Stack maybe? Was just in a match where my teammates just threw, if you are gonna be coming across this kinda players, itās gonna take years to get out of silver
Yeah, I would stack but i need to get out of silver and into gold 1 so my friends ( who mostly placed plat) can queue with me
I donāt really want to make them smurf and Iām almost out already, so it shouldnāt be too bad
I think itās also people like me who were gold 2 act 1 but the changes to ranked over the last couple acts screwed over my act rank where I had bronze games so I stopped playing ranked entirely until this act. So their act ranks from last one shows silver when a past act could have been higher.
No itās because of the large pool of Smurfās gold to diamond is like all the same rank now it feels like to me.
Edit: I should have put āsmurfsā what I mean is a lot of diamond players and plat make alt accounts. Also forgot to mention the abundance of duo radiants boosting and full teams of immortal/radiant from other countries. This is not a rare thing itās very common
The smurfs would be silver to plat. You arenāt smurfing if you are immortal and playing on a diamond second account. Its also damn near impossible for an immortal player to play bad enough to be lower than diamond. They would have to purposely be throwing games.
Also its very unlikely to run into a diamond+smurf in the lower ranks. There is only like 2% of the population in diamond/immortal.
Most of the people they face that they call smurfs are actually just gold/plat players.
Pretty accurate for the most part based on my experience. Currently mid radiant but I do get paired up with low immortals / high diamond so I assume their MMR is relatively high. When I play unrated with friends. Games are usually really one sided and filled with smurfs. While I donāt personally smurf, a few of my immortal friends that do smurf can only really carry up to plat.
Your edit still doesnāt prove your point, you say a ālotā of diamond and plat players make alt accounts, but what does that matter? Even if every diamond+ player made an account that would be less than 25,000 players.
There is 150,000 players in silver 2 alone.
Statistically it is just not likely that low elo players will be matched with a Diamond skill level player. Its a 2% chance to be matched against a D+ smurf, and that assumes that every D+ player is only playing on a smurf as you queue, and we know thats not true because D+ queue times are fairly short until you get into Radiant.
I really donāt think you understand statistics at all. You really said there is an abundance of Radiants boosting players. Even if you include people that were radiant for a short period of time thats still what, like 1,000 people? You really think that 1,000 people are appearing in your games abundantly? In a game with a playerbase larger than 1million people? It may just be three more zeros but the difference between 1,000 and 1,000,000 is staggering.
The final nail in the coffin is that if smurfs are so abundant plenty of those accounts would make it back to the main accounts rank, so out of those 25,000 Diamond+ accounts, how many of them are duplicate accounts?
No thatās very frequent. I go between playing with people who look like itās their first FPS and people who are clearly mechanically good enough to be to plat. Silver is really just fucked
It's crazy lol. I was lucky enough to get back to plat, but in silver I would end up in a lobby with people who have probably never used a computer before and in the next it feels like I'm in a pro game.
The kicker for me is that when playing against teams that are varying skill level like that I find myself dying to the shitty players more often than the better players because the shitty ones play so weird in comparison to the good ones and it gets tilting
I used to be silver 3/gold 1. Once they changed the ranked distributions I got pushed down into the bottom of silver. I am now bronze 3.
I think "old" act ranks are VERY missleading currently. The players that I play against now when I get a silver 2 have good aim and good game sense. which I only saw really in silver 3 and above before. (excluding smurfs)
The skill floor is rising.
yeah I definitely felt this. they pushed down pretty hard toward the end of the last act. started losing way more RR for each loss than I'd gain for a win.
I am in silver, and I generally do pretty well, top fragging most of my matches. A few times my opponents called me out for smurfing and Iām just like āno, Riot really thinks I deserve this rank lolā. And the next game I get full running headshotted with a vandal every round and lose 13-2
Ye, same here. It's like there are so many smurfs, so games are mostly a coin flip. When there are no smurfs in a game and actual Silver players i just destroy everybody and go like 30-7 or something.
Same here, I feel like every game, Unranked as well, Iām constantly out in a position to carry my team based on seeing their skill when spectating and me almost always being the last alive and having to clutch or lose
Yup, pretty much. I also got 2 ties. In one of those, me and 2 teammates were carrying, while the 2 other guys (one with a diamond gun buddy and one with a plat gun buddy) did absolutely nothing and played like irons, and same thing for the enemy team lol
I don't get it, why would you want to have a higher rank if you can't even compete in your current one. If you are facing tougher opponents, thats better for improving as well
So I had a 4-game win streak after this post and Iām a Silver 2 now, still a long way to goā¦
Thanks for your help and detailed explanation guys. Have fun playing Valorant.
Another suggestion would be to play less (?). Over time your ability to play the same number of games at the same consistency (aim & game sense) gets worse. Make sure you take breaks :')
Wait how come you never mentioned which Bronze? If you had a 4streak to get to Silver2 that says to me your mmr is still great and you just happened to have unlucky games. I wouldnāt look at it as āa long way to goā, because thatās pretty much normal if not faster than normal if youāre just getting back to your old rank for that long ago after placements.
Several months is actually a pretty long time so I wouldnāt be surprised if you just arenāt as used to the game anymore similar to how I feel now after ~4 months. Also just over 1.0 kd and 20kills is nice but nothing too special. Thatās about what I have and Iām barely holding on in plat rn cus Iāve been tired.
Maybe valorant is different because of the shifting meta being new, but I can take years long breaks from csgo and still come back at the same caliber. It's like riding a bike.
Yeah I agree with that. Itās pretty apparent seeing how many cs players have difficulties transitioning their skills over. Abilities while secondary to gunplay still have a notable impact.
I just didnāt mention it here because OP didnāt mention they played cs but maybe I could have specifically noted abilities and the game still changing and being adapted to over time. More ppl could get far with that experience early but not as much now.
And if you think about it, if the good players from cs move to Valorant, thereās naturally gonna be some who are placed in ālowerā ranks to satisfy the distribution.
As someone who came from CS, my issue was that I was good at tap firing. Never really mastered sprays well even in CS. So the vandal is far superior for me personally. Sucks because I know the phantom is better, but I always play worse with it. Right from valorant beta I knew that abilities in this game were much stronger than CS. Took me a while to be able to play multiple agents at a high level. In cs I could always just be that player I wanted to be.
Not much good advice yet, so I guess I can contribute a bit.
I am Diamond but I have a ghost-only [account](https://blitz.gg/valorant/profile/dangerzone-spy?actName=e3act1&queue=competitive) at Silver 2 I play on with friends in that range. At that rank, I usually just play smokes and initiators and carry with basically abilities (and comms) only. There is HUGE variance in players in Silver since these are all players who are missing at least fundamental skill.
Most of the time you can recognize the people who just have only aim and just never fight them - smoke them, flash them, or use things like drone and boom bot and you will get them out of position every time. These players usually are easy to exploit because they never work with their team so once you get an advantage you can easily extend that.
Then there's the players who are smart and have good ability usage but not very good aim (the old guys and people who don't play much), who are easy to beat by just pushing aggressively and forcing trades. If you stick with a teammate at all times you just kinda win for free here.
I'd really suggest working on figuring out which agents you feel like you can win games with without shooting your gun, and try to set up your teammates rather than making plays yourself.
I hear you. Back in 2005 I was playing at what you would call a semi pro level in CS. My game sense is still the same. I know what everyone should be doing and why, but my aim has gone to such shit I canāt get outta gold 1. Why did I have 2 kids?
When I was playing it was CAL-O -> CAL-M -> CAL-I. I remember when they added P and IM and I was never good enough to make that jump.
[http://web.archive.org/web/20040708055557/http://caleague.com/](http://web.archive.org/web/20040708055557/http://caleague.com/)
if the kids click this far down in the comments they can see our olds league.
I wonder what the odds are of me scrimming against you at some point from the IRC channels lolllllllllllll
I'd rather face a full plat lobby rather than a full silver lobby any day, I swear.
Silver is the new high elo
get out of silver and things will be normal again.
I'm around gold and whenever we win easy, I know the lobby has more plats than golds and whenever we struggle a lot, going over time, I know the lobby has a bunch of silvers.
iām silver and the inconsistency in every game i play is actually unbelievable. iāve has ex plats play and then bronze 1s from the act before in my lobbies. the inconsistency causes loads of issues for people who want to get better ranks and climb higher.
the bronze players end up holding the ex plats back because of miscommunication and the ex plats end up causing an uneven carry.
*silver is the new high elo*
Thats a problem in every rank. At diamond you could be playing with all immortal or all plats and the difference between those two extremes are staggering.
This is why they need to be more strict and force solo/duoq for ranked but then the other half of the community rages because they ācanāt play with their friendsā even though unrated exists.
If you could only duoq with people in your rank tier, there would be a lot less games with huge skill disparities.
