Valorant Season 2026 Act 2 — New Agent, Map Changes, Knockout Mode And Battle Pass

Valorant Season 2026 Act 2 went live on March 17 with patch 12.05, and it's one of the more content-heavy act launches in a while. New agent, new mode, map pool rotation, balance changes and a full battle pass all dropped at once. If you want to climb faster in the new act, Goranked has Valorant accounts available.

New Agent — Miks

Miks is the new Valorant agent in Act 2 — a Controller from Croatia and the first new addition since the start of Season 2026. Riot built him around the idea of making team utility more rewarding, and his kit reflects that directly. Everything about him points toward coordinated play rather than solo carry potential.

Abilities

• Smokes — standard controller utility for cutting sightlines and blocking vision on site executes

• Healing — active support during engagements, keeps teammates alive through drawn-out fights

• Concuss device — disrupts enemy positioning and applies pressure without requiring a direct kill

• Combat Stim buff — directly boosts teammate performance in coordinated pushes, rewarding grouped play

How He Plays

What makes Miks interesting compared to other Controllers is the combination of offensive and supportive tools in one kit. Most Controllers either smoke and disengage or smoke and play aggressively. Miks can do both while also sustaining his team — a unique enough combination to make him worth learning properly.

Who He's For

The catch is that his value scales almost entirely with how well your team communicates. The Concuss device and Combat Stim buff are most effective when everyone is moving together and calling timings. In random solo queue without comms, half his kit gets wasted. In a coordinated five-stack or with a regular duo partner, he looks like one of the stronger Controller additions in recent acts.

He's not a beginner pick and not a solo queue carry. If you're used to playing Omen or Viper and making individual impact with smokes alone, Miks will feel passive. But if you play with a group that communicates, he adds a layer of team utility that most Controllers simply don't have.

Map Pool Changes

Valorant Act 2 2026 rotates the competitive pool without adding a brand new map. Lotus and Fracture are back in both Competitive and Deathmatch queues, while Abyss and Corrode have been removed entirely.

Current Act 2 competitive pool: Bind, Breeze, Fracture, Haven, Lotus, Pearl, Split

Lotus didn't just return unchanged. Riot made direct changes to A-site alongside its comeback — reinforced walls in A Lobby and around the Tree to cut down early spam, repositioned the jump up to Vines, opened more space around the A-site stairs, and reworked the plant zone so you can no longer plant for Breakable/Link. All of it aimed at making attacker entries cleaner and reducing passive wall spam.

Fracture returns without major changes. If you haven't played it recently the double-sided attacker spawn layout takes time to get comfortable with — it's unlike anything else in the current pool.

New Mode — Knockout

Knockout is the new limited-time Valorant mode in Act 2. It runs 5v5 on Team Deathmatch maps with one defining mechanic — every kill revives one fallen teammate, meaning rounds can swing completely on a single trade sequence.

There's no economy. You pick your loadout before the match, weapons are tuned stronger than standard, and the first team to win four rounds wins. It plays significantly faster than standard Valorant — rounds are short, fights are constant, and the revive mechanic keeps both teams at near-full strength throughout.

Knockout replaces All Random One Site and Skirmish 2v2, both removed from the limited-time rotation.

Gameplay And Balance Changes

Patch 12.05 targets agents that were overperforming in solo queue relative to organized play. The changes are meaningful enough to shift how some of these agents get used in ranked.

Balance changes:

• Skye — Guiding Light now has a 60-second cooldown, limiting back-to-back flashes significantly

• Yoru — lost one Blindside charge, Gatecrash duration cut from 30s to 15s — shorter window makes his plays easier to punish

• Clove — Ruse after death dropped from 14s to 6s, Meddle radius reduced from 6m to 4m — less value generated from beyond the grave

• Sage — updated ally targeting UI and visual model update, no mechanical changes

• Breach — new voice lines

UI and systems updates:

• Assist Banners added to killfeed — setup abilities now get proper credit

• Updated Status Effect Tags on HUD for better clarity mid-fight

• Ability Map Targeters now visible for observers and in replays

Battle Pass

The Valorant Act 2 battle pass costs 1,000 VP and runs until April 29, 2026. Riot moved progress tracking to their new Progression Hub this act, making it easier to see exactly where you are in the grind.

Three skin lines define the premium track — Paceline, Dragon Gate and Soulburst. The standout weapons are Paceline Vandal at tier 25, Dragon Gate Phantom at tier 45, and Paceline's Edge melee at tier 50 as the premium capstone.

Premium weapon skins:

Free track includes Soulburst Bandit weapon skin, V26 ACT II Coin Buddy, and sprays and player cards spread throughout the tiers.

New Bundle — Blackthorn

The Blackthorn bundle is the main store release for Act 2, revealed by Riot just before launch. It covers Vandal, Guardian, Marshal and Classic skins alongside the Blackthorn Blades melee — one of the more complete bundles in terms of slot coverage, hitting rifle, sniper, pistol and melee in one purchase.

Ranked Changes

Riot adjusted RR thresholds for Immortal 2, Immortal 3 and Radiant to better align leaderboard requirements across regions. The underlying MMR system didn't change — just the visible cutoffs at those specific ranks. Players near the Immortal 2 and 3 boundaries may notice their rank look slightly different at the start of Act 2. The rank summary screen also got a small QoL pass from patch 12.04, making it faster to get back into queue after a match.

FAQs

When did Valorant Act 2 2026 start? 

Valorant Season 2026 Act 2 launched on March 17, 2026 alongside patch 12.05.

Who is the new agent in Act 2? 

Miks is the new agent in Valorant Act 2 — a Controller from Croatia focused on team utility, smokes, healing and coordinated pushes.

What is Knockout mode in Valorant? 

Knockout is a limited-time 5v5 mode on Team Deathmatch maps. Every kill revives one fallen teammate, there's no economy, and the first team to win four rounds wins the match. It replaced All Random One Site and Skirmish 2v2.

What maps are in the Act 2 competitive pool? 

The current Valorant Act 2 map pool is Bind, Breeze, Fracture, Haven, Lotus, Pearl and Split. Lotus and Fracture returned this act, while Abyss and Corrode were removed.

What changed on Lotus in Act 2? 

Riot reinforced walls in A Lobby and around the Tree to reduce early spam, repositioned the Vines jump, added more space around the A-site stairs, and reworked the plant zone — you can no longer plant for Breakable/Link.

How much does the Valorant Act 2 battle pass cost? 

The Act 2 battle pass costs 1,000 VP and runs until April 29, 2026.