Valorant Patch 0.50 Updates and Notes: Sage and Cypher nerf, removed running headshots and slow recoil recovery

Pic courtesy: Dexerto

Valorant's patch 0.50 is out, and it is a big one.

Riot have targeted a lot of the key issues that have been plaguing the game in the first month of its closed beta. Slow gun recovery, along with Sage and Cypher’s dominance, required some much-needed fixes. The Valorant developers have done just that in the 0.50 patch.

The gun recovery time has been reduced, and walking accuracy is no more. Sage and Cypher have been nerfed, and made much more balanced than they previously were.

Here is a full list of the changes that have come in this patch.

Valorant Patch 0.50 Notes and Updates

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Gameplay and balance:

Weapon updates

• You’ll no longer enter the “walking accuracy” state when transitioning from run to stop.
• Riot noticed that many players were entering a walking accuracy state during their run-to-stop transition. This made it appear as if shots they fired/landed were done at full speed.
• Deadzone accuracy speed threshold has been increased: 25 percent to 30 percent.
• Now that you can’t gain walk accuracy while transitioning from a run to a stop, Riot also slightly increased the size of the deadzone (full accuracy state) to make it a bit easier to get an accurate shot out quickly.

All rifles

• Recovery times on all rifles have been updated, which should make tap and burst firing more efficient. Inaccuracy is accrued any time the weapon is re-fired prior to a complete duration of a weapon’s respective Gun Recovery Time.
• Base walk accuracy: 0.6° to 0.8°
• Riot felt like walk-spraying with rifles was a little more effective than it should be, particularly at longer ranges. Riot is going to pull back on this accuracy slightly, and they will continue to monitor the same.
• Vandal:
• Horizontal (Yaw) Recoil reduced by 15 percent while crouched and stationary. This was intended to be the case, and this now properly matches the crouch benefits of other rifles.
• Gun Recovery Time: 0.4 seconds to 0.375 seconds
• Tap Efficiency: Four to six
• Phantom:
• Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended.
• Gun Recovery Time: 0.55 seconds to 0.35 seconds
• Tap Efficiency: Three to four
• Bulldog Automatic Fire:
• Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended.
• Gun Recovery Time: 0.55 seconds to 0.35 seconds
• Guardian:
• Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended.
• Gun Recovery Time: 0.4 seconds to 0.35 seconds.

Machine guns have been significantly underperforming when compared to other weapons at their price points. Machine guns are meant to be bullet hoses—powerful once they get going. This is a difficult balance to strike in a game where a single bullet from the Vandal will put you down.

Riot’s hope here is to make machine guns better at what they do (shoot lots and lots of bullets), while also increasing the power of the Ares relative to weapons at a similar price point.

• Ares:
• Price reduced from 1,700 to 1,600 creds.
• Firing Error (this value is a curve that has intermediate values between each bullet; bullet two has slightly less error than bullet one, and so on.)
• Bullet 1: 1.0° to 0.8°
• Bullet 5: 0.85° to 0.75°
• Bullet 10: 0.75° >to 0.7°
• Reduced the amount and intensity of horizontal (Yaw) Recoil after the first eight bullets.
• Odin:
• Reduced the amount and intensity of horizontal (Yaw) Recoil after the first eight bullets

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Agent updates:

Sage

• Slow Orb zone duration decreased from nine seconds to seven seconds.
• Slow Orb slowing amount decreased from 65 percent to 50 percent.
• Riot has decided to try to reduce some of Sage’s stopping power while still allowing her to fulfill her role as the premier staller in VALORANT. These changes aim to reduce the overall efficacy of her Slow Orb, especially if they are chained back-to-back.

Cypher

• Cyber Cage no longer slows enemies that move through it.
• Riot envisioned Cypher as a premier sentinel gathering info on his enemies and picking them off, but the slow on the cage was allowing him to move into Sage’s territory by stalling an entire enemy team. Riot still thinks this will be a tool he uses to buy some time, but enemies will now have more options when pushing his defenses, especially when coordinated.
• Spycam cooldown when destroyed increased from 30 to 45 seconds.
• Spycams have been flying into enemy territory like Sova darts at the start of rounds because the punishment for losing one to an enemy is so low.

