Following the recent launch of Valorant Rated, the game’s competitive ranked mode, Riot Games has rolled out Valorant Patch 1.03 – the first update since Rated became accessible. The patch features new quality-of-life changes, as well as updates to weapons, maps, and game modes.
Valorant Patch 1.03: The Most Important Changes
“The first patch of Rated queue is looking fairly stable thus far,” writes Riot, in the Valorant Patch 1.03 patch notes; “so we’ve opted to keep our balance changes light in order to let the meta evolve naturally”. This time around, the patch only affects one gun – the Guardian – but it is a fairly significant rework, not just a minor tweak. First of all, the Guardian will now cost 2,500 instead of 2,700, while its rate of fire has gone down from 6.5 to 4.75. The gun’s penetration has also been upgraded from Medium to Heavy. According to Riot; “it remained close to the premium rifles while not adequately compensating their power,” but should now be a better option.
Map updates are relatively light in Patch 1.03. Haven has had a slight tweak to remove a spot where a Spike was irretrievable, for example. All of the maps have reportedly receives fixes to stop players clipping through the level geometry, and to stop Sova’s sensor arrow passing through walls. The Spike Rush mode has had some more substantial tweaks, however, including the addition of a new orb.
The Twin Hunters orb is now available in Spike Rush, as of the rollout of Patch 1.03. When you capture this orb, it will release a pair of “hunting wolves” who will go after the two nearest enemies. Note that the targets are selected when they spawn and will not change from that point onwards. Each wolf has 100 hp and can be damaged. When they sight their target, a wolf will speed up and lunge into them. This doesn’t cause damage, but does inflict a slow and near-sighting debuff for 4 seconds. Wolves only last 15 seconds but will also despawn if their target dies.