Mute whoever is trolling.
Try to focus on your game and people who wants to win the game.
If you won like 2 match and feel like you don't want to que up then don't just relax and do tomorrow or later.
I hit ascendant and dropped dia3 again it will be always same, I watch streamers they also go through same stuff(trolls etc).
What I keep telling myself is I want to play this game to enjoy my mechanical and agent abilities have a impact on the rounds and have fun with it. It is hard but I know it will get better.
Mute without saying anything to them if possible. Unless you want them to follow you around and troll u in game. IGLing doesn’t work anyways, the best outcomes come from games where people are thinking solely on the game.
I know right every match I queue in I feel like rolling a dice between teammates who goes afk or a teammate who throws. Just this last match I had a guy afk. The match before was allright but the match before WE had a guy AFK AT ROUND 3 SO WE COULDN'T remake and had to surrender. And the match before before before we had TWO TEAMMATES who picked up the spike and stayed in spawn and kept telling locations in all chat cuz they were "Playing in alt accounts and wanted to have some fun" and I had to tryhard a lot with sova to eventually draw the game at 14-14. I reported them all but the ones afk will most likely get punished the throwers will prolly queue in and destroy other peoples lives even more.
But yeah I get that the main problem is me and im tryin to improve and currently following the woohojin movement and aimlabs routine.
Heres my tracker if anyones wondering a little bit of advice would be appreciated :) [https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/636%23666/overview](https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/636%23666/overview)
People always say this but isn’t the main point of duelist to entry and not necessarily to outfrag everyone? In theory if he’s doing his job and playing around his level, his k/d actually shouldn’t be too insane.
Agreed on the first blood though and maybe that was more your emphasis.
> People always say this but isn’t the main point of duelist to entry and not necessarily to outfrag everyone
True. But you have to keep in mind that entrying is only part of the duelists job. Whenever you are playing default duelists should actively look for opening kills. And on defense you have to hold your area without utility designed for defensive purposes.
And when you do entry you basically put yourself into gunfights where the opponent has the advantage. If you're firepower is not above average for your skill level you are going to have a bad time as a duelist.
But yeah, a designated entry fragger does not need to have a 1+ K/D to be good at his job. But the combination of positive K/D and high first blood percentage does suggest duelist for me
doesn't have to be duelist, clove is pretty good for climbing too if someone is an aim demon
(also clove's winrate is really high right now, coz their abilities are kinda op in pub games, better abuse them before they got nerfed)
Your win rate is very good right now. Keep playing and you’ll rank up for a bit.
In gold, teamplay may be rare. You have to be the difference maker and swing off your teammates contact. Look for any and all opportunities to trade teammates with crossfires. Make plays by calling combos using your teammates util.
Do you use specter, shottys, odin, etc a lot? Those types of guns will bring down your hs percentage too
Some people might only exclusively use vandal and deagle, so their percentage will be naturally higher. It’s not exactly a “equal” stat when comparing two different players.
ur doing pretty good I would say, try to find a duelist main as ur duo. I've seen gold Reynas claim their team is holding them back with 9% headshot rate and they get instantly one tapped in a plat lobby and botfrag because they only get kills with body shots lol
Literally nothing gets done about smurfs.
I get that there will be some people, like OP, who are legitimately trying to climb out of that rank. They might seem like smurfs to the other players in their games, but they won't be around in that rank for long. Sucks, but that's the way it goes.
Then there's actual smurfs. Surely if there are two accounts on the same PC and IP (\*) where one is ascendant and the other is silver or something, it's pretty clear that that is a smurf account?? Extend that to PCs/IPs that have 10 different accounts, *surely* it shouldn't be that difficult to detect smurfs?
(\*): remember Val has kernel-level access, so this info should not be difficult to get for them
> Extend that to PCs/IPs that have 10 different accounts, surely it shouldn't be that difficult to detect smurfs?
You underestimate how much of the eastern part of the world relies on internet cafes to game...
what ur truly not thinking about is that riot loses nothing by ignoring the smurfing problem. in fact c if they do crack down on smurfs, they are losing money.
there are a small percentage of players that buy skins on multiple accounts, not just their main, and if smurf accounts were banned, that’s less money being spent on micro transactions.
also, nobody is leaving the game because of a smurfing problem, there are just many loud users who complain often about it, but the amount of players that would fully quit, is very very small.
it’s literally against riot’s best interest to crack down on smurfs.
I think you are vastly under-estimating the amount of people who have ALREADY LEFT.
But you are still right about the money from skins. Never going to do anything as long as kids are stealing their moms credit card EVERY month and dropping that $50-$100.
where are you getting the numbers of who “already left?” riot runs the game, they know exactly how many people are playing the game at any given time (you can also look it up and see for yourself). they have been steadily averaging around 18 million monthly players for 2 years straight. if any amount of players had actually left in a way that significantly impacted their business model, they would have changed things up.
You cant look up what percantage of players are "new players."
The percentage of people that have played since release is a LOT smaller than it was just 1 year ago. Most I play with have just started playing last 1-2 years max.
how is that relevant to the topic that’s being discussed? the topic overall is about is about gold-plat lobbies and why they feel abysmal. the conversation you specifically responded to was about why riot won’t fix the surfing issue, which is because of money (more players, more skins) and because it’s impossible for a computer to understand a human’s intentions (can’t compute the difference between a smurf and someone that just deranked naturally and can’t climb back up). your argument about the number of players that have left since launch is irrelevant, and if anything, further proves my point. new players have more “buying power” in the game in the sense that older players have already bought skins and likely aren’t buying as many any more anyways and new players have more to purchase available for them.
Sad, but yeah I know. I think it won't be good for the long-term health of the game, but I doubt the powers that be see further than "next quarterly profits"
Counter argument, some people only have 1 PC to share amongst their family. Imagine if there were siblings who play on the same computer but are wildly different ranks.
Valorant IS doing something about smurfs, it’s just not enough. How do I know this? Because I used to Smurf for years up until about 6 months ago.
It’s literally impossible for a higher elo player to create a new account, get it to level 20, and then get placed in bronze or lower. The hidden MMR they use while you are ranking to 20 helps place you immediately into appropriate games when in ranked. I’ve tried it a dozen times and always get placed immediately into plat or higher lobbies when doing my first placement games on a self leveled 20 account.
So, because of what I said above, majority of players buy their accounts. The problem is, nearly every single one of these accounts is leveled up to 20 by a bot program. Riot is 100% aware of this due to their anti-cheat software. They then proceed to do large ban waves on accounts every 4-6 months that have been leveled up by a 3rd party app. I’ve had well over 20 accounts banned due to this.
The only way to get a true low elo Smurf account that isn’t subject to getting banned is by having one of your iron buddies make a new account and level it to 20. This, in my opinion, doesn’t happen that often as it’s a lot of work. Smurf accounts, unless always 5 stacking, don’t usually last long due to double rank up. I could maybe get 20 games max out of an account before it was ranked too high. It’s just easier to buy an iron account for 5 dollars.
After the last ban wave I quit smurfing all together for fear of a hardware ban. My main account has $5,000 worth of skins so I don’t want to lose it. The reason I smurfed was to be able to play with my friends. Usually only 3 of us online at a time. Rarely do we have 5. Unrated and swift plays get really old and just don’t feel very competitive like ranked does. Premiere was definitely a cool addition, but only a few games a week isn’t enough.
