VALORANT Patch 13.09: Hush Is Live, and Three Leaked Nerfs Never Arrived

VALORANT Patch 13.09 is live. Hush is playable, Clove lost movement speed, the Warden got easier to control, and two new buff terms now sit on your HUD.

It is also a patch worth checking against the rumour mill, because the leaks that went around last week were only partly right.

What the VALORANT Patch 13.09 leaks got right, and what never arrived

We reported the datamined changes on October 23 and said clearly that Riot had confirmed none of them. Now we can mark the sheet.

Landed:

• Clove’s Pick-Me-Up speed bonus dropping from 15% to 10%, exactly as leaked
• Killing Clove after Not Dead Yet granting the killer an ultimate point and a signature refresh point
• Warden recoil reductions, now with numbers attached

Did not:

• Clove losing the ability to gain ultimate points from kills after casting Not Dead Yet
• A range limit on Gekko’s ultimate
• A range reduction on Skye’s ultimate
• A size reduction on Sova’s ultimate

That last group matters. VALORANT Patch 13.09 leaves Gekko, Skye and Sova untouched on the balance sheet. The only lines mentioning Gekko and Sova anywhere in the notes are bug fixes that pull their abilities back inside the intended area. A datamined fix reads a lot like a nerf. These were fixes.

The Clove one is the bigger miss. Losing ult points for the rest of the round after casting would have been a serious nerf. What shipped is smaller and sharper: your death now pays the enemy twice.

Hush is playable now

Riot’s description is worth reading before you queue. Hush comes from Guangdong province and “redirects her combat utility in midair to disrupt and displace the enemy team before suspending them helplessly for the killing blow”.

Her full kit:

• Telekinesis (passive): picks up weapons, the Spike on attack, and uses switches from increased range
• Displacement: a throwable that explodes on any surface or after a delay, pulling everyone toward the centre and concussing anyone who collides with a surface or another player. Resets every two kills
• Flashbulb: a throwable flash that blinds anyone looking at it when it goes off
• Flow: instantly places an anchor, then propels her toward it after a delay. In the air she briefly levitates first
• Suspension (ultimate): a projectile you steer with your crosshair, then detonate to levitate every player caught in it

Read the inputs rather than the effects and the design gets clearer. Displacement, Flashbulb and Suspension all follow the same pattern: throw or send, then reactivate to steer it toward your crosshair mid-flight.

That is the whole character. Three of her four abilities are course-correctable after you commit, which is the opposite of how most utility in this game works. Our Hush agent guide covers her lore and unlock routes.

Passives are finally written down

Riot rewrote every ability description in VALORANT Patch 13.09 and, more usefully, started documenting passives that the client never explained.

Phoenix healing in his own fire is the clearest example. Players have known about Inner Fire for years, but you learned it from a video or by watching someone stand in a wall and come out healthier. It now sits on his agent page with a name attached. Neon’s Battery gets the same treatment.

The tooltip itself also changed. It now shows the agent, the role and the keybind at a glance, and it appears at moments where you actually need it, such as trying a new agent in the Range.

Convenient timing, given there is a new agent to learn today.

Haste and Snapshot are now real words

This is the change almost nobody will lead with, and it touches five agents.

Riot has made Haste an official buff term for increased movement speed, separate from a Combat Stim buff, which covers fire rate, equip speed, reload speed and recovery speed. Snapshot now names the still-image silhouette reveal, the kind Cypher gets from Neural Theft and his Spycam.

Where Haste now shows up:

• Brimstone: Stim Beacon displays it on affected players
• Clove: Pick-Me-Up displays it, and the old timer bar is gone because Haste brings its own
• Miks: Harmonize displays it on affected players
• Neon: High Gear and Overdrive both display it
• Waylay: Riot renames Convergent Paths to Haste, since the effect was identical

Until now you had to know which speed buff you were under by feel. The HUD finally tells you, and it tells your teammates too.

The Clove nerf in context

Riot says it audited its buffs and found Clove out of line with the rest of the roster on two counts: a higher movement speed bonus than comparable abilities, and different kill rewards after Not Dead Yet.

Pick-Me-Up drops from 15% to 10%. Killing Clove after they resurrect now hands the killer an ultimate point and a signature refresh point.

Second one is the real cost. Clove’s whole appeal is that dying is an opening rather than an ending. Now the enemy who closes it out gets paid for the trouble, which makes a greedy self-revive a worse idea in a round you are already losing.

Jett also loses her passive from the Buy Menu, which is tidying rather than balance.

Warden buffs, with numbers

The Warden arrived in Patch 13.06 and never settled. VALORANT Patch 13.09 tries to fix that. Riot says it wants the gun’s base versatility and handling to match its 2900 price.

• Pitch recoil smoothed out across the first few bullets
• Reduced spread on follow-up shots
• 2nd bullet error from 0.25 to 0.2
• 3rd bullet error from 0.6 to 0.5

These are learnability buffs, not power buffs. The first shot is unchanged. What changes is how much the second and third punish you, which is where most players were losing duels with it.

Performance Score cannot grade Hush yet

Riot said the quiet part out loud here.

Hush is the first new agent since Performance Score launched, also in 13.06. Riot warns that scores on her “may be a bit bumpy in the first few days as we tune what good utility use looks like”.

So if you grind Hush this week, VALORANT Patch 13.09 is scoring you on an agent the system has not learned yet. Worth knowing before you read anything into the number.

PC players also get hover text for trades on the scoreboard and a new explainer screen for what Performance Score actually is.

Map Rating and Accolades

Your Act Best Match now counts for more in your Map Rating each Act. Riot frames it as rewarding peaks and consistency rather than volume. Our Map Rating explainer covers how the score works.

The First Blood Accolade came too easily, so the threshold goes up. Accolades you already earned stay on your record.

In the store, Korean players can now buy Radianite Points in game. That is a regional change and does not affect anyone else.

The bug fixes that change rounds

Most of the fix list in VALORANT Patch 13.09 is housekeeping. Four are not.

• Buy Phase barriers: enemies could see abilities from Cypher, Vyse, Viper and Killjoy through the barrier before the round started. Setups leaked before anyone fired a shot
• Tejo: Special Delivery could survive the round transition and damage or concuss players in the next round
• Chamber and Omen: both could flash up on the enemy minimap for a moment after teleporting
• Sova: Hunter’s Fury could hit players standing behind him

The first one is the one to care about. Pre-round information in a game built on setup is not a cosmetic bug.

Riot’s full notes, including every console and spectator fix, are on the official VALORANT site. The Grave Matters capsule is live alongside the patch, and we cover every update in our VALORANT section.