VALORANT Patch 1.11, which went live last week but had to be rolled back, is now live once again. The patch initially went out in October, but was a "technical nightmare," according to Riot Games, with reports of issues with smokes and nearsight effects. Riot's principal software engineer has a whole post explaining what went wrong if you're interested, but the takeaway is that the fixes have been made and the patch is now live again.
That means Skye, the newest agent, is now playable. Skye is primarily a support agent with a more passive-style that helps the team through obtain vision by summoning various creatures. If you already purchased her when the patch initially went live, she should already be playable for you without needing to repurchase her. Barring any issues, Skye will be available for use in official esports competition after two weeks in the Competitive queue.
In addition to introducing Skye, the VALORANT patch also tunes flash for Initators. Although the fade out of the flash debuff remains the same duration, it now fades slower at the start. Breach's full flash time has been increased to two seconds from 1.75. Here's what Riot had to say on the issue:
Initiators create concentrated windows of extremely high threat to help their teams break onto sites. To this end, we are slightly increasing the duration of debuffs from some Initiator abilities (mostly flashes). Our goal here is to increase the opportunity window that Initiator’s teammates have to capitalize on their utility and further differentiate Initiators from Duelists.
Patch 1.11 also brings changes to Sentinels with the aim of increasing the depth of decision making when playing as one, while also providing enemies with more counterplay options. Cypher's spy camera and trapwire are now disabled and revealed upon death. Killjoy's Alarmbot and Turret will also deactivate if she travels from than 40 meters away from them. Additionally, Alarmbot can be detected from 7 meters away, down from 9 meters, while Nanoswarm can be detected from 5 meters, down from 3.5 meters.
"We want to encourage Sentinel players to play more thoughtfully and carefully around their traps while increasing the reward for taking out the Sentinel player," Riot said of the changes.
For competitive play, Icebox now enters the map rotation and will be available in esports competition as early as November 29, barring any issues. Hgih-ranked players should also experience shorter Unrated queue times.
Lastly, in addition to the quality of life changes and bug fixes, Riot has made updates to the economy ruleset with the intention of "increasing richness in decision making regarding when it is worthwhile to save your gear vs. go for the round win." On the flip side, the change should also allow teams that secure round wins to chip away at the economy of opponents that opt to save out on expensive weapons in a loss. With that in mind, here are the changes:
Attackers who lose but survive the entire round without planting the Spike receive a reduced number of credits (1,000)
Defenders who lose but survive the entire round after the Spike has detonated also receive reduced credits (1,000)
Riot hopes these changes will alter decision-making when the round or your loadout is on the line. You can check out the full patch 1.11 notes for VALORANT here.