Since its closed beta launch in April 2020, Valorant has brought a new fire to the first-person shooter genre. Now fully fledged, Riot Games’ tactical shooter is one of the best free PC games on the market with a highly competitive ranked mode to boot. It also now has a massive global esports scene thanks to the Valorant Champions Tour.
Like many multiplayer games out there, Valorant has a casual mode, but its competitive ranked mode is the one that you’ll really be sinking a lot of time into. If you’ve mastered Raze or want to show off your Reyna skills against some like-minded individuals, then ranked is the place to start.
With a tiered ranking system that rewards proper team play above all else, Valorant’s ranked mode will bring out the best in you and your teammates. So, without further ado, here’s everything we know about the Valorant ranks, like how ranked works, and how you can climb all the way to Radiant.
what are the valorant ranks?
There are eight tiers to Valorant’s ranking system, starting with Iron and ending with Radiant. All tiers except Radiant and Immortal have three sub-ranks within them, with rank one the lowest and rank three the highest. Therefore, if you exclude Unranked, there are 20 ranks in Riot Games’ tactical shooter.
The top 500 players in each region will achieve Radiant rank, and approximately the top 1% per region will achieve Immortal rank.
If you played the beta, you’ll probably have noticed that the top rank in Valorant has been renamed. Now those at the top of their game will be able to call themselves Radiant, rather than Valorant. Riot says it opted to rename the rank to “help reduce potential confusion” and keep things fresh.
how does the valorant MMR ranking system work?
Valorant’s ranking system works like most competitive games out there. You’ll need to win ten unrated matches before you even get the chance to play ranked. Once the mode is available, you can then play Valorant ranked – but you’ll need to play five matches before you get your first rank.
Valorant also uses a matchmaking rating system, known as MMR, to rate players in ranked. Every player will have a number associated with their account that adjusts over time – putting them in and out of ranks as they get better.
Valorant Episode 3 introduced sweeping improvements and changes to matchmaking in ranked, such as better matchmaking accuracy, and adjustments to players’ Ranked Rating curves to make climbing and falling down the ranks “less volatile”.
The ranking system in Valorant is largely based around whether you win or lose a match, with your individual performance also playing a slightly smaller roll.
That changes when you hit the higher ranks though. At Immortal and Radiant ranks, Riot will only take into account how you win and lose your matches, with individual performance being the main factor in the matchmaking process. The developer says this is because it “trusts you and your teammates have earned your way there.”
Your rank will also be hidden if you’re inactive for 14 days. This will return once you’ve played your first match back. Your rank will not decay if you go away longer than two weeks either.
At the start of a new Act, it’ll only take you five games to get a rank, but be aware: your MMR from the previous rank will be taken into account, so expect a “conservative placement” at first where you can work your way back up the ranks. In other words, expect to be placed a few tiers below where you were in the previous act.
What are Valorant acts?
Acts are basically seasons in Valorant. Every Valorant Act will span about two months, and during that time, you’ll be able to work on your rank and track your overall progression. There are three Acts in every Episode, meaning Episodes last around six months.
We’re currently in Episode 3, Act 1. Episode 3, Act 2 is set to kick off in late August.
What are Valorant Act ranks?
Valorant now has Act Ranks, which is a way of showing off your proven skill during and at the end of a season. This is currently determined by taking the results of your best nine games during an Act.
However, in after patch 2.03 your “highest triangle rank in your Act Rank Badge” became your Act Rank title.
If you’re not sure how the Act Rank Badge triangles work, here’s a rough outline. Every time you play a match in an Act, your Rank Act badge will be filled with a new triangle representing the rank you played in. As you progress up the ranks, new triangles representing higher-ranked matches will replace the lower-ranked matches. The border for the badge will also change based on the number of wins you achieve in that rank. For some, their badge at the end of an act will look pretty colourful, but for those at the top dominating Radiant, expect to see a solid gold triangle.
In Episode 1 you were only awarded triangles for winning matches, but from Episode 2 onward you are awarded a triangle based on the rank you end a match with, regardless of the outcome.
You can view your Act Rank badge at any time in the career page.
How do I track rank progression in Valorant?
Your rank progress can be tracked in Match History, but Episode 2 brings a leaderboard and progress bars to make things easier. Instead of Episode 1’s arrows, Valorant Rank Rating is now shown on a progress bar which shows your proximity to the next rank.
You can earn Valorant RR by playing matches, the majority of which comes from winning or losing. You will always gain Rank Rating in a win, and always lose Rank Rating in a loss. However, at lower ranks your individual performance can help you progress quicker.
You will gain between 10-50 Rank Rating for a win, and a max of 20 for a draw. Between Iron and Diamond ranks, individual performance will be taken into account when calculating your Rank Rating.
You will always start at 10 Rank Rating after being promoted to a new rank, and a minimum of 80 after a demotion. You can find each Episode’s rank rewards on the rank info page.
Why does valorant ranked allow premades?
Currently, Valorant allows parties of up to five people in ranked mode as long as each player is within one rank (three tiers) of each other. Ian ‘Brighteyz’ Fielding, Valorant’s product manager, says this is because Valorant is a team game and Riot believes “playing as a team is a major component in your overall mastery of the game.” However, from Diamond 3 onwards, you can only solo or duo queue and are unable to go into games as a big party.
While in the lower ranks, don’t worry if you’re riding solo and find yourself against a five-stack – your rank will increase faster or decrease slower depending on your performance against that team. Matches are generally being optimized so that players, regardless of their premade size, are being put into fair and balanced matches. For solo Immortal and Radiant players, some improvements have been made on this front, but Riot doesn’t have all the answers to fixing that problem just yet because it’s a smaller pool of players.
It’s also easier to play with teammates in placement matches now even if there’s a fairly large skill gap. Elite players still won’t be able to queue with newbies to protect the competitive integrity of the game, but it should be easier to help your friends along in the early days of their ranked experience.
What’s next for Valorant ranked?
Episode 3 has just introduced some big changes to matchmaking, so for the foreseeable future expect there to be lots of observation from Riot on how these changes affect the ranked experience.
With such a big update for the new Episode, it could be a while before we see another overhaul of this size. There will, of course, be regular tweaks being made throughout each Act.
That’s all we have on Valorant’s ranked mode so far. If you’re not sure what agent to play as you can check out our Valorant tier list now. If you’re a console player looking for details on a Valorant console release date, then we’ve got a guide for that too.
Source: https://www.theloadout.com/valorant/ranked-rated-ranks-mmr
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