Omen

• Dark Cover smoke duration increased from 12 to 15 seconds.
• Dark Cover smoke projectile speed increased.
• Dark Cover cooldown increased from 30 to 35 seconds.
• Especially at high-tier play, Brimstone has become the dominant controller. Riot wanted to give his peers a boost to make them more viable, while hopefully maintaining their unique playstyles.

Viper

• Snake Bite radius increased from 350 to 450.
• Riot is increasing Snake Bite’s radius to match other area-denial abilities.

Brimstone/Phoenix/Viper

• Height required to jump out of all damaging area-denial abilities increased from 80 to 120.
• Snake Bite, Fireball, and Incendiary damage tick speed increased (total damage per second unchanged).

Agent ability credit cost tuning

• Sage Barrier Orb increased from 300 to 400 credits.
• Raze Blast Pack increased from 100 to 200 credits.
• Phoenix Curveball increased from 100 to 200 credits.
• Brimstone’s Incendiary increased from 200 to 300 credits.
• Jett’s Updraft reduced from 200 to 100 credits.

Agent armour

• Armour carried over from prior rounds is no longer destroyed when new armour is purchased.
• This allows you to sell newly purchased armour and return to your previous armour status (instead of having no armor).

Max credit cap

• Total credit cap reduced from 12,000 to 9,000.
• Riot has noticed that players/teams who manage to bank a high amount of credits are maintaining a rich economic state for too long.
• This becomes a monumental challenge for the opposing team to dethrone their economy.

Character updates

• Sova’s Owl Drone now includes a layer of sound for engine rotors.
• Audio should better reflect thematics, while maintaining how noticeable the previous version of Owl Drone audio was for allies and enemies, as heard in third-person.

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Map updates:

Split

Attacking teams have been facing difficulties while finding a foothold in territory control across the map.

Riot has made a few changes that should allow attackers better opportunities to contest A Main, Mid Top, and B Tower.

• Barrier locations (those clear blue walls) have been adjusted across the map to provide attackers more of a foothold into territory control across the map.
• Defender barrier in B Mid has been pulled back. New barriers are in the entrance to Vent and atop the staircase in B Tower.
• Defender barrier has been pulled back at A Ramps.
• Attacker barrier has been pushed forward at A Main.
• Attacker barrier has been pushed forward slightly at B Main.
• Angled the wall on the left interior of B Tower when pushing up the stairs from Mid.
• This removes a 50/50 angle check when pushing into this space, which should make it more approachable for you to try and gain control of B Tower.
• Radianite crate in B has been changed to a metal crate to provide more cover when planting the Spike.
• Revised art to improve performance throughout the map.

Haven

• A new map exploit system is in effect. This will have negative effects on anyone trying to escape the playspace.
• Updated several floor sections so that they now have appropriate material sounds.

Split/Haven/Bind

• Added fixes for Cypher Spy Camera exploits to all three maps.
• Backside of spawn barriers are now opaque to prevent some abuse cases.
• Added ability for Spike to automatically fall from elevated boost positions.
• Fixed multiple spots where Sova’s Recon Dart could over-penetrate map geometry.

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HUD and UI:

• Teammate armour is now shown on the scoreboard.
• When the Spike is planted, the Spike icon in the upper middle UI now pulses with the audio beeps.
• New artwork for pings to increase readability in the world.
• Re-enabled portrait for player’s minimap icon.
• Reduced size of portraits and icons by several pixels.
• Added colour to the player’s own minimap icon with a slightly thicker border to aid in finding oneself (on the minimap, not in life).
• Added regulation of chat messages when using the radio menu or radio wheel.
• Slight increase to broken armour text size to make it easier to notice.
• Relocated flyout menu for Titles dropdown so it opens in a more sensible location.
• Moved Leave Match button closer to the other “Exit” buttons in the menu.
• Made Logout button red to match Exit button, since they both exit.
• Shifted location of Skip button on MVP screen so players do not accidentally press Play Again button when slamming the Skip button.
• Adjusted radio wheel behaviour so that mouse wheel up and down always select the other wheels regardless of other keybinds.
• Icon for Need Help changed from the little bug thing to a flag.
• Enabled attack/defend icons in the upper-middle game info UI for all players, not just observers.
• Hooked up “Ult Almost Ready” VO when character uses the Ult Status radio command and are within one ult point of being fully charged.

