Massive Changes on Split and Jett Smokes, and New Skins – Patch Notes 2.01

Slightly over a week after the previous patch notes, the Valorant team decided to make some more changes to balance the game. This is quite a big update, not because there are many changes or nerfs/buffs on agents, but because it’s changing the gameplay on Split with remodeling on the map, giving more chances to have a winnable attacker side. Furthermore, a significant nerf in one of Jett’s abilities, competitive and social updates, and bug fixes. There were issues with the update as players found themselves having to replay unranked matches once again as well as plenty of existing remaining unsolved. Here’s a breakdown of all the changes in the most recent Valorant patch 2.01.

Valorant Patch 2.01

© PlayValorant

Jett Smoke

Jett has continuously been a target of changes, especially on the smokescreen duration. As an aggressive agent designed to get round advantages with an entry kill or how many players are using her as a sniper. The problem here is that with the last change on her smoke duration from 4 seconds to 7 seconds, nowadays, the agent is also being played as a controller like Brimstone or Omen, using smokes to take a fast control of a part of the maps. To bring back Jett’s aggressive playstyle, as pretended, her cloudburst smoke duration decreased from 7 to 4.5 seconds.

The recent changes breaks the Jett defuse ability in a single smoke cast. The new smoke duration would mean Jett has to recast smoke to finish defusing within a smoke with a short gap of smoke dissipating between casts.

Competitive Updates

After receiving some requests to hide players’ custom game results on match history (mainly by pros), now it’s finally possible. Has been added the feature to hide those matches, so players can practice without revealing any strategies. Another problem that was concerning high-ranked players (Radiant) was the queueing time to find a match. Working also on that, the Valorant team adjusted the queue times to be significantly faster.

Social Updates

Now you can’t add enemy players to your friendliest. The option is only available for teammates. However, enabling streamer/privacy mode hides the add button. To avoid more and more AFK players in-game, now the penalizations are higher if you leave a game or don’t play it purposefully.

On the other side of Valorant news, we have two new skin sets coming to the game.

Horizon and Prism 2 New Skins Collection

While the last bundle (Run it Back) was compiling a variety of skins from previous collections, these two new bundles are completely new. Valorant Leaks featured screenshot of both collections on the 20th of January.

Horizon Skins

Similarly in style to some old collections like Nebule and WinterWunderland, these new skins are showing more hot colors.

The price might be 1775 Valorant Points and would be available on:

  • Vandal
  • Bulldog
  • Spectre
  • Bucky
  • Frenzy

Valorant Prism 2 leak

Prism II Skins

This is a second version of the prism collection released in May 2020.

With a clean look and strong color choice, these skins might be a success like their first version. Available on:

  • Vandal
  • Stinger
  • Bucky
  • Shorty
  • Sheriff

Valorant Prism 2 leak

Split Map Changes in Valorant Patch 2.01

Some massive changes were made to make the map more balanced for both sides (attackers and defenders). We have a total of 13 new changes.

After some criticism about how defensive the map is, now it’s the attempt to soften that.

    1. B Main doorway with less width, allowing more utility to be thrown into the site from new angles, making it more difficult to defend.
    2. Extra trash pile in the corner after entering B Main, avoiding hiding in a corner, but also creating a new angle by standing on the pile.
    3. Wider Spike plant zone, creating new bomb locations.
    4. New boxes on B bombsite, isolating angles on the site, and heaven.
    5. Reduced depth of a corner, allowing pushing into defender spawn with more safety.
    6. Eliminated the square close to defenders spawn for more secure pushings.
    7. Larger entrance on the Vent Room
    8. New sloped wall in the Vent Room
    9. Ramen/Scuttle Crab area more open
    10. Reduced depth of cubby in Sewer
    11. Larger doorway to A tower, increasing the importance of A ramps control and making defenders find new positions.
    12. Sloped wall angle on A bombsite adjusted, permitting a faster rush and clear of the spot
    13. Adjusted wall depth near Screens on A bombsite

Youtuber Kam1ne uploaded a short slideshow of all the changes below:

Valorant 2.01 patch final notes and existing bugs

We are expecting some innovation on Split strategies for both sides. Players now have to adjust themselves and create new ways to enter the bombsites but also how to defend them!

There are several bugs in the game that have gone completely un-addressed.

  • You are still able to plant the spike silently using the plant + map keybind
  • You are still able to open doors with Killjoy’s alarmbot from the outside
  • Yoru can still fall into his death out of map
  • Raze is still able to hyperboost on top of Ascent with a Rocket + Blast Pack combo
  • It is still possible to end up below the Haven with Omen and Sage wall + teleport combo
  • Its still possible for Jett to superboost above the map on Icebox using the Attacker side ramp
For more information and read the bug fixes, click here.