Valorant - Episode 5 Ranked Changes

Valorant, shooter game made by Riot Games divides their competitive schedule into Episodes, episodes are then usually divided into three acts lasting around two months each. Acts are smaller time frames with content patches and episodes themselves are not much different from acts, the biggest difference is that with every new episode rank-soft reset occurs and players receive prizes based on their highest achieved rank.

So far there were four Valorant Episodes and twelve acts between them:
Episode 1: IGNITION – lasted from June 2, 2020, to January 12, 2021
Episode 2: FORMATION – lasted from January 12, 2021, to June 22, 2021
Episode 3: REFLECTION – lasted from June 22, 2021, to January 11, 2022
Episode 4: DISRUPTION – lasted from January 11, 2022, to June 21, 2022
Episode 5: DIMENSION

On June 22 Riot released a new, fifth Valorant episode bringing a new map: Pearl, and content but most importantly a whole new competitive rank for players to achieve, the rank itself is designed for players trying to reach the top tiers of the ranked ladder, however, due to changes associated with the introduction of the new rank, all players no matter how far they are on the ranked ladder will be affected.

The newest released rank in Episode 5 will be called Ascendant, its place is between Diamond and Immortal. Ascendant will work just like any other rank besides Radiant and Immortal, it will have three divisions and you will need to earn 100RR to rank up each division, additionally as it is a rank above Platinium, all grouping restrictions will be the same as in diamond – maximum of three ranks difference. 

The introduction of this new rank is nothing surprising after all Riot's ranked system in his both most competitive games – Valorant and League of Legends is very similar, long time ago in League of Legends they released the master tier, and then seasons later grandmaster tier to work as a bridge between diamond and the very top of the ladder league Radiant equivalent, challenger, it smoothed the transition and allowed to split the best aspiring players more evenly. The same thing is currently happening in Valorant, with the introduction of Ascendant rank there is more room for players that are not quite suitable for Radiant or Immortal rank but are visibly better than a majority of diamond players.

Riot themselves weren’t very happy with the state of ranked player base distribution:

“We believe our lower ranks have a few too many of you, especially Bronze and Silver. When we were looking at rank distribution, we realized that if we were to move some of you up and out of those lower ranks, it would overpopulate Platinum and Diamond. So by adding a new rank we can better distribute you across ranks, keep the prestige of high ranks while helping better define the skill level of each rank” – posted by game developers in Episode 5 patch notes.

Perfect rank distribution obviously doesn’t exist and some players will always be slightly higher or lower than they are supposed to be, however, game developers will try to make a system that resembles the Gaussian distribution – a bell curve where the vast majority of playerbase is somewhere in the middle ranks like silver gold and platinum and only a selected few approach the very top, the same goes for the very bottom of the ladder, the goal is to keep ranks like iron and bronze to players truly deserving the reverse 1%.

With the introduction of the new rank, players that were below Ascendant level will have an easier time climbing the ladder because the curve itself was smoothened due to the brand new region that players can occupy. On the other hand, if you are one of the best Valorant players, you will have a harder time reaching the top tier ranks – immortal or Radiant due to the MMR threshold for both being increased, you will have to get through three divisions of Ascendant rank first, after all, Riot stated that they want to make the very top ranks thinner:

“To align with our expectations of what it means to be in the highest ranks of VALORANT, Immortal+ players will find it harder to climb back to their previous episode rank. This means Immortal will also have a smaller leaderboard population in all regions.”

“Ranked restrictions for Solo, Duo, and Team will start at Immortal 1 instead of diamond 3”
“The highest possible placement rank got increased to Ascendant 1 instead of diamond 1”
“RR penalty for a stack of 5 players will start at Immortal 1 instead of diamond 3.”

After patch 4.08 where a penalty of getting RR was reduced to 25% not much has changed regarding special restrictions for high-ranking players, in this episode players will get a whole new rank (and one bonus division) before encountering the penalty for playing with a full team. Another thing that changes is that the cut-off for the very top end is moved into a new rank so diamond players will have an easier time not being affected by ranked restrictions.

With a new Episode new ranked challenges await, this ranked restart should be less harsh than previous ones but it also means that the next one will probably drop everyone in rank further than it normally would. Another thing to consider is that you may not see your rank increase right off the bat, you may need to play quite a bit to truly benefit from the new rank introduction.

With all that said, your first games after this reset may be much more significant than regular Valorant matches, if you feel stressed by that fact and need a slight push in the right direction, we are here for you.
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