Neon is in line for some big nerfs in the new Valorant patch.

Credit: Riot Games

The Valorant 12.09 patch notes have been released and they bring some major nerfs to two very strong areas of the game; shotguns and Neon.

Neon has been one of the stronger and more disruptive agents for a while in Valorant, with her speed and mobility giving her too much of an advantage in fights. In the patch notes, the developers acknowledged that this is somewhat down to a larger, game wide, issue when it comes to pacing, but that will take longer to address, so for now Neon is getting some significant nerfs to try and reduce the issue somewhat.

The Neon nerfs include a major change to High Gear, which grants her the majority of her movement abilities. Now, when jumping, High Gear will not provide any speed bonuses, and your speed while in the air cannot exceed melee speed. This should have a massive impact on how Neon players can move in and out of combat giving opponents little chance of predicting their movement. Now you should see fewer Neons appearing above head height round a corner at lightning speeds.

The other significant Neon nerf means her fuel will now only regenerate with a kill when her ultimate is active, which should mean less fuel in general for aggressive Neon players. Of course, her fuel will still regenerate passively.

Shotguns are the other big loser when it comes to the 12.09 Valorant patch notes, but these changes are also, in a way, tied to the Neon nerfs as many players paired the two together. The shotgun changes are designed to move them from an aggressive offensive weapon to a more defensive weapon.

The biggest change comes to all shotguns, which are now less accurate when moving. Accuracy when running, walking, crouch-walking and jumping have been standardised across all shotguns, and generally speaking accuracy has been reduced across the board with way more bullet spread. If you want to get into the numbers the full list of changes can be seen in the official patch notes.

These two major nerfs are the biggest changes in the Valorant patch notes, but there are some other things to check out such as some useful bug fixes to quite a few agents, and some changes to the MMR system outside of Competitive, Unrated and Swiftplay matches that are being used as test that could be added to those modes in the future.