Valorant
Valorant
How to quickly rank up in Valorant during the holidays
Fariha Bhatti
December is the best time to grind Valorant ranked if you’re a busy gamer. Here are some tips to help you rank up quickly during the holidays. The ranking system in Valorant is no joke. Escaping Silver and Gold ranks becomes a menace if you’re queuing solo due to smurfs and trolls. The role feature in Riot’s shooter makes it even more challenging to break through low ranks and enter …
Valorant
Use this new Yoru teleport bug to trick enemies into rotating
Fariha Bhatti
While most players have just been ignoring Yoru, dedicated players have found a valuable trick to make the agent more viable. This new Yoru teleport trick is subtle and powerful. Valorant’s least-played agent, Yoru, is better than most think. This new Yoru teleport trick shows what he’s capable of in the right hands. It’s a weird bug that works in a unique way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFG0bBSnGS4 Yoru never quite managed to live …
Valorant
The complete guide to playing Cypher in Valorant
Fariha Bhatti
Cypher may have a complex kit, but he is no less deadly than a duelist in the hands of those who understand how to play Valorant’s sneaky Spy Cypher. The spy-like agent has a complicated toolkit that remains a must-have in the current Valorant meta. The sentinel is capable of locking down an entire map, making him an overpowered detective. Cypher’s strength isn’t about firepower, so he becomes useless …
Valorant
Is Omen’s teleport ability broken? TP glitches plague agent
Fariha Bhatti
Omen may not be Valorant’s top controller anymore, but many still run him in high-stake games. However, dedicated players complain that Riot has broken Omen’s teleport. Valorant has a few impactful controllers in the current patch, but Omen ruled the category a few months ago with paranoia and large purple shrouds. However, multiple tweaks minimized the viability of his kit. Omen mains are complaining that the developer has “broken” the …
These are best Valorant aim training methods in KovaaK’s
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
Have you mastered your primary Valorant agents’ abilities but still can’t seem to climb ranks? Try these Valorant training methods in KovaaK’s to hone up your skills in aiming and shooting, which are huge parts of what it takes to excel in Valorant. Unlike your traditional first-person shooter games, Valorant has many layers that make learning complex and challenging. Riot’s tactical shooter added an exciting twist of ability-packing characters to …
What’s the AFK rating in Valorant? Riot is now tracking leavers
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
Valorant AFK players and leavers, beware! Riot Games is been using trackers to single out “serial leavers.” Like every other online first-person shooting game, Valorant has a good chunk of trolls who like to grieve by going away from the keyboard in the middle of high-stake games. It turns out that Riot Games has been using special tools and features to track and record this behavior, which has significantly reduced …
This Viper setup on Breeze guarantees easy rounds on defense
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
Valorant’s largest map Breeze isn’t easy to tackle, but it’s a cakewalk for the poisonous controller Viper. The addition of Breeze to the Valorant map pool had sent players into a frenzy, with most used to playing in enclosed locations with choke points. But Viper mains breezed through the new experience with extended walls and damaging smokes. The poison handler Viper’s setups and lineups are tricky to break through, making …
KovaaK goes free, gives away 3080 GPUs for Latency Challenge
William Davis
Counter-Strike
A free week for KovaaK is the perfect time to try out the best aim trainer. First-person shooter training tool KovaaK 2.0 has officially left its beta period. To celebrate, the developer New Meta has teamed up with NVIDIA for a special contest. The prizes include esports-ready monitors, mice, and RTX 3080 Ti graphics cards. KovaaK will also become free to download and play for a full week to celebrate …
Valorant matches taking too long to find, Riot fixes queue time
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
Valorant queue time has been unbelievably long for many players. Riot Games has finally found a way to cut the wait time by half after players’ demand. Players have long been complaining about the sudden hike in Valorant smurfs, prompting Riot to take intense action. The developer found a middle ground, which came with a downside of prolonged wait time in Valorant rank queues. However, Riot Games has now rectified …
How to get free holiday gun buddy in Valorant
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
Christmas is just around the corner, and Riot Games isn’t holding back from showering its players with winter-themed goodies. A boxed holiday gun buddy is next on the list of Riot’s 2021 gifts. It’s been a whole year since Valorant was first made available to play for everyone. To commemorate the end of the year, the developer is thanking the dedicated player base with a gift pack gun-buddy in Valorant …
Snowball fight returns to Valorant for Christmas
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
Snowball fight is coming back to Valorant by popular demand of the players in a winter-themed limited mode. Last year, Riot Games introduced limited game modes in the forms of Replication, Escalation, and Snowball fight. All three game modes were well-received by casual Valorant fans as the developer started a permanent rotation for each map. Riot Games is bringing the snow back into the arid Valorant maps for December. https://twitter.com/PlayVALORANT/status/1470458304614715396 …
xQc accidentally buys Valorant karambit after saying it’s bad
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