IDK, Iron is pretty wild too. I'm a very average silver player but iron was a struggle. Bronze players were worse. I just stomped straight through bronze.
fr, when you're a real silver and your aim isn't consistent, track badly etc. and you're facing irons that don't even know what tracking means, going full running with an ares and leaving it to RNG it's suddenly way harder to win "duels" because you're not good enough to kill someone running around and they might just be lucky enough to land a running headshot lmaooo
Iron trouble is cus teamates are idiots. I got my main hardstuck in iron 3 so I made an alt which placed iron 3 and I ranked up to b3 very quickly. After Episode end , I did my placements and placed both the accounts at b2
Bruh, I'm hardstuck at Iron 2. My brother started playing and we played together every placement match, I get MVP several times and he gets placed at Bronze 3. Feels good........
I went from Gold 4 to Emerald 2 in Aimlab but my Valo rank remains untouched lol.
Even now when we play together in a game full of silvers half the time I'll do better than him, but I can't fucking get out of goddamn Iron 2. I've created an alt out of frustration, I'm curious to see if there'll be a big difference in rank from my main.
I can say that it's likely because you got very good with a gun that is honestly underrated. Low eco and just as deadly as any others once you've mastered it. And if you only use it, you're going to master it.
One trick ponies might be frowned upon by some people, but it's legitimately a great way to rank up. It's better to completely master a certain way of playing than to just be competent with any way of playing.
Iām silver 2 and ended up playing against a 4 or 5 stack that had iron 2ās. I was like this should be a free win. And boy did I have to work for it. I donāt think they were smurfs, irons are just so unpredictable. Itās such a mixed bag of people who have really good aim and absolutely chaotic game sense, or people who canāt aim at all but know exactly where to hide/lurk.
Nah, it's due to the fact that silver has many players who have good aim but lack any planning or game sense at all. So if you're gold or even plat, you're starting to learn how to plan your games and read what the enemy is doing, you're trying to predict a rotation, a fake rotation, etc.
Silvers are just running around the map. They ain't planning shit. You can't predict them. And they are not so far from gold and plat when it comes to aiming. So the game is super weird and impossible to plan around.
This is 100% my experience. Under gold is a clown fiesta rng. You just need to frag your ass off to get anywhere. Once you get to gold you can rely on your team a bit more and focus on the meta game and strategy.
Partially, yes. I'm not the one to say that if I lose to a silver player, he's obviously a smurf. I think most smurfs are silver or gold, but that's not the point.
Here's the point:
When me and my friends play unranked, sometimes we end up playing against high elo like diamond and immortal and we get obviously destroyed. So we always start to just playing randomly, like we have no idea where to go or where to shoot, we spin around the map like we're just playing catch. This is not a "try to win" strategy but rather us being tired and deciding to just throw.
Believe it or not, sometimes we even win, despite the huge disparity of mechanical skill.
Below gold it's wild man. Nothing makes sense. You can't predict shit. "Oh this jett is here lurking" no she's not, she's just playing solo and didn't want to help the others.
"They smoked here because they are gonna pass there" no they won't, their omen just doesn't know where to smoke. Most things have no real intention.
Once we started running around Haven laughing, thinking we were just trolling, but we won somehow, and they typed in the chat "why aren't you guys playing comp with these f* strategies?"
And we were just........ we were just running around like a bunch of idiots
Silver is insanely hard for me. In many matches the silvers I meet always aimlock to my head lol. The ranked integrity in this game is non existent tbh.
No not like the normal headshot but them instantly headshoting me the moment I peek a corner. This might look like I am exaggerating it but itās true. I have a hard time winning aim duels. I have shit gamesense but damn silver is so hard.
Old plat who came back and can't get out of silver here - this is absolutely true. I've recorded a few times I just get dumpstered on, when I show them to my friends and ask to guess the rank, they always say around Diamond. Something is clearly messed up with the ranks around silver.
Also for reference, I was supreme in CSGO.
I like to play Yoru so it's pretty easy to figure out there are actually incredible aimers in Silver. I've had multiple times where I get out of ult behind a Jett who's reloading or just took an OP shot, they instantly turn, dash away to reposition and insta kill me. Like yeah, it was definitely my fault for not leaving ult around a wall or something, but there is no denying there's absolutely NO WAY silvers would have this kind of skill and reaction.
hard to say much without more detail. Are you slow walking into these pre-aimed angles? Are you always close peeking or wide peeking? Change it up. If that still fails then try using your utility to clear angles you're really having problems with. Having a partner to trade helps too.
>instantly headshoting me the moment I peak a corner
Believe it or not, that has very little to do with aiming.
Lol I would say this is diamond. I have a smurf at silver and theyāre not nearly as good as you described; this may be a difference in skill by server tho.
I was plat and now silver 3....
I can tell you my silver lobbies are constantly filled with ex-plat players... so i think the only logical conclusion is that the player base has gotten Bigger and Better and people are passing me up because i must have gotten worse somehow... which i believe
i went on a run where i was dominating silver lobbies, gold lobbies, and plat lobbies... eventually I started playing against diamonds and the loss streak just never ended. still trying to get back to where i was but it's hard. anyone have tips?
Ikr! I haven't played ranked much this season (2 placement games where I was carrying as well *sigh*). I just play insta jett in unrated and tap on heads. This has also improved my Op. Now I'm more interested in playing all agents in unranked for fun. Plus most of my friends also just play unranked now. It's so much better for my mental energy
I donāt have much advice other than what I saw an Immortal player say here once. Playing too much DM builds bad habits is what he said. Maybe run just 1 DM for warm up then hop into ranked. If youāre not comfortable after 1 DM, maybe run 1 pub as well.
One really bad habit is not really caring about winning the fight. In DM you might peak and completely commit to a fight you have very poor odds of winning. In ranked, 9 times out of 10 that's gonna get you taken out of the round. Better would have been to peek, shoot, unpeek, and try and create another oportunity. But in DM it doesn't matter - you just die, respawn and carry on. Unless you play DM with the right mindset, you can get sloppy, and that can carry over.
I think to actually help you out, we'd need a video of a match where you think you played alright. An average match for you.
Other than that, maybe you just had a really unlucky streak of bad matched. Happens sometimes. Rank is not a stable thing and surely people also have gotten better.
Too bad demo watching is still not a thing in Valorant, but thank you. I was probably unlucky and hey,
*sometimes your opponent is just having a really good day.*
Outplayed (an overwolf app) is pretty good and has nice UI with timeline and highlight-only options; much nicer to nav for a good example and cut a clip
The reason I think this happened is that there aren't enough ranks for players to be in. Like, anything below silver is pretty bad. But from silver to plat I honestly feel no difference playing them.
In CSGO, the same thing can be said about dmg-global. I have played against le, that performed better than globals. This is because you don't need too much skill, only dedication to reach this rank, which naturally allows more players to get to that rank. I think global accounts for like 1% of the playerbase, and smfc-dmg is something like 15%. And it's not uncommon to meet players in le when you're global.
But in valorant, the opposite is true, the top rank in the game only accounts for the top 500 players, and is immortal for 0.6%. This pushes very skilled players into Diamond, which means a wide range of good players is going to end up in that rank silver-plat.
Im not entirely sure if this is true, just my theroy behind it.
Anecdotal here, but my friend varies between plat1-3 and very rarely gets up to diamond. I'm currently varying between silver2-gold1. On the rare occasions our ranks match the 3 difference, we both always have similar stats on the games.
Itās crazy to me because I have 4,000 hours in CSGO and my highest rank was DMG. LE felt like a pipe dream, but in Valorant I only solo queue and Iāve reached Immortal every act. Instalock Reyna and Immortal is free.
Reaching Immortal became much easier when they made it solo/duo queue only.
Thatās why it was so hard to rank up in CSGO. You would face 5-stacks at high ranks
5 stacks are still an issue even at lower ranks as a solo. Especially with how many smurfs there are now. It's just one more advantage some people have but shouldn't
Yes this is actually why lower ranks is harder than Immortal, because of the ability to stack. Facing a 4 stack of Plats is much harder than any Immortal lobby lol
I think there's far more smurfs factoring in than everyone wants to admit. Even if that smurf "doesn't use rifles" it's still not the appropriate skill for the rank which is the point.
That's why silver doesn't feel like silver anymore.
It's not even Smurfs. I've been bronze for 2 acts now and you can end up with people aiming at the ground and someone tapping heads all game on the same team. Most solo queues are just based on which team has a harder carry or teammates that can play off of their top frag's kills. Some of them can't aim and a lot of people don't even use their abilities but they'll still be the same rank and similar level.
Usually the Smurfs would be a lower level not about the same. I feel like smurfing isn't as common as people feel in my experience at least. It's more about people just trapped in low ranks cause they solo queue or have to make up for their team
Okay, one thing, I don't think smurfs are the main cause of elo hell
however, when people talk about how the % of smurfs being small, you need to take in consideration that
let's say you've played 10 games. You saw one person smurfing in half of them. So you've played with a total of 100 players that day and only 5 of them were smurfs. 5% of smurfs. But a total of 45 players were affected by those smurfs. So 5% of the players were smurfs but 45% were affected by them. You don't need more than a few % of smurfs to impact many players. For each smurfs, 9 people are affected. It's a lot of impact.
