Valorant Patch 4.08: Episode 4 Act III Kickoff

Riot Games has released Last Act of Episode four, Kickoff on April 28, 2022 Welcoming the Turkish Bounty Hunter, Fade accompanied with Agents Updates, Balance Changes, and much more exciting stuff for all the regions. With the upcoming patch, Riot has tried to balance the game by introducing Jett nerfs, neon buffs, Sova change and much more.

Agent Updates

Fade

The new Turkish born Initiator, Fade goes live. Take a look at her abilities at Valorant’s Agent Page.

Jett

Tailwind

• Upon pressing E, Jett consumes her Tailwind charge and after a .75 second delay, activates a 12-second window where she’s able to dash on next key press
• Jett’s Tailwind charge can still be regained with 2 kills
• To keep parity with the changes to Jett dash, the functionality for Dash during Knife rounds in Escalation will be adjusted

Neon

General

Battery energy received upon killing an enemy increased 25%>>>100%

High Gear

• Slide cannot be cast during equip delay
• Velocity restriction removed
• Neon can now slide sideways and forward, and only requires that she is moving
• Energy drain increased 6.7/s>>>10/s

Fast Lane

Wall damage removed

Sova

Owl Drone

• Duration reduced 10s >>> 7s
• Health reduced 125 >>> 100
• Dart Reveal
  • Number of reveal pings reduced 3 >>> 2
  • Initial delay before first ping reveals increased 1.2s >>> 1.6s
    • Delay between the first and second ping remains 1.2s

• Quality of Life
  • Changed crosshair color to green to better stand out against the white HUD
  • Removed delay on [Target Hit] confirmation text
  • [Target Hit] confirmation text now remains on the player HUD when transitioning out of Owl Drone.
  • [Target Hit] confirmation text now remains on screen for 2s, previously 1s
  • Adjusted audio on drone dart hits for both Sova, and the player hit, to make confirmations more noticeable
• Fixed a bug with Owl Drone, where the Dart Cooldown UI element would not properly update after tagging an opponent.

Shock Dart

• Max Damage decreased 90 >>> 75
  • Radial damage has been scaled in accordance with new max damage.

Agent Ability Ammo

Jett’s Bladestorm, Raze’s Showstopper, and Sova’s Hunter’s Fury will now show how much ammo they have left when equipped.

Competitive Updates

5-Stack Queues

• Reduced Rank Rating gain/loss penalty for different 5-stack configurations
  • If EVERYONE in your party is Iron–Diamond 2:
    • No RR penalty if within normal grouping
    • 25% RR penalty for all players if any player falls outside of normal grouping
  • If ANYONE in your party is Diamond 3–Immortal 3 (but no one in your party is Radiant)
    • 25% RR penalty for all players
  • If ANYONE in your party is Radiant
    • 75% RR penalty for all players
• Tuned matchmaking to reduce wait time for 5-stacks

Bugs

Agents

• Fixed a bug where Jett could find herself unable to use abilities or weapons when using Tailwind immediately after depleting her Bladestorm daggers
• Fixed a bug where Yoru could teleport out of bounds when using Gatecrash
• Fixed various exploits allowing Yoru to use weapons before fully decloaking at the end of his ultimate

Performance

Fixed a bug in the Shooting Range where bots would respawn unarmed.

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RGX 2.0 Skin Bundle & Battle Pass

The much awaited and anticipated skin bundle RGX 2.0 is finally here with the new Act including a Melee, a Spectre, an Operator, a Phantom & a Classic. Apart from the gun skins you will also get a Spray, Player Card and a couple of Gun Buddies with the pack . You won’t have to pay for the Melee skin and extra goodies apart from the Gun Skins if you will be buying the whole bundle which is worth 8700 VP. Each gun skin will be having 5 levels which you can upgrade using 10 Radianite points each that unlock VFX on level 2, Animation on level 3, Finisher on level 4 and finally the Kill Counter on level 5. Just like the previous iteration of the bundle 2.0 Bundle also has 4 Variants that can also be unlocked using 10 Radianite points each.

Apart from the Premium skin bundle, the community has been blessed with a very aesthetic battle pass time introducing three new skin lines including an Axe style melee, nine gun buddies, and 13 Player cards. Battle pass can be bought using for 1000 VP for around 10 USD depending on what region player is from and what payment method player will choose.

Miscellaneous

Jett nerfs didn’t only change the way Jett mains used to play the game but also revamped the gameplay so that the game feels more balanced. Sova changes were kinda expected by the community as the agent hasn’t been touched by Riot since a long time but the main concern for all those Sova mains out there should be the shock dart nerfs as they need to be on point to eliminate the opponent with full HP. Coming to Neon changes which came out of nowhere as no one expected riot to change the agent for quite a while as the pick rate wasn’t worth noticing and the players labelled neon as a support duelist as well.

Coming to upcoming changes and leaks, Valorant Content Creator ValorLeaks teased a Cascade Agent Select system to tackle the instalockers in the game.

To Explain a bit more. Each Player has 10 seconds, after 10 seconds the next player will be able to choose their agent and so on.

Riot sent out Surveys for players to give their feedback on the system, in its current form. As mentioned above, all can change as this is not final.

— Mike | Valorant Leaks & News (@ValorLeaks) April 26, 2022

Riot recently also announced that they will be implementing a partnership system to Valorant in 2023 which will help the teams financially to compete in the esports events. A tournament mode is also expected to be in game in near future as it’s also in development. This Act is already full of exciting stuff which players can’t get enough of, and with a brand new Episode to be out in a couple of months, players are still speculating what will they be getting from the game which might leave them astonished again.