The latest Valorant update is out as patch 1.14 was released yesterday. Here’s everything you need to know about it.
Hey, wait where’s patch 1.13? That’s what we’ve been asking ourselves, but Riot had the answer in the 1.14 patch notes.
If you’re wondering what happened to Patch 1.13, we used it to roll out some Unreal upgrades. So, there’s that.
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at what’s new in 1.14.
Agent Changes
Sage
Barrier Orb
- Barrier Orb can’t be cast in Buy Phase
Although this was a hotfix solution intended to prevent an exploit with Omen, this change is overall a solid one that we believe creates cohesion across what can and can’t be cast in buy phase. Most of the abilities cast during buy phase are meant to set up more permanent utility.
- Once fortified, Barrier no longer loses health over time—Barrier only starts to deteriorate a few seconds before it expires
Overall, we’ve been happy with how the fortified barrier has been playing but wanted to make some changes to prevent the mitigation of the fortifying counterplay, while rewarding Sage players that successfully fortify their walls. By removing the mitigation of the counterplay, we are able to investigate future opportunities to reward players that succeed in getting their barriers to fortify.
Map Updates
Icebox is the only map that gets changes in patch 1.14 and there are a lot of them. Check out what’s new on the gifs below.
New Mode: Snowball Fight!
Snowball Fight will be the event for the holidays, kicking off on December 15 and ending on December 29. It’ll be a 5v5 Deathmatch and the first team to 50 kills wins. Respawns are enabled and there are special types of powerups:
- 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!
Snowball Fight will be only available on Icebox for the first week and then on all the maps in the seconds one. You can earn 750 XP per game with an extra 150 XP per win.
Store Update
Riot introduce the Night Market which opens on December 10. Each player will have 6 chances to receive a random Select, Deluxe, or Premium weapon skin at a discount.
Social Updates
- Requirements to unlock Competitive play have been changed from Play 20 Unrated matches >>> Win 10 Unrated matches
- 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
Those were the most important changes in the 1.14 patch. For the full notes, check the official Valorant website.
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