# VALORANT 12.09 — VALORANT Patch Notes 12.09

- Product: VALORANT (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/valorant)
- Vendor: Riot Games
- Date: 2026-05-12
- Version: 12.09
- Original notes: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-12-09
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/valorant/releases/12.09
- Labels: Platforms: Windows, PlayStation, Xbox

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

---

- **changed** — Neon's High Gear no longer provides speed bonus while airborne; air speed while sprinting now matches melee speed
- **changed** — Neon's High Gear fuel regeneration on kill only occurs when her ultimate is active
- **changed** — Improved Neon's High Gear VFX to more clearly communicate the direction and origin of her slide
- **changed** — All shotguns are now less accurate when moving, with run, walk, crouch-walk, and jump accuracy standardized across all shotguns
- **changed** — Shotgun crouch accuracy now provides a 15% accuracy multiplier, matching rifles
- **changed** — Bucky crouch accuracy modifier increased from 10% to 15%
- **changed** — Judge and Shorty crouch accuracy modifier decreased from 25% to 15%
- **changed** — All shotguns are now much less accurate while using ropes with significantly increased spread
- **changed** — Bucky pellet damage in 0-8m range decreased: head 40 to 34, body 20 to 17, legs 17 to 14
- **changed** — Bucky minimum spread increased from 2.6 to 3.0 and movement spreads increased across all actions
- **changed** — Judge minimum spread increased from 2.25 to 2.5 on PC and movement spreads increased across all actions
- **changed** — Shorty fire rate decreased from 3.33 to 3.0 and movement spreads increased across all actions
- **changed** — MMR changes are being tested for modes other than Competitive, Unrated, and Swiftplay to improve match consistency
- **fixed** — Fixed bug where ADS-ing while firing Chamber's Headhunter created an animation that covers too much of the screen
- **fixed** — Fixed visual bug where Jett's Tailwind was not playing intended first-person animations when left-handed setting is enabled
- **fixed** — Fixed bug where using Jett's Drift caused performance drops
- **fixed** — Fixed bug where Miks' ultimate preview cone would not show unless the ability was fully equipped
- **fixed** — Fixed issue where a full health Sage could use Healing Orb on herself while affected by Decay, needlessly consuming the ability
- **fixed** — Fixed issue where Tejo's Guided Salvo's equip idle sound kept playing long after cast

HELLO ALL! Drum roll please…🥁🥁🥁 it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Neon and shotgun nerfs have arrived. We’re making changes to her mobility in the air and giving her a greater resource tradeoff on High Gear. We’ve also made all shotguns less accurate while moving and shooting. Read on below for more!
ALL PLATFORMSAGENT UPDATES
Neon has been on our radar for a while now, and we’ve been working through changes to address the amount of impact she can have in games. This is related to a more complex pacing and strategy problem with multiple elements to solve (strong Duelists and shotguns, weak Sentinels, higher Initiator signature cooldowns), but for the time being we are going to release Neon and shotgun changes first to more quickly correct the balance of combat.
Her current role in breaking timings and creating pressure is correct, but her movement and evasiveness are pushing too far into combat space. We want to encourage Neon players to be intentional and make more meaningful decisions while playing her, so we’re making changes to her mobility in the air and giving her a greater resource tradeoff on High Gear. This should also allow opponents to have more opportunities for counterplay, as well as shave some additionally generously-tuned snowballing potential.
For a deeper dive on all the upcoming changes and why, you can read more about it <[here](https://x.com/penguinVALORANT/status/2052441871889371353)>.
Neon
- 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
COMPETITIVE UPDATES
- We’re testing MMR changes for modes other than Competitive, Unrated, and Swiftplay. These changes should result in better, more consistent matches. We’ll use what we learn to improve Competitive, Unrated, and Swiftplay in the future.
BUG FIXES
- Agents
- Chamber
- Fixed a bug where ADS-ing while firing Chamber’s Headhunter created an animation that covers too much of the screen
- Jett
- Fixed a visual bug where Jett's Tailwind was not playing the intended first-person animations when left-handed setting is enabled
- Fixed a bug where using Jett's Drift caused performance drops
- Miks
- Updated tooltip description of Harmonize.
- Fixed bug where the preview cone for his ultimate would not show unless the ability was fully equipped
- Sage
- Fixed an issue where a full health Sage could use Healing Orb on herself while affected by Decay, because she is not actually losing any health. This would consume the ability needlessly, since her health returns to normal once Decay wears off.
- Tejo
- Fixed issue where the Guided Salvo’s equip idle sound kept playing long after cast.
- Viper
- Fixed a bug where Sova's Recon Bolt and Chamber's Trademark were not affected by nearsightedness in Viper's Pit
- Vyse
- Fixed a bug where possessable drones (Sova's Owl Drone, Skye's Trailblazer, Tejo's Stealth Drone) would trigger the arming audio of Vyse's wall
PLAYER BEHAVIOR UPDATES
We've improved our Riot Text Evaluation system to better detect and apply penalties for text comms abuse in the following languages: Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Chinese.
WEAPONS UPDATES
Alongside the Neon changes above, we are also changing the effectiveness of shotguns when moving and jumping to encourage players to use them defensively. Shotguns are intended to be most effective for holding tight angles and clearing close range spaces, but right now they’re a bit too effective in high-mobility situations. To reinforce their ideal usage, we are reducing shotgun accuracy while moving. This should make them more impactful when used deliberately and defensively, versus being aggressive on the move.
All shotg

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-12-09]_