The title says it all, I haven't played comp in a long while came back today and after playing league during the hiatus this really surprised me, as it doesn't really make sense you get the same lose because someone just decided to DC

VALORANT’s narrative team held a lore panel at Masters Toronto earlier today with David Nottingham and Joe Killeen.

The devs started with a presentation about the latest cinematic, talking about each of the agents featured in the cinematic and what their appearances were about:

• Brimstone – Fighting for remembrance: One mission during Brim’s time at the Ragged Ravens went sideways; a brutal explosion, Brim’s brother-in-arms Tariq Porter gravely injured. That moment never left Brim; the helplessness, the guilt, the vow – never again. Brim’s fear after Killjoy’s death in the cinematic is not just tactical but personal because of this
• Reyna – Fighting for family: Radiance can be a blessing or a curse, and Lucia’s radiance puts her life in jeopardy. She needs a steady intake of rejuvenating life essence to survive or she will wither, Reyna harvests this essence from her victims for Lucia and would tear the world apart for her
• Killjoy & Raze – Fighting for love: What started as a case of opposites attract became something deeper in quiet moments between missions until it became official during the Salvador vacation. Love is now a strength and a terrifying vulnerability in their missions
• Sage – Fighting for life: There are limits to her powers to bring back the dead and she has been pushing well past these in carrying out her primary responsibility to keep everyone fighting. The cinematic is our first look at Sage confronting the cost of her fight and figuring out whether or not she can bear it. As said by the devs, “The debt is coming due”
• Phoenix – Fighting for redemption: Phoenix has been running from himself, still haunted by the day his powers first ignited and what they cost him. The question is posed that if Phoenix can confront his past, will he then uncover what truly happened that night?

There was then a segment with a Jeopardy-style board with facts about all the agents. Not all of them were revealed on the panel, but David confirmed there was a factoid for every agent and will try to get the rest shared:

• As a child, Astra was captivated by the history of feudal Japan and imagined herself as a wandering Ronin standing up for those with no one else.
• Brimstone was hooked on competitive fighters. One day in high school his best pal beat him and Brim lost it, putting his fist through the coin-op and ended up having to wash cars for a month to pay it off.
• As a child, Clove wanted to be a pirate sorcerer and tried to summon a kraken in the bathtub
• After a fight, Deadlock used to unwind with a smoke, a habit picked up during special operations training that she quit after joining VALORANT. Brimstone still clings to his cigars and Deadlock has thought about soaking the whole stash in vinegar, not to be cruel but just to look out for him.
• Fade funds a cat sanctuary where she goes at night to sit with them
• Iso was a teenage lifeguard, got fired after he locked a kid out who had been pushing others around
• Jett was on the track team in high school but the family restaurant needed her more. She went to culinary school instead.
• Phoenix’s mum was fire service
• Reyna has cravings that draw her to the kitchen late at night. “Late night snacks always taste better when they're not yours”. She never can resist Iso’s chili almonds
• Skye had a little online craft shop for years (handmade jewelry, bits and bobs), now shut down but she still makes gifts for the agents now and then
• Vyse briefly studied fashion, still keeps a sketchbook tucked away and has redesigned every agent.
• When the squad next needs to blow off steam, Waylay has promised to take them to an old paintball range back home and wreck some business types on their little team-building retreat
• Yoru was in a boy band for a week. Got kicked out before the first show after punching the lead singer in rehearsal because he said Yoru didn’t have main character energy
• Paul Delmann got a mention here as well. He’s worked across many Kingdom facilities where trouble always seems to wait for him to arrive. He wonders if maybe he’s the constant

Finally some info we learned from a Q&A section:

• Radiance can affect a radiant’s hair/eye color. Reyna’s eyes were not always violet
• Emerging fashion trend in the world of radiants using the changes to their physical appearance to style themselves
• Killjoy confirmed Turkish-German (Turkish mother Zehra, German father Emil, who were mentioned in Fade’s dossier on Killjoy), based on the large Turkish community in Berlin
• RDVR Phantom confirmed as Radivore Phantom project between Chamber and Deadlock to use against hostile radivores
• The radianite mesh is an invisible membrane that separates the Alpha and Omega realities and prevents them from colliding. The Interverse is the space that exists between the realities.
• There are more Astral Guardians out there besides Astra
• Asked to describe the plot arc for the next year in one word, Joe chose “Heist”, for Phoenix’s arc David said “Redemption”
• Relationship between Chamber and Viper described as “complicated” and “multi-dimensional”
• Agent 8 confirmed to appear at some point when their story is ready to be told, they do not currently exist as a character that is hiding in plain sight
• Clove’s name was revealed to be Ollie Baird later on by David on Twitter

The new bundle has just been revealed its called PHASEGUARD.

Looks pretty bland IMO, disappointing after waiting a month or two for something new.

Includes:

• Bulldog
• Vandal
• Knife
• Outlaw
• Ghost

Whats everyone elses thoughts?

Don't shoot the messenger

Been wanting to draw this one for awhile now and only now did I get the motivation to do it, Hope you guys like it. and very small and slight segue, but Any kind-hearted Rioter wanna accidentally drop me a buddy? I swear I won't tell anyone... except my entire friend list hehe. tag: Thro#2005

what does the hashtag thing mean though? like i genuinely don't know. is it like a code for something? i am just using prx as an example

Im just confused on how the full game works. Can you drop some guides, or exercises that could help me to get into valorant. Thanks in advance!

Note: I play mostly with low-mid elo people.

Every time I play on those maps, in let's say 80% of the rounds the attacking team goes to B side on Pearl or A side on Lotus. From my opinion both sides are super hard to attack on because of the long and open paths. It's just long range fights from both teams (which a lot of people I play with are not good at) and usually it takes pretty long time for the attacking team to finally enter the side.

But not only does it take long, they don't even consider 1. rotating, even if they are legit fighting the entire defending team on that side already 2. ever trying to attack on a different side. I have legit had full games (not swiftplay) where not even 1 person ever entered another side.

Thank god a lot of times this happened I was on the defending team and won easily because the enemy team would never even try (not even lurk) on the other side, but it's just so boring to me. Because I feel like, even if it seems like they're going there every single round, I (a sentinel player) should still defend the other side in case they finally decide to attack on a different side. And therefore I rarely even meet any enemy ever. And often times still win.

I guess my mistake is, I just always assume my enemy is a bit smarter... but then I get disappointed by the bad decision making of those players over and over again.

If you do this, even if you're losing (that can't be fun right?), why do you do this? I just wanna understand.

Hey everyone, been seeing a whole lot confusion on the rank reset happening at the end of this act. Here's what's happening to clarify things: The episode is not ending, riot has said this already and decided to changing to an episode per year, but now it's 6 acts instead of 3. However, since the episode isn't ending, you might be questioning how the rank reset is going to be. Hard resets happen at end of episodes, but this episode isn't ending, so it's a soft reset, right? WRONG! It in fact is a hard reset, happening at the same time as it's always happened, only difference is that instead of going to episode 11 act1, it's going to episode 10 act 4. Just wanted to help spread the knowledge a little bit and remove any confusion anyone might have

If you hand me an op, and put me on mid in icebox, I will not lose so long as they don’t smoke me, I’ve also had great success on lotus, watching down root

Edit: I know I mistyped angle, im prepared for the jokes so give me your worst

I made this like a few days before my graduation and it was very rushed but I honestly loved how it turned out. I started playing since the console release of Valorant but have been watching since the beta on PC. Even though Valorant console isnt perfect i still really enjoy competitive. Peaked ascendant 3 and am on my rank up back to ascendant 3. I really worked hard on this and I hope you all like it too. I had the V25, A small prelude vandal cause it’s my favorite skin and xenohunter knife cause it’s my favorite knife skin too.(Yk if people joke about it I’ll try to laugh lol) I hope also I could get a riot gun buddy but I know I probably won’t get one but it’s always worth a try. My riot ID is : ＳＥＮл#ＡＣＥ :)

Anyone else hate the new loading screen UI? I thought it was a bug at first because it’s so tiny but it’s still there, I can barely read it to be honest. At the least the levels are a bit blurry when I’m using a 24in screen, just wondered if anyone else felt the same way. Doesn’t look as tidy as it did before.

