VALORANT 12.09 Patch Notes

Written by: Wei

07/05/2026

Neon’s Design

Neon has been breaking our dev philosophy on what combat should be, as well as how intentionally Agents have to play.

VALORANT’s high lethality is intended to emphasize positional importance around the map, and moving around the map should be dangerous if utility investment and teamplay aren’t employed.

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, which is one of the VAL Dev team’s philosophical pillars.

Here’s a visual aid to show how we think about this tactical loop.

Neon’s Core Identity

What we consider Neon’s core identity within the game:

She sprints on the ground to earn her best-in-class close quarters follow up.
She should suffer when not properly supported to enter sites.
She should be vulnerable to enemy peeks and setups if not supported while sprinting.

So What’s Actually Changing?

With Neon, we wanted to focus on increasing tactical intention and creating more meaningful decisions for her.

So we’re tuning down her mobility in the air, and giving her a greater resource tradeoff on High Gear so that she has to engage in more of the Planning and Intel parts of the tactical loop.

With that said, here are the changes we’re making:

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.

While that may help with a variety of situations, there’s another gameplay problem that we’re going to want to tackle at the same time: shotguns.

Shotgun Changes

Shotgun gameplay hasn’t felt as tactical or masterful as we’d like for the long-term vision of the game.

Shotguns have a sharp and intentional purpose within VALORANT. They force opponents to clear close-range spaces with intentionality, with the tradeoff being that they’re more range-limited than other weapons.

Part of this is just that we’re a live service game, and y’all have gotten so much better at abusing the parts of shotguns that were tuned too generously, especially when they’re paired with Agent mobility tools.

Shotgun Accuracy Changes

In terms of changes:

All shotguns are now less accurate when moving.
Run, walk, crouch-walk, and jump inaccuracy values have been standardized across all shotguns.

Extra Shotgun Details

Crouching now provides a 15% accuracy multiplier for all shotguns.

Specific changes:

Bucky: crouched accuracy modifier increased from 10% to 15%.
Judge/Shorty: crouched accuracy modifier decreased from 25% to 15%.

This was a slight multiplier buff for the Bucky while crouching, which was previously inconsistent relative to the other shotguns at a 10% additional accuracy modifier.

However, it is a larger nerf for the Judge and Shorty’s crouched states.

To be clear on the math, the Bucky is still always less accurate in the new world.

Shotgun Spread and Damage Changes

Judge and Bucky minimum spread when stationary increased, since both guns are overperforming a bit.

Minimum spread changes:

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.

So now, when running or jumping, shotguns are going to be less effective and require cleaner positioning and mastery.

Timing and Patch Quality

TL;DR: We’re going to be moving up some of our originally planned package of balance changes from Patch 13.00, June 23 PT, to Patch 12.09, May 12 PT, to improve some of the combat experience with Neon and shotguns.

More changes are still to come.

Let’s talk a bit about our original plans and why we’re moving them up.

How the Live Game Has Been Playing Out

Coming out of Patch 11.08 at the end of 2025 and into the 12.00 patches this year, we knew we would have follow-ups for balance.

However, we also try to let you, our players, have enough time to adapt, create, and try to problem solve around the meta. Part of the fun should be in getting ahead and finding emergent gameplay patterns.

One of the problems we have identified is around general game pacing, also known as how fast rounds are resolving. This boiled down to which strategies were seen as viable.

5-man execs or contact plays were becoming the default strategies. The cherry on top of this has been the rising power and frustration with Neon in this style of play.

The Team’s Approach

The team has been working on tackling these problems altogether rather than playing whack-a-mole and going one by one.

This is so you can feel safe about investing discovery time in adapting to a meta.

This basically translates to what you might notice as larger adjustments at act starts and smaller corrections in between as needed.

Four Areas of Opportunity

When it comes to pacing, we identified four areas of opportunity specifically:

Duelists feeling very strong in this meta, especially Neon when it comes to pushing aggression.
Shotguns in their current tuning were further aggravating the above.
High Initiator cooldowns at 60s have been hard for players to plan around, which further shrinks incentives around slower strategic play or adapting in later-round states where there are large gaps in information.
Sentinels feeling weak in their ability to punish and play against Neon and other aggressive Duelists, and properly stuff or punish sloppy pushes.

Timing of Balance Patches and Getting Changes Right

The downside of trying to address these bigger problems, including multiple Agent roles and weapons, in one go is that these changes stack.

It’s very easy to overswing and reverse the meta state, so we test these changes for longer times as a complete package.

As for changes to Neon, we want to take our time to make sure that we preserve her identity as an Agent and only peel apart the necessary mechanics that are actually hurting the combat loop.

All of our Agents are meant to have different strengths and weaknesses.

Why Now?

With Neon continuing to push beyond the bounds of our combat integrity, we have decided to release a subset of these changes to address the immediate problem and adapt as we go.

So in Patch 12.09, you’ll see the nerfs to Neon and shotguns.

As for the other solutions on Initiator cooldowns and Sentinel buffs that we think will improve strategy and pacing, those will be coming in Patch 13.00 since we need a little longer to finish testing and finalizing those details.

Consideration Around VCT Masters in London

We think there will be good improvement to the game state for everyone alike with just the initial release of the subset of Neon and shotgun nerfs.

Combat health requires urgent attention, so the least disruptive timing we could find was between Playoffs and Masters.

Closing Thoughts

C u on online in VAL.

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.