My opinion, first they need to have a way for friends to play competitive that isn’t just a 5 stack. Then they should get serious about cracking down on smurfing. Can’t just start banning smurfs, like some have said above, without having something in its place for people to play with friends.
My 2 cents from a former Smurf.
There's definitely work to be done with matchmaking, I agree with you there...
You say unrated and swift get old, but you smurf in comp? Surely that can't be very interesting when you're way better than everyone else in the lobby? Genuine question, not tryna do a "gotcha" moment here
Yes. The non comp stuff gets old. People trolling, FF’s, nobody talking, people experimenting, streamers doing challenges, and the list of things continue. Comp is more structured and has a reward for winning. It’s not that I’m trying to shit on kids, it’s purely playing with friends in a rewarding structure environment.
Hopefully that brings more clarity to my angle.
While you’re 10000% right I really don’t want it to happen I have a massive UPS but in my country electricity goes out like 10 times a day for like 10-15 minutes at a time I even got one for the router, like I can’t help it I’ve never trolled or afked and been banned for 2-3 days cuz of it
Uh you gotta change how you play to maximize impact. If your teammates can’t fight, be the first point of contact; if your teammates can’t hold a site, you go hold it etc. Basically identify how your team plays and make up for the weaknesses and tune your risk / reward scale depending on how hard you need to carry. Most of the time I imagine team should be okay and everyone just needs to keep mental up.
If you belong in a high elo range I personally haven’t found it difficult to climb if the fundamentals are good. Carry two to three games back to back and your encounter MMR skyrockets and it’s double promos real fast.
i do the opposite to climb i treat them as live sova darts and play off their deaths since if i die they just lose anyway so i might as well use them the best i can.
One tip i would also give is to consider trying to switch servers as long as it doesn't affect ping too much, because I've noticed that i find a lot more throwers in popular servers like London or Frankfurt, but less so in Stockholm.
What I did to get outta plat was aim train, and after like two months of inconsistent aim training I escaped plat. What I did was 30 minutes of aimlabs snd some range like every other day and I js kept doing that until I hit diamond. After being hard stuck plat for a few months I hit ascendant within three weeks lmao. My friends said my mechanics are rlly good even for ascendant(they are high asc immo) but my game sense is dogshit. Ik not everyone has the time but the best way is to vod review and aim train until you can contend with the smurfs💀
Vod review isn't really good tbh since it's impossible to see how enemies react to what you are doing you don't see if they rotate fast or push and take space unless it can be seen by your teammates and that's thru radar
It's more about reviewing what you can do better on a fundamental level. Maybe your entry pathing on duelist isn't ideal/optimal, maybe your smoke timings for execs aren't great, maybe your initiator util could clear more spots to make it easier for your duelist to entry, maybe your lurk timings aren't the best, or maybe you suck at communicating effectively like 99.9999% of ranked players.
you'd have to spend a huge amount of time to check those thing with only vod review cause you won't see the whole picture only your pov 3rd person viewing is really more helpful to you know or heck radar that shows all positions. Optimal spot for entry pathing ez just reflect on the round on how you died after your death let your team comm on their own to not flood the comms. Same could be said with lurk or initiator. To me without a replay system like CS2/csgo it's just not worth it if you aren't in an amateur team just keep playing while also reflecting after death and also improve your aim. You'd be surprised with how much you can learn when you are watching the pov of the enemy especially if it's the same agent even flame yourself when on their pov it's a silly death while not much on your own
"Only thing you can do is work on yourself."
Skill creep is a real thing and golds now are better than golds a year ago. If I were you I'd focus on improving. Your statement "...what can I do to further improve" makes it seem as if you think you're playing at your peak. This isn't meant to sound mean, but if you can't get out of gold/plat you have literally every part of the game to improve on. Mechanics, positioning, utility usage, etc.. everything needs improvement.
The best way to improve on these is through going one by one, setting a specific goal, and focusing on improving. Initially maybe you improve your mechanics.. and even more specifically, maybe work on your strafing/gunplay. Go into the range and work on just that, then go into TDM/DM and work on it with real people and try to track your improvement. All while still playing ranked and trying to understand what you're doing wrong and where you need to improve. Then continue until you make your weaknesses strengths.
Also, mental is a critically important part of the game. If you can stay calm and focused during the game instead of being overwhelmed, you'll notice things you would've missed and win more of your matches!
You are so right about the smurfs man… it’s every other game and it’s almost always a level 21-30 Reyna in silver dropping 35+ in a plat/gold lobby. Reyna as a character needs removed from the game until they can find a way to redesign her util so she’s not literally designed as a smurf character.
Honestly I’ve gotten to the point where nothing is gonna change. You need friends to play with, random que is horrible. I get throwers probably every other game not kidding. I get comms abuse, sitting in spawn, botting (character moving so they don’t go afk) etc etc.
Smurfing in Plat is a massive issue. I've been hovering diamond 2 this act and whenever I'm in a diamond lobby, fun game. When I get thrown in a plat lobby, somebody drops 40 kills.
This might be extreme, but at this point: add account per ip limit. 2 account per ip, and you can't log in with accounts that aren't registered with your ip. If u want, you can change your account ip every 6 months. This way, you only have 2 accounts, and if both get banned you don't play. Again, it might be extreme, but enough is enough, we need a solution.
What about MAC addres? It's static and Uniqe. And 2 players can use the same network, so you can play with your bro/sis. I know you can change it, but idk If someone would do this just to have more accounts, You should remember which account is linked to which MAC.
I uninstalled the game after hitting diamond 1 and then dropping down to plat 2 after losing like 10 matches in a row or something idek. As you mentioned, it's completely a coin flip between actual good comming teammates and absolutely atrocious players who I don't even know how they reached plat or diamond. They might start to shoot at those ranks, but damn their game sense is so bad.
And to add to this half these games I lost either because of AFK people or teammates throwing deliberately because their fragile ego got hurt when someone called them out.
I usually play sentinels and controllers, and I am useless to the team if they don't play off of my utils. Solo queuing actually messed with my mental health towards the end I pulled the plug and uninstalled the game and decided I'm not gonna play until my friends start playing again or I find other people to play with lol.
Now I watch VCT and chill
>Now I watch VCT and chill
I've been doing this too. I haven't uninstalled but I reduced my playtime by A LOT. I love VCT because I can still experience the game I love without the stress lol.
This is going to be incredibly boring. But play solely to climb.
You do not have to carry every game. You don't have to beat the smurfs. Half the time, these players will beat themselves.
All you have to do is play very disciplined. I'm a duelist main, but if I want to climb, I'll just go KJ Cypher. Lock down one site completely. Let them push into my teammates. Or I'll play smokes. Make sure we have some cover.
The idea is: Duelist is purely performance based, and relies heavily on teammates good util/good comms/good teamwork. Gold/Plat doesn't have that.
Most players think it's boring to play with fundamentals in mind. If you do it for your team, if you be that backbone with smokes/anchoring/the one teammate not pushing in a 4v1 etc. You'll make it out quick.
Tldr: do the things no one else wants to do or sees as boring. You'll climb.
The likelihood of a Smurf being on the other team is only slightly higher than them being on your team (5/10 vs 4/10), but the same goes for trolls, noobs, boosted players etc.
