Riot likes to complicate competitive systems in their games, and it’s no different in Valorant. However, we have compiled all the essential information about the ranking system in Valorant to help you understand how you can climb even in this game.
Ah, Competitive Modes in games made by Riot – almost all of us use it, we can spend hours in it, but no one knows exactly how it works. So, we have gathered all the essential information about the ranked system in Valorant to help you understand its main principles and, therefore, help you climb more effectively.
How To Unlock Competitive Mode in Valorant?
To unlock Competitive Mode in Valorant, you must reach at least profile level 20.
One Level equals 5000AP (Account Points), so to access ranked play, you must reach 95000AP. The fastest way to do this is to spam Unrated & Spike Rush games. If you play the game for about 3 hours every day, it should take you around a week to get to level 20.
All Valorant Ranks
Once you unlock Competitive Mode, you will have to play five placement matches to determine your initial rank. Just like in most competitive games, your rank determines your current skill level. There is a total of 22 ranks in Valorant:
- Iron 1 – 100% of players reach this
- Iron 2 – 99.9% of players reach this
- Iron 3 – 98.4% of players reach this
- Bronze 1 – 92.9% of players reach this
- Bronze 2 – 87.8% of players reach this
- Bronze 3 – 80.3% of players reach this
- Silver 1 – 73.2% of players reach this
- Silver 2 – 63.9% of players reach this
- Silver 3 – 56.2% of players reach this
- Gold 1 – 48.6% of players reach this
- Gold 2 – 41% of players reach this
- Gold 3 – 34.2% of players reach this
- Platinum 1 – 27.9% of players reach this
- Platinum 2 – 21.9% of players reach this
- Platinum 3 – 17% of players reach this
- Diamond 1 – 12.7% of players reach this
- Diamond 2 – 8.7% of players reach this
- Diamond 3 – 5.9% of players reach this
- Ascendant 1 – 3.9% of players reach this
- Ascendant 2 – 2.3% of players reach this
- Ascendant 3 – 1.3% of players reach this
- Immortal 1 – 0.7% of players reach this
- Immortal 2 – 0.3% of players reach this
- Immortal 3 – 0.1% of players reach this
- Radiant – Top 500 of the server
How To Rank Up?
To get a higher rank from your current one, you will need to collect 100 RR points. And how do you earn RR points? Well, by winning games. You will usually get from 10 to 50 RR points for winning a match in Ranked (Competitive) mode. However, you also lose a similar amount if you lose the game.
We will go into how exactly the RR system works in Valorant later in this article, but in general, you can always see your rank progress by clicking on “Career” in the main menu.
So, to sum up – once that bar located below your rank icon fills up, you will get a higher rank. And it works the other way around, if the bar gets low, you drop a rank. It’s also worth mentioning that you are always informed how many RR you gained or lost right after a match.
Rank Decay
Valorant doesn’t have a rank decay system. However, if you don’t play a single game in Competitive Mode for more than 14 days, your rank won’t appear in your profile. Still, after just one match, you will get it back.
Rank Reset
Your rank will reset with every Valorant Episode, which is basically once every six months. Usually, after your first ranked game in a new Episode, you will be ranked down about 3 – 4 ranks. Riot believes this is an opportunity for players to “prove themselves again”.
MMR & RR Systems
Now that we know the absolute basics of the Competitive Mode, let’s discuss how the MMR and RR systems actually work in Valorant. If you’ve played League of Legends before, we could say that this is the 1:1 equivalent of their MMR and LP system. But for those who haven’t, here’s how it all works in a nutshell:
MMR in Valorant Explained
What if we told you that your rank is not such an accurate indicator of your skill? Yeah, the most significant determinant of your skill level is your MMR (Matchmaking Rating), based on your lifetime performance in Competitive Mode. And funnily enough, you cannot see your exact MMR, that value is hidden. However, if you have a rank lower than Immortal, your MMR is equal to all the other players who also have the same rank tier as you do:
Ranked Fact Friday!
— EvrMoar (@RiotEvrMoar) April 1, 2022
Every rank, up to Immortal, is the same MMR apart. That means a Silver 1 vs. Silver 3 is the same MMR difference as a Plat 1 vs. Plat 3. This is so you always feel the same "skill difference" with opponents based on how many ranks away they are from you!
And how does your MMR value affect your ranked play experience? This is related to the RR system.
RR in Valorant Explained
As we mentioned earlier, after each game, you get or lose RR points, right? So, the value of RR points you get after a match is directly determined by your MMR.
The higher your MMR value, the more RR points you will get if you win, and the less you will drop if you lose. This is actually one of the main reasons why people (including pro players) create new accounts – their poor MMR values make their climb feel like forever, so they prefer to start rebuilding it from scratch to get more RR per game.
Once you understand how Ranked in Valorant works, be sure to check out our guide on how to climb in Valorant!
