The final VALORANT update of 2024 is here, packing huge agent and tactical changes to end the year with a bang. If you’re wondering what’s included in the latest VALORANT Patch 9.11, we’ve got the full patch notes ready for you.
Scheduled to go live on Dec. 10, the highly anticipated update brings some much needed nerfs to Neon, exciting improvements to a couple of Vyse’s abilities, and a slightly controversial revamp to VALORANT’s ping system. Besides the big changes, you get a bunch of minor updates to improve the overall player experience and bug fixes like always.
Let’s get to the details of the patch, shall we?
All VALORANT Patch 9.11 changes
The Neon nerfs we needed
As promised earlier, Riot has finally clipped Neon’s wings in Patch 9.11, curbing her overpowered slides for good. She no longer has two slide charges to spare, nor is she entitled to full accuracy while sliding going forward. Furthermore, the timer on her ultimate has been reduced. Here are all the Neon changes in VALORANT’s Patch 9.11, summarized:
High Gear
- Slides 2 >>> 1
- Accuracy during slide: Full accuracy >>> Crouch-walking accuracy
Overdrive
- Duration of ultimate: 20s >>> 10s
- Ultimate points 7 >>> 8
While the slide changes look quite balanced, cutting Neon’s ultimate duration by half and slapping an extra ult point on it at the same time seems a bit too harsh. A five-second cut would probably have been fairer. With this, Riot intends to introduce more counterplay to Overdrive by “giving opponents a potential window to stall Neon out or disengage.” But whether Neon retains her position in the meta after this nerf remains to be seen.
Exciting Vyse buffs
Vyse’s Razorvine hasn’t been performing as per Riot’s expectations in terms of holding space—and Patch 9.11 aims to fix that with some buffs. The vines now deal higher damage per tick than before and also slow down dashes and slides by 50 percent. The ability’s vertical drop spawn height has also been increased, so it no longer “affects players as far under it when spawning high up on objects/level geometry.”
Additionally, Vyse’s Arc Rose has received a minor quality of life update to facilitate aggression after initial placement. Here are all the Vyse changes included in VALORANT Patch 9.11, summarized:
Razorvine
- Damage per tick of moving through Razorvine: 6 >>> 10
- Vertical drop spawn height: 450 >>> 300
- Now slows enemy dashes similar to Sage’s Slowing Orb and concusses
Arc Rose
- Equip speed after cast: Normal >>> Fast
The Ping system gets a major overhaul
Riot noted that while the Ping system was introduced to facilitate communication without microphones, players have learned to use it in “unintended ways” to enjoy “in-the-moment combat advantages that go beyond the intended use of the system.”
To curb such use cases, Patch 9.11 introduces a few changes to Pings in VALORANT:
- Smokes now block in-world pings from traveling through them and instead land on the smoke. For example, you can no longer “ping” the Spike and spam the visible point on the map. Instead, you’d have to look at the map for the Spike icon or remember the placement and fire your bullets accordingly. Tough post-plant times begin.
- If you open the minimap and ping a point on it, the ping won’t appear in the world. It only appears on the minimap.
- New ping visuals and new ping sound for pings made on the map to make the difference between world and map pings clearer.
- New cheat function for custom games allowing map pings to show in the world to help labbing and lineup practices. This will be added in a future patch.
Client updates for PC and console
You can now unlock multiple available skin levels in a single transaction instead of having to individually purchase every upgrade and sit through the animation. That said, you’d still have to unlock color variants individually.
A thoughtful update, I’d say, but I’m still looking for the option to be able to change skins while in a match. Are you listening, Riot?
Team Deathmatch gets the Regen Shield
Going forward, you’ll now have the Regen Shield in the first stage of a Team Deathmatch game if you equip the Classic instead of Light Armor.
Some social updates for peeps on PC
- The color of Party chat messages from Team chat messages has been updated.
- The appearance of Party flags in the Social Panel has been updated.
All bug fixes included in VALORANT Patch 9.11
We get only one bug fix with this update, targeting an issue related to a progression mission.
- Fixed a bug that incorrectly required 100 matches played to complete the Play A Match weekly mission.