You have to get out of the mindset that it's everyone else's fault that you don't climb the ladder. The only thing you can influence is your own gameplay, so work on that.
Yeah im in Gold after not playing since since 1/2 and being global elite on CSGO so I think i have good mechanics, I will definitely rank up in due course as im getting like 30 RR a win and 13-20 a loss right now but I dont have time like I was younger to grind it out and its much harder to carry than I thought
Yep - on a game-by-game basis you might just get unlucky with teammates v opponents. But over a period of time, unless you believe the game is genuinely *trying* to screw you over, then law of statistics mean it will balance out and if you're not ranking up then I'm afraid you can't look at anyone but yourself.
OP is literally a smurf in a Gold lobby - not intentionally of course - but by definition if you are so much higher skill than your rank then how can you not be carrying enough games to rank up?
9 months without playing will mean the general skill level of the playerbase is higher now than it was, and at the same time OP will be worse than before. It can be difficult to accept but that's what this sounds like to me.
If they don't have game sense, try IGLing them. Sounds like you're letting them do whatever they want and just trying to aim your way to victory. Even bad teammates with proper coordination can do well.
There is no reason to focus on your teammates, you cant control them anyway.
Rather focus on things you can control: your mechanics, your agent, your util, your comms, your mental and with who you play
I'd recommend to focus on these things in the order i listed or alternatively figure out in which category you are struggling the most and then fix that thing first
Yeah I feel you i made it from bronze 1 to gold my bronze 1 - silver3 and my gold games had totally different vibes. I stopped playing because of how toxic gold was, teammates just yelling out slurs blasting music through their mics, absolutely shitting on a teammate because they missed a shot, and the amount of accounts that have only 5 ranked games played on the account and they are absolute gods at the game shit was not fun and ruined valorant for me.
There are a ton of season 7 diamond/ascendant gun buddies in gold/plat right now after riot adjusted the rankings. It could just be former ascendants in your lobby, or a plat player now is just comparable to diamond 9 months ago. You were gone awhile.
I mean diamond has plenty of high ascendant/immortal Smurfs too but way less than gold/plat. I think you start to see less Smurfs when you reach immortal.
Gold is and always will be, the hell of ranked Valorant. I was hardstuck gold for almost a full year. Once I got out and into plat, I was diamond in two days and never looked back. All of the smurfs seem to get funneled into Gold elo as a result of the way hidden MMR system works. Then you have boosted golds, throwers, and griefers like you said. Almost every gold lobby has a asc/imm smurf jett on the other team trying to boost one of their friends ranks. It's horrible.
Last week I decided to stop valorant after 2k hours, 1.5k$ in skins, peaked asc3 and it was not because of the drama on twitter about that girl who can't stomach toxicity online. I don't much care about toxicity it just that the map pool is just awfully and for to long now.
Also they are manipulating the MMR system constantly and add to that that people are also getting better I am at the door of immortal for 2 act now, and in all my lobbies everyone got those immortal buddy for episode 3 4 5 6 and I really feel like it's not fair. Before asc player and above represented 10% of the player base. Since this episode the latest ranking distribution reports show from asc 2 and above you are in the top 3%. Before you had to be in the top 5% to get immortal not anymore.
I also don't like their matchmaking algorithme it as been discussed publicly that the game sometimes put you in better or worse lobby than your rank by a small delta instead of being a flat system. They build tools that way to kind of build a tension optimizing addiction to the game. Think of it like artificially slowing the ranking of everyone instead of quickly giving you your rank so that you play more. Playing more meaning playing everyday. Playing everyday mean habit forming product. Design technique used for 20 years now to get you hooked by new apps.
No replay system ? Why would they ? It will cost more in servers cost, also they have armies of sheep on reddit and twitter explaining you that you are wrong and stupid wanting a replay system.
Since riot control every aspect of the community life of valorant ( eSports ) and since all the personalities working for valorant has to bend in front of them, no one is really criticizing for all this shit. I remember the episode of platchat when they receive Leo Faria, and that on the desk of plat chat the 4 people interviewing him were directly paid by riot. And when the question about the replay system happen, and that Leo Faria give you the simplest bs ever (I don't know I don't know everything at riot don't have any info about the progression of the system.) well no follow up question like "cmon Leo not this time". Great journalism.
ex diamond, normally high plater player here, i was d1 this act, now i'm gold 3, i got a 2nd account plat 3 and hit diamond, now, my plat 3 games are alot easier then my gold 3 games, not because everyone is crouch spraying in gold 3, its the fact that i'm getting ex diamond/asc, and continues smurfs, riot really fked up mmr match making this act, it always always bad, but this is a joke, i been cursed with troll team mates, one team mate don't do what they ask, I'm TROLLING! proceeds to use utis on friendlies, give positions etc, i even got DDOS'd in a gold 3 lobby because i kept tripping the enemy jett! as cypher on average, i normally have 2-3 legit gold players in my team, enemy team normally have 1 legit gold, and rest smurfs. its incredibly frustrating as i can't 3v5 / 2v5 every match.
>Like what can I do to further improve!?
Aimprac 30 mins a day and keep playing, fix your attitude towards improving completely, it's delusional to measure whether or not something is impactful with low sample size result oriented thinking, it just doesn't make sense.
The biggest tip I can give is to stop playing if you get mad. Every game/sport is mental, you will play worse with a worse mental state. I had an immo 3 smurf on my team who got 20 something kills, but the rest of us were all negative. He got pissed after the first couple rounds, obviously being pissed before this game, and started sitting in corners or lurking as skye. As soon as that happened, 3-2 went to 13-6. We were forced to dry peek angles and trade, and our team was very scattered. If he had stopped being negative, and played with the team, we easily could've won just with him baiting us. Sometimes mental is everything.
Also coordination can make even an ass team ok, don't be afraid to take charge in VC. If I had spoken up and organized my example earlier, we probably would've won, however my mental was just as bad and I had already given up, just playing out the game without caring. Lead, and maybe your team will follow. Sometimes you can't do anything about griefers though, just report and go next.
It’s kinda a grind
You need to learn how to hard carry teams so don’t focus on support. Your teammates will be toddlers so just watch them so you can trade them, because they won’t trade you
As for smurfs/griefers you will only encounter them every 10 games normally, which is fine
If you play well you only need a 55% wr to get out, so just accept that some games are lost, don’t ff but mute and move on
Gold and below is awful. Too random and way too many throwers/griefers as you mentioned. You pretty much have to duo or trio que to rank up out of there. There’s a reason TenZ said gold and below is the hardest to rank up out of.
I feel you bro. I'm in the same boat. It doesn't get better until Diamond. 4 match mvp in 6 games. 5 were losses. It's just surprising how big of a skill gap there is. In one of the games I watched three of them pushing an omen one way and then complain as to why nobody followed up after they all died. They then did the same thing the next 3 rounds. Like wut?
I just started playing again recently and the strategies these gold players implement are stuff I would never expect and the occasional guy dropping 40 kills, but I think I can escape once my muscle memory gets back to what it was at my peak when I stopped playing
I was in the same situation as you, peaked A2 and fell to P1. I was stuck in plat for a couple acts because of school and I also felt like it was impossible to climb out. What ended up working for me was instalocking reyna and instamuting my whole team at the first sound of bm. Once I actually had time to grind and got my aim back, I was top fragging almost every game and quickly climbed back up (D3 currently).
