Valorant Beta Patch Nerfs Raze, Increases Melee Damage

Riot Games recently rolled out a beta patch for Valorant, making adjustment to Raze and Sage while also increasing melee damage. The melee damage changes are actually for destructibles, like Sage’s Barrier. This is to provide more opportunities for destroying the Barrier in rounds with low economy while introducing a bit of risk.

Sage’s Slow Orb has also been changed to slow the air speed of players within its zone. The caveat is that now players can walk through it without making noise. This change was made to circumvent the risk-free nature of bunny-hopping through the Slow Orb zone while also ensuring some counterplay against Sage.

As for Raze, her Paint Shells have been reduced from 2 to 1 and require two kills for players to refresh the cooldown. Audio for Paint Shells, Blast Pack and Showstopper have also been tuned to make them more obvious to hear. You can also expect the secondary cluster of Paint Shells to now have a slight delay before exploding.

Check out some of the patch notes below for more details on the reasoning behind these changes.

Gameplay and balance

Melee Damage

• Melee attacks now inflict double the damage per hit to destructibles, including Sage’s Barrier and Haven’s metal double doors
  Why? There weren’t enough options during low econ rounds—such as the first round and right after switching sides—to combat Sage’s Barrier Orb. Our intent is to add a high-risk, high-reward method for players to interact with her wall, while still being able to take it down, no matter their loadout

Raze

• Reduced Paint Shells from 2 to 1
• Paint Shells now have a kill reset, requiring players to get 2 kills to refresh cooldown
• Tuned and adjusted audio for Paint Shells, Blast Pack, and Showstopper so that they’ll be easier to hear in hectic scenarios
• Fixed an edge case where the secondary cluster of Paint Shells would explode quicker than intended. They now have a minimum duration before exploding.
  What’s up with that? Raze’s goal is to be a highly-threatening duelist that punishes enemies posted in predictable positions, but we felt like the cluster grenades and their number were creating overly oppressive scenarios. Also, players should be supplied proper gameplay information and the audio cues on all of Raze’s abilities didn’t match their threat, so we changed the audio of each. For example, when the Showstopper is equipped or fired from a distance, players should be able to clearly identify and interpret the threat.

Sage

• Slow Orb now also slows the air speed of players in the zone
• Players can now walk through the Slow Orb without making noise
  Why though? Players were able to circumvent too much of Sage’s Slow Orb by bunny hopping through the zone. We want the minimum slow amount to be a bit more consistent with all movement in the zone, while still allowing for bunny hopping and walking to provide a slight benefit to traversing the zone. Also, we feel adding a stealthy yet slow way to move through the field brings more nuance to playing against the zone and a bit more uncertainty for Sage, since she can’t necessarily hear people who move through