Riot Games troll Valorant players with hilarious April Fools patch notes

Brad Norton
Valorant gameplay

Riot Games took advantage of April 1st in a big way this year, trolling the Valorant community with some of the most outrageous patch notes you’ll ever see.

Gamers always have to be careful when April Fool’s Day rolls around. Developers often look to prank their player base with some wild news, insane updates, or even gimmick modes.

Given 2021 marks Riot’s first opportunity to troll players since Valorant launched, they were looking to make the most of it. While the community speculated on what they might do, no one could have predicted the utterly insane patch notes they shared online.

After playing it safe in recent updates, the April 1st patch notes looked to obliterate any kind of balance. From ridiculous Agent buffs to a complete ranked reset, here’s everything from the meme-worthy patch notes.

To start out with the April Fool’s changes, Riot adjusted a number of flash abilities. For Breach, rather than having a set number of flashes, the Agent worked off a cooldown timer instead. With just a five second window to recharge, this means players could theoretically flash 20 times per round.

For Phoenix, his flash changes were a little different. The Curve Ball ability still came with the same effect, though he could add some style points to it now. Using various mouse buttons in this troll update, Phoenix could send the stun through his legs, behind his back, and even vertically.

When it comes to smoke-based abilities, Riot couldn’t help but make Brimstone even more of a go-to Controller. His earlier smoke-extension buffs were “well received,” according to the devs. So they added another 80 seconds of lasting power to his Sky Smoke ability.

Outside of specific Agent tweaks, the comedic patch notes included a ton of general changes as well. One major adjustment targeted ranked players in that the higher your rank, the better your accuracy. Going completely against that change, however, the very same patch notes also “abolished matchmaking based on skill level.”

Valorant Brimstone artwork
Brimstone would be obscenely powerful with 100 second smokes.

The Prime Vandal skin was removed for being overpowered, melee weapons were all changed to toothpicks, and plenty other bizarre trolls were crammed in as well.

Obviously, none of these adjustments are actually real, but for one day only, there’s a chance some of them might reach the live servers. You’ll just have to keep an eye out when jumping into Valorant on April 1, for all we know, Raze might be dual-wielding RPGs.

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About The Author

Brad Norton is the Australian Managing Editor at Dexerto. He graduated from Swinburne University with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and has been working full-time in the field for the past six years at the likes of Gamurs Group and now Dexerto. He loves all things single-player gaming (with Uncharted a personal favorite) but has a history on the competitive side having previously run Oceanic esports org Mindfreak. You can contact Brad at brad.norton@dexerto.com