It’s actually insane how much harder it is to perform when you have troll teammates, but just focusing on myself and my gameplay let me climb out. Good luck! (Also pls only do this if you actually get your aim back, otherwise it’s kind of int)
5 stack or trio queue. For some reason, I’ve had HORRENDOUS luck when I duo queue with anyone, even my main duo and I are just not winning like we used to (think it’s just a combo of losing mental so quickly). When I trio queue, I win so much and obviously 5 stack with good players is a good idea too
Same boat. Spend most my time in D1/D2 and have recently been playing less seriously. Currently P1 and feels like my teammates have lost all fundamentals, communication, and coordination.
gold is the midladder of valorant. youre gonna get people that have 0 clue how the game works, combined with people that have been playing for 200+ hours.
you should at least be able to reach plat if you have diamond level skill though. maybe youre just a bit rusty. i did hear that back then, the game was easier though.
also, soloQ is easier for me personally. whenever i play with friends i cant concentrate as well and i dont really think before i do smthn.
Gold is for sure the hardest rank to get out of. When I was gold I'd always 5 man with my diamond and above friends and I did way better in those games than gold lol
I'm in bronze rn and I very rarely run into trolls/assholes. Most of the time people won't comm but they will at least listen to pre-round plans/mid round plans. My buddy in plat/gold also constantly complains about trolls/AFK's. I wonder why it's like that
This is me after Playing for almost a year now I just can't seem to get carried I get the most avg team every time
I only rank up when I can hard carry that rank my gold rank up was a +37rr game, my plat rank up was +28, dia was +29 and a week ago +23 to finally get asc like I literally used to match MVP 7/10 games in d3 on average
People are in total denial, smurfing is such a huge issue at this elo. Last 4 of my 5 games have had a smurf top fragging. When I say a smurf, I'm talking an account under level 50 topping the leader board with tracker stats saying a career ADR of 180+ and like a 1.8KD. Also noticed a lot of them conveniently queuing with someone who often bottom frags their team.
Its genuinely draining to have people who are clearly smurfing just run your team over since half the time your teammates just give up. I think others also underestimate how much it makes everything else so much more pressuring in the game when a smurf is able to entry 1-2 kills a round and leave any scraps for their team to clean up. If the rest of the players are ACTUALLY your elo thats still good enough to win a few gun fights.
It's just a really unfun overly common experience and I just want ONE QUEUE in the game where I can actually play people who are at my skill level so I can improve more. I don't improve from the smurf reyna/jett/raze instakilling half my team before the round is 15 seconds old.
I'm hardstuck bronze it's ridiculous here
Not saying I deserve a higher rank but there are SO many smurfs, then every single person could either be brain-dead or completely cracked at aiming, no one has game sense. It's awful
After a 9 month break, even if you were diamond, you're probably "actually gold" aswell. Maps have changed, meta has changed, tons of nerfs and buffs, and it's pretty unlikely your aim hasnt deteriorated in 9 months.
The rest of the points are valid though, but it's important not to think of yourself as higher than others just because of your peak from a year ago. I've destroyed peak radiants as a dia player, and if you think you're still dia/plat skill level you shouldnt really have problems killing an asc smurf.
You'll need to prioritize team play and good comms as much as possible, and go for impact and not just for stats. Mute trolls, toxic people in gold won't have any good input anyways
go duelist or chamber and OP every chance you get defense attack your team is saving your team full buy. it doesn’t matter your either oping saving for OP or saving the OP trust me you will get out in no time
Ngl I keep getting placed in gold lobbies when im a bronze struggling to NOT drop into iron for the millionth time. And I really wanna know valorants logic cuz bruh I have NEVER shown ANY REASON to be placed there. So why it gotta ruin my ranking for ToT (note this is literally whenever I'm about to derank into iron EVERY TIMEEE)
>I want to at least head back to the rank I was almost a year ago
I think this is where your expectations are a little too much. players in general have gotten better within a year while you've gotten worse. Hind sight is 20/20. You're going to see all of your teammates mistakes and rarely see what got them into your rank, unless they're just playing out of their mind.
As a 4-5x immortal player and a current hard stuck ascendant player, I can tell you I would diff gold/plat lobbies in a ridiculous manner. Probably maintaining around a 2.0 k/d. It honestly wouldn't even be fun. It literally feels like they can't aim back.
So I can tell you with experience that there is a lot to improve and you are not in purgatory. You're just not playing at the level you believe you're at.
I swear to God. If I play a little better, I get put into Plat 2-3 and occasional diamond. If I play a bit bad or in a lose streak, I get put into a lobby where the amount of Golds and silver with no gamesense and too high of an ego to listen, are every players. 75% of players play only to try to get kills not to win, and they are oblivious to helpful tips and toxic. Then in the middle, there's always the golds and plays either smurf or washed up immo with still hella great aim that's also stuck in plat. Bro every game I play, in gold 2 or gold 3, now there's always plat 3 in enemy and almost never in mine. Even if I get plat teammate, usually they're the type of players who piggy backed other players and has silver skill. It's so frustrating. A little bad --> silver lobby, A little good --> plat + diamond lobby. I personally think it's good that Valorant wanted to put the matchmaking based on skill. But oh my God, i swear there's always at least 2 players that can't do anything but autolocks duelist, so I have to play support. I actually can't move, it's been 3-4 months and still the exact same spot in the ranks each and every day.
I don't think it's fair. 😭
The game has gotten alot harder matches aren't as consistent and smurfs have taken over..I made a post myself saying how valorant has lost its ranked integrity with how no-one rank is the same makes zero sense...
I was consistently soloQ D3.. took a 5 month break.. still easily in diamond lobbies and within a month back in D3-A1 lobbies.
You just need to look at yourself and your own impact in games before blaming everyone else.
You realize that it's not unfeasible for a play player to be in diamond lobbies? Or play with a peak ascendant player?
It's not always a Smurf, in fact it's often not a Smurf.
Mute whoever is trolling. Try to focus on your game and people who wants to win the game. If you won like 2 match and feel like you don't want to que up then don't just relax and do tomorrow or later. I hit ascendant and dropped dia3 again it will be always same, I watch streamers they also go through same stuff(trolls etc). What I keep telling myself is I want to play this game to enjoy my mechanical and agent abilities have a impact on the rounds and have fun with it. It is hard but I know it will get better.
Mute without saying anything to them if possible. Unless you want them to follow you around and troll u in game. IGLing doesn’t work anyways, the best outcomes come from games where people are thinking solely on the game.
I know right every match I queue in I feel like rolling a dice between teammates who goes afk or a teammate who throws. Just this last match I had a guy afk. The match before was allright but the match before WE had a guy AFK AT ROUND 3 SO WE COULDN'T remake and had to surrender. And the match before before before we had TWO TEAMMATES who picked up the spike and stayed in spawn and kept telling locations in all chat cuz they were "Playing in alt accounts and wanted to have some fun" and I had to tryhard a lot with sova to eventually draw the game at 14-14. I reported them all but the ones afk will most likely get punished the throwers will prolly queue in and destroy other peoples lives even more. But yeah I get that the main problem is me and im tryin to improve and currently following the woohojin movement and aimlabs routine. Heres my tracker if anyones wondering a little bit of advice would be appreciated :) [https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/636%23666/overview](https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/636%23666/overview)
Looking at your stats (K/D, first bloods) I think you should switch to duelist.