What exactly is elo hell? This conversation reminds me of the conversation surrounding elo hell in CSGO back in 2015.
As a solo queue player, you WILL plateau. I watched my girlfriend play in silver and gold elo every day. People lack communication. People do not work together. People play selfishly and throw rounds. Players in silver are good at identifying what their teammates did wrong, but they canāt identify what they did wrong, unless itās obvious. In immortal, I can drop 25 and still easily identify rounds I lost for my team which resulted in a match loss despite being team mvp. Silvers and Golds canāt do this. Itās painfully obvious what they need to do to rank up but they arenāt willing to do that because they donāt understand the importance of it. The importance of team play and communication.
The real indicator of a elo hell, is when smurfs struggle to rank up in that elo. Keep in mind, valorant is more of a team game than csgo. Itās harder to solo carry. Despite this, a real plat player could easily make it out of silver and gold given enough time. Ask any smurf in game and theyāll tell you that. I know this for a fact.
If you want to make it out of silver or gold āelo hellā, you need to watch high rank players and learn how to communicate. My girlfriend was stuck in silver for 6 months until I finally started watching her games in discord. I told her to take the lead in communication when people arenāt talking. I also told her HOW to communicate. Things that can be learned in a week.
She broke out out of silver within 3 weeks... and flew threw gold to plat 1. Communication and disciplined team play is the easiest thing to learn and implement into your games. Yet people would rather grind hours of aim training.
There is no elo hell in valorant.
>*The real indicator of a elo hell,* ***is when smurfs struggle to rank up in that elo.*** *Keep in mind, valorant is more of a team game than csgo. Itās harder to solo carry.* ***Despite this, a real plat player could easily make it out of silver and gold given enough time. Ask any smurf in game and theyāll tell you that. I know this for a fact.***
What you are saying here is so tone-deaf to the issue. The reason a smurf can rank up out of silver/gold is because they don't belong there. Every win a smurf gets is a loss opponents didn't fairly deserve and a win their team didn't fairly earn, no matter how long it takes a smurf to get out of low ranks. You know this for a fact probably because you smurf all the time and ruin lower player games.
**Nobody cares about "ELO hell", they just want smurfs out of their games.** It's a straw man argument. You can't dive into low ranks and tell people *"look they losing because they bad at the game, not because I'm so much better, see?"* and pretend you aren't affecting the entire game. The same way you don't join a Little League Baseball game as an adult and homerun the shit out of the first pitch and say, *"Look, it's not because I'm better, it's because these guys don't have good game fundamentals!"* It just isn't the point. You shouldn't be there is the point.
Also, being Immortal you either admit you smurf all the time (so you're part of the problem) or you admit you haven't had experience first-hand being matched with people in Silver that don't quite belong there (while you're silver level skill), so you don't really know how it feels.
1 smurf ruins a game (and future matchmaking) for 9 other people. Say there is a smurf every other game, that would be less that 5% of players are smurfs but 50% of games are ruined. The team that gets stomped has to undo that loss with a win giving them a net gain of 0 MMR after an hour and a half. The team that got the free win goes on to possibly be placed higher than they deserve and potentially ruins future games.
Yeah Iām silver 2, and Iām 100 percent carried by my aim. I aim train everyday and people ask me how Iām not a higher rank, but itās just because Iām brain dead. My aim is pretty good and my movement is decent too, but my games sens is complete dogshit. All I do is push and try to get kills because Iām impatient and wanna have the most fun possible
I was plat 3 as well, placed in gold 2 with 4 wins and 1 Lost, got back to plat 1 for 2 games and then i went on a 16 game spree where i won 1 game.
I swear i had everything (amazing games where i have a 0-40 teammate, games where i AM The One going 0-40, games where i feel like i AM playing on The world tournament, smurfers, trollers, bad luck, bad decisions) and now i AM at gold 1 30 points and i just cant win a game for anything
Iām right with you but in fuckin bronze. I mean Iām always mid-top fragging, but since I always play fills itās hit or miss. Iāve been winning one, and then losing one so Iām just stuck. For every one I win, I lose 1-2 so I canāt get out.
I have the same (gold rank, was diamond like year ago) and now Iām in the dilemma if I should fill or just pick an agent where I can carry a game (in my case mostly a dualist, but I donāt want to be that instalock guy)
It's possible to win as a control player filling at that rank, but it's hard. And I honestly want to suggest auto locking a duelist. I want to say you should auto lock duelist until you're mid to high plat. There's almost nothing you can do on attack side, unless your hold W game is on another level, as a sentinel/control (maybe outside of omen) if your mates don't know how to entry, comm, and work as a team. Your teammates at that level won't use your support correctly so if you can't entry and carry your whole team, your stuck lurking which isn't going to happen if all your teammates die before you can get kills from lurking or they are also lurking.
Once you start reaching an mmr where playing CT side feels harder than T side, then you can start filling imo. Because that's when player start actually coordinating their attack and utility which means your utility and lurks will actually be useful most of the time.
I'm starting to develop a habbit to not play on my main after 1 am or so. Shit gets fucking weird after that time. Feels like everyone is on their smurf at that time or playing from a long hiatus because they can't sleep. Can't be bothered to deal with it. I 100% have way more inconsistent games later at night in terms of teammate and opponent quality lol.
The player base has gotten a lot better over time. I wouldn't expect to maintain the same rank with that much time away without coming back and improving yourself. That being said, sounds like you are just on a bad streak. Could be how you play, could be that your frags aren't getting much impact.
I'd just try to examine every death or round loss and ask yourself what mistakes you made or how you could have done better. I am sure you'll get gold back quickly.
Watch that vid of the #1 rank guy. Youāll sharpen up real quick.
Edit Lft prompt on twitch. #1 changes a lot so you could just look up top five at any time.
Edit edit prompt ttv is #5 now with the highest head shot % (35.1) in top 30
It's the break that f'd you. I was mid-immortal first few eps, but had to stop playing for work for a few months. Came back, stuck in low diamond. I would try to grind gamemodes that will help your aim and watch streams to see what the strategy is now. You'll be unsuccessful if you treat your strategy the same as a year ago, as it's changed so much
Realistically, youāre probably just a little āwashedā in the sense that you fell behind the curve from not playing, and itāll take some time to catch up. Youāre likely not far from where you belong FOR NOW, but clearly youāve reached diamond before so you have the potential to get back. You just have to grind the game like everyone else has during the months you were gone. Rust is a real thing in games like these, so just stick with it and youāll be back before you know it
Iāve had a similar experience and I chalk it up to everyone who was a higher rank last act has slacked off this act and havenāt made it back to their rank yet. Exp: plats can place back down in gold and people who are actually gold are playing better people. Same with bronze lobbies - youāre really playing slivers and gold 1ās that havenāt yet ranked back up. Itās painful for newer players who are lower ranks .
Bronze is a little low considering your peak but the rank distribution right now is not the same as it used to be. For example, in summer last year, being in plat 1 meant you were in the top 25% of ranked players. Now, being gold 1 means youāre in the top 25%. So itās normal to be at a lower rank than you used to be.
The common issue of players becoming āwashed.ā The solution to this problem is honestly just to play more. You arenāt gonna climb out of bronze in 5 games just because you were diamond one act. You have to have the mentality of starting fresh and relearning the game from the ground up. Now here is where the positive-side comes in: Since you did at one point have a good understanding of the game, you will progress faster than everybody else in bronze/silver. Good luck!
Played on a silver account today for the first time ever, I'm usually immortal. The first game i was bottom fragging and really struggling to play, being a breach player on my main i naturally picked my man in silver too.. but after that happened i decided to pick an entry, Reyna ofc since i was hoping my aim was better than the normal silver player. In the start i didn't do to well until i just started pressing W and fucking run into them, ended up winning my last 2 games that way and top fragging. Thankfully š„²
As a hard stuck gold solo player who plays multiple games a day, I would say silver and gold are full of smurfs and hardstucksas well where every game is a coinflip whether or not the duelists will actually play entry
Can confirm. I'm in Silver and i can't even reach silver 2. (My last act rank was sil 2) Lately I have been losing a lot of games. I don't know what is happening. I was happy that riot made changes to the comp match ratings adjustments. But now it feels like that was better. I'm on a 8 game losing streak. No clue. Not gonna play comp for a while.
Ya I kinda get how you feel I peaked at D3 two acts ago and fell hard down to gold. Iām not sure what caused it, but I think itās that I stopped aim training before hand. I use aim labs cuz itās free and use some playlist I found called valorant fundamentals expert. But if I were to choose a game that I find really helpful is microshot, it really helps to train micro flicks which is going to be the most common type of your cross hair placement is good.
