Since VALORANT Champions 2024, one agent within VALORANT has made ranked matches a nightmare. This agent is none other than Neon. In many’s eyes, this agent has been overpowered for quite a while. Riot Games has announced that in the upcoming VALORANT Patch 9.11 update, Neon is getting nerfed. In this article, we look at these nerfs and what will impact VALORANT.
Neon Is Finally Nerfed in VALORANT Patch 9.11
Image Credits: Riot Games
VALORANT players’ frustration toward Neon has been well-documented on various social media platforms. This was due to a buff given to her before VALORANT Champions 2024. We covered that buff and why it had made Neon overpowered in the game. In VALORANT Patch 9.11, the agent will finally get certain nerfs to her abilities.
The first nerf to the agent is that her slides are getting reduced to just one. Previously, two could be bought within the shop during rounds.
The second nerf within Patch 9.11 is that her shooting accuracy while she is sliding has been reduced. Previously, players would have 100% shooting accuracy while sliding and shooting. Now, they will have the same accuracy as another agent crouching and moving while shooting. This is a nerf that many players and fans of the game expected Neon to receive within the game in this patch.
Neon’s third nerd concerns her ultimate and her ability, High Gear. Now, High Gear will take longer to charge fully within VALORANT. Neon’s ultimate ability, Overdrive, will now require 8 Ult points to be activated within the game.
Many might feel that this nerf is quite harsh, but we have seen the game treatment done to agents such as Viper and Chamber in the past. Once patch 9.11 is live, there is a high probability that we will reach a point in VALORANT where most agents are usable within the game.
Other Changes Within Patch 9.11
VALORANT has made some changes to the ping system within the game. The first change is that pings made on the map cannot be seen in-game. This means that all players in one team can only see pings made by teammates without the map. The default key bind for pinging a specific point on a map is Z.
The second change is that pings will now be blocked through smokes. Similar to how pings interact with walls, players won’t be able to provide a ping past a smoke. This means that teammates cannot help their teammates by knowing where the spike is during the post-plant of the team on defense, which has put down a smoke.
This is mainly done to prevent players from spamming from far distances through a cloud of smoke to kill the opponents as they defuse the spike. Following Patch 9.11 going live, players must push into smokes more often to stop the enemy from defusing the spike.
Recently, VALORANT released the yearly flashback. Players can check out some stats concerning their playstyle within VALORANT on both ranked and unranked lobbies.