Love her or hate her, Sage is a prominent power in Valorant. As strong as she was on release, Riot Games is working to bring her down a notch, or a few. Reyna remains unscathed in this bout of changes, in case you are wondering. Three new Spike orbs with new mechanics are released on this patch to spice Spike Rush up a bit. The discontent high and low-end spec users’ complaints are being partially addressed this patch as well. Heeding community advice wasn’t always a strong suit of Riot Games, but they seem to be getting better at it this time around; they should keep it up.

How Bad Are the Sage Nerfs?

Our sieging queen Sage was too good at everything. The aspect of Sage that Valorant developers are targeting this time is exactly her sieging potential. They are reducing the size of her Barrier Orb wall by 50 percent, from 20 meters to 10. Half of anything seems like a harsh nerf, but they want her to be more defense-focused instead of seizing neutral territory too easily. Her healing abilities which were nerfed before remain untouched, for now. Tight spaces and priority choke points coming into focus for Sage players was the purpose of the nerf. We’ll see if it’s an effective or excessive nerf soon enough.

One-Shot Spike Orbs

Valorant devs first attempt to quell quick casual players, Spike Rush, is getting an update this patch. In particular, more spike orbs are being added to the selection to shake things up. 
The Spike Rush game mode was introduced into the Valorant ecosystem at launch. Relatively new to the game, there are still many things being added and changed. This patch’s pick of the problems is more orb variety. Three new orbs are being added to Spike Rush, namely:

Health Orb - (Instantly gives a teamwide health regen) 

• Has a 20-second duration
• Heals at 12 HP per second (3HP per tick)(240 HP in Total)

Deception Orb - (Applies “Paranoia” to the enemy team 3 seconds after capture)

• 10-second debuff duration
• Gives greatly reduced vision (and a small Field of Vision shift)
• Plays fake footsteps and gunfire play for affected players
• The Minimap is disabled

Golden Gun - (Gives the capturing player a Golden Gun)

• Instant one-shot, one-kill
• Perfect accuracy
• The Agent moves at the speed of holding a knife
• Only one bullet in the chamber and two backup rounds
• Kills grant an additional round

With more elements added to Spike Rush, more strategies and obstacles will appear one after the other. In addition to the changes above, the Full Ultimate Orb is always available, and out of the now seven orbs, four will be a random selection. User-friendly instructions on how to use orbs and what they do will be displayed now. I would say critics will be hard-pressed to pick this patch apart, but they’ll find a way. 

Perilous Fps Plummeting

According to the Valorant website, 9 out of 10 players did not pre-load skin textures before joining a game. When they come into contact with a new skin, frame rates would plummet. In a game, a moment of pause is enough to lose you a game, so you can see how this would be a problem. In patch 1.01, Riot Games opted to resolve some of these problems. They sought to enrich the player experience for high-spec users with a multi-thread option, and optimize default settings for low-spec players. A medium to check the frame-rate as your gave progressed was also brought to live servers. This solves a big problem that alleviates a lot of the Valorant community’s frustration. This accommodating Valorant dev team is refreshing; hopefully, this is a trend that continues.