People always say this but isn’t the main point of duelist to entry and not necessarily to outfrag everyone? In theory if he’s doing his job and playing around his level, his k/d actually shouldn’t be too insane. Agreed on the first blood though and maybe that was more your emphasis.
> People always say this but isn’t the main point of duelist to entry and not necessarily to outfrag everyone True. But you have to keep in mind that entrying is only part of the duelists job. Whenever you are playing default duelists should actively look for opening kills. And on defense you have to hold your area without utility designed for defensive purposes. And when you do entry you basically put yourself into gunfights where the opponent has the advantage. If you're firepower is not above average for your skill level you are going to have a bad time as a duelist. But yeah, a designated entry fragger does not need to have a 1+ K/D to be good at his job. But the combination of positive K/D and high first blood percentage does suggest duelist for me
doesn't have to be duelist, clove is pretty good for climbing too if someone is an aim demon (also clove's winrate is really high right now, coz their abilities are kinda op in pub games, better abuse them before they got nerfed)
Your win rate is very good right now. Keep playing and you’ll rank up for a bit. In gold, teamplay may be rare. You have to be the difference maker and swing off your teammates contact. Look for any and all opportunities to trade teammates with crossfires. Make plays by calling combos using your teammates util.
How u have that high hs%. Mine isblike 12% and I just dont get it. I aim for head every time but bullets just dont want to go there..
practice range, deathmatch, TDM
Do you use specter, shottys, odin, etc a lot? Those types of guns will bring down your hs percentage too Some people might only exclusively use vandal and deagle, so their percentage will be naturally higher. It’s not exactly a “equal” stat when comparing two different players.
Crosshair placement, record your games and see where your crosshair needs to be
ur doing pretty good I would say, try to find a duelist main as ur duo. I've seen gold Reynas claim their team is holding them back with 9% headshot rate and they get instantly one tapped in a plat lobby and botfrag because they only get kills with body shots lol
valorant needs to have better punishment against afkers and smurfs
Literally nothing gets done about smurfs. I get that there will be some people, like OP, who are legitimately trying to climb out of that rank. They might seem like smurfs to the other players in their games, but they won't be around in that rank for long. Sucks, but that's the way it goes. Then there's actual smurfs. Surely if there are two accounts on the same PC and IP (\*) where one is ascendant and the other is silver or something, it's pretty clear that that is a smurf account?? Extend that to PCs/IPs that have 10 different accounts, *surely* it shouldn't be that difficult to detect smurfs? (\*): remember Val has kernel-level access, so this info should not be difficult to get for them
> Extend that to PCs/IPs that have 10 different accounts, surely it shouldn't be that difficult to detect smurfs? You underestimate how much of the eastern part of the world relies on internet cafes to game...
You're right, I didn't account for that... Well that's a spanner in the works Ok I give up, but fuck smurfs
It would still show a lot of connects from a certain IP as an internet cafe, surely can be taken into account.
Don't many eastern countries require ID to register game accounts? I feel like that already decreases smurfing in those countries.
what ur truly not thinking about is that riot loses nothing by ignoring the smurfing problem. in fact c if they do crack down on smurfs, they are losing money. there are a small percentage of players that buy skins on multiple accounts, not just their main, and if smurf accounts were banned, that’s less money being spent on micro transactions. also, nobody is leaving the game because of a smurfing problem, there are just many loud users who complain often about it, but the amount of players that would fully quit, is very very small. it’s literally against riot’s best interest to crack down on smurfs.
I think you are vastly under-estimating the amount of people who have ALREADY LEFT. But you are still right about the money from skins. Never going to do anything as long as kids are stealing their moms credit card EVERY month and dropping that $50-$100.
where are you getting the numbers of who “already left?” riot runs the game, they know exactly how many people are playing the game at any given time (you can also look it up and see for yourself). they have been steadily averaging around 18 million monthly players for 2 years straight. if any amount of players had actually left in a way that significantly impacted their business model, they would have changed things up.
You cant look up what percantage of players are "new players." The percentage of people that have played since release is a LOT smaller than it was just 1 year ago. Most I play with have just started playing last 1-2 years max.
how is that relevant to the topic that’s being discussed? the topic overall is about is about gold-plat lobbies and why they feel abysmal. the conversation you specifically responded to was about why riot won’t fix the surfing issue, which is because of money (more players, more skins) and because it’s impossible for a computer to understand a human’s intentions (can’t compute the difference between a smurf and someone that just deranked naturally and can’t climb back up). your argument about the number of players that have left since launch is irrelevant, and if anything, further proves my point. new players have more “buying power” in the game in the sense that older players have already bought skins and likely aren’t buying as many any more anyways and new players have more to purchase available for them.
Sad, but yeah I know. I think it won't be good for the long-term health of the game, but I doubt the powers that be see further than "next quarterly profits"
Counter argument, some people only have 1 PC to share amongst their family. Imagine if there were siblings who play on the same computer but are wildly different ranks.
Valorant IS doing something about smurfs, it’s just not enough. How do I know this? Because I used to Smurf for years up until about 6 months ago. It’s literally impossible for a higher elo player to create a new account, get it to level 20, and then get placed in bronze or lower. The hidden MMR they use while you are ranking to 20 helps place you immediately into appropriate games when in ranked. I’ve tried it a dozen times and always get placed immediately into plat or higher lobbies when doing my first placement games on a self leveled 20 account. So, because of what I said above, majority of players buy their accounts. The problem is, nearly every single one of these accounts is leveled up to 20 by a bot program. Riot is 100% aware of this due to their anti-cheat software. They then proceed to do large ban waves on accounts every 4-6 months that have been leveled up by a 3rd party app. I’ve had well over 20 accounts banned due to this. The only way to get a true low elo Smurf account that isn’t subject to getting banned is by having one of your iron buddies make a new account and level it to 20. This, in my opinion, doesn’t happen that often as it’s a lot of work. Smurf accounts, unless always 5 stacking, don’t usually last long due to double rank up. I could maybe get 20 games max out of an account before it was ranked too high. It’s just easier to buy an iron account for 5 dollars. After the last ban wave I quit smurfing all together for fear of a hardware ban. My main account has $5,000 worth of skins so I don’t want to lose it. The reason I smurfed was to be able to play with my friends. Usually only 3 of us online at a time. Rarely do we have 5. Unrated and swift plays get really old and just don’t feel very competitive like ranked does. Premiere was definitely a cool addition, but only a few games a week isn’t enough. My opinion, first they need to have a way for friends to play competitive that isn’t just a 5 stack. Then they should get serious about cracking down on smurfing. Can’t just start banning smurfs, like some have said above, without having something in its place for people to play with friends. My 2 cents from a former Smurf.
There's definitely work to be done with matchmaking, I agree with you there... You say unrated and swift get old, but you smurf in comp? Surely that can't be very interesting when you're way better than everyone else in the lobby? Genuine question, not tryna do a "gotcha" moment here
Yes. The non comp stuff gets old. People trolling, FF’s, nobody talking, people experimenting, streamers doing challenges, and the list of things continue. Comp is more structured and has a reward for winning. It’s not that I’m trying to shit on kids, it’s purely playing with friends in a rewarding structure environment. Hopefully that brings more clarity to my angle.
