Valorant patch 1.08 brings Raze changes and Guardian buffs

Patch 1.08 for Valorant is soon upon us, and Riot has revealed the scoop. In short: Raze is seeing some balancing and Riot is trying to make the Guardian more relevant. They also mention they are still looking at the Operator’s strength, but want to test more internally before bringing anything to the public.

What changes are coming to Valorant with 1.08?

Now then, onto Raze, the blast pack-jumping, rolly-boy-sending paint queen. No longer will she do friendly fire when jumping around the place with her explosives, which is awesome news for… well, every Valorant player who does not play Raze.

Also, her initial blast pack damage has been nerfed to just 15 within .2 meters, and 5 damage at the outer edges. If it lands on the ground, however, it’ll do its full damage of 50 at maximum after an arming period of .5 seconds. Alternatively, you can now also shoot it to detonate, making it do its current damage of 50.

Riot continues to try to make the Guardian viable

In another attempt, Riot has buffed the Guardian in both fire rate, recovery, and price. It was reduced from 2500 to 2400 credits, and will now fire at 5.25 rounds per second, up from 4.75. Additionally, it’ll now take .2925 seconds to recover your accuracy after firing three bullets, improved from .35 seconds.

Riot claims they don’t think the Guardian can or should compete with the Phantom and Vandal, but with this change, it may become a rifle that players choose instead of saving for another round. And hey, it may even become a good gun for those force buy rounds. Time will have to tell, but it’s no secret that Riot is struggling to bring the gun into the Valorant meta.

Map rotation becomes pseudo-random

One of the more significant changes in this small Valorant update is the map rotation. Where it used to be random which map was picked next, it’ll now first look at which map you played last and deprioritize it. That isn’t it to say you won’t ever play on the same map twice in a row, of course, but the chance has been lowered, at least.