As my first FPS game, VALORANT has been both frustrating and insanely fun. If you are anything like me, since the 28th you have been languishing in front of your gaming PC for the past few days, lost at sea without VALORANT to entertain you. Do not worry, the days of waiting are almost over! VALORANT will be officially releasing tomorrow (June 2), and there are some exciting changes coming to the game we love! Read on to find out about the new agent, map, gamemode, and battle pass!

Here is a list of major updates coming with the official June 2nd release:

❀ New Agent: Reyna. I wrote an article discussing her abilities, origin, and all the teasers we have, linked in the bottom section. Be sure to check it out for a more in-depth review! As a quick summary, Reyna is the new champion that will release on June 2. She seems to be a dark healer, and acts as a counterpart to Sage's benevolent nature. There are strong hints at vampirism, wherein she can steal souls from enemy bodies to heal and/or boost herself (and possibly teammates) She can also blind, overheal, and gain a combat stim!

❀ New Map: Ascent. There is a new map being teased named Ascent. The map can be seen in Reyna's gameplay trailer, and people have connected the gameplay information to a previous developer update. There are 2 points on this map (thankfully not another 3 point map). Here is a full overview picture of Ascent:

❀ Battle Pass: The battle pass will cost 1000 VALORANT Points, or $10. There will also be a free battle pass players can unlock from playing the game! Of course, players who unlocked items on the Beta Pass will keep those items, and those who purchased VALORANT Points during the beta will receive all of their purchased points and extra 20%. You will not, however, be able to keep the skins and cosmetics purchased, or any of the weapon buddies, player cards, or gun skins from Agent Contracts. For those that were not able to play on the closed beta but were watching streams, you will receive an exclusive Twitch/Valorant player card!

❀ New Game Mode Spike Rush: For those who do not have time to play 30-40 minute VALORANT games, there is a new, faster gamemode in the works! Spike rush is a new gamemode that will have an average game time of 8-12 minutes in length. It sounds like the gamemode will introduce temporary buffs such as "speed boost", which will help to accelerate the game.

❀ Ranked: As of now, VALORANT will not have solo duo queue, or a seperate ranked queue where people can not queue up with a party of more than 2 players. The reasoning is that splitting the queues into party and solo/duo will cause "longer queue times, asymmetrical queue health." Additionally, during the official launch, ranked modes will not be available. This is to encourage new players who did not have access during the beta to learn the game before jumping into ranked games, and improve the overall quality of gameplay when ranked queues do open up.

❀ Launch: Of course, the most exciting part it being able to play VALORANT again! A tweet from @PlayVALORANT, the official Valorant twitter account, has exact launch hours based on location. For Europe, Turkey, MENA, Russia and CIS countries it will launch 6 am BST / 7am CET. For North America, Latin America and South America, it will launch 8am EST / 5am PST. And finally for Korea, Japan, and most of Asia-Pacific, it will launch at 8am KST.

Patch Notes:

❀ Sage:

- Healing orb cd increased, 35 > 45 seconds

- Barrier orb: health reduced 1000 > 800, duration reduced 40 > 30 seconds

- Barrier orbs from ally now show on minimap

❀ Raze:

- Blast Pack max damage radius reduced 2 > 1 meter

❀ Jett:

- Cloud Burst duration increased 4 > 7 seconds

- Tailwind auto breaks Cypher's Trapwires after briefly revealing

❀ Phoenix:

- Blaze duration increased 6 > 8 seconds, damage 15 every 0.25s > 1 every 0.033 s, healing 3 every 0.25s > 1 every 0.16s

-Hot Hands healing 3 every 0.25s > 1 every 0.08s

-Curveball max flash duration increased 0.8 > 1.1s

-Run it Back automatically reloads all weapons on rewpawn

❀ Omen:

- Paranoia equipped instead of quickast, hit detection improved

- Dark Cover enters a "phaser" world where he can see through walls to place smokes and pressing RELOAD toggles between phased and normal targeting, omen can increase smoke distance with PRIMARY FIRE, decrease with SECONDARY FIRE, throw smoke with ABILITY KEY

- Shrouded Step can now see teleport location on the map & reveices in-world indicator of where he's targeting when vision of the point is obstructed

- From the Shadow can cancel TP while in Shade form by pressing ABILITY KEY again - loses all ult points if he cancels

Thank you for reading, and see you in game!