Intel

The anticipation behind every new Valorant Act is one that players worldwide look forward too, and with Episode 4 Act 2 winding down, we're starting to learn a ton about Act 3.

We're going to run over everything you need to know about Valorant Episode 4 Act 3 down below!

Valorant Episode 4 Act 3 Release Date

Players won't have to wait much longer in order to jump into the new Valorant Act, as of now, the battle pass for Episode 4 Act 2 is set to end on April 26th, 2022.

This means we should see Act 3 release the same day or April 27th, 2022. So, keep your eyes peeled on Valorant's social media for official news!

Valorant Episode 4 Act 3 Battle Pass

ValorLeaks has been hard at working posting all the new content coming in the new Act, and above is some of the battle pass skins coming for players!

Valorant Episode 4 Act 3 New Agent

Fade will be released during Episode 4 and is expected to release with Act 3. This is the most logical time for Riot to push a new agent, given Act 2 has seen a notable absence.

The agent has now been confirmed to be titled, Fade, and she looks intimidating to say the least!  

ValorLeaks has supposedly leaked the abilities for the next agent:

  • Prowler (C): Send out a creature that can follow trails OR be controlled by moving your mouse. Upon reaching an enemy, they will be Nearsighted for 3s. Only 1 Creature per Trail.
  • Seize (Q): Equip and Fire an Orb which will stay in the air for a max of 1.5s, and then slam to the ground. When the orb hits the ground Enemies within the radius will be tethered, and will take damage and be deafened.
  • Haunt (E): Equip and Fire an Orb which will stay in the air and then hit the ground. Then it will go back into the air and turn into an eye. If Enemies get seen by the eye they will be revealed and a trail debuff is applied.
  • NightFall (X): Send out a wave of dark mist. If the mist hits an enemy, they will be Deafened, Trailed, and Decayed.

Valorant Episode 4 Act 3 Patch Notes

JETT POWERED

It’s crazy to think of how perception of Jett’s power has evolved from once being considered one of the weakest Agents in Beta to becoming a mainstay in most compositions. The team’s always loved what Jett brings to the roster: breaking through defenses on executions and making highlight plays with impressive mechanical skills. But some of her other impacts on the game have pushed beyond VALORANT’s core tactical cycle in worrisome ways.

In 4.08, we’ll be making an update to Jett’s Tailwind to address this concern:

  • Tailwind
    • On pressing the ability key, after a short delay Jett activates a 12 second window where she is empowered to immediately dash on next button press.
    • Her Tailwind charge is lost whether she Dash’s or the window expire, but can still be regained with two kills.

With this update, we want to bring Jett back into that core loop by asking her to call her shots and then engage with a window of dash power to make those trademark explosive plays. This should create clear signals for other players to consider and understand that Jett made a deliberate call. Jett’s new dash will require an adjustment for players but we feel this is the best solution to balance maintaining Jett’s identity while increasing game health.

We developed and tested dozens of prototypes for Jett’s dash, but they came up short. Some of them avoided having to press the dash ability button twice, but ended up being less intuitive for players despite that. Some of them felt better for Jett players, but didn’t give us confidence that it solved the game health issues we set out to fix.

As players have mastered Jett, her dash has proved unhealthy to the tac cycle in a number of ways that we think are critical enough to address.

Here are the key issues we found with Jett’s dash:

  • The dash had no prerequisite, so she always had access to her escape power with no intentional decision making. This freedom gave Jett the unintended capacity to continually take space or hold unusual ground without having to commit her ability. This play pattern is something that no other Agent could match, and allows Jett to exert an extreme amount of pressure on a match in a way that can be oppressive, especially at high MMRs or in professional play.
  • This lack of intentional decision making made it feel like she played outside of the tactical cycle all our other Agents adhere to. Too often, she didn’t have to leverage game sense that other Agents needed to succeed, because her reactive dash could often negate her own strategic mistakes, or the great tactical calls by her opponents.
  • As we talked about in the Controller Deep Dive, one of our core design philosophies is that Agents are sharp and provide both clear upsides and opportunity costs when compared to their peers. Jett's strength as both a dash-in executor on attack and holding angles with an Op—with unrestricted access to escape—provided her broad power with little downside. We want her to retain as much aggressive power on offense as possible, but reduce her defensive Op power.
  • Even in highly coordinated play, she's proven very difficult to strategize against, and her access to an instant escape (not to mention two on demand smoke screens) marginalized most of the tools the rest of the Agents have to deal with her.

Overall, we want Jett to have her power moments and to be able to dash, but we also want viable counterplay and for Jett players to be more thoughtful when using their abilities.