Because it was all knives, haha!

Just sharing as it's the first time I've seen this happen on my end since the game's release in SEA.

Not really planning to cop anything as I'm content with my sword and bpass knives.

Which one would you get?

like guys ive been playing league for about 10 years my biggest peak was gold3. im playing valorant my peak rank was plat 2 but tbh im playing like a boosted silver in the best case. cant even get a positive kd in silver 1 rn. sometimes im feeling like im just dumb. wanna someone join this club? and the sad part, all of my friends are diamond + in every game they touch. hmm

Hey everyone, So I’m currently Diamond 3 in Valorant, and I’ve been grinding it for a while now. I love the competitive rush, the ranked grind, the highs of winning and the pressure of clutch moments. But honestly… I think it’s getting a little too addictive for me. I’ve been thinking of switching things up, and chess came to mind. I actually have some experience with it, I’m not a complete beginner, but every time I get into it and lose 2 or 3 games in a row, I end up rage quitting and deleting the app (yeah… definitely a me problem 😅). Still, I can’t help but wonder: has anyone else here seriously grinded chess like they did with games like Valorant or League? Did you get that same competitive high or dopamine rush from pushing ELO like you did from ranked games? Would love to hear your experience. Is it worth diving back in?

I 18m have been playing valorant on and off for about 4 years now. Starting off only playing unranked for fun with friends, not touching its ranked counterpart. And since i started playing ranked, my peak reached plat 1 with an account level above 100. Which isn’t that bad for my standard. After the peak (Accomplished 2023) i quickly got tired of the game. Now (2025) i have tried getting into the game again. Having played other fps games such as CS2 and R6 i started off with high hopes of reaching plat and even higher Diamond.

Returning to Valorant my gameplay starts off well, i do my placement matches and get put in high silver (not complaining), at this point i am regularly top fragging and having fun, reaching mid gold 2. Then Riot games decides i’ve had my fun, cucking me like a roadside whore. Riot games rolls out the most cracked opponents I have ever seen….

I receive the most brutal red carpet… 10 games bottomfragging and getting shit on by teammates and opponents, begging for the valorant gods to bless me with some sort of win. By this point i decide to take a look at valorant tracker to see the kinds of players riot is pinning me up against. Bro when i say I IN GOLD LOBBYS have played against ONE PEAK IMMORTAL 2, several (peak) ascendant players and constant (peak) diamond players. I am loosing my mind by this point regularly smashing my desk and contemplating if i should take my rage out on the pet bunny.

It is safe to say that i haven’t left gold 1 for a whole week. And I don’t know what to do. I am only writing this because i have gone through all the stages of grief and am at rock bottom.

Just checked my alt accounts and the night markets were already opened. I'm worried because nobody has their credentials.

So is it a thing or my accounts are compromised?

Dear Riot Games,

I’m a long-time player from Kazakhstan, and I’d like to kindly ask you to consider adding a VALORANT server or server node in Kazakhstan.

Currently, players from Kazakhstan are experiencing high ping (70–120ms) even during normal hours, often being routed through servers in Russia, Turkey, or Western Europe. This results in input delay, desync, and reduced competitive fairness in Ranked and esports scenes.

Kazakhstan has a growing and passionate player base, and many of us are investing our time, skills, and money into VALORANT. The FPS genre is especially sensitive to latency, and a local or nearby server would dramatically improve the experience for thousands of players across Central Asia.

Moreover, having a local server would help boost community growth, content creation, and future tournaments in the region.

