VALORANT Patch 6.02: Stinger nerf, bug fixes, and quality of life changes

February's first VALORANT patch involves Stinger alterations based on its long-range capabilities, management of ping-based to increase fairness on players with lower pings, and map, agent, weapon, and social related bug fixes.

Stinger nerf

As of recently, the Stinger has been labelled as a gun which is heavily overperforming in terms of its cost to performance ratio. Its price point and close-range capabilities are intended to be the Stinger’s strong suit. However, it has been overperforming at medium and long range engagements for its lack of economic tradeoff.

• Cost increased from 950 to 1100 credits.
• Damage falloff changes:
• 27 damage per bullet at 0-20 meters has been reduced to a threshold of 0-15 meters.
• 25 damage per bullet at 20+ meters has been docked to 23 damage per bullet at 15+ meters.

Social, quality of life, and bug fixes

A minor social update has been introduced that begins the Voice Evaluation Beta on North American servers, a system which has been implemented in order to enhance the data collected by Riot regarding behavioral reports in game with intent to improve the impact of comms moderation.

The ping-based game system has experienced its first significant change. When a player shoots, it takes time for the input to reach the server. To stop players on high ping needing to lead their shots, VALORANT uses a system known as server rewinding, in which the server chooses the outcome of a shot based on a small rewind in character positions to match their locations to the time where the input for the shot was initially performed. The server rewind max value was set to 200ms at VALORANTs launch, but patch 6.02 changes this. Max server rewind limit has been reduced to 140 from 200ms. This change has been implemented in order to change the fact that playing against high-ping players often felt like you would get shot after moving behind cover from a bullet fired earlier. As a result, players on high ping may start to experience slight hit registration inaccuracy, but for the vast majority of the player base the change should not be noticeable.

"AGENTS

• Potentially fixed bug with KAY/O’s Zero/point (E) not showing the correct enemies that it has suppressed (please let us know if you see further issues here)
• Pathfinding has been improved on Raze’s Boom Bot (C) when chasing an enemy. It can now more consistently jump up small heights and will do so with smoother movement
• Fixed a bug with Boom Bot (C) getting stuck in a wall and rapidly shaking while making a loud noise. It will now bounce off the wall per usual
• Fixed a bug where Yoru’s Fakeout (C) could get stuck in mid-air in various locations
• Fixed bug where Cypher’s Neural Theft (X) would only reveal one time if he had been killed or the round had changed during a previous cast
• Fixed a bug where Cypher’s Neural Theft (X) reveals would be interrupted when he was killed after it had been deployed

MAPS

• Players will no longer make footstep audio when dropping from Lotus B site platform to the fountain
• Lotus door volume has been lowered further (we lowered in 6.01 as well) during the rotation phase
• On Lotus, players next to each other while rotating door…rotates should feel smoother
• On Lotus, fixed an issue where players were spawning on the wrong side of barrier near C site if standing on rotating door at round end
• On Fracture, fixed a bug where the “Paul Delmann” badge could be stuck on the screen after Buy Phase ends

WEAPONS

• Fixed an issue where Frenzy and Bulldog reload audio is quieter than other weapons in third person

SOCIAL

• Fixed a bug that caused voice chat to no longer function when disconnected from the internet for less than 60 seconds If the internet is disconnected for 60 seconds or less, you will be able to reconnect to voice chat without having to relaunch the game."

(Credit: Riot Games)