Valorant’s recent patch came with a whole host of bug fixes and quality of life improvements, but the biggest news out of the recent patch is the addition of a ranked mode to Riot Games’ new first-person shooter. There are only a few requirements before players can be assigned a rank, and most who have been playing the open beta should already meet the criteria to start their placement games.
Before players can even queue for Valorant’s ranked mode, they’ll have to complete 20 unranked games. At around 25 to 30 minutes on average, it’s not a huge ask. 20 games is more than enough to understand two heroes, the absolute minumum that players should have a handle on before jumping into Valorant’s ranked mode.
Players can check how many matches they have left to complete by clicking on the “Career” tab at the top of Valorant’s main menu. Underneath “Unranked,” the UI will show how many games the player has left to complete.
Valorant has eight total ranks, each one broken down into three groups for a grand total of 24 different spots a player can place into. Similiar to League of Legends, the ranks start at Iron and progress through Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond before breaking off into two new ranks: Immortal and the top “Valorant” rank. Riot gave some hints regarding the stats that Valorant is using to place players after their competitive placements. According to the Valorant blog, winning is the most important factor in both where a user places after their placements and how quickly they rank up afterward.
In other words, win games and rank up.
Riot has also said that personal performance does play a role, as well as the margin of victory or loss in each match. That means that if a player and their team defeat their opponents by a greater number of rounds, the more their competive rank will change. Lose by a large number of rounds or play a terrible game, however, and the same holds true for ranking down.
Valorant will also take into account personal performance more strongly in the beginning when attempting to determine a players initial rank. For those skilled enough to place or rank into Valorant, Riot has said that personal performances will play no role at all. This is to make sure to avoid the problem that plagues all high-tier competitive games, people playing for themselves and not for their team. Only wins will move a player up and down if they reach Valorant’s highest rank.
Valorant will also feature rank decay and will hide a user’s rank after 14-days of inactivity. Valorant’s ranked mode is live right now in the game’s closed beta.
