Riot is looking to shake up the Valorant meta in a real way in Season 3, as the game receives major changes across almost all of its agents and key mechanics. The game’s weapons and gunplay mechanics are also being tweaked significantly, which will be immediately felt by all players and especially those who like to shoot on the move.
Movement inaccuracy changes
Valorant is designed with the explicit intent to reward good positioning and aim more than movement. If you stand still, you will have near-perfect accuracy, but the moment you start moving, your weapon’s bloom increases dramatically, resulting in shots landing everywhere except on target.
That’s the intent, anyway. Since launch, the game’s background mechanics were inadvertently working against this design in a rather strange way. Getting hit by bullets or bullet tagging in the pre-Season 3 Valorant build reduced players’ movement speed to just below the movement inaccuracy threshold, effectively allowing them to move and shoot semi-accurately while under fire. This is no longer the case in Season 3, as bullet tagging alone will never reduce a player’s movement speed to the point where their accuracy is back to its standing-still value. The exact changes are:
- Bullet tagging results in 72.5% movement slow effect, previously 75%.
- Maximum movement speed at which a player becomes inaccurate is 27.5%, previously 30%.
In addition to this, in Season 3, most ranged weapons in Valorant become much less accurate when fired on the move.
- Rifle movement inaccuracy is 2, up from 1.3
- SMG movement inaccuracy is 1, up from 0.3. Running inaccuracy is 2.5, up from 2.
- Heavy weapon movement inaccuracy is 2.4, up from 0.5.
Individual weapon changes
In addition to the overall mechanical changes, some weapons get individual tweaks in Season 3 of Valorant.
- Judge cost increased from 1600 to 1850, damage falloff increased by roughly 25%.
- Bulldog cost dropped from 2100 to 2050, hipfire rate of fire increased from 9.15 RPS to 9.5 RPS.
- Sheriff movement inaccuracy increased from 0.25 to 1.2, running inaccuracy increased from 2 to 3.
- Ghost movement inaccuracy increased from 0.25 to 0.92, running inaccuracy increased from 1.85 to 2.3
- Classic movement inaccuracy increased from 0.25 to .84, movement inaccuracy increased from 1.5 to 2.1.
- Frenzy cost dropped from 500 to 450, movement inaccuracy increased from 0.25 to 0.8, running inaccuracy increased from 1 to 2.
Finally, the following Valorant weapons get slight price changes in Season 3:
- Shorty cost is 150, down from 200.
- Stinger costis 950, down from 1100.
- Bucky cost is 850, down from 900.
- Marshal cost is 950, down from 1000.
- Ares price is 1550, down from 1600.
- Operator price is 4700, down from 5000.
