Valorant Neon Nerf Planned, Riot Says Changes Go Beyond Numbers

Neon is in line for another nerf in Valorant, after Riot’s agent balance lead told players in the Patch 13.06 Reddit AMA on 28 September that the Duelist is still too strong by the studio’s internal metrics. The fix won’t just trim her numbers. Riot is testing several changes aimed at how Neon plays, and hasn’t said when any of them will ship.

Hi folks, we launched one of our biggest patches in recent memory and wanted to chat about it with y'all! Hop in the AMA with your questions and we'll be responding to them at 11am!https://t.co/Eb4l0ApXIP

— Joe Lee (@Riot_SWAG) September 28, 2026

Game Director Joe Lee hosted the AMA alongside 12 developers, following a patch he described as one of the biggest the team has shipped in recent memory. Neon led the balance discussion, but the session also covered the new Performance Score and how it relates to Ranked Rating (RR), Agent Mastery, the Kingdom Credits cap, and Riot’s view that ranked matches have started to feel repetitive.

Why Riot Says Neon Is Still Too Strong

The Neon comments came from Dan, Riot’s Game Design Manager for Agents and Live Balance, who posts as penguinVALORANT. A player pointed out that Patch 13.06 shipped without agent balance changes and asked whether the team was happy with the meta. Dan replied that being “satisfied for the end of this year doesn’t mean long-term satisfied”, then put Neon first on his list of problems.

Riot’s internal metrics include both win rate and how frustrating an agent is to play against, tracked across the player base by the studio’s Insights team. Neon sits on the stronger end of those metrics. Dan accepted that some frustration comes with an agent like Neon, but said she is out of line with Riot’s tactical design principles and carries too much raw ranked power in multiple skill brackets.

Rather than another round of straight number cuts, Riot wants pattern-level changes to how she plays. Dan didn’t describe what those look like, calling himself a “vaguepost king” because the team is still iterating on and testing multiple options.

The last Neon nerf landed in Patch 12.09, released on 12 May 2026. It changed her High Gear sprint so that jumping while sprinting no longer adds air speed, and limited fuel regeneration from kills to while her Overdrive ultimate is active. Those changes didn’t push her out of pro play. Neon was the second-most picked agent across all regions during VCT Stage 2, as double-Duelist compositions became more viable, and several teams have run her at VCT 2026 Champions Shanghai.

Public ranked data looks far calmer. On tracker.gg, Neon sits in Tier B with a 3.4% pick rate, a 50% win rate (49.9% outside mirror matches), a 0.99 K/D, and 3.5% of all kills. Clove (52.5%) and Sage (51.9%) hold the highest win rates, and Jett is still the most-picked Duelist at 9.7%. That gap doesn’t contradict Riot. An overall win rate blends every rank together, and Dan’s case rests on two things it can’t show: Neon’s power bracket by bracket, and how frustrating she is to face.

Ranked Meta, Yoru, and Agent Reworks

Dan’s second concern was the ranked experience itself, which he said feels “too samey/flat”. Fixing that will take work across several agents. Riot wants to reward macro strategy and a wider range of tactics as a way to change which agents players see, and Dan noted that metas have come and gone faster this year than in previous ones.

He also admitted the team overswung on Yoru’s first nerf pass. Against that record, testing several Neon options before shipping one is the sensible call, even if it keeps her strong for longer.

Riot is also weighing reworks and larger balance changes, rather than small buffs, for agents that haven’t found a clear place in the game, naming Miks as one example. There are no plans for an agent cap, and Riot wants to prioritise quality over quantity when adding new agents. On gunplay, Dan said combat is in a healthier state overall and that the team is still looking at the Warden for follow-up changes.

Does Performance Score Affect RR?

No. Riot said the new Performance Score, which replaced Average Combat Score (ACS), has no direct effect on your matchmaking rating (MMR) or on how much RR you gain or lose. MMR is driven primarily by match results, and the score exists to show how much you affected that particular game. So padding your Performance Score won’t move your RR on its own.

Trades count both ways: you get credit for trading a teammate’s death and for having your own death traded. Derek, a Product Manager on Competitive Systems who posts as Riot_Kero, said the design comes from Riot’s belief that “Valorant is best when you are playing TOGETHER”. The team wants players entering gunfights with at least one teammate and swinging alongside them when a fight starts.

When one player asked whether lurk-heavy playstyles would suffer, Derek said kills are still the biggest factor in Performance Score. Utility is scored relative to each agent, since different kits affect a round in different ways, and Riot said it is still tuning that part of the system. The new stat screen also shows an Adjusted Kills figure, though Riot hasn’t laid out how it is calculated.

Agent Mastery, Kingdom Credits Cap, and Map Rating

Riot described the current Agent Mastery system as an early version. The team is watching which rewards resonate with players and has ideas to expand it beyond basic rewards, including more ways to show off customised Agent IDs in-game, possibly on the death recap screen.

Riot is discussing the 10,000 Kingdom Credits cap at length, but wants to study spending trends across the game’s economy before deciding whether to raise it. Developers also said they are exploring ways to give players more control over map selection, without confirming a specific system.

Map Rating is the next confirmed piece, listed for Patch 13.08 in Joe Lee’s AMA post, with a new Competitive Flex following in Patch 14.00. Riot closed the AMA saying the team will be back in the coming months with more on the topics it couldn’t discuss.