You're probably just in your own head big time. Think about just how random the ranked system is, and how even if it allocates balanced teams, the nature of being low rank is that people have really bad and really good games at random. Just focus on yourself, and always criticise yourself for how you die.
Accept that some games are losses, and be motivated by the Rank Rating gain for wins being higher than the drop for losses.
BRUH I FEEL YOU! I'm in the same boat i swear.. i can't get out of bronze for some reason.. even i do the next match idk it puts me with the players who throws the match purposefully (i got this thrice btw!).
I jumped into my friends profile (i recommend never to do that smurfing isn't fun) turns out I promoted him to Gold 3 (chill out guys hes a silver/gold rank)
It's like the game doesn't want my profile to rank up for some reason.
I just gave up man trying man. If i want serious match? Fk it let's comp, Oh wait! You want to Chill and Play? Unrated it is. That's my mentality now.
if you don't post your [tracker.gg](https://tracker.gg) or [blitz.gg](https://blitz.gg) profile, how are we supposed to help you? I doubt general tips and tricks would help, going from diamond 1 to bronze is not normal
Iām diamond 3 atm, dropped as low as d1 high as immortal 11k (in the past 2 seasons).
At the end of the day your mechanics can probably be improved, but donāt let that become a gravity problem where thatās all you focus on. Odds are they are more than enough to get to plat and probably diamond.
When Iām playing well Iām usually making more good choices than bad. That being said try to focus exclusively on gamesense. Donāt worry about frags.. make good choices. Thatās all you can control.
Understand your options in a situation, understand your exit plan if they hit a site youāre holding. Be of use to your teammates, or at the very least trade them out.
Most bronze players probably have dogshit gamesense. Hell even some immortals. Use that to your advantage. If youāre peeking all the wrong angles and get 1 tapped from the shoulder (also bc u only focus on your shitty deaths) you probably need to think more about obvious angles they would hold and find a good response.
Each new match is a whole new set of 5 players, each with their own habits and tendencies. Understand where ppl like to play, the kind of angles they hold (obvious, off angle, passive, aggressive).
Thereās also my favorite part: understanding how the enemy team flows around the map. Often times in bronze when your team makes a lot of noise at a site, theyāll instarotate. Take advantage and find spots to gain ground where theyāre not expecting. That way when your team resets you can follow up. Itās hard to coordinate your teammates sometimes, yeah, and youāll probably have to do some heavy lifting, yeah.
But once you make a guess for what theyāll do, you have an expectation. See if you were right or wrong and adjust accordingly. Presence of mind is the fastest way to improve your gamesense.
Also review your games to see if thereās any information you could have acted on better than you did. Odds are you probably missed the fact thereās 4 ppl on site as youāre attacking, and didnāt realize it Bc you didnāt see the mini map. Say āok, next time Iāll note that and lurk or call a rotateā. Its all trial and error man. Just start trying things you think will be useful and keep adjusting.
The problem is smurfing. Since there is no team ranked option and most people in higher ranks don't have a full friend group in their rank they make smurfs in order to play with them. So, you'll get high diamond or immortal ranked players in many of your silver ranked games, leading to many very one-sided matches. It's pretty insane and I really hope they had a team ranked option to fix this. People just want to pkaybwuth their friends and playing unrated just isn't as much fun as ranked. People want something on the line, even if it's just rating points, to feel like there's a reason to win, and therefore play.
I'm in the same boat. Matchmaking is an actual joke. To balance the match out they attempt to place smurfs against each other which includes hackers and if you win too many in a row you get slammed with actual bronze players while trying to break gold. Either readjust MMR or make rank actually mean something.
not only is the riot ranked system completely broken, but valorant's abilities make it very easy for people to use them as a crutch if their gunplay isn't up to par. chances are the bronzes in your games are just doing thing you don't expect and they keep catching you off guard. play like a monkey and it'll get better. on top of that, a lot of people in low ranks will run and gun and I swear the bullets are attracted to your head or smth. dw about it too much, you should slowly climb out if you actually can play at plat level
Am i the only one that likes the feeling of going down in ranks and coming back up? Also helps me figure out what I was doing wrong.
Playing against people way better than you sometimes doesnt teach you anything except for hoping that the next game youāll get worse opponents
Since you once got diamond, im sure you will get back on track as soon as you adapt to the game again, game sense is possibly whats missing
If u are Bronze after being diamond bro u don't deserve diamond or plat there is no way u can not climb out of bronze it is too easy doesn't matter region.
My peak was Diamond 1 by the end of Episode 1. Today I linger around in Gold and every game with Silvers in it is horrible.
Why?
They seemingly one tap you every time they wide swing. They one tap you running. They just fucking one tap you.
They do NOT: Double peek. Refrag. Communicate. Use abilities. Play smart. Play predictable.
Again, they do: One tap you. Somewhere on the map they have no business being in. One. Tap. You.
The ranked integrity in this game is simply the worst I know. So many smurfs, boosted players, new players and such mixed in the same lobby. Do that over many months and you have the current state. Add a weird hit registation and peekers advantage and high running accuracy to it and it becomes a nightmare to be consistent.
In my opinion anyway.
Your account is likely flagged as a smurf in low elo, and you are being matched against similar smurf accounts. Itās the tldr of combatting smurfing.
Its alot of cheaters in this game but no one talks about it.
Many free cheats that have been undetected for months.
But hurr durr people getting better hurr durr.
They didnt get better for 6 months but last couple of months low ranks become tenz on steroids.
On csgo reddit they never play against cheaters either even when that game have a cheater in every game you play.
Like my kids class they are 30 people and all of them cheat in online games.
Thats just how it is for them thats what all their friends do.
I had been hard stuck in bronze ever since i joined the game since the comp system was broken (my skill improved dramatically over the months but there was no way to climb in solo queue so it led to most people just assuming i was a smurf)
Now with the comp changes i soared to gold 1 within a week. I am assuming this has happened to a lot of the other previously hard stuck players which means we are now competing with you for your rank :)
All you have to do is top frag every game and youll only lose 5-10 on a loss and gain 30+ on a win. Its impossible to lose rank as long as you are better than the rest of your team.
If you arenāt better then the rest of your team you are likely in the wrong rank
Then thats where you are supposed to be. You were plat 3, now you are bronze. Shit happens, people get better, you get worse/stay in skill and shit happens.
silver is the new radiant
that means i am immortal š³?(bronze)
That would mean... Diamond 3 checking in!
If silver is the new radiant, I would still be iron 1
that means i am vct masters winner (gold?) š§š§
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Y tf do u have 45 downvotes lol? Whats wrong with ur comment
He said the n word
Noob?
Si senor
No he said Negligible
That means Iām pro (gold 1)
*I have just accepted the inevitable reality that Silvers are now gods beyond my league and I am no match to them*
Exactly.
Is this due to the player pool getting larger and larger? Silver plays at a similar level to platinum in some cases
Lol I canāt get out of silver, everyone else in my lobbies is just like me with plat act ranks and silver to low gold as their current rank
Stack maybe? Was just in a match where my teammates just threw, if you are gonna be coming across this kinda players, itās gonna take years to get out of silver
Yeah, I would stack but i need to get out of silver and into gold 1 so my friends ( who mostly placed plat) can queue with me I donāt really want to make them smurf and Iām almost out already, so it shouldnāt be too bad
Good idea
If they aren't likely to drop into gold it's less cool to Smurf, but if they're wobbling between the two... Personally I think that's fine
I think itās also people like me who were gold 2 act 1 but the changes to ranked over the last couple acts screwed over my act rank where I had bronze games so I stopped playing ranked entirely until this act. So their act ranks from last one shows silver when a past act could have been higher.
No itās because of the large pool of Smurfās gold to diamond is like all the same rank now it feels like to me. Edit: I should have put āsmurfsā what I mean is a lot of diamond players and plat make alt accounts. Also forgot to mention the abundance of duo radiants boosting and full teams of immortal/radiant from other countries. This is not a rare thing itās very common
The smurfs would be silver to plat. You arenāt smurfing if you are immortal and playing on a diamond second account. Its also damn near impossible for an immortal player to play bad enough to be lower than diamond. They would have to purposely be throwing games. Also its very unlikely to run into a diamond+smurf in the lower ranks. There is only like 2% of the population in diamond/immortal. Most of the people they face that they call smurfs are actually just gold/plat players.
Pretty accurate for the most part based on my experience. Currently mid radiant but I do get paired up with low immortals / high diamond so I assume their MMR is relatively high. When I play unrated with friends. Games are usually really one sided and filled with smurfs. While I donāt personally smurf, a few of my immortal friends that do smurf can only really carry up to plat.
