Phantom

The Phantom has been changed in 5 patches since the closed beta, most recently in patch 11.08. Each entry links to the full notes for that patch.

1. Patch 11.08 October 14, 2025
   • Buff Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.37s → 0.6s

   • Nerf Chance for horizontal (Yaw) to switch increased from 6% → 10%

   • Buff Protected bullet count increased from 6 → 8 bullets

   • Buff Horizontal (Yaw) switch time increased from 0.50s → 0.60s

   • Buff Protected bullet count from yaw (horizontal) switching while spraying, increased from 5 → 8 bullets
2. Patch 9.10 November 19, 2024
   • There have been fewer Phantom purchases over time with new maps being released and higher proficiency in shooting. The Phantom and Vandal’s current differences are intended to keep their identities unique while still being relatively competitive with each other. These changes are intended to make the Phantom feel better to use primarily and reduce frustrating instances of headshots doing less damage than expected at different distances. These breakpoints will remove some instances of 140 headshots and all instances of 124 in 1 headshots (excluding wall penetration).
     • Damage fall-off changed:
       • Previously:
         • 39 damage per bullet (0 - 15m)
         • 35 damage per bullet (15 - 30m)
         • 31 damage per bullet (30m+)
       • Now:
         • 39 damage per bullet (0 - 20m)
         • 35 damage per bullet (20m+)
3. Patch 8.07 April 16, 2024
   • We also had several other guns/skins reported as having audio issues (Standard/Default Phantom, Oni Phantom, Recon Phantom, etc.), but we verified these are actually working properly. If these guns or any other first person audio sounds different on headphones than it sounded before 8.05, it could be due to your speaker configuration in the VALORANT audio settings. This can happen if your USB headphones appear to Windows to be a surround sound device with multiple channels and you have opted into Auto-Detect in the VALORANT audio settings. If you are listening on headphones, have selected Auto-Detect, and do not have Spatial Audio enabled, your speaker configuration should appear as 2.0. If any other number of channels is shown, you can either set your VALORANT speaker configuration back to Stereo or enable Spatial Audio in Windows to fix this.
4. Patch 6.11 June 6, 2023
   • Phantom Reserve ammo adjusted from 90 → 60
5. Patch 0.50 May 12, 2020
   • Phantom:
     • Fixed an issue where the Gun Recovery Time was higher than intended
     • Gun Recovery Time:.55s >>.35s
     • Tap Efficiency: 3 >> 4

Patch change data adapted from Patch Notes on the VALORANT Wiki, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.