As an Astra player, I love watching my enemies tentatively step into my sparkling purple nebula, guns at the ready, terrified that one misstep will lead to them losing their heads. That sense of power is fun if you’re the smoker, but not so much if you’re on the receiving end of it. With the latest round of Valorant patch notes, though, tracking smokes and their respective timers just got a lot easier.
As a former Controller main in Valorant, I know just how powerful a well-placed smoke can be – especially mid-match when no-one has their eye on the exact time that it was placed. While you can count down the timer at the start of a match, keeping track of when smokes dissipate in the FPS game is hard – especially when the bullets inevitably start flying.
Now, however, there are new visuals and audio clips that will play ahead of the smoke dissipating. Astra, Brimstone, and Omen’s smokes will now see shimmering specs of light appear 1.5 seconds before they vanish for good, accompanied by a rather satisfying wooshing sound, which you can hear in the video below.
Going forward, this’ll make smokes a lot easier to track and let you make more informed pushes – no more lurking and praying required.
The other changes are relatively minor, but include an expansion of the Agent bar in Agent Select to accommodate for new additions to the game’s ever-expanding roster, as well as an easier selection system for level borders and player cards. You can see how both look on the image below.
Valorant patch 7.08
Below are the the Valorant patch notes for the 7.08 update, with bug fixes omitted. You can check those out here.
General Updates
- We made a slight adjustment to the rows of Agents you can select from at the bottom of the screen in order to make room for future Agents.
Agent Updates
Smoke Visual Update
- Some of the key smokes can manipulate the play space for a good chunk of time and we feel it is important to be able to make the right decisions in the moment. We’ve added audio and visual cues at the end of our longer lasting smokes to give you a bit of a heads up for when the smoke will disappear.
- Smokes play an audio and visual cue 1.5 seconds before they are about
to fade. The following Agents’ smokes have been affected:- Astra
- Brimstone
- Omen
- Ability equipping sounds are no longer audible to your Allies.
- Previously, the sound of you equipping abilities as certain Agents could be heard by allies that were very close to you. Hearing this audio was inconsistent with equipping guns, which are silent to allies, and resulted in confusion around if enemies were able to hear these sounds. We hope this change will make the rules around equipping gun and ability audio more consistent and make what can be heard by enemies easier to learn and understand.
Premier Updates
Premier Playoffs Tournament Queue Changes
- The Playoffs Tournament Queue is now only 15 minutes instead of one hour. If you don’t queue up and stay queued within the 15 minute window, your team will not be able to play in the Tournament.
- At the end of the waiting period, all teams that are still in the queue will be matched at one time into evenly distributed brackets seeded by Premier Score.
- This change ensures that having a better regular season record gives you a higher seeding in your tournament.
Store Updates
- Your Level Borders and Player Card collection UI is getting an upgrade! You’ll now be able to search, navigate, and equip your Level Borders and Player Cards using our grid UI.
If you’re anything like me, your player card has to match your Valorant skins, so this will make things a lot easier. If you aren’t as oddly obsessed with color-coordination, though, then I’d suggest channeling your energy into popping heads with the best Valorant crosshairs – I feel like it’s slightly more useful than ensuring yours skins all match.