‘Valorant’ patch gives Sage minor buffs, reworks Icebox map

There’s also a new Snowball Fight game mode

After a month off, Riot Games has returned with a brand-new patch for Valorant that includes notable changes for the agent Sage and the Icebox map.

Sage, who has been progressively nerfed since even before Valorant was officially released, has been given buffs for the first time. The changes are mostly to her Barrier Orb ability, which will now no longer lose health over time after fortification and will only start to deteriorate “a few seconds” before the wall disappears.

“We’ve been happy with how the fortified barrier has been playing but wanted to make some changes to prevent the mitigation of the fortifying counterplay, while rewarding Sage players that successfully fortify their walls,” Riot Games said. “By removing the mitigation of the counterplay, we are able to investigate future opportunities to reward players that succeed in getting their barriers to fortify.”

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Patch 1.14 also includes major changes to the game’s latest map, Icebox. The location’s A Site has been significantly reworked and simplified in order to reduce “the height of some of the most vertical areas on the map”.

A new limited-time mode will also be introduced into the game on December 15 and will run for two weeks. The holiday-inspired mode, called Snowball Fight, will be in the style of a 5v5 Team Deathmatch, with snowball launchers in the place of guns.

Other changes in Patch 1.14 include an update to rank distribution, bug fixes to Killjoy’s turret, changes to Observer mode and more. Read the full patch notes here.

The last major update to Valorant was Patch 1.11, which was released in October. That patch introduced the new agent Skye, alongside a number of nerfs and buffs for Initiator and Sentinel agents, respectively.

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