Valorant devs explain massive 8.11 Neon buffs that could flip the meta

Neon is getting a massive buff in patch 8.11 and a Valorant dev explained in depth why the blue speedster received such a bump in power in an interview with Plat Chat.

The Valorant esports podcast interviewed Riot Games dev Dan ‘penguin’ Hardison on June 5 about the host of changes coming to the Duelist class in patch 8.11.

The early patch notes say the buffs to Neon, Raze, Reyna, and Iso are to level the playing field for those Duelists compared to Jett and the space that she creates for her team.

While some changes are relatively minor, Neon received arguably the biggest buffs. Her High Gear ability is now incredibly powerful, allowing her to sprint at high speed for longer, and to strafe at the same speed as her sprint, and her Slide ability now has two charges instead of one.

Those changes are just the beginning, as the Valorant devs also changed her Relay Bolt and made some quality-of-life changes to her Fast Lane ability.

In the interview with Plat Chat, penguin addressed the massive movement changes to High Gear, and said Neon is the “grounded movement Duelist fantasy.”

Neon is discussed at the 9:02 mark.

“You’re supposed to kind of being breaking people’s ankles and outplaying people with your movement so any kind of restriction around that felt out of place,” the Valorant dev said about the strafe changes. “It’s probably a lot more power than we could really feel and will really know about and this could be a horrible mistake.”

When talking about the new slide charge, penguin said players can combo a slide into another slide after a slight delay. He also confirmed Neon is now more accurate while sliding than players are while walking or running.

While the changes might seem bizarre on the surface, penguin said in the playtest they weren’t that crazy.

“We killed Neon out of slide pretty regularly so we were kind of like ‘Hey how far can we push this’ because this is such a committal risk compared to the other Duelists in the game.

“Like, Jett is up and behind you in a smoke, Raze is flying through the air potentially with a shotgun kill you near instantly, so how do we make Neon kind of able to compete,” he said.

The Valorant dev also explained that the team wanted to make Neon feel dangerous up close because it probably took a lot of work to get to that position compared to Jett or Raze, who can both effectively fly around the map.

So far, the Valorant player base has been shocked by the changes to Neon and is chomping at the bit to test them out in-game and see how pros pilot her in matches.