Valorant’s Chamber is receiving a huge raft of nerfs in the game’s 5.03 patch, which aims to redress some of the balance issues in the game right now.
Even following a previous nerf, the French Sentinel has proven a dominant force in most matches. His success rings especially true in the pro scene, where he was selected in almost all matches of the recent Valorant Masters Copenhagen.
The Valorant 5.03 patch notes look to redress this, bringing increases to the cooldowns and costs of his abilities. In addition, his Trademark trap has had its slow duration reduced, and his Ultimate now costs an extra pip to reach.
© Riot Games
Elsewhere, developer Riot is hoping to create consistency across the game’s weapon types, most notably when it comes to regional damage across the body. While most weapons receive a modifier based on whether you hit the target in the head, body, or legs, certain abilities such as Neon and Jett’s Ultimates disregarded aspects. Neon, Jett, and Chamber have all had their Ultimates adjusted to encourage more precise aim. In Neon’s case, a reduction to leg shots with an increase to head shots should make her laser more powerful in high-skill matches while reducing its dominance at lower skill levels.
The update also brings a visual refresh to the Agent Browser, which will not make use of the stylish agent art released with each new character.
The full patch notes can be read on the Valorant website or by scrolling down below.
Valorant 5.03 patch notes
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
- Just thought we should leverage some of the cool Agent art and lean more into our VALORANT style.
Agent updates
Chamber
Developer note: As players in both ranked and pro play have mastered Chamber, his strengths have started to overshadow his weaknesses, making the counterplay to Rendezvous and his arsenal not as effective as we’d hoped. Chamber’s overall strength has also felt outsized, and we believe that we can reduce the complete power of his kit while still keeping him competitive with the rest of the roster.
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
- Chamber’s Rendezvous is intended to be powerful at holding space, but the generous radius allowed him to take that space with more aggression than intended. This change should require Chamber to exert more effort to access off-angles.
- We hope that a harsher punishment for destroyed Rendezvous anchors, and the reduced radius will demand Chamber mains to be more careful in their use. This change also brings the counterplay of Chamber’s destructible objects more inline with the behavior of other destructible objects in the game.
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
- It’s important that Headhunter is a powerful sidearm for Chamber but at its current price point Chamber doesn’t have to engage in making difficult economic decisions as meaningfully as other Agents. This should most noticeably impact Chamber’s decision making on pistol rounds and save rounds. The ultimate point change to Tour De Force is also working towards this goal
Ability region damage breakup
Developer note: 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 system 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.
Those were the full Valorant 5.03 patch notes. Are you happy with the Chamber nerfs? Let us know in the comments below.