VALORANT Patch 13.08 (October 2026): Corrode changes, Map Rating, new map pool

Patch 13.08 went live on 13 October 2026 and opens V26 Act 6. For anyone running events, the headline is the map pool: Bind and Corrode are in the Competitive and Deathmatch queues, Ascent and Split are out of both. Corrode also got a proper layout pass, so read that section before you lock a veto order for your next bracket.

Riot's notes cover the matchmaking queues only. They say nothing about which maps pro leagues or third-party organizers must use, so your pool stays your call. Treat the queue change as a hint about what your players have been practising, not as a rule.

The map pool change

The note itself is blunt: Bind and Corrode in, Ascent and Split out of Competitive and Deathmatch. Anyone who has queued ranked this week has already felt it.

Players build habits in the queue, and a team that grinds ranked for a month arrives knowing the queue pool best. If your lobby still offers Ascent or Split, expect some rust on those maps, especially in open brackets where nobody has a coach drilling old setups. That is no reason to change your pool. It is a reason to publish it early so captains can plan practice.

My suggestions for community organizers, which are mine and not Riot's:

• Announce the veto format and map list at least a week out, not on match day.
• If Ascent or Split stay in your pool, say so in the rules. Players who assume "it's the current ranked pool" will argue otherwise.
• For one-off weekend cups, five or six maps keeps the veto short and avoids obscure picks nobody has practised.

Corrode: what actually changed

Riot opens the section with "happy belated birthday, Corrode", then says that after more than a year of watching games and gathering data it wanted to fix a few things. The changes target defender rotations and mid.

Defender paths. Riot says rotations on Corrode were especially slow, which made it hard for defenders to get back for a retake. Defender spawn pathing toward the sites was adjusted, and the paths into the back of A Site and B Site were changed to shorten rotations. No timings are given, so I will not invent seconds. My read is that retakes get a little easier and the map leans back toward defenders when a team commits to a hit.

Mid. Riot calls mid "a bit of a brawl" and wants fights there to be more predictable. Attackers had been funnelling through a single choke into Lower Mid, where defenders could slow them by spamming the half wall. The Mid half wall is now metal and sits one metre further out, which cuts wall spam and lets attackers slip into A Link without being seen from Top Mid. The boxes at the back of Lower Mid moved toward B and gained a jump-up, and the wall in Lower Mid was raised so nobody can peek over it from the relocated boxes.

A Site plant zone. Riot adjusted it to make post-plant from A Link less effective. If your team's default was holding the plant from A Link, that default just got weaker.

If you coach or captain, rewatch your own Corrode demos with the new geometry in mind. Default mid setups, A Link lurks and post-plant spots are the likeliest to be stale. Riot included before-and-after images in the notes, and they repay a block of practice time.

Map Rating and Performance Score

Map Rating is new in Competitive and Premier. It tracks how your proficiency on a given map changes over time, on a 0 to 500 scale with a letter grade from C to S. It is built from overall win rate, attacker win rate, defender win rate and Performance Score, and recent matches count for more than older ones. Everyone starts fresh at launch, so historical games do not count. Other players cannot see your Map Rating.

You can see your own rating and stats in Agent Select, End of Game and Career. For a captain it is a decent way to spot which map a teammate is quietly dragging down. I would not pick a roster from it without watching demos.

Riot also changed Performance Score, with adjustments that went live in 13.06. They raised the score impact of Damage, Adjusted Kills and Adjusted Deaths (the adjusted metrics include first bloods and first deaths) and made Chamber-specific adjustments. The reason Riot gives: at launch, Performance Score and ACS agreed on Match MVP about 70 percent of the time, in line with expectations, but some edge cases suggested the extra factors were weighted too heavily. If you use Performance Score to name MVPs in your own events, test it against your agent mix first.

Smaller changes

• Killjoy. Alarmbot's projectile destruction VFX and audio feedback now trigger when moving doorways destroy the projectile.
• Queue and mode select. There is a new interface for matchmade and custom game types. If you create custom lobbies for scrims or events, the menu will look different the next time you set one up, so find your usual options before players join.
• Career. A navigation bar now links to Rank Legacy, Accolades and Map Rating.
• Audio. Alternate footstep sounds, bodyfall audio and gun bounce audio that sometimes failed in Fog of War were fixed. Sound information matters in tournament play, so this is good news.
• Weapons. A Warden scope reticle misalignment during full auto fire was fixed.

Known issues

Riot lists two. Team MVP does not display correctly in Match History, so do not rely on it for screenshots or disputes. And the Practice Range was disabled after it put some players into a bugged queue state. Riot says a fix is being tested and hopes to ship it ASAP, with no date. If your warm-up routine uses the Range, keep a custom lobby ready as the fallback.

Anti-cheat numbers

Riot says it wants to share penalty numbers more often. For the Act 5 detection period, 18 August to 1 October, it reports full bans of three days or longer for 171,000+ cheaters, 54,000+ botters, 76,000+ for rank manipulation, 74,000+ for toxicity or comms abuse, 288,000+ for repeated AFK or gameplay abuse, and 14,000+ for stream sniping or instalock tools.

The stream sniping figure matters if you broadcast matches live. Riot's totals say nothing about your bracket, so a stream delay and your own ghosting rules are still on you.

Before your next event

Publish your map pool and say whether Ascent and Split stay. Tell captains about the Corrode changes so the veto does not surprise anyone. Run a test custom lobby on the new mode select screen, and have a backup warm-up plan in case the Practice Range is still off.

Browse the open VALORANT tournaments to see which map pools organizers are choosing this act.

Source: Riot Games, VALORANT Patch Notes 13.08, https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-13-08/.