How will Valorant's new smoke update affect gameplay?

Valorant is one of the most popular esports shooter titles and packs a steep skill ceiling that can only be reached with consistency and mastery over Agents. Introducing a change that lets players relax and wait for audio-visual cues will affect both casual and competitive playstyles as it removes the need to micromanage and count seconds for the smokes.

Riot Games will introduce a new update to Valorant that will change the mechanics of most smokes in the game. The patch will not affect all Agents in the roster that can deploy or utilize smokes or throwable canisters like Viper.

This new change will provide the player base with a clear visual and sound cue to notify that the makeshift cover is disappearing soon. It will be similar to the visual changes that appear on Sage’s Wall ability when it is about to break.

This article will discuss the impact of the new smoke update in Valorant.

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Will Valorant’s new smoke changes make the game easier?

Valorant is a tactical shooter at its core and requires immense teamwork, mechanical skills, and an understanding of one’s abilities to secure consecutive victories.

Most high-rank players and pros had already mastered predicting when the smokes would disappear and the intent behind almost any smoke on the map.

Riot’s latest update will affect three major Controller Agents and change the nature of their smokes. Here is a brief about the update and the changes coming to the shooter:

• The affected Agents are Brimstone, Omen, and Astra.
• An audio and visual cue will be played 1.5 seconds before the smoke dissipates from the map. This will provide players on both attacker and defender sides with ample information to execute favorable game plans.

Including a distinct sound and video cue for the smokes disappearing could help raise the gameplay of inexperienced or casual players. This would greatly affect the overall rank distribution in Valorant as the learning curve will become more linear.

The developers might have also brought about such a change to create a beginner-friendly and fair playing ground.

This would allow players from various gaming backgrounds to easily enter Valorant and learn the game mechanics without worrying about counting down smokes around the map. However, this patch will also eliminate the element of surprise as players can clearly see when the smoke will disappear and prepare for an imminent gunfight.

The smokes play a vital role in the game as it can create temporary space for either team, block the flow of information, and cut off direct line-of-sight. The new audio-visual cues will provide a healthy buffer for the community to figure out the next move and position themselves accordingly while playing a match.

Despite all these changes, higher-ranked players can still utilize it as a distraction and catch enemies off-guard by pushing out from smokes moments before it disappears and initiating sudden gunfights.

Moreover, the new visual cues might interfere with the visibility of Agents while emerging from the smoke, which could become an exploit. Such issues might cause the developers to balance and deploy a new patch to fix existing problems.

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Stay tuned to Sportskeeda for more recent Valorant updates.