VALORANT Patch 3.05 will introduce significant changes to how certain agents can interact with other abilities, allowing them to damage or destroy them. This is meant to reward players who can creatively use their ability kit to “solve the obstacles other agents are creating.” Making physical objects interact consistently with the agent abilities allows players to plan for the round effectively without worrying about the specific interactions of certain abilities.
Brimstone, Sova, and Breach’s abilities will all receive consistency changes to ability damage, making them more effective at dealing with enemy abilities. But players must adjust their tactics to avoid destroying their teammates’ abilities and equipment in the process. Here are the specific damage changes for the three agents:
Breach’s Aftershock now deals damage to the following:
- Killjoy Alarm Bot
- Killjoy Nanoswarm
- Killjoy Lockdown
- Cypher Tripwire
- Reyna Leer
- Sage Barrier Orb
- Sova Recon Bolt
- KAY/O Zero/Point
Brimstone’s Orbital Strike now deals damage to the following:
- Killjoy Nanoswarm
- Cypher Trapwire
- Sage Barrier Orb
- Sova Recon Bolt
- KAY/O Zero/Point
Sova’s Hunter’s Fury now deals damage to the following:
- Killjoy Nanoswarm
- Cypher Trapwire
- Sage Barrier Orb
- Sova Recon Bolt
- KAY/O Zero/Point
Patch 3.05 also nerfs Killjoy’s Turret and Raze’s Boom Bot. Killjoy’s Turret is an excellent tool that helps chip away at enemy health, alert players to enemy movement, and slow down players to help secure an easy kill. Despite the turret being manageable in later rounds, Riot Games noticed how strong it performed in pistol rounds. The turret could significantly oppress a team down a long sightline, making it tough to push forward.
To resolve this issue, Killjoy’s Turrets’ bullet tagging has been reduced from a 72.5-percent slow to a 29.5-percent slow. This means players hit by the turret will have a better chance at escaping and more counterplay options.
Raze’s Boom Bot excelled at clearing an area, finding opponents, and killing or significantly damaging players. But the Boom Bot’s effectiveness prevented counterplay, especially during low eco rounds. To resolve this issue without completely ruining the Boom Bot, it now costs less but does less damage. Here are the specific changes:
- Maximum damage reduced from 125 to 80
- Minimum damage reduced from 50 to 30
- Cost reduced from 400 to 300
One of the biggest updates in Patch 3.05 is Fracture, the newest map in VALORANT. This map takes players to a damaged Kingdom facility where two worlds have collided, creating a battlefield with two distinct sides. Instead of spawning on opposites sides of the map, the defenders spawn in the center with immediate access to both bombsites. The attackers can use a zipline to immediately push the sites, causing defenders to deal with two threats at once. If you wanted a completely new VALORANT experience, Fracture is the map for you.
The competitive playlist will also receive changes in Patch 3.05. Immortal rank tiers are back and the leaderboard will be updated to distinguish between each tier. The return on Immortal 1/2/3 also changes ranked grouping restrictions. Here are the new Immortal and Diamond grouping restrictions:
- Diamond 1 → Immortal 1
- Diamond 2 → Immortal 2
- Diamond 3 → Immortal 3
In addition, Patch 3.05 adjusts the competitive ranked distribution, which Riot previously explained in a blog post. Fans who want to try Fracture can enjoy the new Fractured queue, which is a standard unrated playlist. This queue will only be available for two weeks and Fractured will enter the other modes after this period.
Players who purchase the premium battle pass will earn a three-percent XP boost toward battle pass tier progression until the end of Act Two. The bonus isn’t retroactive, meaning players who purchase the pass early will earn more XP. This XP bonus doesn’t apply to daily or weekly missions.
The AFK detection logic has been updated to prevent players from farming battle pass or account levels by AFKing in game modes like Deathmatch or Snowball Fight. Players can also enjoy performance updates like updated ping calculations that exclude the server frame time and updated markers for NVIDIA Reflex. The update should allow Reflex to “better pace frames by adding present markers as well as fixes on some old markers.”
Patch 3.05 will introduce several bug changes to agents, the competitive playlist, and certain esports features. These changes can be found in the official patch notes.
Patch 3.05 is set to go live on Sept. 8.
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