VALORANT Patch Notes 12.09

Hello everyone! Drumroll please... 🥁🥁🥁 The moment you've all been waiting for is here. Neon and shotgun nerfs are finally being implemented. We've adjusted her aerial mobility and increased resource consumption in High Gear. Additionally, we've reduced movement accuracy for all shotguns. See below for details!

All Platforms

Agent Updates

We've known for a while that Neon needed adjustments, and we've been working on changes to address her significant impact on matches. This is a complex issue involving pacing and strategy—intertwined with factors like the powerful Duelist/Shotgun combo, weak Sentinels, and long cooldowns on Initiator signature abilities. However, we've decided to implement these Neon and shotgun nerfs as immediate balance adjustments ahead of solving those fundamental issues.

While Neon's current role of disrupting timing and applying pressure is intentional, her movement and evasion capabilities provided too much of a combat advantage. To require more strategic decision-making when using her abilities, we've adjusted her aerial mobility and increased High Gear resource consumption. We expect this to give opponents more counterplay opportunities and curb her excessive snowball potential.

For more details on upcoming changes and the reasoning behind them, you can check <here>.

Neon

• High Gear

1. Jumping while High Gear is active no longer increases Neon's aerial mobility. Neon's aerial speed while sprinting will now match her melee attack speed.
2. Energy is now only replenished when Neon gets a kill while her Ultimate is active. - Automatic energy recovery remains unchanged.
3. Improved VFX to make Neon's slide direction and movement origin clearer.

Competitive Updates

• Experimental MMR changes are being implemented in modes excluding Competitive, Unrated, and Swiftplay. We anticipate these changes will lead to more stable and better matches. Lessons learned from this trial will be applied to future improvements in Competitive, Unrated, and Swiftplay.

Bug Fixes

Agents

1. Chamber - Fixed a bug where firing Headhunter while in ADS caused the animation to cover a large portion of the screen.
2. Jett - Fixed a bug where the first-person animation for Tailwind didn't play correctly in left-handed mode. - Fixed a performance drop occurring when using Jett's Drift.
3. Mix - Updated the description for Harmonize shown on hover. - Fixed a bug where the fan-shaped area-of-effect preview for the Basequake ultimate wouldn't show if the ability wasn't fully equipped.
4. Sage - Fixed a bug where Sage could use Healing Orb on herself while under the Decay effect even if her HP wasn't reduced (since HP returns to normal after Decay ends, this was wasting the ability).
5. Teho - Fixed a bug where the equip sound effect for Guided Salvo continued to play for a while after firing.
6. Viper - Fixed a bug where Sova's Recon Bolt and Chamber's Trademark were not affected by the vision obscuration of Viper's Pit.
7. Vyse - Fixed a bug where the sound effect for Vyse's Shear wall would trigger for drone-type abilities (Sova's Owl Drone, Skye's Trailblazer, Teho's Stealth Drone).

Player Behavior Updates

Improved the 'Riot Text Evaluation System' to increase detection accuracy and apply penalties for inappropriate behavior in text chat for the following languages: Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, and Chinese.

Weapon Updates

Alongside the Neon changes, we are adjusting the effectiveness of shotguns while moving and jumping to encourage their use for defense. Shotguns are intended to be most effective when holding tight angles or taking close-range fights, but they are currently too effective while mobile. To emphasize their ideal use case, we've reduced shotgun accuracy while moving. This should make them more effective when used intentionally for defense and limited when used while moving.

All Shotguns:

Accuracy while moving decreased for all shotguns.

• Unified accuracy for running, walking, crouch-walking, and jumping across all shotguns.
• Crouching now grants a 15% accuracy bonus to shotguns, similar to rifles. - Bucky's crouch accuracy bonus increased: 10% >>> 15%. - Judge and Shorty's crouch accuracy bonus decreased: 25% >>> 15%.
• Shotgun accuracy while on ropes significantly decreased. - Spread will spike particularly while moving on ropes.
• Stationary firing accuracy decreased (Spread increased: 0.075 >>> 0.75).
• Walking firing accuracy decreased (Spread increased: 0.09 >>> 1.5).
• Running firing accuracy decreased (Spread increased: 0.1 >>> 3.0).

Bucky:

• Pellet damage at 0 - 8m range decreased.

1. Head: 40 >>> 34
2. Body: 20 >>> 17
3. Leg: 17 >>> 14

• Minimum spread increased: 2.6 >>> 3.0
• Moving spread increased: 0.075 >>> 1.0
• Running spread increased: 0.1 >>> 2.0
• Crouch-walking spread increased: 0.05 >>> 0.5
• Jumping spread increased: 1.25 >>> 4.0

Judge:

• Minimum spread increased: 2.25 >>> 2.5 Note: This change currently applies to PC only. It will be applied to consoles in Patch 12.11.
• Moving spread increased: 0.075 >>> 1.0
• Running spread increased: 0.75 >>> 2.0
• Crouch-walking spread increased: 0.05 >>> 0.5
• Jumping spread increased: 2.25 >>> 4.0

Shorty:

• Fire rate decreased: 3.33 >>> 3.0
• Moving spread increased: 0.075 >>> 1.0
• Running spread increased: 0.1 >>> 2.0
• Crouch-walking spread increased: 0.05 >>> 0.5
• Jumping spread increased: 1.25 >>> 4.0

PC Only

Performance Improvements

• Added support for AMD Anti-Lag 2, which reduces input lag in specific GPU-bound scenarios (requires compatible hardware and drivers updated after March 9, 2026).

Bug Fixes

Agents

• Neon - Fixed a bug where certain NVIDIA graphics settings allowed for an exploit affecting competitive integrity in Fast Lane. Neon has returned to the game.

Progression

• Fixed a bug where daily missions shown on hover didn't match those on the end-of-match screen.

Console Only

Bug Fixes

Agents

• Phoenix - Updated the description for Curveball shown on hover.

Known Issues

Modes

• Skirmish 2v2: Ascension and Skirmish 1v1: Ascension - Timer stops at 0.50 seconds during the overtime phase.
• Skirmish 2v2: Ascension and Skirmish 1v1: Ascension - Agent abilities do not appear in the battle report in the round following their use on an enemy.

VALORANT Patch Notes 12.09

➡️https://playvalorant.com/ja-jp/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-12-09

Note: There may be a delay between X and web publication. If you cannot view it on the web, please wait a moment.

Official Site

➡️https://playvalorant.com/ja-jp/