon updates
Classic pistol
- Fixed bug where running inaccuracy on the right-click was much higher than intended.
- running was adding a 1.5 penalty because it was referencing our generalized running error curves for pistols.
- Fixed bug where jumping had no inaccuracy penalty.
- Running spread is changed from 3.4 to 2.1, primarily a bug fix.
- Jumping spread changed from 1.9 to 2.3.
- Walking spread changed from 1.9 to 1.95.
- Added a 10 percent bonus to accuracy when crouching and stationary.
- Intent is to feel consistent with crouch providing an accuracy benefit.
Valorant HUD and UI updates
- Riot replaced the previous Weapon Stats textbox in the pre-round shop with an easier-to-compare graphical representation of stats.
Valorant quality of life updates
- Observer minimap vision cones are now colored by team.
- Replaced Reyna’s voice over for Italian and Mexican.
Valorant Elderflame skin updates
- Adjusted the volume on the Elderflame Operator equip animation.
- Fixed bug that would cause the volume to stack if you spam equipped the Operator.
- Enemy footsteps duck cosmetic bus properly.
- This means that enemy footsteps will always lower the volume of the skin sound effects that are not important to gameplay, like the flame whooshes, dragon roar, etc.
- Elderflame Melee inspect animation now has sound effects for level one and two.
Valorant performance updates
- Gun pickup targeting and Sage Ultimate targeting unified with ally character highlights, saving VRam and GPU performance.
- Minor rendering performance fixes.
- Gun skin upgrade videos are now streamed instead of locally stored, reduced install size by 380MB.
Valorant bug fixes
- Fixed requirement for Reyna to look at Soul Orbs to activate them and maintain her healing, behavior should match that of patch 1.02.
- Fixed one-way Brimstone smokes when the player’s camera was around the top of the smoke.
- Fixed Breach’s Aftershock not properly applying damage to all characters if multiple are hit by it.
- Fixed jittering when reaching the max flight height of Sova’s drone in Valorant.
- Fixed Marshall bug where the weapon maintained accuracy while walking.
- Fixed issues with some translucency effects being one frame behind (such as Jett’s dash, when used by the player).
- Fixed ally highlights not showing up on some AMD GPUs when using MSAA, and some Intel GPUs.
- Fixed a bug where loading screens did not cover the entire screen when playing in certain resolution/aspect ratio combinations.
- Shortened the text on the photosensitivity warning screen.
- Fixed a bug where the “equip” button would stay grayed out when purchasing a skin variant that is being previewed.
- Fixed Brimstone smokes on Haven spawning offset of where intended.
- Fixed a typo in Brimstone’s biography (thanks mooonlimes for the report).