VALORANT 5.03 PBE Patch Notes

Written by: Candiey

29/07/2022

As players in both ranked and pro play have mastered Chamber, his strengths have started to overshadow his weaknesses, making the counterplay to Rendezvous and his arsenal not as effective as we’d hoped. Chamber’s overall power has also felt outsized, and we believe that we can reduce the overall power of his kit while still keeping him competitive with the rest of the roster.

PBE Known Issues:

You’ll likely be seeing a lot of broken in-game UI elements. Team is working hard to fix these in time for the full Patch 5.03 release. Notably misbehaving:

In Low UI Quality settings, things like the Social, Agents, and Collections tab may disappear when scrolling through the main menu
The Spike announcement Banner may behave oddly in game
Player Health HUD may be highlighted red when spectating
Crosshair opacity setting may flicker when changing
Discoloration on the start button if you’re unable to start a game
[Non custom match] Server selection preference appears as LATAM only, but queueing is unaffected. Your optimal server will still be used.

PBE will close at 11am PDT Monday, Aug 01

JUNE 29 weekend PBE will focus on Chamber, “regional” damage, and the game engine

GENERAL

We’ve completed our upgrade to Unreal Engine 4.26 and that’s what you are playing on for this PBE. We're collecting lots of data and metrics to see how things are going.

AGENT UPDATES

Chamber

As players in both ranked and pro play have mastered Chamber, his strengths have started to overshadow his weaknesses, making the counterplay to Rendezvous and his arsenal not as effective as we’d hoped. Chamber’s overall power has also felt outsized, and we believe that we can reduce his kit while still keeping him competitive with the rest of the roster.

Rendezvous (E)

Base Cooldown increased 20s >>> 30s
Recall Cooldown increased 20s >>> 30s
Cooldown set to 45s whenever a Rendezvous anchor is destroyed
Radius Size decreased 21m >>> 15m

Chamber’s Rendezvous is intended to be powerful at holding space, but the generous radius allowed him to take more space than intended. This change should require Chamber to exert more effort to access off-angles.

We hope that a harsher punishment for destroyed Rendezvous anchors, and the reduced radius will demand Chamber mains to be more careful in their use. This change also brings the counterplay of Chamber’s destructible objects more inline with the behavior of other destructible objects in the game.

Trademark (C)

Slow Duration decreased 9.5 >>> 6s

Tour De Force (X)

Ultimate Points Required increased 7 >>> 8
Slow Duration decreased 9.5 >>> 6s

Headhunter (Q)

Bullet Cost increased 100 >>> 150

It’s important that Headhunter is a powerful sidearm for Chamber but at its current price point Chamber doesn’t have to engage in making difficult economic decisions as meaningfully as other Agents. This should most noticeably impact Chamber’s decision making on pistol rounds and save rounds.

Ability Regional Damage Breakup

We’re adding a breakup of ‘regional damage’ to all of the abilities that affect certain body segments differently—similar to our weapons—so that precision is rewarded (eg., a headshot vs a legshot).

Neon

Damage per shot reduced 22 >>> 18
Killzone increased 15m >>> 20m
Leg shot multiplier reduced 1.0 >>> 0.85
Headshot multiplier increased 1 >>> 3

Chamber

Tour De Force (X) leg shot multiplier reduced 1.0 >>> 0.85

Jett

Bladestorm (X) leg shot multiplier reduced 1.0 >>> 0.85

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