Sage’s self-healing has been reduced while its heal for allies has increased. Is Battle Sage still viable?
Valorant Patch 5.12 is out and it has some big changes to several agents. Chamber receives significant nefs i this update while other against also receive some changes. Here’s a rundown of what’s changed in the latest Valorant update.
What are the biggest changes in Valorant Patch 5.12?
We've increased the point costs of the Agent Ultimates that have large, site-wide footprints. These changes should reduce their overall frequency and increase counterplay against them at the strategic level.
Agent ultimates are now much more costly as Valorant devs want to make ultimates more impactful. This also allows opponents to counter certain ultimates leading to more strategic gameplay.
In addition to the Ult adjustments, we've also made a tuning pass on Agent ability economy. The areas targeted in this pass include: Total loadout cost outliers (for their respective role), Agents with lack of pistol round buy options, and unintended power relative to the cost of the ability.
Some agents will also receive some help from the developers via some help especially during the pistol rounds. The pistol rounds often rely on agent abilities in the early rounds and some agents find themselves at a disadvantage due to the high cost of some abilities. As such the Valorant Patch 5.12 brings some changes to the game allowing some agents to buy significant abilities for the first round.
To wrap up the broad updates, we’ve taken a pass at the HP of destructible objects in the game. Damage-over-time area abilities (like Brimstone’s Incindiary and Viper’s Snakebite) now damage enemy utility (read more in the Gameplay Systems Updates), so we’ve increased the health of 1hp destructibles so that they aren’t instantly vaporized—but can still be destroyed by one-shot in most situations. Also, Killjoy’s Lockdown gets a bigger health bump to reduce the number of abilities that can destroy it solo. Boombot and Prowlers on the other hand have felt like they require unloading too many bullets given their other strengths, so the health of those abilities have been reduced.
Some destructibles now have higher HP numbers. So we have agents such as Killjoy, Raze's Boombot and more.
These agents' destructibles have more HP now than the 1 HP previously. This will ensure that damage over time abilities such as Brimstone's Incindiery and Viper's Snakebite would not destroy these destructibles.
Agent Changes
Chamber
Headhunter (Q)
- Updated Stability Curve
- Spread increased after 2nd bullet, when spamming. This is explicitly meant to reduce low-precision body-shot spam as an effective combat measure at range.
Rendezvous (E)
- Chamber now places a single anchor that can be teleported to while inside its range
- Radius increased 7.5m >>> 13m
- Removed teleport activation height restriction
- You can teleport to the Anchor while on different verticality so long as you are within its radius.
- Increased weapon equip time after teleporting 0.4s >>> 0.7s
- Headhunter is unaffected by this change
- Destroying Rendezvous teleport anchor now disables it for the remainder of the round, instead of being placed on a cooldown.
- Chamber no longer incurs an additional cooldown when recalling his Anchor after teleporting.
- Health decreased 80 >>> 50
Trademark (C)
- The trap is now range restricted
- Trademark will disable when Chamber moves out of range, and reactivate once he is inside.
- Can now be recalled mid-round without line of sight
- 30s cooldown on recall
- Destruction remains permanent
- Initial Arm Time increased 2s >>> 4s
- Health Increased 1 >>> 20
Tour De Force (X)
- Fire rate decreased by 57.5%
Slow
- This applies to both Trademark and Tour De Force
- Reduced duration 6s >>>> 4s
Cypher
Trapwire (C)
- Health increased 1>>> 20
Fade
- Prowler (C )
- Health decreased 100>>>60
Harbor
Harbor has been one of the agents whose launch has been very underwhelming. The new controller style smoke has not been utilized to its full potential, although players like Benkai hope that the agent will see more usage in the future as teams learn how to include him in their comps.
High Tide (E)
- Duration increased 12s >>> 15s
Cascade (C)
- Duration increased 5s>>>>7s
Killjoy
Killjoy's Lockdown is one of the best ultimate abilities in the game. However, due to its long load time, the ability is also easy to destroy. After making changes to how destructible HPs are structured, Valorant patch 5.12 also increased the Health for Lockdown (from 150 to 200). This makes it slightly more difficult to destroy even with guns.
- Lockdown (X)
- Health increased from 150 to 200
- Nanoswam (C )
- Health increased from 1>>>20
Omen
Paranoia is one of the most important abilities for Omen. He can blind enemies through walls acting as a support for his teammates. By reducing the cost of Paranoia, Valorant devs want to ensure this ability gets used more often.
- Paranoia
- Cost decreased from 300 to 250
Phoenix
- Blaze (C )
- Cost decreased from 200 to 150
Raze
Raze's Boombot is one of the more irritating abilities to destroy when you see it coming at you. By decreasing its health, it makes it easier to destroy the Boombot. The Blast pack Health has also been increased in order to ensure it doesn't get destroyed by damage over time abilities.
- Boom Bot (C )
- Health decreased from 100 to 60
- Blast Pack (Q)
- Health increased from 1 to 20
Sage
Battle Sage is no longer as viable as before. The Valorant Patch 5.12 reduces Sage's self-healing. The update also increases her healing for allies from 60 to 100. Self Heal is now down to 30 HP making healing herself and acting as a battle sage much less feasible for Sage players.
- Barrier Orb (C )
- Fortify delay increased from 3s to 3.3 s
- Healing Orb (E)
- Self heal total amount decreased from 60 HP to 30 HP
- Ally heal total amount increased from 60 HP to 100 HP
Sova
- Recon Bolt (E)
- Health increased from 1 to 20
Skye
- Trailblazer (Q)
- Cots increased from 250 to 300
- Regrowth (C )
- Cost decreased from 200 to 150
Viper
Viper has received some significant nerfs mostly pertaining to her ultimate ability. The max time she can remain outside of the smoke has been decreased from 15 to 8s, Viper's movement is severely limited. The increase in cost for the ultimate point also makes the Viper's ultimate less frequent.
- Viper’s Pit (X)
- Smoke integrity regen time 5 to 25
- Max time out of smoke decreased from 15 to 8
- Ultimate points required increased from 7 to 8
Yoru
- Gatecrash (E)
- Health decreased from 100 to 60
- Cost decreased from 200 to 150
You can read more about the patch updates here.
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