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Quality of life:

• Cheaters are no longer referred to as “hackers.”
• Profanity filter setting added; when enabled, will filter out profanity from chat.
• Added a setting that allows toggling between walking and running.
• Viper’s Poison Cloud no longer enters cooldown when picked up during the buy phase.
• Added foe colouring for Sova’s Hunter’s Fury.
• Added Contract level-up animation when unlocking free characters or purchasing contract levels.
• Added tooltips and explanations guiding new players towards activating their first contract.
• Unowned skin levels now list their individual cost (in Radianite Points) and description in the collection pages.
• Made performance optimisations to address FPS drops when you or allies are shooting.
• Various social panel improvements to support better error handling and messaging.
• “Keep Player Centered” minimap setting is now a default setting.
• Renamed “First Person Enhanced Visuals” graphics setting to “Bloom.”
• As discovered by u/Far_OW on Reddit, this setting affects more than just first-person visuals—it’s actually a visual bloom, or glow effect, which primarily affects weapon renders.
• Renamed “Shadows” graphics setting to “First Person Shadows”. This setting only affects shadows cast on a player’s weapon, hands and arms.
• Observer HUD
• Dead players will now appear greyed out on the HUD rather than hidden.
• Team colours on the HUD will swap when switching sides, rather than the teams on the HUD changing position.

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Bug fixes: In-game

• Cypher and Sova will no longer float in the air if the Sage Barrier Orb wall they are standing on is destroyed while when using the Spycam or Owl Drone.
• Cypher can no longer pick up his trap after an enemy has triggered it.
• Sova’s Owl Drone can no longer rapid-fire darts if the prior one hits an enemy.
• Reduced collision size on Sova’s arrows so they don’t get stuck on corners when fired near them.
• Removed placeholder mesh from Viper’s Toxic Screen projectile.
• When using the ping wheel on the map, right-clicking now correctly cancels the action and does not place a ping.
• Fixed a bug where the Spike UI would sometimes overlap with the HUD.
• Fixed a bug where a weapon’s ammo count on the HUD would disappear if swapping your knife, then back, while on low ammo.
• Removed Spike icon from being visible on enemy player minimap icons.
• Spike can no longer be planted partially in map geometry.
• This also fixes cases where the Spike camera was appearing inside the Spike.
• Barriers on the minimap no longer adjust positions incorrectly during the buy phase if you open the megamap.
• Fixed bug where various issues would occur after multiple players would fulfil a weapon buy request at the same time.
• Fixed issue where the game would hitch/stutter when opening the in-game options menu.
• Fixed issue where the game would hitch/stutter when opening the in-game shop.
• Fixed rare movement bug where resurrected players who were tagged would have jittery movement in first-person perspective.
• Fixed a bug where some weapons lost their muzzle flashes in first-person POV when tracers were disabled.
• Fixed a rare bug where players appeared to be standing, when they were actually crouching.
• Ability details in the combat report will now correctly appear in the buy phase of the round when teams switch sides.
• Fixed miscellaneous Observer mode HUD issues.
• Spectators can now see weapon inspect animations.
• Fixed a bug where the camera could take an invalid position during character select.
• Fixed an issue where the combat report would show 150 damage but the enemy player was still alive (in cases where healing was not involved).
• Fixed an issue where a teammate’s voice activity would incorrectly light up more than their own icon in the above-character UI element.
• Selecting a ping on the ping wheel and cancelling no longer incorrectly spawns the cancelled ping next time the player uses the basic ping.

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Bug fixes: Game client

• Fixed incorrect location of text when hovering rewards in the contracts.
• Fixed a bug where purchase refunds were not reflected in client until it was restarted.
• Fixed a bug where player cards were cropped on the arsenal menu screen.
• Fixed a bug where, in some languages, mission descriptions could appear truncated.
• Fixed an issue where the Distortion Graphics setting was not properly enabled. Enabling this may have a performance impact on some older graphics cards.