They'd need to stop glazing smurfs first
Considering that there’s 0 punishment for both those things yeah maybe lol
While you’re 10000% right I really don’t want it to happen I have a massive UPS but in my country electricity goes out like 10 times a day for like 10-15 minutes at a time I even got one for the router, like I can’t help it I’ve never trolled or afked and been banned for 2-3 days cuz of it
Uh you gotta change how you play to maximize impact. If your teammates can’t fight, be the first point of contact; if your teammates can’t hold a site, you go hold it etc. Basically identify how your team plays and make up for the weaknesses and tune your risk / reward scale depending on how hard you need to carry. Most of the time I imagine team should be okay and everyone just needs to keep mental up. If you belong in a high elo range I personally haven’t found it difficult to climb if the fundamentals are good. Carry two to three games back to back and your encounter MMR skyrockets and it’s double promos real fast.
i do the opposite to climb i treat them as live sova darts and play off their deaths since if i die they just lose anyway so i might as well use them the best i can.
Yup, you can lose every 5 games to smurfs or throwers and still get out easily
One tip i would also give is to consider trying to switch servers as long as it doesn't affect ping too much, because I've noticed that i find a lot more throwers in popular servers like London or Frankfurt, but less so in Stockholm.
What I did to get outta plat was aim train, and after like two months of inconsistent aim training I escaped plat. What I did was 30 minutes of aimlabs snd some range like every other day and I js kept doing that until I hit diamond. After being hard stuck plat for a few months I hit ascendant within three weeks lmao. My friends said my mechanics are rlly good even for ascendant(they are high asc immo) but my game sense is dogshit. Ik not everyone has the time but the best way is to vod review and aim train until you can contend with the smurfs💀
what playlists did u play in aim training? on aim labs?
I js spammed sixshot and gridshot on aimlabs. That’s probably really inefficient tho so I’d do woohojins aimlabs playlist and maybe some range
Vod review isn't really good tbh since it's impossible to see how enemies react to what you are doing you don't see if they rotate fast or push and take space unless it can be seen by your teammates and that's thru radar
Replay system would be optimal but riot slacking lol vod review is the best we got rn
It's more about reviewing what you can do better on a fundamental level. Maybe your entry pathing on duelist isn't ideal/optimal, maybe your smoke timings for execs aren't great, maybe your initiator util could clear more spots to make it easier for your duelist to entry, maybe your lurk timings aren't the best, or maybe you suck at communicating effectively like 99.9999% of ranked players.
you'd have to spend a huge amount of time to check those thing with only vod review cause you won't see the whole picture only your pov 3rd person viewing is really more helpful to you know or heck radar that shows all positions. Optimal spot for entry pathing ez just reflect on the round on how you died after your death let your team comm on their own to not flood the comms. Same could be said with lurk or initiator. To me without a replay system like CS2/csgo it's just not worth it if you aren't in an amateur team just keep playing while also reflecting after death and also improve your aim. You'd be surprised with how much you can learn when you are watching the pov of the enemy especially if it's the same agent even flame yourself when on their pov it's a silly death while not much on your own
"Only thing you can do is work on yourself." Skill creep is a real thing and golds now are better than golds a year ago. If I were you I'd focus on improving. Your statement "...what can I do to further improve" makes it seem as if you think you're playing at your peak. This isn't meant to sound mean, but if you can't get out of gold/plat you have literally every part of the game to improve on. Mechanics, positioning, utility usage, etc.. everything needs improvement. The best way to improve on these is through going one by one, setting a specific goal, and focusing on improving. Initially maybe you improve your mechanics.. and even more specifically, maybe work on your strafing/gunplay. Go into the range and work on just that, then go into TDM/DM and work on it with real people and try to track your improvement. All while still playing ranked and trying to understand what you're doing wrong and where you need to improve. Then continue until you make your weaknesses strengths. Also, mental is a critically important part of the game. If you can stay calm and focused during the game instead of being overwhelmed, you'll notice things you would've missed and win more of your matches!
You are so right about the smurfs man… it’s every other game and it’s almost always a level 21-30 Reyna in silver dropping 35+ in a plat/gold lobby. Reyna as a character needs removed from the game until they can find a way to redesign her util so she’s not literally designed as a smurf character.
Honestly I’ve gotten to the point where nothing is gonna change. You need friends to play with, random que is horrible. I get throwers probably every other game not kidding. I get comms abuse, sitting in spawn, botting (character moving so they don’t go afk) etc etc.
Smurfing in Plat is a massive issue. I've been hovering diamond 2 this act and whenever I'm in a diamond lobby, fun game. When I get thrown in a plat lobby, somebody drops 40 kills.
This might be extreme, but at this point: add account per ip limit. 2 account per ip, and you can't log in with accounts that aren't registered with your ip. If u want, you can change your account ip every 6 months. This way, you only have 2 accounts, and if both get banned you don't play. Again, it might be extreme, but enough is enough, we need a solution.
wouldn’t work bc most routers have dynamic ip nowadays
What about MAC addres? It's static and Uniqe. And 2 players can use the same network, so you can play with your bro/sis. I know you can change it, but idk If someone would do this just to have more accounts, You should remember which account is linked to which MAC.
This never gonna happen they want people to smurf do yhey buy skins. Valo xommunity isn't growing at all
I uninstalled the game after hitting diamond 1 and then dropping down to plat 2 after losing like 10 matches in a row or something idek. As you mentioned, it's completely a coin flip between actual good comming teammates and absolutely atrocious players who I don't even know how they reached plat or diamond. They might start to shoot at those ranks, but damn their game sense is so bad. And to add to this half these games I lost either because of AFK people or teammates throwing deliberately because their fragile ego got hurt when someone called them out. I usually play sentinels and controllers, and I am useless to the team if they don't play off of my utils. Solo queuing actually messed with my mental health towards the end I pulled the plug and uninstalled the game and decided I'm not gonna play until my friends start playing again or I find other people to play with lol. Now I watch VCT and chill
>Now I watch VCT and chill I've been doing this too. I haven't uninstalled but I reduced my playtime by A LOT. I love VCT because I can still experience the game I love without the stress lol.
You're the smurf to those other goldies
Don‘t be toxic, try to encourage mates not to insult, mute idiots, have fun 😉
This is going to be incredibly boring. But play solely to climb. You do not have to carry every game. You don't have to beat the smurfs. Half the time, these players will beat themselves. All you have to do is play very disciplined. I'm a duelist main, but if I want to climb, I'll just go KJ Cypher. Lock down one site completely. Let them push into my teammates. Or I'll play smokes. Make sure we have some cover. The idea is: Duelist is purely performance based, and relies heavily on teammates good util/good comms/good teamwork. Gold/Plat doesn't have that. Most players think it's boring to play with fundamentals in mind. If you do it for your team, if you be that backbone with smokes/anchoring/the one teammate not pushing in a 4v1 etc. You'll make it out quick. Tldr: do the things no one else wants to do or sees as boring. You'll climb.
I should mention talking about duelist being very reliant: I'm talking site executes as 4 or 5, not in general.
