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Valorant Rolls Out Patch 1.02 Without Competitive Play

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Valorant Rolls Out Patch 1.02 Without Competitive Play

Valorant has received patch update 1.02 which promised to bring competitive playback but instead brought quality of life changes.

On Jun 22, Riot announced that in patch 1.02 competitive would be making its way back to Valorant. This didn't happen, but Riot did roll out several hero and quality of life changes for Valorant. The UI received a major overhaul and cleans up a few of the lacking elements. For start, the main menu received a few changes to how you access agents, contracts, and the battle pass. Agents now have their own tab, allowing for easier management of Agent items and contracts.

Much needed Agent adjustments

Speaking about heroes, Viper, Jett, Reyna, and Cypher all received changes to their toolkits. Viper has been one of the less picked agents of Valorant, mainly due to her toolkit being toxic to both friend and foe. Viper’s Toxic Screen can now go through walls, allowing her to cut off sightlines. Snake Bite now inflicts a status called fragile that increases the amount of damage taken and Poison Orb had its activation cooldown extended. Viper overall got a buff, and mains will be able to more effectively close off sightlines and choke out the enemy team. For Jett and Reyna, both agents had interaction bugs with Phoenix’s Run It Back ultimate. For Jett, Blade Storm now refreshes when she kills Phoenix during his ultimate, and for Reyna, a Soul Orb now appears when she kills Phoenix during Run It Back.

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Cypher is quite possibly one of the buggiest agents in Valorant, with camera glitches popping up left and right. For starters, you could use Spycams to block a Spike defusal in previous patches but the bug has been removed. The Spycam bug on Bind where you were able to use the ability to open the teleporter has been fixed and his Cyber Cage received some graphical updates.

Big Fixes Finally Arrive

Riot rolled out some bug fixes as well which make up a majority of this patch’s changes. 

  •  Levels 2-7 for the Sovereign Ghost skin are now fixed and unlockable
  • Fixed Toggle Walk, you can once again use this setting
  • Fixed the Return from AFK message only displaying the name of the last player to rejoin
  • Fixed an issue where the defuse bar would duplicate
  • Fixed several localization strings and text overlaps
  • Fixed several crashes
  • Fixed a bug where the Spike could automatically plant when you walked onto a plant site while it was in your inventory
  • Fixed a bug where the Spike would float in the air if it had been placed on a Sage wall
  • Fixed a bug where the dropped Spike's model could be invisible to defenders on while it was on the ground
  • Fixed a bug where gun buddies were squished on the Arsenal page
  • Fixed a bug where trying to open the Character Select UI while the mega map in the Shooting Range would result in a deadlock
  • Improved GPU performance of most out of game menu screens
  • Fixed a bug where sometimes players got stuck on the transition into the game and never successfully transitioned into game
  • Fixed a bug where the spread on the Bucky's alt-fire was higher when walking than was when running or standing still
  • Fixed a bug where dead players could appear standing when you reconnect to a match
  • Fixed a bug where you could get stuck grabbing orbs
  • Fixed a bug where enemy players would appear on the minimap while watching the Spike, once your team was dead

There is no word yet on when Competitive will be available, but Riot keeps promising that it is “soon”. It is better to have the mode refined for when it hits the live server, but announcing the feature for this patch and removing it at the last second is discouraging. When Competitive does make its way to the live server, matchmaking will be fixed and there is now a surrender option for when all hope is lost.