Valorant’s Champions 2021 bundle may have convinced dedicated players to spend big bucks, but Félix “xQc” Lengyel doesn’t agree. Though it didn’t stop him from accidentally buying a particularly expensive item. Valorant Champions Tour has wrapped up in Berlin with Acend as the ultimate Champions of 2021. To commemorate the event, Riot Games introduced a sleek-looking royal bundle in Champions 2021, which can be a bit too pricey for the …
Valorant Run It Back bundle leaked, includes premium skins
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
Prepare your wallets because Valorant leakers have unveiled yet another skin bundle after the Snowball collection. Valorant data miners have leaked another skin bundle after the Snowball collection, but this one has plenty of eye-catching skins. Riot Games continued its tradition of celebrating Christmas with an ice-cold Snowball bundle, which was quite a letdown for the excited players. However, a brand new collection has been leaked, and it features premium …
Understanding differences between aim training maps in KovaaK 2.0
Fariha Bhatti
Counter-Strike
Shooting bots isn’t enough to sharpen up your aim. But, if you’re still whiffing shots after spending hours in KovaaK, you may want to understand your aim training routine and revise your warmup maps. Whether you play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or Valorant, these FPS games require razor-sharp aim, reaction time, awareness, and more. These skills can be honed up in practice ranges like KovaaK 2.0. However, a thorough understanding of …
Jett is the most OP agent in Valorant, VCT Champions stats prove
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant
New stats from Valorant Champions 2021 prove that the wind ranger Jett is a top pick of both casual and competitive Valorant players alike. Valorant’s biggest circuit has finally come to an end at Verti Music Hall in Berlin. The intensely competitive event touched the soul of esports enthusiasts, but it also left a meaningful impact on the game meta. Tons of players watching the last stage of VCT 2021 …
Acend topples Gambit to win VCT Champions 2021
William Davis
Valorant
Acend has taken the first-ever Valorant Champions Tour with a 3-2 victory over Gambit in the grand finals. https://twitter.com/AcendClub/status/1470152038512308224 The European roster took the inaugural VCT final with a back-and-forth series against the favorite. Acend’s playoff run included solid victories over Team Secret and Team Liquid before the razor-close final series. The match featured multiple comebacks and insane clutches from both sides. Mehmet Yağız “cNed” İpek distinguished himself as the …
Riot Games has long looked to expand its footprint beyond the success of popular MOBA League of Legends, and one of its biggest successes to date in this regard is the tactical shooter, Valorant. Blending traditional first-person shooter elements with unique and flashy hero abilities, Valorant seeks to combine the best attributes of tactical shooters and hero shooters into one cohesive experience.
Based on player feedback, the game has largely succeeded in accomplishing those aims. It’s not an easy balance, and it’s one that is arguably still tenuous, but Riot Games seems to be doing as good a job of it as most fans have hoped for.
What type of game is Valorant?
Valorant is a first-person shooter that represents a unique blend of the tactical shooter and hero shooter subgenres. There are some games that represent similar gameplay elements, but not many that offer the exact experience that Valorant puts forward to players.
The tactical shooter genre is often considered to have been defined by the release of the original Counter-Strike, a multiplayer mod for famed single-player PC title Half-Life that later became a standalone game of its own. While most multiplayer FPS games to that point emphasized prolonged battles between opposing players zipping around the game at high speeds, Counter-Strike slowed things down significantly and made players much more susceptible to each other’s firepower, requiring players to take a more tactical approach to play.
That slower and more tactical approach, combined with the lightning-quick nature of action when it does occur, proved reliably popular. That popularity can still be seen today with the ongoing success enjoyed by the Counter-Strike franchise, and it’s this gameplay type that represents the core of Valorant. It’s no accident that former Counter-Strike developers were drafted by Riot Games to help create Valorant during the game’s formative stages.
What differentiates Valorant from CS and other tactical shooters it that each of the game’s characters, called agents, wield a number of unique abilities. Some are typical for tactical shooters, like flashbangs and smokes, while others are wildly different, such as an ability that transports two players to an isolated dueling arena for its duration.
These agent abilities are more reminiscent of hero shooters, a subgenre that arguably got its start with the Team Fortress games but has best been popularized by Blizzard title Overwatch. The abilities, combind with the tactical considerations that are at the core of Valorant, separate it from most any other FPS experience available for play.
How does Valorant esports work?
Like many other popular competitive shooters, Valorant does have a thriving esports scene. That scene is differentiated by the way it’s run and controlled by developer and publisher Riot Games. Riot uses a model based on the success of its League of Legends esports scene, which sees the globe’s competitive players and team’s separated by region. These regions play out their own competitions in their sections of the world before coming together at regular intervals for international tournaments featuring the best teams from each individual region.
While League of Legends once boasted a variety of regions and regional types, Riot sought to simplify that model when setting up esports for Valorant. The game has only a handful of major regions, and these regions are held as largely equitable, each sending their best teams to international events leading up to the year-end VALORANT Champions event.
Valorant
Valorant
Valorant
Valorant
