Is Yoru Good After the Gatecrash and Fakeout Buffs in VALORANT

Patch 13.01 gives Yoru two changes, and both of them point at the same thing: he gets more room to lie to you. Gatecrash‘s active beacon now stays live for 20 seconds instead of 15, and Fakeout clones now hold whatever weapon Yoru last equipped instead of automatically defaulting to his strongest gun. Neither of those is a rework, and neither of them changes a single damage or flash value — they change how long a threat can hang in the air and how convincing it looks while it does.

Yoru is stronger, and that 20 seconds is beacon time

The headline number floating around this patch is 20 seconds, and it is being read wrong. It is not a new Gatecrash cooldown. It is the active beacon duration — how long the placed tether stays alive and teleportable after you send it out — going from 15s to 20s. If you went into a game expecting to throw a fresh Gatecrash every twenty seconds, you are going to be disappointed for reasons that have nothing to do with the buff.

What changed for Gatecrash and Fakeout

Two lines on Yoru, and that is the whole list. Everything else about him — his flash, his ultimate, his clone’s health, his ability costs and charges — plays exactly the way it did before you updated.

So no damage buff, no flash buff, no faster teleport, no beefier clone, no extra charge. If someone tells you Fakeout hits harder now, they are describing a patch that does not exist.

Five extra seconds of live teleport pressure

Five seconds sounds small until you put it against the old window: 15s to 20s is roughly 33.3% more active beacon time per Gatecrash. That extra third is almost entirely uptime you spend doing the thing Yoru is supposed to do — making the enemy team hold two places at once.

On attack, it means you can send the beacon out before the round has a shape, spend utility, watch the defense react, and still have the teleport available when your team finally picks a side. The old timer punished patience; you were often forced to take the trip while the beacon was alive rather than when the take was good. Now a lurk can run longer, a mid-round rotation has time to actually develop, and a post-plant beacon parked behind the enemy retake can sit there while the spike ticks and the defenders bunch up. The threat itself does work even when you never use it, because a defense that knows a live tether exists has to keep a body honest.

On defense, the same five seconds mostly buy you an exit. You can take a genuinely greedy fight for early information — a mid contest, a choke peek, a one-and-done angle — knowing your escape route stays open past the point where the trade would normally get you killed. It also lets you wait out utility instead of running into it: if a molly or a flash is sitting on your path, you now have the room to let it expire and take the teleport clean. That is the practical shape of this buff. It does not win you fights. It removes the rushed timing that used to lose them.

Fakeout clones now carry the weapon you last held

Before this patch, the clone always spawned with Yoru’s strongest weapon, which quietly gave the whole thing away. A Yoru on a pistol round is not walking out with a Vandal, and a Yoru who just bought an Operator does not sprint into site with it held. Any defender paying attention could clock the mismatch and treat the model as a decoy before it finished the animation.

Now the clone holds whatever you last equipped, which turns your loadout into part of the lie. Swap to a pistol before you send it and the clone sells a save or an eco push. Hold a rifle and it sells a full buy walking into site. Pull out a shotgun and it sells a close-range entry that a defender has every reason to hold an angle for. The weapon in the clone’s hands is now a sentence you get to write, and the story stays consistent with whatever pressure your team is faking.

Do not mistake that for free value. Good opponents read timing, pathing, sound, and context, not just the gun model — a clone that runs a line nobody would ever walk, at a moment nobody would ever push, still reads as a clone regardless of what it is holding. What the buff removes is the single tell that used to break the illusion for free. The rest is still on you.

You can settle both changes for yourself in about two minutes of range time, then let ranked tell you whether they matter at your level.

Load into patch 13.01 on Yoru

Update the client, then take Yoru into a custom game or the range so nothing is contested while you test.

Time the Gatecrash active beacon

Send the beacon out and count how long it stays live before it expires — it should hold for 20 seconds, not 15.

Send Fakeout with a pistol equipped

Swap to your sidearm, then use Fakeout and check that the clone walks out holding the pistol rather than your best gun.

Repeat with a rifle and a shotgun

Cycle your last equipped weapon between buys and confirm the clone matches each one, so you know exactly which fakes you can sell.

Take it into ranked and track the round

Count successful teleports, space created, escapes off a live beacon, Fakeout baits that drew a shot, and the kills or information you got out of them.

Where Yoru fits next to Jett, Raze, and Reyna

This patch does not make Yoru a plug-and-play duelist, and pretending otherwise will get you killed. Jett, Raze, and Reyna all give you value the moment you point them at a site — dash, blast pack, dismiss — and none of that asks your team to understand what you are doing. Yoru still asks. His payoff comes from setup, misdirection, and a team that is ready to trade or follow when the lie lands.

What the longer beacon does is widen the maps and the moments where that setup is worth the effort. Anywhere with real teleport, rotation, and lurk value — Bind, Split, Haven — you can now hold a threat live long enough for your team to actually build a round around it. If you play with a group that talks, or you enjoy the creative side of the agent, he is a genuinely better pick than he was last patch. If you are solo-queuing and want an entry who wins on mechanics alone, the more direct duelists are still the easier answer.

One more thing worth knowing before you take those duels: patch 13.01 also touched the Outlaw, whose recovery moved from 0.1 to 0.15, with spread going from 0 to 2.25 and recoil from 0 to 4.0 after the first shot. The follow-up shot is less forgiving now, which slightly changes what a whiffed Outlaw peek costs the person peeking you.

Mistakes that still make Yoru look weak

Play him that way and the patch shows up in your rounds. Play him as a highlight machine and you will be the reason your team thinks the buff did nothing.