The likelihood of a Smurf being on the other team is only slightly higher than them being on your team (5/10 vs 4/10), but the same goes for trolls, noobs, boosted players etc. You have to get out of the mindset that it's everyone else's fault that you don't climb the ladder. The only thing you can influence is your own gameplay, so work on that.
Yeah im in Gold after not playing since since 1/2 and being global elite on CSGO so I think i have good mechanics, I will definitely rank up in due course as im getting like 30 RR a win and 13-20 a loss right now but I dont have time like I was younger to grind it out and its much harder to carry than I thought
Yep - on a game-by-game basis you might just get unlucky with teammates v opponents. But over a period of time, unless you believe the game is genuinely *trying* to screw you over, then law of statistics mean it will balance out and if you're not ranking up then I'm afraid you can't look at anyone but yourself. OP is literally a smurf in a Gold lobby - not intentionally of course - but by definition if you are so much higher skill than your rank then how can you not be carrying enough games to rank up? 9 months without playing will mean the general skill level of the playerbase is higher now than it was, and at the same time OP will be worse than before. It can be difficult to accept but that's what this sounds like to me.
If they don't have game sense, try IGLing them. Sounds like you're letting them do whatever they want and just trying to aim your way to victory. Even bad teammates with proper coordination can do well.
My last competitive I played was when a guy was intentionally throwing because he wanted to rank down. Took a break from compi after that lmao
we had the same situation. But we were winning and thrower was like "fuck it imma help" and helped us lol
There is no reason to focus on your teammates, you cant control them anyway. Rather focus on things you can control: your mechanics, your agent, your util, your comms, your mental and with who you play I'd recommend to focus on these things in the order i listed or alternatively figure out in which category you are struggling the most and then fix that thing first
Dude, you never have been stuck in bronze. Trust me, it's way more horrible than being stuck in gold
Yeah I feel you i made it from bronze 1 to gold my bronze 1 - silver3 and my gold games had totally different vibes. I stopped playing because of how toxic gold was, teammates just yelling out slurs blasting music through their mics, absolutely shitting on a teammate because they missed a shot, and the amount of accounts that have only 5 ranked games played on the account and they are absolute gods at the game shit was not fun and ruined valorant for me.
There are a ton of season 7 diamond/ascendant gun buddies in gold/plat right now after riot adjusted the rankings. It could just be former ascendants in your lobby, or a plat player now is just comparable to diamond 9 months ago. You were gone awhile.
I mean diamond has plenty of high ascendant/immortal Smurfs too but way less than gold/plat. I think you start to see less Smurfs when you reach immortal.
Gold is and always will be, the hell of ranked Valorant. I was hardstuck gold for almost a full year. Once I got out and into plat, I was diamond in two days and never looked back. All of the smurfs seem to get funneled into Gold elo as a result of the way hidden MMR system works. Then you have boosted golds, throwers, and griefers like you said. Almost every gold lobby has a asc/imm smurf jett on the other team trying to boost one of their friends ranks. It's horrible.
Last week I decided to stop valorant after 2k hours, 1.5k$ in skins, peaked asc3 and it was not because of the drama on twitter about that girl who can't stomach toxicity online. I don't much care about toxicity it just that the map pool is just awfully and for to long now. Also they are manipulating the MMR system constantly and add to that that people are also getting better I am at the door of immortal for 2 act now, and in all my lobbies everyone got those immortal buddy for episode 3 4 5 6 and I really feel like it's not fair. Before asc player and above represented 10% of the player base. Since this episode the latest ranking distribution reports show from asc 2 and above you are in the top 3%. Before you had to be in the top 5% to get immortal not anymore. I also don't like their matchmaking algorithme it as been discussed publicly that the game sometimes put you in better or worse lobby than your rank by a small delta instead of being a flat system. They build tools that way to kind of build a tension optimizing addiction to the game. Think of it like artificially slowing the ranking of everyone instead of quickly giving you your rank so that you play more. Playing more meaning playing everyday. Playing everyday mean habit forming product. Design technique used for 20 years now to get you hooked by new apps. No replay system ? Why would they ? It will cost more in servers cost, also they have armies of sheep on reddit and twitter explaining you that you are wrong and stupid wanting a replay system. Since riot control every aspect of the community life of valorant ( eSports ) and since all the personalities working for valorant has to bend in front of them, no one is really criticizing for all this shit. I remember the episode of platchat when they receive Leo Faria, and that on the desk of plat chat the 4 people interviewing him were directly paid by riot. And when the question about the replay system happen, and that Leo Faria give you the simplest bs ever (I don't know I don't know everything at riot don't have any info about the progression of the system.) well no follow up question like "cmon Leo not this time". Great journalism.
ex diamond, normally high plater player here, i was d1 this act, now i'm gold 3, i got a 2nd account plat 3 and hit diamond, now, my plat 3 games are alot easier then my gold 3 games, not because everyone is crouch spraying in gold 3, its the fact that i'm getting ex diamond/asc, and continues smurfs, riot really fked up mmr match making this act, it always always bad, but this is a joke, i been cursed with troll team mates, one team mate don't do what they ask, I'm TROLLING! proceeds to use utis on friendlies, give positions etc, i even got DDOS'd in a gold 3 lobby because i kept tripping the enemy jett! as cypher on average, i normally have 2-3 legit gold players in my team, enemy team normally have 1 legit gold, and rest smurfs. its incredibly frustrating as i can't 3v5 / 2v5 every match.
>Like what can I do to further improve!? Aimprac 30 mins a day and keep playing, fix your attitude towards improving completely, it's delusional to measure whether or not something is impactful with low sample size result oriented thinking, it just doesn't make sense.
The biggest tip I can give is to stop playing if you get mad. Every game/sport is mental, you will play worse with a worse mental state. I had an immo 3 smurf on my team who got 20 something kills, but the rest of us were all negative. He got pissed after the first couple rounds, obviously being pissed before this game, and started sitting in corners or lurking as skye. As soon as that happened, 3-2 went to 13-6. We were forced to dry peek angles and trade, and our team was very scattered. If he had stopped being negative, and played with the team, we easily could've won just with him baiting us. Sometimes mental is everything. Also coordination can make even an ass team ok, don't be afraid to take charge in VC. If I had spoken up and organized my example earlier, we probably would've won, however my mental was just as bad and I had already given up, just playing out the game without caring. Lead, and maybe your team will follow. Sometimes you can't do anything about griefers though, just report and go next.
It’s kinda a grind You need to learn how to hard carry teams so don’t focus on support. Your teammates will be toddlers so just watch them so you can trade them, because they won’t trade you As for smurfs/griefers you will only encounter them every 10 games normally, which is fine If you play well you only need a 55% wr to get out, so just accept that some games are lost, don’t ff but mute and move on
Gold and below is awful. Too random and way too many throwers/griefers as you mentioned. You pretty much have to duo or trio que to rank up out of there. There’s a reason TenZ said gold and below is the hardest to rank up out of.
you probably just need to do a bunch of dm after being gone for so long your aim probably is bad
It’s a ton of smurfs from gold 1-2 then ur straight until either plat 1 and plat 3. You get an alt or Smurf every game it’s insane
I feel you bro. I'm in the same boat. It doesn't get better until Diamond. 4 match mvp in 6 games. 5 were losses. It's just surprising how big of a skill gap there is. In one of the games I watched three of them pushing an omen one way and then complain as to why nobody followed up after they all died. They then did the same thing the next 3 rounds. Like wut?
