• The Valorant 1.14 patch is one of the smaller ones, with the main change being to Sage’s barrier orb (no longer deployable pre-round), and some needed tweaks to the bomb sites on Icebox.  
  • A new snowball fight game-mode is here for Christmas (available from the 15th).

The Valorant 1.14 patch is here, and though it seems the days of the mega-patches are over with we have a few interesting changes: Sage’s barrier orb has been tweaked, icebox has had some adjustments to the sites, a new Christmas themed game-mode is here.

Sage barrier Orb Changes

The major change in this patch (particularly for Sage players) affect the barrier orb. The Orb can no longer be cast before the game starts (which makes sense in terms of consistency) and should help to speed up gameplay. It also won’t lose strength continually from being deployed, but will instead remain at full strength until just before it breaks compeltely.

Icebox: Map Tweaks

Icebox has has some tweaks made on the sites to improve gameplay. A-site was a bit of a mess, with just a few too many angles/positions to cover from the attackers and three height levels to watch out for on defence. The highest sections at the back of A site have been removed as well as a box, simplifying the site and giving it an overall cleaner feel, which is generally needed on what has always been a pretty “busy” map.

Mirroring these changes on B-site, the double yellow container stack has been halved in height (now only one level) making it easier to clear and play around. Overall, these seem like smart changes that should improve gameplay. 

New Snowball game mode

A new limited-time game mode is out on the 15th, and it’s basically a massive snowball fight DM. Its a 5v5 with respawns and the first team to 5o kills win. Brim’s grenade launcher fires out snowballs, and there’s airtime, so you have to lead your shots. Sounds like a good bit of fun!

  • 5v5: Team Deathmatch
    • The first team to 50 kills wins
    • Respawns are enabled, so get back in there
  • The snowball launcher is your weapon of choice
    • Killjoy has rigged a custom version of Brimstone’s molotov launcher
    • Projectile based snowballs have travel time and an arc (make sure to lead that shot!)
    • Infinite snowballs—don’t stop shooting!
  • The gift that keeps on giving: Power ups!
    • Gifts spawn around the map, sometimes a portal appears and gifts come pouring out
    • Each gift contains a power up when opened (shoot to open)
    • You can only have one of each power up at a time, so make sure to share with your teammates
    • If you die, you drop your power ups and someone else can snag them
  • Gift types
    • Rapid Fire: fire even faster
    • Growball: grows over time while traveling in the air
    • Ricochet: for all those snowball trick shots off the ground and walls
    • Skates: skate around quickly and in style. Jump higher!
  • Maps
    • Week 1: Check out the festivities on the newly updated holiday version of Icebox (Snowball Fight only!)
    • Week 2: Snowball Fight can be played on all current maps
  • Progression
    • Get 750 XP for each game completed, and 150 bonus XP for a win
    • Snowball mode does not progress missions

Minor Bug fixes

  • COMPETITIVE UPDATES

      • Rank distribution has been updated to make it easier to climb out of the lower ranks
      • Act Rank Badge display has been re-enabled on in-game player cards.
        • Performance issues, such as hitches, have been fixed along with on death performance optimizations
        • These were previously disabled due to performances hitches
      • Career page: Match History and Act Ranks have been split out into their own specific sections.
        • You can still view both your friends Match History and Act Rank progress

    STORE UPDATES

    • Check out our newest feature with the introduction of the Night.Market
      • Each player will get 6 chances to receive a random Select, Deluxe, or Premium weapon skin at a discount
      • Opens December 10th

    SOCIAL UPDATES

      • Requirements to unlock Competitive play have been changed from Play 20 Unrated matches >>> Win 10 Unrated matches
        • We hope this will lower the amount of AFKs and INTing we see in unrated games caused by players rushing to unlock ranked mode.
      • A text field has been added to the Report Player menu so that players can now provide more information on their reason for reporting, if they choose to
      • Players can now add friends in-game via the player list in the escape menu
        • Add teammates and opposing players to your friends list to play with again in the future if you enjoyed their company!

    GAME SYSTEMS UPDATES

    • Manual Game State Recovery
      • In cases where tournament organizers need to roll back or replay from a given round, they can now remake any tournament match from that point with our manual recovery tool.
    • Cinematic Cameras
      • We have added cinematic camera locations across all maps for observers to use.
      • Observers can press Shift + player number to jump to the best cinematic camera to capture the action.
      • Observers can immediately leave a Cinematic Camera to move to Free camera
      • We have a lot more ideas for additional functionality, so stay tuned for that in the future.
    • Projectile Follow
      • Observers can now follow a projectile fired by a player character (Default keybind is F).
      • Observer camera will remain at the destination of the projectile and will transition to a free camera from this point.
    • Minimal Broadcast HUD
      • Observer perspectives that are meant to be used for broadcasting can turn on Minimal Broadcast HUD from the custom game lobby to retain as clean of a HUD experience as possible for custom overlays
    • Observer Follower
      • Observers can now lock their view to match another observer (Be the passenger instead of the driver)
      • Default keybinds for following previous / next observer: ‘[‘ and ‘]’
    • Observers can use player numbers on the minimap to jump directly to a specific player

    BUG FIXES

    • Fixed an issue where Killjoy’s turret could be placed underneath the ground in some maps
    • Fixed an issue where Omen could teleport past the Buy phase barrier
    • Fixed a bug where pressing a push-to-talk key while typing in chat would trigger voice chat
    • Fixed a bug where AFKer queue restrictions would keep resetting for some players