Massive Tejo nerfs are coming in VALORANT Patch 10.09

Riot Games has finally addressed community feedback and is set to nerf Tejo in the upcoming VALORANT Patch 10.09, with nearly every ability being affected.

“Since Tejo’s release, we’ve watched players master the use of his rockets, and over time we’ve seen enemies feel that their options of counter plays are limited and that misplaying often leads to checkmate scenarios,” Riot stated.

“His ability to use rockets on cooldown throughout the round from safe distances has felt unhealthy, so we’d like to bring Tejo a little closer to our other initiators that require more vulnerable positioning when using abilities and make decision making around his rockets more intentional and meaningful.”

Most notabily, Tejo’s Guided Salvo will now fire only one missile per charge, but to balance this, the total number of charges has been increased to two. The first charge remains free, while the second will cost 150 credits.

Apart from this, the ability’s map range has been reduced from 55 meters to 45, and  its cooldown has also been removed

Tejo’s Stealth Drone has also seen an increase in price from 300 to 400 credits. On the other hand, Special Delivery has had its cost reduced from 300 to 200 credits.

Finally, his ultimate, Armageddon, will now require nine ultimate points instead of eight to be activated.

“Our goal is to ensure that the game still feels like a tactical shooter first, so when certain synergies and ability overlaps move us away from that goal, it is important for us to correct them,” Riot added.

The scheduled changes to Tejo have mostly received a positive response from the community, as his abilities will now need to be used more cautiously.

“Chef kiss, I really like these changes. Have to actually think about how you use the rockets instead of just blindly dumping them for whatever you want to do, also fixes a lot of run away post plant as you have to think about using the rockets for post plant or to take the site, not both.

“Should feel a lot more rewarding to bait out his rockets as well. GG Riot these are some fire changes,” said Tyson “TenZ” Ngo, long-time VALORANT pro.

However, not everyone is on board with the nerfs, as some believe Riot may have gone too far.

“This is so overkill. Yes, he needed nerfs but he just got the chamber treatment. There will be little to no reason to pick him in ranked or pro play,” a fan wrote on X (Twitter).

We believe Tejo’s meta is over—period. While the nerfs were necessary, we agree with the community that the nerfs are extremely brutal. As a result, we can expect an increase in pick rates for initiators like Sova and KAY/O in both VCT and ranked play instead, along with Killjoy as a sentinel.

“Only 1 map he’s still viable on after this change in my opinion and that map(fracture) is going too. Farewell Tejo,” Fnatic’s IGL Jake “Boaster” Howlett tweeted.

VALORANT Patch 10.09 is expected to go live in VCT at VALORANT Masters Toronto; however, we’ve reached out to Riot for confirmation and will update the story once we receive a response.