VALORANT Patch 4.01 Notes: Ares and Melee Changes (January 2022)

VALORANT 4.01 patch notes have just been shared. VALORANT players had been eagerly waiting for the new patch, especially since the Ares was complained about as being buffed too much in the previous patch and it was unknown whether the Ares would be adjusted in this new patch. Riot Games released Patch 4.01 almost as if answering players' questions. 4.01 covers weapon updates such as the Ares and Melee, social updates and a few bugs.

VALORANT 4.01 Patch Notes

Social Updates

• A Blocked Words List has been added to settings.
• The Blocked Words List arrived as a new section, found in your settings, where you can type the kinds of words/phrases you personally do not want to see in the game.

Weapon Updates

Ares

• Price increased from 1550 >>> 1600.
• Vertical recoil increased.
• Bullet spread multiplier adjusted from 0.8 >>> 0.7 after 10 bullets and from 1.0 >>> 0.7 after 13 bullets.
• The benefit to spread and recoil from crouching was reduced from 40% >>> 25%.

Melee

• Right-click hit areas were adjusted to be 1.5 times larger. Left-click hit areas were adjusted to be larger than right-click and to have slightly longer range.
• Targets closer to the center of knife attacks will now be hit first.
• Bonus: You can now see knife marks on walls when you attack walls with knives.

Bugs

Weapons

• Fixed a bug that caused the Origin collection idle animations not to play for some levels or variants in Spectator mode.

Esports Features

• Fixed a bug that caused observer players' hotkeys to change after switching sides.

Performance

• Fixed an issue that caused performance charts requiring NVIDIA Reflex to be displayed and not be hideable.