VALORNT Patch 12.09 brings long-awaited Neon and shotgun nerfs. The changes aim to make playing Neon and shotguns more deliberate, requiring meaningful decisions instead of running it down every round for free kills.
Here’s everything included in VALORANT Patch 12.09 on May 12.
Table of contents
All changes included in VALORANT Patch 12.09
Neon nerfs
As promised in a developer blog post last week, Neon is getting a series of nerfs to reduce her overall dominance among Duelists. The changes incentivize more meaningful decisions while giving more counterplay options.
Here are the Neon changes in Patch 12.09:
- High Gear
- 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.
Shotgun nerfs
Shotguns in VALORANT have always enabled high-mobility plays. This is why, alongside Neon nerfs, Riot is reducing shotguns’ accuracy while moving. The changes should make shotguns more impactful when used defensively rather than aggressively.
Here are all the general shotgun changes in Patch 12.09:
- Run, walk, crouch-walk, and jump accuracy have been standardized across all shotguns.
- Crouching now provides a 15 percent accuracy multiplier for shotguns, matching rifles.
- Bucky: Crouch accuracy modifier increased from 10 to 15 percent.
- Judge/Shorty: Crouch accuracy modifier decreased from 25 to 15 percent.
- Shotguns are now much less accurate when using ropes.
- Standing still: Spread increased from 0.075 to 0.75.
- Walking: Spread increased from 0.09 to 1.5.
- Running: Spread increased from 0.1 to 3.0.
Here are all the Bucky changes in Patch 12.09:
- Bucky pellet damage in the 0-8m range decreased.
- Head 40 to 34
- Body 20 to 17
- Legs 17 to 14
- Minimum spread increased from 2.6 to 3.0.
- Walking spread increased from 0.075 to 1.
- Running spread increased from .1 to 2.
- Crouch-walk spread increased from .05 to .5.
- Jump spread increased from 1.25 to 4.
Here are all the Judge changes in Patch 12.09:
- Minimum spread increased from 2.25 to 2.5 (PC only).
- Walking spread increased from .075 to 1.
- Running spread increased from 0.75 to 2.
- Crouch-walk spread increased from .05 to .5.
- Jump spread increased from 2.25 to 4.
Here are all the Shorty changes in Patch 12.09:
- Fire rate decreased from 3.33 to 3.0.
- Walking spread increased from .075 to 1.
- Running spread increased from 0.1 to 2.
- Crouch-walk spread increased from .05 to .5.
- Jump spread increased from 1.25 to 4.
MMR changes
In Patch 12.09, Riot is testing MMR changes in modes other than Competitive, Unrated, and Swiftplay. This should result in better, more consistent matches, and Riot will use the data from the test to improve Competitive, Unrated, and Swiftplay.
Behavior updates
Riot has improved the text evaluation system to better detect and apply penalties for text chat abuse in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, and Chinese.
Bug fixes
There are also a few bug fixes in Patch 12.09, including a fix to Neon’s exploit that caused Riot to disable her from the queue:
- Neon: Fixed an exploit with Fast Lane, where using specific NVIDIA graphics settings impacted competitive integrity. Neon has been re-enabled.
- Phoenix (console-only): Updated tooltip description of Curveball.
- Progression: Fixed issue where dailies shown while hovering over the icon did not match the dailies in the End of Game screen.
