Chamber, Neon and Jett all get changes in the patch.
Riot Games has revealed the patch notes for Valorant update 5.03, which reveal some major nerfs to Chamber, and somewhat strangely, introduces some bugs the developers are already aware of.
Chamber has been the bane of many Valorant games in recent times, with almost everyone agreeing that his kit has been a little bit too strong for a while now. Now the time has come for some nerfs, and the Valorant development team is pretty confident they have done just that.
“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,” the dev team said in the patch notes. “He’s 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.”
His Rendezvous has been particularly hard hit, with an increase of 10 seconds to its cooldown and a significant decrease in the size of the ring, which should mean he has to play a little safer and less aggressive. Elsewhere the slow on both Trademark and Tour De Force has been decreased from 9.5 seconds to 6, and his ultimate from him now requires an extra point to activate. The final change increases the cost of his Headhunter bullets from 100 to 150, which combined with the increased ultimate cost, should bring down the frequency he can use his most valuable assets from him.
Other agents that are being changed in patch 5.02 include Neon and Jett who, along with Chamber, now have to deal with decreased damage to limbs when they use their ultimates, but increased damage when they hit a head. If you compare this to how pretty much every other weapon works in Valorant it makes sense to bring them in line.
There are a few bug fixes that aren’t all that important, but strangely patch 5.03 is adding more bugs that Riot already knows about. It’s all for a good cause, as the Valorant engine is being upgraded to Unreal Engine 4.26, giving the development team access to some new tools, but it does mean that there may be some UI-related bugs that pop up. The good news is that Riot is already on the case and they should be fixed pretty soon.
It may not be a massive update all things considered, but the Chamber nerfs will certainly be good news to everyone apart from Chamber mains, and the changes to certain ultimates set a good precedent going forward.
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