With Valorant Season 2026 Act 4 fast approaching, the competitive meta of the shooter is certain to see a drastic shift as Riot Games has revealed some crucial Agent changes coming to the game with the upcoming patch.
Over the past few months, we have been seeing Valorant’s meta growing increasingly stale, with certain Agents in each role dominating the pick rates while some remained nearly untouched. The Valorant 13.0 Agent changes aim to shake things up by addressing these imbalances, delivering some much-needed buffs to several underutilized Agents and shifting the game towards more ability usage rather than relying solely on raw gunplay.
Valorant Patch 13.0 Agent Changes
While Duelists and Controllers remain largely untouched in the Valorant 13.0 update, Sentinels and Initiators have received buffs across the board, with the former category receiving more significant buffs overall.
Agents like Killjoy and Veto will see significant power spikes to their kit, while others like Cypher and Sage receive minor improvements.
A number of Initiators will have their signature ability cooldowns reduced by ten seconds, while Gekko’s ability cooldowns after reclaiming buddies will be reduced by five seconds.
Valorant 13.0 Update: All Agent Changes Listed
Here’s a list of all the Agent changes that are coming to Valorant with the Season 2026 Act 4 update, as confirmed by the devs:
Cypher
- Trapwire
- Reduced windup from .9s to .7s.
Killjoy
- Turret
- Rate of fire increased by 50%
- Nanoswarm
- Duration increased from 4s to 5s.
- Alarmbot
- Movement speed increased by 50%.
Veto
- Interceptor
- Reclaim cooldown reduced from 30s to 20s.
- Crosscut
- Usable area increased from 24m to 30m.
- Arming time after placing was reduced from 1.5s to .75s.
Sage
- Healing Orb
- Self Heal-Over-Time has increased from 50 to 100.
Deadlock
- GravNet
- Cooldown reduced from 60s to 50s
Initiator Cooldowns
- The signature ability cooldown of Sova, Fade, Skye, Breach, KAY/0 have been reduced from 60s to 50s.
- Gekko’s ability cooldowns after reclaiming his buddies has been reduced from 20s to 15s.
While the gameplay and thematic elements of Omen’s Shrouded Step generally align with our design intention, cases where Omen teleports past or behind enemies during chaotic VALORANT rounds undetected because they simply could not parse the audio violates our gameplay clarity standards. This change is small, but should make Omen’s more obvious casts of this ability easier to hear.
Omen
- Shrouded Step
- We’ve updated enemy Omen Shrouded Step audio with the goal of improving clarity in situations where you are within range of the ability but are unable to hear it.
Alongside the aforementioned Agent changes, the Valorant 13.0 update will also kick off the new Act, bringing with it the new map Summit, the Retake game mode, lots of new cosmetics, and more.