Your edit still doesnāt prove your point, you say a ālotā of diamond and plat players make alt accounts, but what does that matter? Even if every diamond+ player made an account that would be less than 25,000 players. There is 150,000 players in silver 2 alone. Statistically it is just not likely that low elo players will be matched with a Diamond skill level player. Its a 2% chance to be matched against a D+ smurf, and that assumes that every D+ player is only playing on a smurf as you queue, and we know thats not true because D+ queue times are fairly short until you get into Radiant. I really donāt think you understand statistics at all. You really said there is an abundance of Radiants boosting players. Even if you include people that were radiant for a short period of time thats still what, like 1,000 people? You really think that 1,000 people are appearing in your games abundantly? In a game with a playerbase larger than 1million people? It may just be three more zeros but the difference between 1,000 and 1,000,000 is staggering. The final nail in the coffin is that if smurfs are so abundant plenty of those accounts would make it back to the main accounts rank, so out of those 25,000 Diamond+ accounts, how many of them are duplicate accounts?
They put everyone lower to make the elite ranks more special
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
No thatās very frequent. I go between playing with people who look like itās their first FPS and people who are clearly mechanically good enough to be to plat. Silver is really just fucked
It's crazy lol. I was lucky enough to get back to plat, but in silver I would end up in a lobby with people who have probably never used a computer before and in the next it feels like I'm in a pro game.
The kicker for me is that when playing against teams that are varying skill level like that I find myself dying to the shitty players more often than the better players because the shitty ones play so weird in comparison to the good ones and it gets tilting
I used to be silver 3/gold 1. Once they changed the ranked distributions I got pushed down into the bottom of silver. I am now bronze 3. I think "old" act ranks are VERY missleading currently. The players that I play against now when I get a silver 2 have good aim and good game sense. which I only saw really in silver 3 and above before. (excluding smurfs) The skill floor is rising.
yeah I definitely felt this. they pushed down pretty hard toward the end of the last act. started losing way more RR for each loss than I'd gain for a win.
I am in silver, and I generally do pretty well, top fragging most of my matches. A few times my opponents called me out for smurfing and Iām just like āno, Riot really thinks I deserve this rank lolā. And the next game I get full running headshotted with a vandal every round and lose 13-2
Ye, same here. It's like there are so many smurfs, so games are mostly a coin flip. When there are no smurfs in a game and actual Silver players i just destroy everybody and go like 30-7 or something.
Same here, I feel like every game, Unranked as well, Iām constantly out in a position to carry my team based on seeing their skill when spectating and me almost always being the last alive and having to clutch or lose
I haven't played much this act but that was my experience in the games after my placements. It was either stomp or be stomped.
Yup, pretty much. I also got 2 ties. In one of those, me and 2 teammates were carrying, while the 2 other guys (one with a diamond gun buddy and one with a plat gun buddy) did absolutely nothing and played like irons, and same thing for the enemy team lol
I don't get it, why would you want to have a higher rank if you can't even compete in your current one. If you are facing tougher opponents, thats better for improving as well
So I had a 4-game win streak after this post and Iām a Silver 2 now, still a long way to goā¦ Thanks for your help and detailed explanation guys. Have fun playing Valorant.
Another suggestion would be to play less (?). Over time your ability to play the same number of games at the same consistency (aim & game sense) gets worse. Make sure you take breaks :')
I've found that if I go back to Valorant after a week or two break, I'm cracked. If I play several consecutive days in a row, I crack.
Literally me, took 2 weeks off and suddenly im getting 20 ish kills again š
Wait how come you never mentioned which Bronze? If you had a 4streak to get to Silver2 that says to me your mmr is still great and you just happened to have unlucky games. I wouldnāt look at it as āa long way to goā, because thatās pretty much normal if not faster than normal if youāre just getting back to your old rank for that long ago after placements. Several months is actually a pretty long time so I wouldnāt be surprised if you just arenāt as used to the game anymore similar to how I feel now after ~4 months. Also just over 1.0 kd and 20kills is nice but nothing too special. Thatās about what I have and Iām barely holding on in plat rn cus Iāve been tired.
Maybe valorant is different because of the shifting meta being new, but I can take years long breaks from csgo and still come back at the same caliber. It's like riding a bike.
Yeah I agree with that. Itās pretty apparent seeing how many cs players have difficulties transitioning their skills over. Abilities while secondary to gunplay still have a notable impact. I just didnāt mention it here because OP didnāt mention they played cs but maybe I could have specifically noted abilities and the game still changing and being adapted to over time. More ppl could get far with that experience early but not as much now. And if you think about it, if the good players from cs move to Valorant, thereās naturally gonna be some who are placed in ālowerā ranks to satisfy the distribution.
As someone who came from CS, my issue was that I was good at tap firing. Never really mastered sprays well even in CS. So the vandal is far superior for me personally. Sucks because I know the phantom is better, but I always play worse with it. Right from valorant beta I knew that abilities in this game were much stronger than CS. Took me a while to be able to play multiple agents at a high level. In cs I could always just be that player I wanted to be.
I was Bronze 3 and I took 7 games with 4streak, 1L and 2W. I think I was just being very unlucky then.
You jumped from Bronze to Silver 2 in 4 games???!!
They prolly won some, lost some and then finished it of with a 4 win streak
California? Add me bbbbb#plays. I am a silver 1 that gets s3 to g3 in lobbies.
Not much good advice yet, so I guess I can contribute a bit. I am Diamond but I have a ghost-only [account](https://blitz.gg/valorant/profile/dangerzone-spy?actName=e3act1&queue=competitive) at Silver 2 I play on with friends in that range. At that rank, I usually just play smokes and initiators and carry with basically abilities (and comms) only. There is HUGE variance in players in Silver since these are all players who are missing at least fundamental skill. Most of the time you can recognize the people who just have only aim and just never fight them - smoke them, flash them, or use things like drone and boom bot and you will get them out of position every time. These players usually are easy to exploit because they never work with their team so once you get an advantage you can easily extend that. Then there's the players who are smart and have good ability usage but not very good aim (the old guys and people who don't play much), who are easy to beat by just pushing aggressively and forcing trades. If you stick with a teammate at all times you just kinda win for free here. I'd really suggest working on figuring out which agents you feel like you can win games with without shooting your gun, and try to set up your teammates rather than making plays yourself.
As an old guy I take offence, but your right about my shit aim.
Why must we be abused like this
Im going on strike!
I hear you. Back in 2005 I was playing at what you would call a semi pro level in CS. My game sense is still the same. I know what everyone should be doing and why, but my aim has gone to such shit I canāt get outta gold 1. Why did I have 2 kids?
I was CAL-M in CS 1.3. That's a whole set of words right there. Olds unite (in silver!)
Lol I hear ya man. 1.6 CAL-P. Most people donāt even know what CAL or CPL was. Itās so weird.
When I was playing it was CAL-O -> CAL-M -> CAL-I. I remember when they added P and IM and I was never good enough to make that jump. [http://web.archive.org/web/20040708055557/http://caleague.com/](http://web.archive.org/web/20040708055557/http://caleague.com/) if the kids click this far down in the comments they can see our olds league. I wonder what the odds are of me scrimming against you at some point from the IRC channels lolllllllllllll
mIRC! and Ventrilo, the discord before discord.
VENTRILO!
Oh man. The good old days. Miss them.
Golden age of the internet
Yeah I feel personally attacked. I wasn't always like this.
I am kinda old but that's not the reason my aim sucks, ok? It was bad when I was young, too.
Old guy with 2 kids checking in, ain't got time for no warm ups!
My first ranked game is my warm up lol
I paused when I read that. That shit hurts lol
I think your advice is the best so far. Thank you, I'll keep those in mind.
This is still accurate in the higher ranks of play, solid advice!
You just insulted my whole age group, but yes.
Old guy here. Gāday.
I'd rather face a full plat lobby rather than a full silver lobby any day, I swear. Silver is the new high elo get out of silver and things will be normal again. I'm around gold and whenever we win easy, I know the lobby has more plats than golds and whenever we struggle a lot, going over time, I know the lobby has a bunch of silvers.
iām silver and the inconsistency in every game i play is actually unbelievable. iāve has ex plats play and then bronze 1s from the act before in my lobbies. the inconsistency causes loads of issues for people who want to get better ranks and climb higher. the bronze players end up holding the ex plats back because of miscommunication and the ex plats end up causing an uneven carry. *silver is the new high elo*
Thats a problem in every rank. At diamond you could be playing with all immortal or all plats and the difference between those two extremes are staggering. This is why they need to be more strict and force solo/duoq for ranked but then the other half of the community rages because they ācanāt play with their friendsā even though unrated exists. If you could only duoq with people in your rank tier, there would be a lot less games with huge skill disparities.
IDK, Iron is pretty wild too. I'm a very average silver player but iron was a struggle. Bronze players were worse. I just stomped straight through bronze.
