Valorant patch 5.03 finally nerfs French Sentinel, Chamber, as well as tweaking both Neon and Jett’s ultimate abilities. Riot Games’ flagship FPS will also now run on Unreal Engine 4.26, making it smoother than ever before.
Players asked, and it has arrived: Valorant’s Chamber is finally getting nerfed. After an insane pick rate at the Valorant Champions Tour Masters in Copenhagen, Riot have turned their attention to the sassy sniper, taking him down a few pegs to end his reign of dominance.
Feisty Filipina, Neon, is also taking an arrow to the proverbial knee, but her changes aren’t quite as devastating as they look on paper. Players will need to focus on popping heads with her Ultimate instead of just zooming in and hoping for the best, as her headshot multiplier has been significantly improved.
Finally, Riot have also updated the game’s engine to Unreal 4.26 to enhance the experience, and have made some changes to the Agent select screen.
Valorant patch 5.03 nerfs chamber (finally)
Chamber has become one of Valorant’s most controversial Agents. Despite being a Sentinel (an Agent whose role is mainly to lockdown sites with traps) he’s become a one man army with his impressive weapon arsenal.
The main changes are to his teleport, Rendezvous. Its cooldown for both use and recall have been increased by 10 seconds, and if another player destroys that glistening golden anchor then he’ll need to wait 45 seconds to plant another. He also needs to be a lot closer to it – 15m to be precise, instead of 21m.
Trademark has also taken a hit, with its slow being reduced to 6s instead of 9.5s, and his Headhunter’s bullets now cost 150 credits instead of 100.
Finally, his Ultimate now costs 8 points instead of 7, and the slow inflicted by it has decreased to 6s. If you also miss your enemy’s head and hit their leg, the damage multiplier is now 0.85 instead of 1.
While these changes seem pretty significant, Riot remain confident that Chamber’s nerfs are not excessive. We’ll have to see where he lands in the Valorant tier list post-5.03, but I truly hope it’s at least in the B-tier.
Valorant patch 5.03: Full notes
Below are the Valorant patch 5.03 notes, courtesy of Riot Games.
GENERAL UPDATES
- Engine update to Unreal Engine 4.26
- This update improves the tool set available to our developers in many ways, however this change will likely go unnoticed by you, as the goal of any Engine update is to happen under the radar.
- There are some known issues this time around though, mostly the UI is misbehaving. We’re fixing these as quickly as we can, but expect some funkiness in the game and in the Main Menu. If anything interrupts your gameplay, please submit a bug report.
- Agent Browser visual design refresh
AGENT UPDATES
CHAMBER
Rendezvous (E)
- Base Cooldown increased 20s >>> 30s
- Recall Cooldown increased 20s >>> 30s
- Cooldown set to 45s whenever a Rendezvous anchor is destroyed
- Diameter size of the “ring” Chamber can stand that allows him to activate Rendezvous decreased 21m >>> 15m
Trademark (C)
- Slow Duration decreased 9.5 >>> 6s
Tour De Force (X)
- Ultimate Points Required increased 7 >>> 8
- Slow Duration decreased 9.5 >>> 6s
Headhunter (Q)
- Bullet Cost increased 100 >>> 150
ABILITY REGIONAL DAMAGE BREAKUP
We’re updating the ultimates for the following Agent so that they follow similar regional damage rules to our weapons—where hitting the head and legs of an enemy applies different damage multipliers. Intent is to reward precision and create intuitive consistency across damage in Valorant.
For Neon specifically, it also gives us more tuning levers for balancing her across different skill levels. This change should also add depth to the mastery needed when tracking while sprinting that her ult demands.
NEON
Overdrive
- Damage per shot reduced 22 >>> 18
- Killzone increased 15m >>> 20m
- Leg shot multiplier reduced 1.0 >>> 0.85
- Headshot multiplier increased 1 >>> 3
CHAMBER
Tour De Force (X)
- Leg shot multiplier reduced 1.0 >>> 0.85
JETT
Bladestorm (X)
- Leg shot multiplier reduced 1.0 >>> 0.85
GAMEPLAY SYSTEMS UPDATES
- Added ability to change “Ghost” keybind outside of Custom Games
- This option is listed under Settings >> Controls >> Actions
BUGS
Agents
- Fixed an issue with Jett’s Tailwind where switching weapons in the middle of the dash would cause the weapon pull out animation to take longer than desired.
Gameplay Systems
- Fixed a bug where some Reyna/Killjoy HUD elements were still visible after enabling Hide User Interface.
- Fixed a bug where defuse animation wouldn’t consistently play if the orb is tapped in rapid succession.
KNOWN ISSUES
- Changing crosshair opacity settings in-game causes crosshair preview visual to flicker
- Spike Announcements UI displaying incorrectly