V26 Act 6 kicks off with Patch 13.08, and it’s a meatier one than the patch number suggests. Vanguard keeps swinging the ban hammer, the brand-new Map Rating system lets you see which maps you’re actually good on, Performance Score got dialed in, Corrode received its first big map update, and the competitive map pool has been shuffled again. Here’s the full rundown.
TL;DR
- Map Rating is live for Competitive and Premier – a 0 to 500 score with a C to S grade per map.
- Performance Score adjustments (already shipped during 13.06) reduce weird edge cases.
- Corrode map update: faster Defender rotations, reworked Mid, tweaked A Site plant zone.
- BIND and CORRODE are in, ASCENT and SPLIT are out.
- New Queue and Mode Select interface, plus a navigation bar in Career.
- Bug fixes for Fog of War audio, Warden scope and the Masterful accolade.
Act 5 ban numbers: Vanguard goes brr
Riot wants to be more transparent about what happens to problematic players, so it’s going to start sharing penalty numbers more often. The figures below cover accounts that were fully banned from playing VALORANT for 3 days or longer during Act 5’s detection period (August 18 to October 1):
- 171,000+ cheaters
- 54,000+ botters
- 76,000+ for rank manipulation (boosters, boostees, hitchhikers, wintraders and others)
- 74,000+ for toxicity or comms abuse
- 288,000+ for repeated AFK or gameplay abuse
- 14,000+ for using streamsniping and/or instalocking tools
Riot admits there’s still plenty of work left and promises more updates. The important part for you: in-game reports genuinely feed into better tooling and detection, so keep reporting. If you’re curious how the comms side of enforcement works, we covered Riot Voice Evaluation in a separate article.
Map Rating: find out which map is really your best
This is the headline feature. Map Rating evaluates how your proficiency on a given map changes over time, expressed as a 0 to 500 rating plus a letter grade from C to S.
- Your rating is built from four primary stats: Overall Win Rate, Attacker Win Rate, Defender Win Rate and Performance Score.
- Recent matches count for more than older ones, and improving any of those four stats can push your rating up.
- You can check your rating, stats and extras like your Top Agents in Agent Select, End of Game and Career.
- Other players can’t see anything about your Map Rating – it’s for your eyes only.
- It’s available in Competitive and Premier.
- Everyone starts fresh at launch; historical match data doesn’t count toward your rating.
In practice this is a nice nudge to stop blind-banning the map you secretly win on. If you’re still learning the layouts and callouts, our overview of Valorant maps is a solid place to start, and the system also pairs well with knowing how Valorant ranks actually work.
Performance Score updates
Riot says Performance Score has been doing a good job of valuing the contributions of different agents and roles while still rewarding fragging. At launch, Performance Score and ACS agreed on Match MVP roughly 70% of the time, which was in line with expectations given the extra factors Performance Score measures. Still, some edge cases felt like an overswing, so adjustments went live back in 13.06:
- Increased the score impact of Damage, Adjusted Kills and Adjusted Deaths – those adjusted metrics include First Bloods and First Deaths.
- Chamber-specific adjustments that better reflect how he uses his utility.
Translation: raw impact plays and opening duels carry a bit more weight again, so the MVP screen should feel less surprising. If you’re not sure which role you’re actually being measured on, check our breakdown of agents and roles.
Client and agent changes
- New Queue and Mode Select interface for both matchmade and custom game types.
- Career now has a navigation bar, making it easier to jump to feature pages like Rank Legacy, Accolades and Map Rating.
- Killjoy’s Alarmbot projectile destruction VFX and audio feedback now trigger when the projectile is destroyed by moving doorways.
Corrode map update
Happy belated birthday, Corrode. After more than a year of watching games and gathering data, Riot identified a few spots worth improving.
A Site and B Site – Defender paths
Rotations were simply taking too long. Rotation times vary from map to map, but Corrode’s made it especially hard for defenders to get back for a retake. Defender spawn pathing toward site has been adjusted so defenders can rotate safely and a bit faster.
- Adjusted Defender paths into the back of A Site and B Site to shorten rotations and help with retakes.
Mid
Mid has felt like a brawl, and Riot wants fights there to be more predictable for both sides. Attackers used to funnel through a single choke into Lower Mid, where defenders could stall them by spamming the half wall. The wall and nearby cover have been reworked to give attackers more room and better routes toward A Link.
- The Mid half wall is now metal and has been moved out 1 meter, reducing wall spam and letting attackers sneak into A Link without being spotted from Top Mid.
- The boxes at the back of Lower Mid were moved toward B, with a jump-up added.
- The wall in Lower Mid was raised so players can’t peek over it from the relocated boxes.
A Site – Plant Zone
- The A Site plant zone was adjusted to make post-plant from A Link less effective.
Map pool updates
- IN for Competitive and Deathmatch: BIND and CORRODE
- OUT of Competitive and Deathmatch: ASCENT and SPLIT
Bug fixes
Competitive
- Fixed an incorrect threshold shown for the Masterful accolade.
Gameplay Systems
- Fixed alternate footstep sounds sometimes not playing while a character was in Fog of War.
- Fixed bodyfall audio events failing to play at the proper location when agents died in Fog of War.
- Fixed gun bounce audio events sometimes not triggering as expected.
Weapons
- Fixed Warden scope reticle misalignment during full auto fire.
Known issues
- Competitive: a visual bug where Team MVP doesn’t show correctly in Match History. A fix is in the works.
- Range in Queue: an issue was putting some players into a bugged queue state while using the Practice Range, so the feature was disabled. A fix is being tested and should ship ASAP.
Where to go next
If you want the context for this patch cycle, we wrote up Patch 13.06 too, and more coverage is collected in our Valorant news hub.
FAQ
It’s a new system that tracks how your proficiency on a given map changes over time. You get a rating from 0 to 500 and a letter grade from C to S, calculated from Overall Win Rate, Attacker Win Rate, Defender Win Rate and Performance Score. Recent matches count more than older ones.
No. Other players can’t see any information about your Map Rating. You’ll find it in Agent Select, End of Game and Career.
No. Everyone starts fresh with the Map Rating launch, and historical match data will not count.
BIND and CORRODE are in the Competitive and Deathmatch queues, while ASCENT and SPLIT are out.
Riot disabled it because an issue was putting some players into a bugged queue state while using the Practice Range. A fix is being tested and should arrive as soon as possible.