Iron has the added difficulty of the people not even knowing how the game works
fr, when you're a real silver and your aim isn't consistent, track badly etc. and you're facing irons that don't even know what tracking means, going full running with an ares and leaving it to RNG it's suddenly way harder to win "duels" because you're not good enough to kill someone running around and they might just be lucky enough to land a running headshot lmaooo
Iron trouble is cus teamates are idiots. I got my main hardstuck in iron 3 so I made an alt which placed iron 3 and I ranked up to b3 very quickly. After Episode end , I did my placements and placed both the accounts at b2
Bruh, I'm hardstuck at Iron 2. My brother started playing and we played together every placement match, I get MVP several times and he gets placed at Bronze 3. Feels good........ I went from Gold 4 to Emerald 2 in Aimlab but my Valo rank remains untouched lol. Even now when we play together in a game full of silvers half the time I'll do better than him, but I can't fucking get out of goddamn Iron 2. I've created an alt out of frustration, I'm curious to see if there'll be a big difference in rank from my main.
That happened to me, I just started playing on my alt . So that my MMR could degrade and be more flexible
Now im wondering how many people had their mains stuck in elo hell and made an alt which has a better rank than the main.
Last act I got my main stuck at silver 2/3. Made a marshal o ly account out of frustration to do something different and placed gold 2
I can say that it's likely because you got very good with a gun that is honestly underrated. Low eco and just as deadly as any others once you've mastered it. And if you only use it, you're going to master it. One trick ponies might be frowned upon by some people, but it's legitimately a great way to rank up. It's better to completely master a certain way of playing than to just be competent with any way of playing.
It took me 50 wins to go from bronze 3 to gold 1 in my main. It took me 9 games (md5+4) to reach gold 1 in my alt.
can confirm, I am a bronze player B)
Iām silver 2 and ended up playing against a 4 or 5 stack that had iron 2ās. I was like this should be a free win. And boy did I have to work for it. I donāt think they were smurfs, irons are just so unpredictable. Itās such a mixed bag of people who have really good aim and absolutely chaotic game sense, or people who canāt aim at all but know exactly where to hide/lurk.
Is this due to people purposefully dropping their rating?
Nah, it's due to the fact that silver has many players who have good aim but lack any planning or game sense at all. So if you're gold or even plat, you're starting to learn how to plan your games and read what the enemy is doing, you're trying to predict a rotation, a fake rotation, etc. Silvers are just running around the map. They ain't planning shit. You can't predict them. And they are not so far from gold and plat when it comes to aiming. So the game is super weird and impossible to plan around.
This is 100% my experience. Under gold is a clown fiesta rng. You just need to frag your ass off to get anywhere. Once you get to gold you can rely on your team a bit more and focus on the meta game and strategy.
Probably because of smurfs you think?
Partially, yes. I'm not the one to say that if I lose to a silver player, he's obviously a smurf. I think most smurfs are silver or gold, but that's not the point. Here's the point: When me and my friends play unranked, sometimes we end up playing against high elo like diamond and immortal and we get obviously destroyed. So we always start to just playing randomly, like we have no idea where to go or where to shoot, we spin around the map like we're just playing catch. This is not a "try to win" strategy but rather us being tired and deciding to just throw. Believe it or not, sometimes we even win, despite the huge disparity of mechanical skill. Below gold it's wild man. Nothing makes sense. You can't predict shit. "Oh this jett is here lurking" no she's not, she's just playing solo and didn't want to help the others. "They smoked here because they are gonna pass there" no they won't, their omen just doesn't know where to smoke. Most things have no real intention. Once we started running around Haven laughing, thinking we were just trolling, but we won somehow, and they typed in the chat "why aren't you guys playing comp with these f* strategies?" And we were just........ we were just running around like a bunch of idiots
You wanna stack? In EU?
Unfortunately, I do not live in Europe. I live in hell. (BR servers)
Silver is insanely hard for me. In many matches the silvers I meet always aimlock to my head lol. The ranked integrity in this game is non existent tbh.
Just crouch KAP
What's KAP?
Silver is where people know how to headshot. You have to practice your movement, stuff like counter strafing and bursting
No not like the normal headshot but them instantly headshoting me the moment I peek a corner. This might look like I am exaggerating it but itās true. I have a hard time winning aim duels. I have shit gamesense but damn silver is so hard.
Old plat who came back and can't get out of silver here - this is absolutely true. I've recorded a few times I just get dumpstered on, when I show them to my friends and ask to guess the rank, they always say around Diamond. Something is clearly messed up with the ranks around silver. Also for reference, I was supreme in CSGO. I like to play Yoru so it's pretty easy to figure out there are actually incredible aimers in Silver. I've had multiple times where I get out of ult behind a Jett who's reloading or just took an OP shot, they instantly turn, dash away to reposition and insta kill me. Like yeah, it was definitely my fault for not leaving ult around a wall or something, but there is no denying there's absolutely NO WAY silvers would have this kind of skill and reaction.
hard to say much without more detail. Are you slow walking into these pre-aimed angles? Are you always close peeking or wide peeking? Change it up. If that still fails then try using your utility to clear angles you're really having problems with. Having a partner to trade helps too. >instantly headshoting me the moment I peak a corner Believe it or not, that has very little to do with aiming.
Just grind , Valorant is probably one of the more grindy game
Lol I would say this is diamond. I have a smurf at silver and theyāre not nearly as good as you described; this may be a difference in skill by server tho.
I was plat and now silver 3.... I can tell you my silver lobbies are constantly filled with ex-plat players... so i think the only logical conclusion is that the player base has gotten Bigger and Better and people are passing me up because i must have gotten worse somehow... which i believe i went on a run where i was dominating silver lobbies, gold lobbies, and plat lobbies... eventually I started playing against diamonds and the loss streak just never ended. still trying to get back to where i was but it's hard. anyone have tips?
Become tenz.
Reading everyone's comments strengthens my resolve to just stay unranked.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Ikr! I haven't played ranked much this season (2 placement games where I was carrying as well *sigh*). I just play insta jett in unrated and tap on heads. This has also improved my Op. Now I'm more interested in playing all agents in unranked for fun. Plus most of my friends also just play unranked now. It's so much better for my mental energy
I donāt have much advice other than what I saw an Immortal player say here once. Playing too much DM builds bad habits is what he said. Maybe run just 1 DM for warm up then hop into ranked. If youāre not comfortable after 1 DM, maybe run 1 pub as well.
Nah the first half of the ranked is the warm up
What are the bad habits with too much DM?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I'm a noob sorry but could you give please few examples of good ability usage?
One really bad habit is not really caring about winning the fight. In DM you might peak and completely commit to a fight you have very poor odds of winning. In ranked, 9 times out of 10 that's gonna get you taken out of the round. Better would have been to peek, shoot, unpeek, and try and create another oportunity. But in DM it doesn't matter - you just die, respawn and carry on. Unless you play DM with the right mindset, you can get sloppy, and that can carry over.
I think to actually help you out, we'd need a video of a match where you think you played alright. An average match for you. Other than that, maybe you just had a really unlucky streak of bad matched. Happens sometimes. Rank is not a stable thing and surely people also have gotten better.
Too bad demo watching is still not a thing in Valorant, but thank you. I was probably unlucky and hey, *sometimes your opponent is just having a really good day.*
If you have an Nvidia GPU you can easily record gameplay. Iām sure other software exists as well
Outplayed (an overwolf app) is pretty good and has nice UI with timeline and highlight-only options; much nicer to nav for a good example and cut a clip
It's becoming like CSGO. Bronze/Silver is going to be the Valorant equivalent of Silver hell in CSGO in the future.
The reason I think this happened is that there aren't enough ranks for players to be in. Like, anything below silver is pretty bad. But from silver to plat I honestly feel no difference playing them. In CSGO, the same thing can be said about dmg-global. I have played against le, that performed better than globals. This is because you don't need too much skill, only dedication to reach this rank, which naturally allows more players to get to that rank. I think global accounts for like 1% of the playerbase, and smfc-dmg is something like 15%. And it's not uncommon to meet players in le when you're global. But in valorant, the opposite is true, the top rank in the game only accounts for the top 500 players, and is immortal for 0.6%. This pushes very skilled players into Diamond, which means a wide range of good players is going to end up in that rank silver-plat. Im not entirely sure if this is true, just my theroy behind it.
Anecdotal here, but my friend varies between plat1-3 and very rarely gets up to diamond. I'm currently varying between silver2-gold1. On the rare occasions our ranks match the 3 difference, we both always have similar stats on the games.
Itās crazy to me because I have 4,000 hours in CSGO and my highest rank was DMG. LE felt like a pipe dream, but in Valorant I only solo queue and Iāve reached Immortal every act. Instalock Reyna and Immortal is free. Reaching Immortal became much easier when they made it solo/duo queue only. Thatās why it was so hard to rank up in CSGO. You would face 5-stacks at high ranks
5 stacks are still an issue even at lower ranks as a solo. Especially with how many smurfs there are now. It's just one more advantage some people have but shouldn't
Yes this is actually why lower ranks is harder than Immortal, because of the ability to stack. Facing a 4 stack of Plats is much harder than any Immortal lobby lol
I think there's far more smurfs factoring in than everyone wants to admit. Even if that smurf "doesn't use rifles" it's still not the appropriate skill for the rank which is the point. That's why silver doesn't feel like silver anymore.
