Valorant Patch 12.09 Finally Brings the Neon Nerf Everyone Asked For
This one has been a long time coming. Neon players have been running lobbies for months with that High Gear speed advantage, and Riot finally decided enough was enough. Valorant patch 12.09 drops two big changes on her. First, jumping while High Gear is active no longer gives any speed bonus in the air. Neon’s airborne sprint now matches melee speed instead. Second, fuel regeneration from kills only works when her ultimate is running. Passive regen still exists, but the kill-based refill outside of ult is gone. Riot also cleaned up the slide VFX so opponents can actually tell where she is coming from and where she started.
Source: Riot Games / Valorant
How the Shotgun Rework Changes Daily Gameplay
Forget the Neon stuff for a second the shotgun changes might actually affect more players on a daily basis. Riot reworked accuracy for every shotgun in the game. Moving accuracy got worse across the board. Running, walking, crouch-walking, and jumping spread values are now standardized, and the numbers went up significantly. Crouching gives a flat 15% accuracy multiplier for all shotguns now, matching rifles. That means the Judge and Shorty actually lost crouch accuracy going from 25% down to 15%, while the Bucky gained a bit going from 10% up to 15%.
Rope Fights With Shotguns Are Basically Over
The wildest part of the shotgun changes is what happened to rope accuracy. Standing still on a rope? Spread jumped from 0.075 to 0.75. Walking on a rope? From 0.09 to 1.5. Running? From 0.1 to 3.0. Those are massive increases. Anyone who used to hold angles on ropes with a Judge or Shorty just lost that entire playstyle. Riot clearly decided that rope shotgun plays were not how the game was supposed to be played and killed it in one patch.
| Shotgun Spread & Damage Changes | |||
| Attribute | Bucky (Old → New) | Judge (Old → New) | Shorty (Old → New) |
| Damage per Pellet | 20 → 17 | Unchanged | Unchanged |
| Fire Rate | Unchanged | Unchanged | 3.33 → 3.0 |
| Minimum Spread | 2.6 → 3.0 | 2.25 → 2.5 | Unchanged |
| Walking Spread | 0.075 → 1.0 | 0.075 → 1.0 | 0.075 → 1.0 |
| Running Spread | 0.1 → 2.0 | 0.75 → 2.0 | 0.1 → 2.0 |
| Crouch-Walk Spread | 0.05 → 0.5 | 0.05 → 0.5 | 0.05 → 0.5 |
| Jump Spread | 1.25 → 4.0 | 2.25 → 4.0 | 1.25 → 4.0 |
| Alt Fire | Unchanged | — | — |
Bucky, Judge, and Shorty All Got Hit Individually Too
On top of the universal changes, each shotgun got specific nerfs. The Bucky lost close-range damage headshots dropped from 40 to 34, body from 20 to 17, legs from 17 to 14. Minimum spread also went up. The Judge’s minimum spread increased from 2.25 to 2.5 on PC, with console getting the same change in patch 12.11. The Shorty’s fire rate dropped from 3.33 to 3.0. All three weapons also got their walking, running, and jump spread values cranked up hard. If the old shotgun rushes were a core part of someone’s game, this patch just forced a serious adjustment.
Bug Fixes and PC Performance Updates
Beyond the balance changes, Riot cleaned up a long list of agent bugs. Chamber’s Headhunter ADS animation got fixed. Jett’s Tailwind now plays correctly in left-handed mode and the Drift performance drops are gone. Miks got tooltip corrections and an ult preview fix. Sage can no longer waste Healing Orb on herself during Decay when she is at full health. On the PC side, AMD Anti-Lag 2 support is now live for players with compatible hardware and drivers from March 2026 or later. Riot also patched a Neon exploit involving NVIDIA graphics settings that was bad enough to get her temporarily pulled from the game entirely.
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