Riot forbereder nye endringer for Neon i Valorant: Utviklerne mener hun er for sterk

Neon may be getting changes again in Valorant. During a Reddit Q&A session, Riot Games' Agents and Live Balance lead, who goes by penguinVALORANT, revealed that the team is already working on new changes for the agent.The topic came up because the new 13.06 patch didn't include any balance changes.

One player asked whether the team was happy with the current meta. The developer replied that the meta works for Riot only until the end of the year, and that there are several problems the team definitely plans to address:

Satisfied for the end of this year doesn't mean long-term satisfied if that makes sense.

The first of these problems he named was Neon. According to Riot's internal metrics, the agent is still one of the strongest in the game. The team tracks not only win rate but also how frustrating an agent is to play against. The developer admits that playing against Neon is supposed to be frustrating, since that's part of her style. But according to him, she's currently too strong. She's hard to play against, and she gives too much of an advantage in ranked matches across different ranks.

At the same time, this won't be limited to simple number tweaks. Riot wants to change the agent's behavior and mechanics:

Changes here wouldn't be just straight numbers nerfs, we want to look at more pattern level changes.

The developer didn't share details, explaining that the team is still actively testing several options and hasn't made a final decision yet. Among other issues, he also mentioned that ranked games feel too samey. Riot plans to address this through changes to several agents.

Interestingly, public stats don't look as alarming as Riot's internal data. According to tracker.gg, Neon is currently in Tier B. Her pick rate is 3.4%, her win rate is exactly 50%, and her non-mirror win rate is 49.9%. She has a 0.99 K/D and accounts for 3.5% of kills. For comparison, Clove and Sage currently have the highest win rates at 52.5% and 51.9% respectively, while Jett, with a 9.7% pick rate, remains the most popular duelist. However, Riot looks not only at win rate but also at how frustrating an agent is, and it examines different skill levels separately. So the numbers in overall stats may not show the full picture.

It's worth remembering that Neon was already significantly nerfed this year. In patch 12.09, released on May 12, 2026, Riot changed her High Gear ability: jumping while sprinting no longer gave a bonus to air speed, and fuel from kills now only regenerates while her ultimate is acti