Valorant patch 4.01 notes: Ares nerf & melee changes

Valorant patch 4.01 is here, and it’s accompanied by a slew of nerfs to the now-tyrannical Ares, as well as the highly anticipated melee changes.

Valorant Episode 4 is upon us, gifting us a whole new battle pass to grind through, as well as Filipina speedster, Neon.

Patch 4.0 also adjusted some of the game’s most notorious weapons’ stats – although these changes haven’t exactly been the hit the devs were likely expecting them to be. Following complaints over the buffs to the now “broken” Ares, Riot have nerfed it once more in Patch 4.01.

Additionally, we’ll finally see the promised adjustments to the game’s melee, a weapon whose hitbox has been heavily criticized.

Named after the Greek God of war, the Ares certainly lives up to its name in Episode 4.

Valorant Patch 4.01 nerfs Ares

Patch 4.0 has transformed the Ares into a weapon of war. Removing the spin up (allowing the weapon to shoot immediately) and increasing the fire rate from 10 to 13 rounds/second, players have been taking advantage of its raw power and low price ever since Episode 4 began.

Thankfully, patch 4.01 sees the deadly heavy weapon’s price increase to 1,600 (an extra 50 credits), its spread decreased and its crouch benefits reduced.

Does Patch 4.01 mark the end of the Ares meta?

Valorant Patch 4.01 notes

Below are the full patch notes for Valorant’s 4.01 update, courtesy of Riot Games.

SOCIAL UPDATES

Muted Words List added to the settings
Muted Word List is a new section you will find in your settings where you can type in variations of words/phrases that you, personally, would not like to see appear in-game
For example: Let’s say “Riot” is a bad word. Our detection may catch the word “Riot” as one that should be blocked and penalized, but there’s a variety of different ways to spell Riot that we may not be catching: R!ot, R!0t, Ri0t, etc.
And no, you won’t get “League of Legends” banned from chat
We’re hoping that we can leverage the lists that you and others create to make the chat less toxic by comparing them across regions, and using the data we collect to improve our own detections of bad words.

WEAPON UPDATES

ARES

Price increased from 1550 >>> 1600
Pitch recoil increased
Spread changed from .8 >>> .7 after 10 bullets to 1.0 >>> .7 after 13 bullets
Crouch benefits spread and recoil reduced from 40% >>> 25%

MELEE (but for real this time)

The melee’s been too tricky to aim with, making it tough to rely on. So we’ve updated both left and right click melee attacks for more reliable Agent-whacking action.
Right click hitboxes are now 1.5x larger. Left click hitboxes are now larger than a right click and have a slightly longer range too.
Targets closer to the center of your knife attacks will get hit first, so you still have precision if you need it.
Bonus: Knifing walls now have instant feedback when slicing up walls (predicted on the client side)

BUGS

WEAPONS

Fixed a bug where the Origin collection idle animations weren’t playing for some levels and variants in Spectator mode

ESPORTS FEATURES

Fixed an issue where observer player hotkeys would change after side-swap.

PERFORMANCE

Fixed an issue where performance charts that require NVIDIA Reflex were displayed and could not be hidden
- Thanks to TowerofShadow for the report