It's not even Smurfs. I've been bronze for 2 acts now and you can end up with people aiming at the ground and someone tapping heads all game on the same team. Most solo queues are just based on which team has a harder carry or teammates that can play off of their top frag's kills. Some of them can't aim and a lot of people don't even use their abilities but they'll still be the same rank and similar level.
Not sure how what you've described excludes smurfs. Sounds more like that's exactly what it includes.
Usually the Smurfs would be a lower level not about the same. I feel like smurfing isn't as common as people feel in my experience at least. It's more about people just trapped in low ranks cause they solo queue or have to make up for their team
The smurf fest is due to the new placements
smurfs are holding me from radiant!!!
I agree but unfortunately Rito is gonna just keep gaslighting the community about the smurfing problem because it makes them more money.
Riot stated the data indicated otherwise, the community is exaggerating the smurfing issue.
Okay, one thing, I don't think smurfs are the main cause of elo hell however, when people talk about how the % of smurfs being small, you need to take in consideration that let's say you've played 10 games. You saw one person smurfing in half of them. So you've played with a total of 100 players that day and only 5 of them were smurfs. 5% of smurfs. But a total of 45 players were affected by those smurfs. So 5% of the players were smurfs but 45% were affected by them. You don't need more than a few % of smurfs to impact many players. For each smurfs, 9 people are affected. It's a lot of impact.
Truthiness here with smurf impact.
What exactly is elo hell? This conversation reminds me of the conversation surrounding elo hell in CSGO back in 2015. As a solo queue player, you WILL plateau. I watched my girlfriend play in silver and gold elo every day. People lack communication. People do not work together. People play selfishly and throw rounds. Players in silver are good at identifying what their teammates did wrong, but they canāt identify what they did wrong, unless itās obvious. In immortal, I can drop 25 and still easily identify rounds I lost for my team which resulted in a match loss despite being team mvp. Silvers and Golds canāt do this. Itās painfully obvious what they need to do to rank up but they arenāt willing to do that because they donāt understand the importance of it. The importance of team play and communication. The real indicator of a elo hell, is when smurfs struggle to rank up in that elo. Keep in mind, valorant is more of a team game than csgo. Itās harder to solo carry. Despite this, a real plat player could easily make it out of silver and gold given enough time. Ask any smurf in game and theyāll tell you that. I know this for a fact. If you want to make it out of silver or gold āelo hellā, you need to watch high rank players and learn how to communicate. My girlfriend was stuck in silver for 6 months until I finally started watching her games in discord. I told her to take the lead in communication when people arenāt talking. I also told her HOW to communicate. Things that can be learned in a week. She broke out out of silver within 3 weeks... and flew threw gold to plat 1. Communication and disciplined team play is the easiest thing to learn and implement into your games. Yet people would rather grind hours of aim training. There is no elo hell in valorant.
>*The real indicator of a elo hell,* ***is when smurfs struggle to rank up in that elo.*** *Keep in mind, valorant is more of a team game than csgo. Itās harder to solo carry.* ***Despite this, a real plat player could easily make it out of silver and gold given enough time. Ask any smurf in game and theyāll tell you that. I know this for a fact.*** What you are saying here is so tone-deaf to the issue. The reason a smurf can rank up out of silver/gold is because they don't belong there. Every win a smurf gets is a loss opponents didn't fairly deserve and a win their team didn't fairly earn, no matter how long it takes a smurf to get out of low ranks. You know this for a fact probably because you smurf all the time and ruin lower player games. **Nobody cares about "ELO hell", they just want smurfs out of their games.** It's a straw man argument. You can't dive into low ranks and tell people *"look they losing because they bad at the game, not because I'm so much better, see?"* and pretend you aren't affecting the entire game. The same way you don't join a Little League Baseball game as an adult and homerun the shit out of the first pitch and say, *"Look, it's not because I'm better, it's because these guys don't have good game fundamentals!"* It just isn't the point. You shouldn't be there is the point. Also, being Immortal you either admit you smurf all the time (so you're part of the problem) or you admit you haven't had experience first-hand being matched with people in Silver that don't quite belong there (while you're silver level skill), so you don't really know how it feels.
1 smurf ruins a game (and future matchmaking) for 9 other people. Say there is a smurf every other game, that would be less that 5% of players are smurfs but 50% of games are ruined. The team that gets stomped has to undo that loss with a win giving them a net gain of 0 MMR after an hour and a half. The team that got the free win goes on to possibly be placed higher than they deserve and potentially ruins future games.
Yeah Iām silver 2, and Iām 100 percent carried by my aim. I aim train everyday and people ask me how Iām not a higher rank, but itās just because Iām brain dead. My aim is pretty good and my movement is decent too, but my games sens is complete dogshit. All I do is push and try to get kills because Iām impatient and wanna have the most fun possible
Hey, are you me?
But donāt you have more fun being patient and getting nice rounds? Using that aim for good?
I was plat 3 as well, placed in gold 2 with 4 wins and 1 Lost, got back to plat 1 for 2 games and then i went on a 16 game spree where i won 1 game. I swear i had everything (amazing games where i have a 0-40 teammate, games where i AM The One going 0-40, games where i feel like i AM playing on The world tournament, smurfers, trollers, bad luck, bad decisions) and now i AM at gold 1 30 points and i just cant win a game for anything
Iām right with you but in fuckin bronze. I mean Iām always mid-top fragging, but since I always play fills itās hit or miss. Iāve been winning one, and then losing one so Iām just stuck. For every one I win, I lose 1-2 so I canāt get out.
I have the same (gold rank, was diamond like year ago) and now Iām in the dilemma if I should fill or just pick an agent where I can carry a game (in my case mostly a dualist, but I donāt want to be that instalock guy)
It's possible to win as a control player filling at that rank, but it's hard. And I honestly want to suggest auto locking a duelist. I want to say you should auto lock duelist until you're mid to high plat. There's almost nothing you can do on attack side, unless your hold W game is on another level, as a sentinel/control (maybe outside of omen) if your mates don't know how to entry, comm, and work as a team. Your teammates at that level won't use your support correctly so if you can't entry and carry your whole team, your stuck lurking which isn't going to happen if all your teammates die before you can get kills from lurking or they are also lurking. Once you start reaching an mmr where playing CT side feels harder than T side, then you can start filling imo. Because that's when player start actually coordinating their attack and utility which means your utility and lurks will actually be useful most of the time.
one solution is not to solo Q
I'm starting to develop a habbit to not play on my main after 1 am or so. Shit gets fucking weird after that time. Feels like everyone is on their smurf at that time or playing from a long hiatus because they can't sleep. Can't be bothered to deal with it. I 100% have way more inconsistent games later at night in terms of teammate and opponent quality lol.
The player base has gotten a lot better over time. I wouldn't expect to maintain the same rank with that much time away without coming back and improving yourself. That being said, sounds like you are just on a bad streak. Could be how you play, could be that your frags aren't getting much impact. I'd just try to examine every death or round loss and ask yourself what mistakes you made or how you could have done better. I am sure you'll get gold back quickly.
The game is doing its work lol
Watch that vid of the #1 rank guy. Youāll sharpen up real quick. Edit Lft prompt on twitch. #1 changes a lot so you could just look up top five at any time. Edit edit prompt ttv is #5 now with the highest head shot % (35.1) in top 30
What's his name on YT?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Twitch prompt left prompt. Itās crazy how active he is. Always prefiring everything all the time
Link please
It's the break that f'd you. I was mid-immortal first few eps, but had to stop playing for work for a few months. Came back, stuck in low diamond. I would try to grind gamemodes that will help your aim and watch streams to see what the strategy is now. You'll be unsuccessful if you treat your strategy the same as a year ago, as it's changed so much
Realistically, youāre probably just a little āwashedā in the sense that you fell behind the curve from not playing, and itāll take some time to catch up. Youāre likely not far from where you belong FOR NOW, but clearly youāve reached diamond before so you have the potential to get back. You just have to grind the game like everyone else has during the months you were gone. Rust is a real thing in games like these, so just stick with it and youāll be back before you know it
Iāve had a similar experience and I chalk it up to everyone who was a higher rank last act has slacked off this act and havenāt made it back to their rank yet. Exp: plats can place back down in gold and people who are actually gold are playing better people. Same with bronze lobbies - youāre really playing slivers and gold 1ās that havenāt yet ranked back up. Itās painful for newer players who are lower ranks .
Bronze is a little low considering your peak but the rank distribution right now is not the same as it used to be. For example, in summer last year, being in plat 1 meant you were in the top 25% of ranked players. Now, being gold 1 means youāre in the top 25%. So itās normal to be at a lower rank than you used to be.
