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Valorant
Riot Games rolled out Valorant Patch 13.02 on July 28, 2026. It's a light patch on paper, but it lands a quiet nerf on one of the game's most farmed ultimates, finally grows the Retake map pool, and delivers bad news for anyone waiting on the next limited-time mode. Every value below is verified against the official Riot Games patch notes.
What's new in Patch 13.02
Where 13.01 touched Iso, Yoru, and Outlaw, 13.02 narrows in on a single Agent change, an expanded Retake pool, and a long list of Agent and platform-specific bug fixes across PC and console.
Phoenix nerf: is Run It Back farming over?
Riot says it's happy with Phoenix's overall balance, but wanted to address how often he could recast Run It Back. This is a frequency fix, not a power nerf to the ultimate itself.
- Phoenix Ultimate cost: 6 ⇒ 7
One extra orb doesn't sound like much, but in scrims and ranked alike it pushes back the point in the round where Phoenix can afford to throw his body into a high-risk peek without worrying about losing his safety net for good.
Retake grows: Split, Corrode, and Lotus join the mode
Retake, the warm-up mode introduced in Patch 13.00, just got a meaningfully bigger site pool.
- Maps added to Retake: Split, Corrode, Lotus
- Total sites now available in Retake: 18
Since Split, Corrode, and Lotus are all in the current Act's competitive map rotation, warming up directly on their bomb sites — instead of a generic pool — is one of the fastest ways to get your positioning and utility timing dialed in before a ranked match or a scrim.
AROS: Replication delayed indefinitely
First teased back in May 2026, AROS: Replication (All Random One Site: Replication) — which combines All Random One Site's single-bomb-site format with Replication's duplicate-Agent chaos — is not shipping with this update. Riot confirms it's still targeting a future release but isn't committing to a date.
A big cleanup pass on Agent bugs
More than ten Agents get fixes across PC and console. The most notable:
- Omen: fixed a missing obstructed-placement indicator on Shrouded Step
- KAY/O: fixed NULL/cmd's missing death audio/visual effects and an incorrect death animation after revive
- Cypher: fixed incorrect Cyber Cage visual effects and a rare disconnect while casting Neural Theft
- Gekko: fixed incorrect Wingman plant voiceover and a rare death bug during plant/defuse under low framerate
- Reyna: Dismiss's icon no longer stays grayed out after a kill
- Chamber: Rendezvous no longer fails to teleport him back to his anchor
- Waylay: Lightspeed and Refract can no longer clip her into Icebox's B Tube walls
- Jett: fixed an unintended delay between Cloudburst and Tailwind/Updraft
- Raze: Boom Bot no longer briefly clips through geometry while locking onto airborne targets
- Deadlock: Annihilation no longer incorrectly captures an Omen using From the Shadows (the bug dealt up to 900,100 damage)
- Vyse: Razorvine can no longer become indestructible if deployed the instant she's suppressed
- Summit: utility can no longer get crushed by a door that's already closed
Console-specific fixes
13.02 also patches three PS5/Xbox-specific issues:
- Chamber: restored missing haptic feedback on Tour de Force
- Yoru: Fakeout finally gets aim assist support
- Waylay: fixed an exploit granting extra dash speed/distance from Lightspeed plus a quick Spike/Flex swap
Key dates and context
Patch 13.02 rolled out on July 28, 2026 (staggered: Tuesday for NA/LATAM/Brazil servers, Wednesday for Europe). It lands inside Act 4, which started with Patch 13.00, and comes ahead of 13.03 expected later in August. The Neo Frontier skin bundle (Vandal, Shorty, Lasso Melee) was revealed on July 27, just one day before this patch.
A bigger Retake pool and a pricier ultimate are small changes on paper, but the meta shifts with every patch — and keeping up with it in real time is often the difference between stalling out and actually climbing. If you'd rather skip the hours of patch-note archaeology, the coaches at ElevateBoost offer Valorant boosting and 1-on-1 coaching to speed that climb up.
