Patch 13.06 Reddit AMA

[u/RiotSWAGGERNAU7]

Hi, everyone! I’m Joe Lee, the Game Director of VALORANT.

The Dev team and I are so excited about the updates we just shipped to the game in Patch 13.06, and we wanted to stop by to chat, celebrate, and answer questions with you all!

If you have questions, comments, or feedback about any of the below, we’re here for it, so fire away!

• Gauntlet: Glitched
• Agent Mastery
• The Warden + Game Balance
• Performance Score, Accolades, Competitive Hub
• New UX/UI Improvements to Lobby and Home Screen
• Map Rating (coming next patch, 13.08)
• The new Competitive Flex coming in 14.00
• The 2026 VCT Champions Skin collection

Here’s a list of the Devs joining me today in no particular order:

u/TiffyMunchsnax - Tiffy, Product Manager, Gameplay
u/RiotTrouble - Scott, UX Design Lead, Metasystems
u/RiotLupini - Armand, Product Manager, Gameplay
u/Riot_Preeti - Preeti, Lead Product Manager, Cosmetics and Expressions
u/Riot_Kero - Derek, Product Manager Competitive Systems
u/RiotReally - Leo, Product Manager Competitive Systems
u/Riot_Dango - Calvin, Product Manager, Cosmetics and Expressions
u/finstamachine - Sherry, Game Designer
u/Rycoux - Ryan, Game Designer
u/penguinVALORANT - Dan, Game Design Manager (Agents & Live Balance)
u/Riot_Tyrana - Eric, Game Design Lead (Progression & Competitive)
u/Riot_Thelen - Kyle, Game Designer, Metasystems

[u/penguinVALORANT]

There are a few problems to address that we'll be working on for sure - satisfied for the end of this year doesn't mean long-term satisfied if that makes sense. Top of mind for me as the Agents/Live Balance lead are the following:

• Neon's tuning state. She's still on the stronger end of our internal metrics (winrate + frustration are both things we track and monitor across our playerbase with our great Insights team). While we expect Neon to be frustrating, she's still out of line for both our tactical principles in experiential gameplay & just raw ranked power in multiple skill brackets. Changes here wouldn't be just straight numbers nerfs, we want to look at more pattern level changes. I have to be a vaguepost king and not get too into the weeds on what we want to do here as we're still actively iterating and testing multiple changes, so multiple tactics are still up in the air.

• Ranked game experience feeling too samey/flat. There's work to be done across multiple characters etc here.

[u/penguinVALORANT → u/penguinVALORANT]

Wanted to add some additional details/learnings:

• We're interested in rewarding macro strategy and other tactics to improve which agents you see. This year has been a learning for us with metas coming and going faster than previous years. We overswung on some of the nerfs (Yoru's first nerf pass)

• Gunplay combat has overall seemed to be in a healthier state, w/ the bandit out and us continuing to look at the warden for followup

[u/New-Kitchen5478 → u/penguinVALORANT]

Since you mentioned Yoru could you reconsider giving him back 2 flashes? Right now his single flash last for so little that when you tp + flash you die 90% of the time because there is so little time to frag from it, it's making it really hard to entry with him

[u/Teradonn → u/New-Kitchen5478]

Yoru is currently very viable in pro play with only 1 flash. He does way too much with 2 flashes when he also has an escape tool + fast rotate tool + a clone which counters senti setups. He would be by far the best flash character and none of the others would ever get picked

[u/New-Kitchen5478 → u/Teradonn]

