Valorant Patch 13.09 Goes Live: Telekinetic Duelist Hush Arrives Alongside Clove Nerfs and Warden Buffs
Ten days after her official reveal during the Valorant Champions finals weekend in Shanghai, Hush is officially live on Valorant servers. Deployed today by Riot Games, Patch 13.09 introduces the game's 31st Agent (and ninth Duelist in the roster), while overhauling how movement speed buffs are displayed in the UI, toning down Clove, and smoothing out the recoil pattern on the Warden rifle.
Hush Joins the Roster: Full Telekinetic Abilities Breakdown
Hailing from China's Guangdong province, Valorant's new telekinetic Duelist Hush is built around mid-air utility manipulation and spatial disruption. Unlike traditional linear entry Duelists such as Jett or Raze, her kit lets players steer projectiles toward their crosshair mid-flight to flush defenders out of deep corners.
- Telekinesis (Passive): Hush can pick up dropped weapons, grab the Spike (when on the Attacker side), and interact with map switches or doors from an increased range without exposing herself directly to enemy sightlines.
- Displacement (Signature Ability - E): Equip a telekinetic projectile. Primary fire throws it immediately, while alt-fire prepares it in place. Reactivating the ability mid-flight directs it toward your crosshair. It explodes upon hitting any surface or after a delay, pulling all nearby players toward the center and concussing them if they collide with a wall or another player. Resets every two kills.
- Flashbulb (Q): Equip a flash charge that can be thrown immediately or prepped via alt-fire, then steered mid-air toward your crosshair by reactivating the ability. It detonates on any surface or after a brief timer, blinding all players looking at it.
- Flow (C): Instantly creates an anchor point. If Hush is airborne when cast, she briefly levitates in place to arrest her momentum before dashing rapidly toward the anchor after a short delay.
- Suspension (Ultimate - X): Instantly prepares a suspension field. Primary fire sends it forward while steering it with your crosshair. Reactivating the ability or pressing fire again detonates the orb, causing all players caught in its radius to levitate helplessly in the air.
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Standardized Haste and Snapshot Buffs Alongside Clove Nerfs
Beyond Hush's debut, Riot Games has used Patch 13.09 to standardize how temporary status effects are categorized and displayed on the HUD. Buff and debuff abilities are now officially split into two clear terms: Haste and Snapshot.
Haste specifically refers to increased movement speed granted by abilities, distinguishing it from a Combat Stim buff, which boosts fire rate, equip speed, reload speed, and recovery speed. A unified Haste timer bar now appears for Brimstone's Stim Beacon, Clove's Pick-me-up (removing its previous redundant timer bar to reduce HUD clutter), Miks' Harmonize, Neon's High Gear and Overdrive, and Waylay's Convergent Paths, which has been renamed directly to Haste. Meanwhile, Snapshot now officially designates still-image silhouette reveal debuffs, such as Cypher's Spycam dart and Neural Theft ultimate.
While auditing movement speed buffs across the roster, Riot also addressed two major outliers on Clove:
- Pick-me-up (C): Bonus movement speed has been reduced from 15% to 10% to match comparable movement speed abilities across the agent pool.
- Not Dead Yet (Ultimate - X): Eliminating Clove after they activate their resurrection ultimate now grants one ultimate orb point and one signature ability refresh point to the player who secures the kill.
To keep UI elements consistent across all Agents, Jett's passive has been removed from the Buy Menu to match other non-purchasable passives, while redesigned ability tooltips now explicitly list passive abilities (including previously uncategorized ones like Neon's Battery) across Agent Select, the Agent Hub, and the Range.
Warden Rifle Recoil Buffs, Performance Score Tuning, and Bug Fixes
Introduced back in Patch 13.06 at the 2,900-credit price tier alongside the Vandal and Phantom, the scoped Warden rifle is getting a handling buff to make its initial burst far more controllable. Riot has smoothed out vertical pitch recoil across the first four bullets (dropping from 0.6 to 0.45 on the 1st shot, 1.5 to 0.9 on the 2nd shot, 2.5 to 1.8 on the 3rd shot, and 3.75 to 3.2 on the 4th shot) while tightening follow-up bullet spread: 2nd bullet error is reduced from 0.25 to 0.2, and 3rd bullet error drops from 0.6 to 0.5.
On the competitive systems front, Hush is the first new Agent released since the launch of Performance Score. Riot noted that player scores on Hush may fluctuate slightly during her first few days on live servers while the team calibrates baseline data for optimal telekinetic utility usage. PC players also get new hover text explaining trades on the post-match scoreboard, Act Best Match now carries greater weight in calculating each Act's Map Rating, and the threshold for earning the First Blood accolade has been raised.
Finally, as the competitive community looks ahead to the 2027 off-season and TenZ's potential return to the VCT stage, Patch 13.09 squashes a long list of gameplay bugs: retrieval UI prompts for Veto and Vyse have been updated from PICK UP to RECALL, abilities belonging to Cypher, Vyse, Viper, and Killjoy can no longer be spotted through barriers during the Buy Phase, and Chamber and Omen will no longer briefly appear on the enemy minimap after teleporting.
My Take
Hush's kit directly challenges some of the most ingrained habits in high-elo play. Being able to curve a flash and a concussive pull projectile mid-air while snatching a dropped Spike out of an Operator sightline without ever showing a shoulder gives attackers an incredible tool for breaking stalled mid-rounds. Steering her utility with the crosshair while taking space will take real mechanical discipline, but pairing her Displacement pull with area-of-effect damage from Raze or Brimstone is going to punish static site anchors immediately.
The sleeper highlight of Patch 13.09, however, is the combination of Clove's nerf and the Warden buff. Clove has been running rampant in ranked queues largely because a 15% movement speed boost allowed for reckless wide swings, and rewarding players with an ultimate point and signature refresh for putting Clove down a second time during Not Dead Yet fixes a glaring economy frustration. Add in noticeably tighter second- and third-bullet spread on the 2,900-credit Warden, and rifle rounds just got a lot more versatile.
SEO consultant for over 20 years and digital entrepreneur, Charles 'Grimtag' Ronchain is the founder of Pro-Gamer.gg, Retrocharting.com, and Gamescharting.com. A competitive gamer, streamer, and retro game collector, he has worked in the video game industry for over 15 years, notably as a consultant for leading game price comparison platforms. Passionate about real-time performance data and gaming technology, he analyzes competitive esports, gaming hardware benchmarks, and creator workflows on Pro-Gamer.gg with an authentic player perspective.
