Valorant’s dev team has outlined upcoming changes to Neon, shotguns, and Agent cooldowns in a post shared by Valorant Agent Lead, Dan Hardison, on behalf of the development team.
The blog post outlines both changes for the May 12 12.09 patch, and further plans to balance the gameplay, which will seek to balance aggression and tactical gameplay in the 13.00 patch.
Neon nerfs seek to address her boundless aggression
The post followed the disabling of Neon on PC following the discovery and proliferation of a graphical exploit that allowed the Agent to see through its own Fast Lane ability.
The Agent is due to return to the game in the 12.09 patch, but it seems that the removal has become a crystallization point to address the latent issues with the Agent and how her springy movement affects gameplay.
Riot immediately shared that the hero would receive nerfs for the 12.09 patch, labelling “parts of her kit… overtuned.” The blogpost starts by outlining those specific nerfs.
The blog post starts by asserting that Neon’s current kit circumvents important tactical concerns, such as positional importance, resource constraints, and teamplay, sharing, “Neon’s sprint lacks meaningful resource constraints, and her bunnyhopping into slide pattern allowed her to take more space thoughtlessly than we think is appropriate for the tactical loop.”
The devs then shared plans to make her weaker when not supported by teammates, while also returning resource management as a concern for Neon players.
Listed changes are:
- Jumping with High Gear active no longer provides any speed bonus while Neon is airborne. Instead, Neon’s air speed while sprinting will match melee speed.
- Fuel will only regenerate with a kill when Neon’s ultimate is active (Fuel will still regenerate passively).
- Improved VFX to more clearly communicate the direction and origin of her slide.
Shotguns receive greater movement penalties
The devpost then moved on to shotguns, stating that they were being used in a way initially unintended by the developers, with the original intention to “force opponents to clear close-range spaces with intentionality.”
Instead, Neon and other heroes have jumped into sites with the shotgun equipped, and blasted their opponents with very few limits intended by their original design, resulting in upcoming movement penalties for the majority of Valorant’s shotguns.
The devs label the shotgun changes as:
- All shotguns are now less accurate when moving
- Run, walk, crouch-walk, and jump inaccuracy values have been standardized across all shotguns
- Crouching now provides a 15% accuracy multiplier for all shotguns
- Bucky: crouched accuracy modifier increased from 10 to 15%
- Judge/Shorty: crouched accuracy modifier decreased from 25 to 15%
- Bucky: Minimum spread increased from 2.6 to 3.0
- Judge: Minimum spread increased from 2.25 to 2.5
- Bucky pellet damage in the 0-8m range decreased: Head 40 to 34, Body 20 to 17, Legs 17 to 14
Sentinel and Initiator cooldowns set to receive buff in 13.00 patch
The dev team also expressed dissatisfaction with the gameplay implications of the 11.08 patch. The patch, which dropped in October of last year, massively increased cooldowns across the board, resulting in faster, more rush-heavy gameplay.
The blog post states that Duelists felt too strong, leaving Initiators with long cooldowns with less incentive to play lower, or more strategically, and leaving Sentinels “feeling weak in their ability to punish and play against Neon and other aggressive Duelists.”
However, fans will have to wait for the game to slow down, as those changes will not be a part of the upcoming 12.09 patch; instead, the devs are targeting the 13.00 to make sure those changes are ready.
The devs concluded, “As with all balance adjustments, we will continue to monitor and see how Neon and shotguns are performing, and keep prepping our broader changes to Sentinels and Initiators coming in Patch 13.00.”
Do you think the upcoming changes go far enough? Let us know on our Discord server!
For other Valorant news, see Eggsterr’s retirement statement on his stream.
Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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