Valorant patch 4.01 nerfs the Ares and updates melee attacks

It’s been just over a week since Valorant embarked on a new chapter with Episode 4 and a new Game Director at the helm. Patch 4.0 introduced the lightning-fueled speedster agent, Neon. Plus, it made some substantial changes to a few weapons. Now, Valorant patch 4.01 is here to tone down the overpowered Ares changes, as well as implement a few other new features.

If you want to check out the complete patch notes for 4.01, you can do so here. The major changes are the Ares nerf, the improvement to melee attacks, and the addition of a Muted Words List.

Valorant patch 4.01 changes

Let’s start with the most important update, the Ares. In patch 4.0, the windup time of the weapon was removed. It made the Ares incredibly powerful for its meager price. To counter this, Riot Games has increased the price of the gun from 1,550 to 1,600 Credits. Plus, it has made the weapon harder to control when spraying. Ares’s pitch recoil has also been increased. Its spread will now only lessen after 13 bullets, as opposed to the previous 10. And the benefits of spread and recoil control from crouching have been reduced from 40% to 25%.

Melee attacks have been unreliable in Valorant since launch. Riot was supposed to ship a fix for this in patch 4.0 but decided to wait until patch 4.01 for some unvoiced reason. With the improvement, right-click melee attacks now have a 50% larger hitbox and left-click melee attack hitboxes are even larger than that.

As for the Muted Words List, this is a new section in your settings that allows you to choose words that you do not want to see written in Valorant. Riot will use the data it collects from all the muted words across all the lists to improve its own in-game detection of bad words. The Muted Words List is another way the studio is trying to foster a healthy and respectable community.