Weapons have always been VALORANT’s most crucial feature, with abilities meant to play an important but supporting role in winning rounds. Unfortunately, evolving utility usage and growing mastery among players have overshadowed gunplay over the years. VALORANT Patch 11.08 is here to change that.
As part of the “precise gunplay first” initiative, Riot is tweaking VALORANT’s arsenal to balance shooting styles and reward mechanical brilliance. Here’s every weapon development coming to VALORANT with Patch 11.08.
All weapon updates in VALORANT Patch 11.08
Scheduled to go live with Act Six on Oct. 15, Patch 11.08 brings a number of weapon updates affecting rifles and SMGs to improve the combat experience in VALORANT. These changes are expected to highlight every weapon individually based on their strengths and weaknesses, while pushing them as “competitive choices for different scenarios and round economy states.”
But before we go into the details, let’s talk about Yaw Switch and Protected Bullets, which are exactly what this update targets to improve.
What is Yaw Switch?
While spraying a weapon in VALORANT, you may have noticed it sometimes flips to the left from the right of your crosshair and vice versa because of horizontal recoil: that’s Yaw Switch. This characteristic makes it difficult to predict and control the horizontal recoil pattern, and Patch 11.08 aims to improve that. Yaw Switch runs on three aspects:
- Yaw Switch time: This determines how fast your weapon flips horizontal recoil direction from left to right or vice versa. A higher Yaw Switch time means the switch happens slowly, giving you more time to control your aim.
- Percentage chance of Yaw Switch: This is the percentage chance of Yaw Switch happening. The lower the chance, the better it is for recoil control.
- Protected Bullet count: This is the number of bullets you can fire before there’s a chance of Yaw Switch. So, these are the most accurate number of bullets you can spray out of your gun.
Patch 11.08 improves Yaw Switch time for multiple VALORANT weapons, while maintaining balance with percentage chance. The goal is to let you choose between different shooting styles like tap strafing, spraying, and bursting, instead of promoting just one style. Until now, tap strafing has been the most reliable shooting style for accuracy, and Riot wants to make things more flexible for players opting for spraying or bursting based on the situation.
With that said, here are the changes you’ll see after Patch 11.08 goes live.
All rifle changes in VALORANT Patch 11.08 (PC only)
Bulldog
- Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.37 to 0.6 seconds (more chances for you to recover before switch happens).
- Chance for horizontal (Yaw) to switch increased from six to 10 percent (balancing the switch time increase).
Vandal
- Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.37 to 0.6 seconds.
- Chance for horizontal (Yaw) to switch increased from six to 10 percent.
- Protected bullet count increased from six to eight bullets (spray up to eight bullets without worrying about recoil).
Phantom
- Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.37 to 0.6 seconds.
- Chance for horizontal (Yaw) to switch increased from six to 10 percent.
- Protected bullet count increased from four to six bullets.
All SMG changes in VALORANT Patch 11.08 (PC only)
Patch 11.08 aims to highlight Spectre’s superiority over Stinger in some scenarios. The Spectre now flaunts better horizontal recoil, increased tap efficiency, and lower spread. The Stinger receives a buff to its spread, but its vertical recoil curve has been made more aggressive.
Spectre
- Total spread reduced from 1.5 to 1.4.
- Tap Efficiency increased from two to three.
- Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.18 to 0.28 seconds.
- Protected bullet count increased from four to five bullets.
Tap efficiency determines how quickly your aim becomes inaccurate when you fire again before your weapon has a chance to fully recover. Increased tap efficiency means the weapon recovers fast, so the bullets don’t run inaccurate when you tap-fire multiple times.
Stinger (Full Auto mode)
- Total spread reduced from 1.5 to 1.4 seconds.
- Total spread accrued faster from seven to six bullets (maximum spread now hits faster).
- Vertical (Pitch) recoil curve increases more aggressively, but total recoil is unchanged.
All console-only weapon updates in VALORANT Patch 11.08
VALORANT’s console version will receive slightly different weapon updates considering the difference in platforms. The changes are a little less aggressive than on the PC version.
Here are the changes you can expect if you play the tac shooter on Xbox or PlayStation:
Spectre
- Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.20 to 0.28 seconds.
Stinger (Full auto)
- Vertical (Pitch) recoil curve increases more aggressively, but total recoil is unchanged.
Bulldog
- Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.5 to 0.60 seconds.
Phantom
- Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.5 to 0.6 seconds.
- Protected bullet count from yaw (horizontal) switching while spraying, increased from five to eight bullets
Vandal
- Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.5 to 0.6 seconds.
- Protected bullet count from Yaw switching while spraying, increased from five to six bullets.
Check out the full VALORANT Patch 11.08 notes here.