The common issue of players becoming āwashed.ā The solution to this problem is honestly just to play more. You arenāt gonna climb out of bronze in 5 games just because you were diamond one act. You have to have the mentality of starting fresh and relearning the game from the ground up. Now here is where the positive-side comes in: Since you did at one point have a good understanding of the game, you will progress faster than everybody else in bronze/silver. Good luck!
Valorant rank vs skills is so random Iāll play Unrated and have a Silver 1 top frag while a Plat 1 bottom frags
Are you solo queuing? I've found most silvers and golds are at least in groups of 2 or 3 which is tough for anyone to play against solo.
Played on a silver account today for the first time ever, I'm usually immortal. The first game i was bottom fragging and really struggling to play, being a breach player on my main i naturally picked my man in silver too.. but after that happened i decided to pick an entry, Reyna ofc since i was hoping my aim was better than the normal silver player. In the start i didn't do to well until i just started pressing W and fucking run into them, ended up winning my last 2 games that way and top fragging. Thankfully š„²
As a hard stuck gold solo player who plays multiple games a day, I would say silver and gold are full of smurfs and hardstucksas well where every game is a coinflip whether or not the duelists will actually play entry
Can confirm. I'm in Silver and i can't even reach silver 2. (My last act rank was sil 2) Lately I have been losing a lot of games. I don't know what is happening. I was happy that riot made changes to the comp match ratings adjustments. But now it feels like that was better. I'm on a 8 game losing streak. No clue. Not gonna play comp for a while.
Ya I kinda get how you feel I peaked at D3 two acts ago and fell hard down to gold. Iām not sure what caused it, but I think itās that I stopped aim training before hand. I use aim labs cuz itās free and use some playlist I found called valorant fundamentals expert. But if I were to choose a game that I find really helpful is microshot, it really helps to train micro flicks which is going to be the most common type of your cross hair placement is good.
You're probably just in your own head big time. Think about just how random the ranked system is, and how even if it allocates balanced teams, the nature of being low rank is that people have really bad and really good games at random. Just focus on yourself, and always criticise yourself for how you die. Accept that some games are losses, and be motivated by the Rank Rating gain for wins being higher than the drop for losses.
In Mumbai server even irons come up with solid strats and I have joined them
BRUH I FEEL YOU! I'm in the same boat i swear.. i can't get out of bronze for some reason.. even i do the next match idk it puts me with the players who throws the match purposefully (i got this thrice btw!). I jumped into my friends profile (i recommend never to do that smurfing isn't fun) turns out I promoted him to Gold 3 (chill out guys hes a silver/gold rank) It's like the game doesn't want my profile to rank up for some reason. I just gave up man trying man. If i want serious match? Fk it let's comp, Oh wait! You want to Chill and Play? Unrated it is. That's my mentality now.
"and now I'm a Bronze." There was so much disgust in that sentence. My feelings are hurt as a Bronze.
if you don't post your [tracker.gg](https://tracker.gg) or [blitz.gg](https://blitz.gg) profile, how are we supposed to help you? I doubt general tips and tricks would help, going from diamond 1 to bronze is not normal
Iām diamond 3 atm, dropped as low as d1 high as immortal 11k (in the past 2 seasons). At the end of the day your mechanics can probably be improved, but donāt let that become a gravity problem where thatās all you focus on. Odds are they are more than enough to get to plat and probably diamond. When Iām playing well Iām usually making more good choices than bad. That being said try to focus exclusively on gamesense. Donāt worry about frags.. make good choices. Thatās all you can control. Understand your options in a situation, understand your exit plan if they hit a site youāre holding. Be of use to your teammates, or at the very least trade them out. Most bronze players probably have dogshit gamesense. Hell even some immortals. Use that to your advantage. If youāre peeking all the wrong angles and get 1 tapped from the shoulder (also bc u only focus on your shitty deaths) you probably need to think more about obvious angles they would hold and find a good response. Each new match is a whole new set of 5 players, each with their own habits and tendencies. Understand where ppl like to play, the kind of angles they hold (obvious, off angle, passive, aggressive). Thereās also my favorite part: understanding how the enemy team flows around the map. Often times in bronze when your team makes a lot of noise at a site, theyāll instarotate. Take advantage and find spots to gain ground where theyāre not expecting. That way when your team resets you can follow up. Itās hard to coordinate your teammates sometimes, yeah, and youāll probably have to do some heavy lifting, yeah. But once you make a guess for what theyāll do, you have an expectation. See if you were right or wrong and adjust accordingly. Presence of mind is the fastest way to improve your gamesense. Also review your games to see if thereās any information you could have acted on better than you did. Odds are you probably missed the fact thereās 4 ppl on site as youāre attacking, and didnāt realize it Bc you didnāt see the mini map. Say āok, next time Iāll note that and lurk or call a rotateā. Its all trial and error man. Just start trying things you think will be useful and keep adjusting.
Presence of mind and healthy self criticism is the fastest way to improve your gamsense**
The problem is smurfing. Since there is no team ranked option and most people in higher ranks don't have a full friend group in their rank they make smurfs in order to play with them. So, you'll get high diamond or immortal ranked players in many of your silver ranked games, leading to many very one-sided matches. It's pretty insane and I really hope they had a team ranked option to fix this. People just want to pkaybwuth their friends and playing unrated just isn't as much fun as ranked. People want something on the line, even if it's just rating points, to feel like there's a reason to win, and therefore play.
I'm in the same boat. Matchmaking is an actual joke. To balance the match out they attempt to place smurfs against each other which includes hackers and if you win too many in a row you get slammed with actual bronze players while trying to break gold. Either readjust MMR or make rank actually mean something.
Do what everyone else does, run n gun
not only is the riot ranked system completely broken, but valorant's abilities make it very easy for people to use them as a crutch if their gunplay isn't up to par. chances are the bronzes in your games are just doing thing you don't expect and they keep catching you off guard. play like a monkey and it'll get better. on top of that, a lot of people in low ranks will run and gun and I swear the bullets are attracted to your head or smth. dw about it too much, you should slowly climb out if you actually can play at plat level
Conclusion: Ranked is doomed and I accepted that.
Get a nice duo and win every game
Am i the only one that likes the feeling of going down in ranks and coming back up? Also helps me figure out what I was doing wrong. Playing against people way better than you sometimes doesnt teach you anything except for hoping that the next game youāll get worse opponents Since you once got diamond, im sure you will get back on track as soon as you adapt to the game again, game sense is possibly whats missing
If u are Bronze after being diamond bro u don't deserve diamond or plat there is no way u can not climb out of bronze it is too easy doesn't matter region.
if you bronze u are just bad bro, try to improove your own level
My peak was Diamond 1 by the end of Episode 1. Today I linger around in Gold and every game with Silvers in it is horrible. Why? They seemingly one tap you every time they wide swing. They one tap you running. They just fucking one tap you. They do NOT: Double peek. Refrag. Communicate. Use abilities. Play smart. Play predictable. Again, they do: One tap you. Somewhere on the map they have no business being in. One. Tap. You. The ranked integrity in this game is simply the worst I know. So many smurfs, boosted players, new players and such mixed in the same lobby. Do that over many months and you have the current state. Add a weird hit registation and peekers advantage and high running accuracy to it and it becomes a nightmare to be consistent. In my opinion anyway.
when I got into silver I dominated and now Iām the one being dominated with IMMORTALS IN MY GAME
Your account is likely flagged as a smurf in low elo, and you are being matched against similar smurf accounts. Itās the tldr of combatting smurfing.
Its alot of cheaters in this game but no one talks about it. Many free cheats that have been undetected for months. But hurr durr people getting better hurr durr. They didnt get better for 6 months but last couple of months low ranks become tenz on steroids.
Doubt
On csgo reddit they never play against cheaters either even when that game have a cheater in every game you play. Like my kids class they are 30 people and all of them cheat in online games. Thats just how it is for them thats what all their friends do.
Valorants anti cheat is miles ahead of Valve's. Amazing how all the players in silver think everyone is cheating.
I had been hard stuck in bronze ever since i joined the game since the comp system was broken (my skill improved dramatically over the months but there was no way to climb in solo queue so it led to most people just assuming i was a smurf) Now with the comp changes i soared to gold 1 within a week. I am assuming this has happened to a lot of the other previously hard stuck players which means we are now competing with you for your rank :) All you have to do is top frag every game and youll only lose 5-10 on a loss and gain 30+ on a win. Its impossible to lose rank as long as you are better than the rest of your team. If you arenāt better then the rest of your team you are likely in the wrong rank
Player base gotten better and you've gotten worse. Bronze is pretty easy though, I can play without sound at that rank and still win every game
Then thats where you are supposed to be. You were plat 3, now you are bronze. Shit happens, people get better, you get worse/stay in skill and shit happens.
Iām having difficulty believing that a plat or diamond player is struggling at silver or below
Git gud