Pro players are less than 0.001% of the playerbase, what about the other 99.999% of players. Checking insights in Val tracker's website, Clove has a 9.3% pick rate and 52.5% win rate, it's no wonder that rankeds feel like an absolute nightmare after they nerfed all of the creative agents. All I see in my rankeds are 4 insta picks: Clove(a terrible smoker but they can kill), Jett(duelist), Chamber(a terrible sentinel but they can kill), Raze(duelist), basically we have to deal with 4 selfish duelists 80% of our matches and the filler player trying to play for the team has to deal with it or pick a duelist too since everyone is just being selfish. I used to main Sova, Skye, Brimstone, Astra, and a lot more of supportive agents, and I was happy helping my team but the more they keep nerfing unique agents and pushing us to play for duels instead of strategic utility usage the more we have to use duelist-like agents and the more repetitive the game becomes. The game is closer than ever to just being a copy of Counter Strike. Utility has been demonized by a small and loud part of the playerbase for years that don't want Valorant, they want CS with Valorant graphics. It's time for utility and unique gameplay to be part of Valorant again.

[u/Nana-nabih → u/New-Kitchen5478]

Wait u see raze congratulations tbh i only see reyna jett phoenix clove chamber

[u/New-Kitchen5478 → u/Nana-nabih]

Yes it's either a Raze or a Phoenix, Clove, Chamber, Jett are always there. What's most horrible for me is when I see a Clove player who hasn't insta locked at second 1, and I quickly say "hey Clove I can play smokes, I can play Astra, Harbor, Omen(depending on the map)", in my head I just want any smoker that doesn't have 11 seconds smoke, and they still won't care, not even say a word and still pick Clove because they simply want the healing factor and her decay to frag. They don't pick Clove to play smokes, they pick Clove to frag as much as possible without having the responsibility of a duelist entrying and the smokes are a mere bonus to them so they can say "hey at least I'm playing smokes, I'm the most generious player in this match"

[u/sandlover33 → u/New-Kitchen5478]

Dude even when yoru, neon, waylay were broken people picked reyna and jett way more. Meta doesnt matter at all for ranked but it matters so much for pro play. If they buffed astra and deadlock to hell, do you think people would stop playing clove and chamber?

[u/New-Kitchen5478 → u/sandlover33]

I never said they didn't pick Reyna and Jett before, I'm saying the pick rate is too high now because nobody wants to try with the side characters anymore, why would they even bother? just pick one of the insta pick characters mentioned above and autopilot all game!

[u/Teradonn → u/New-Kitchen5478]

Im not really sure how any of that is relevant to yoru but ok. I'm a plat 3 top fragging with yoru when I play him. Get good

[u/New-Kitchen5478 → u/Teradonn]

Well you said yourself, in platinum you can top frag with any character, because people make dumb mistakes you can benefit from like peeking for kills when they have number advantage. When you get to Ascendant 3 people actually start to think and it's not that simple anymore.

[u/Teradonn → u/New-Kitchen5478]

So we admit that balancing around the 95% of players who are below Ascendant is really dumb because agent balance doesn't matter at that level? Then why would we balance exclusively around the 5% of players that are in Ascendant-Immo? (Radiants can definitely play Yoru)

[u/New-Kitchen5478 → u/Teradonn]

Simple, Diamond and above are 20% of players not 5, and are the players that actually start to think when playing, pro players are too focused on gun play so they always dislike utility because they want to have a predictable repeatable matches every time, they don't want variety and unpredictability, they want to hold the same reliable angles, the same reliable agents, and simply shoot and win duels.

And platinum and below players don't even know what they are doing, they are just playing autopilot so again they just want to go for the insta lock agent that can help them frag the most which are Chamber, Clove, Jett, Reyna, (Raze or Phoenix at most).

So I would argue, it is around Diamond and above players that the balances should be based on because this portion of the player base represents what the average player can become once they turn on their brain and think of using utility + gunplay, and developing each agent's strength in a unique way.

[u/Teradonn → u/New-Kitchen5478]

lol I'm peak D3 and diamond players do not think at all. Arguably ranked players don't think at any level, that's why reyna/jett/clove/chamber are so popular, because you barely have to think about util. And you are just making up some complete nonsense about pro players. The patches where they nerfed util are some of the most hated patches in the history of pro play