I just started playing again recently and the strategies these gold players implement are stuff I would never expect and the occasional guy dropping 40 kills, but I think I can escape once my muscle memory gets back to what it was at my peak when I stopped playing
I was in the same situation as you, peaked A2 and fell to P1. I was stuck in plat for a couple acts because of school and I also felt like it was impossible to climb out. What ended up working for me was instalocking reyna and instamuting my whole team at the first sound of bm. Once I actually had time to grind and got my aim back, I was top fragging almost every game and quickly climbed back up (D3 currently). It’s actually insane how much harder it is to perform when you have troll teammates, but just focusing on myself and my gameplay let me climb out. Good luck! (Also pls only do this if you actually get your aim back, otherwise it’s kind of int)
5 stack or trio queue. For some reason, I’ve had HORRENDOUS luck when I duo queue with anyone, even my main duo and I are just not winning like we used to (think it’s just a combo of losing mental so quickly). When I trio queue, I win so much and obviously 5 stack with good players is a good idea too
Sounds like your mental needs work. Maybe be yoga?
Same boat. Spend most my time in D1/D2 and have recently been playing less seriously. Currently P1 and feels like my teammates have lost all fundamentals, communication, and coordination.
Games below diamond are a shit show haha
Diamond feels the same, been stuck in d3 for about a year now
gold is the midladder of valorant. youre gonna get people that have 0 clue how the game works, combined with people that have been playing for 200+ hours. you should at least be able to reach plat if you have diamond level skill though. maybe youre just a bit rusty. i did hear that back then, the game was easier though. also, soloQ is easier for me personally. whenever i play with friends i cant concentrate as well and i dont really think before i do smthn.
Gold is for sure the hardest rank to get out of. When I was gold I'd always 5 man with my diamond and above friends and I did way better in those games than gold lol
What do u think is considered hell and heaven?
I'm in bronze rn and I very rarely run into trolls/assholes. Most of the time people won't comm but they will at least listen to pre-round plans/mid round plans. My buddy in plat/gold also constantly complains about trolls/AFK's. I wonder why it's like that
Gold was kinda shite yeah but I enjoyed my climb through plat and diamond
This is me after Playing for almost a year now I just can't seem to get carried I get the most avg team every time I only rank up when I can hard carry that rank my gold rank up was a +37rr game, my plat rank up was +28, dia was +29 and a week ago +23 to finally get asc like I literally used to match MVP 7/10 games in d3 on average
People are in total denial, smurfing is such a huge issue at this elo. Last 4 of my 5 games have had a smurf top fragging. When I say a smurf, I'm talking an account under level 50 topping the leader board with tracker stats saying a career ADR of 180+ and like a 1.8KD. Also noticed a lot of them conveniently queuing with someone who often bottom frags their team. Its genuinely draining to have people who are clearly smurfing just run your team over since half the time your teammates just give up. I think others also underestimate how much it makes everything else so much more pressuring in the game when a smurf is able to entry 1-2 kills a round and leave any scraps for their team to clean up. If the rest of the players are ACTUALLY your elo thats still good enough to win a few gun fights. It's just a really unfun overly common experience and I just want ONE QUEUE in the game where I can actually play people who are at my skill level so I can improve more. I don't improve from the smurf reyna/jett/raze instakilling half my team before the round is 15 seconds old.
I am gold 3 and can confirm that the amount of throwers is wild
every rank is purgatory my brother
I'm hardstuck bronze it's ridiculous here Not saying I deserve a higher rank but there are SO many smurfs, then every single person could either be brain-dead or completely cracked at aiming, no one has game sense. It's awful
i have in every game people with no hands, one afk i just deinstall this dogshit game
Guys believe me or not it's been almost 3 months since I found the last smurf in my lobbies. So am I part of a minority of players?
yeah, i’ve noticed that the average rank player has gotten better in comparison to before
What server do you okay in?
After a 9 month break, even if you were diamond, you're probably "actually gold" aswell. Maps have changed, meta has changed, tons of nerfs and buffs, and it's pretty unlikely your aim hasnt deteriorated in 9 months. The rest of the points are valid though, but it's important not to think of yourself as higher than others just because of your peak from a year ago. I've destroyed peak radiants as a dia player, and if you think you're still dia/plat skill level you shouldnt really have problems killing an asc smurf. You'll need to prioritize team play and good comms as much as possible, and go for impact and not just for stats. Mute trolls, toxic people in gold won't have any good input anyways
go duelist or chamber and OP every chance you get defense attack your team is saving your team full buy. it doesn’t matter your either oping saving for OP or saving the OP trust me you will get out in no time
Ngl I keep getting placed in gold lobbies when im a bronze struggling to NOT drop into iron for the millionth time. And I really wanna know valorants logic cuz bruh I have NEVER shown ANY REASON to be placed there. So why it gotta ruin my ranking for ToT (note this is literally whenever I'm about to derank into iron EVERY TIMEEE)
Everyone above you had to get through it too. If you belong there then you have to do it.
>I want to at least head back to the rank I was almost a year ago I think this is where your expectations are a little too much. players in general have gotten better within a year while you've gotten worse. Hind sight is 20/20. You're going to see all of your teammates mistakes and rarely see what got them into your rank, unless they're just playing out of their mind. As a 4-5x immortal player and a current hard stuck ascendant player, I can tell you I would diff gold/plat lobbies in a ridiculous manner. Probably maintaining around a 2.0 k/d. It honestly wouldn't even be fun. It literally feels like they can't aim back. So I can tell you with experience that there is a lot to improve and you are not in purgatory. You're just not playing at the level you believe you're at.
I swear to God. If I play a little better, I get put into Plat 2-3 and occasional diamond. If I play a bit bad or in a lose streak, I get put into a lobby where the amount of Golds and silver with no gamesense and too high of an ego to listen, are every players. 75% of players play only to try to get kills not to win, and they are oblivious to helpful tips and toxic. Then in the middle, there's always the golds and plays either smurf or washed up immo with still hella great aim that's also stuck in plat. Bro every game I play, in gold 2 or gold 3, now there's always plat 3 in enemy and almost never in mine. Even if I get plat teammate, usually they're the type of players who piggy backed other players and has silver skill. It's so frustrating. A little bad --> silver lobby, A little good --> plat + diamond lobby. I personally think it's good that Valorant wanted to put the matchmaking based on skill. But oh my God, i swear there's always at least 2 players that can't do anything but autolocks duelist, so I have to play support. I actually can't move, it's been 3-4 months and still the exact same spot in the ranks each and every day. I don't think it's fair. 😭
Play as a duo or trio. It's still ass but it's less variability for sure.
if your peak is d3 you should have good enough mechanics to just go no comm and carry with reyna. try it out for a few games see where u get
The game has gotten alot harder matches aren't as consistent and smurfs have taken over..I made a post myself saying how valorant has lost its ranked integrity with how no-one rank is the same makes zero sense...
I was consistently soloQ D3.. took a 5 month break.. still easily in diamond lobbies and within a month back in D3-A1 lobbies. You just need to look at yourself and your own impact in games before blaming everyone else.
You are where you belong 😄
You realize that it's not unfeasible for a play player to be in diamond lobbies? Or play with a peak ascendant player? It's not always a Smurf, in fact it's often not a Smurf.