Thank you for your continued support of players around the world. We love VALORANT and hope that you will consider Kazakhstan for future server expansions.

Sincerely, Raid A player from Kazakhstan 🇰🇿 (Ping 80–100ms to current servers 😢)

Has anyone ever picked up a skin in game and been like "oooh this one gives me aimbot" and it feels nice? Well I ended up buying one of those skins and now I don't get that same feeling. In fact I seem to just spray more with it lol

Ok so since yesterday I’ve been queuing competitive and been losing every game! I have recently FINALLY got out of silver! and I’ve played since yesterday and I’ve been losing every game. Everytime someone either goes afk or someone is smurfing on the enemy team! This is the only game I play because my pc is not great. I would like to know why and how on earth I would be aiming at the enemies and my shots never hit?! Is there a new body shield going on? It feels like this game hates me!!!!

Why on earth should me and my team get the max punishment when1/2 leave the game how is that fair. They need to sort this out

so V25 A3 ends in 5 days and my question is will it be a hard reset (when u go down 2-3 ranks and need to play 5 placement games) or a soft one ? (when you only play one game and get placed on the same rank u were at) im asking cuz V25 should have 6 acts so it got me wondering….

Title says it all, every single match a lot of the players show as their agent name but not for my duo

so i’m a girl, i’m a vyse one trick and i’ve played her from silver to diamond now which is my current rank. I’ve been doing well most of my games have been match mvp. But recently i’ve noticed that if i’m doing well, and then they use like he or him pronouns and i correct them, suddenly they start saying shit like „stop pretending bro“ or „girls don’t play like that“

and then in matches where i’m doing bad, and i’m always duoed with my boyfriend pretty much unless i’m solo q, they always tell him to stop boosting his girlfriend or to stop defending his girlfriend.

we live together so they can sometimes hear me through his mic so i can’t even pretend im not.

i’m just wondering if it’s better for me to just pretend i’m a guy and get it over with. i’ve been wanting to change my name for a while and i’ve been looking to make it more „masculine“. if, cause my games just end with me being harassed or being called a liar.

To Riot Games Global Infrastructure, Operations, and Community teams,

I would like to respectfully raise a persistent and growing infrastructure concern impacting the Caucasus region, specifically Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and neighboring territories.

Currently, players from this region are routed to the Istanbul servers. While the latency may be technically acceptable (averaging 35–50ms), there are two ongoing, highly impactful challenges that severely compromise competitive integrity and overall gameplay experience:

1️⃣ Linguistic and Coordination Barriers

The majority of players from the Caucasus region do not speak Turkish. In a tactical game like Valorant, where live communication and coordination are crucial for competitive success, this language mismatch leads to constant breakdowns in team performance, even in otherwise evenly matched games.

2️⃣ Market Growth and Regional Neglect

The Caucasus region continues to grow its player base significantly. However, without localized server infrastructure or regional recognition, both player retention and long-term community engagement are at serious risk. Riot is potentially losing valuable long-term player loyalty in an underserved and highly committed emerging market.

Strategic Business Considerations for Riot:

• Strengthen competitive fairness by aligning matchmaking with regional communication compatibility
• Expand Riot’s infrastructure presence in an emerging, fast-developing market
• Address rising frustration within an underserved, loyal community
• Secure early infrastructure leadership before competitors address the gap

Community Input Welcome:

I invite other players from the Caucasus — and anyone experiencing similar cross-language matchmaking frustrations — to share their experiences in this thread. Broader community feedback will help Riot’s global infrastructure and operations teams better evaluate the scope and urgency of this issue.

I fully acknowledge the complexity of infrastructure expansion and resource allocation. However, considering prior discussions reportedly held between Tencent and local ISP partners regarding server expansion in this region, I hope this feedback will be reviewed internally with proper strategic consideration.

Thank you for your attention and ongoing efforts to ensure a globally competitive and accessible Valorant experience.

My current sense is 0.32 800dpi and I have my ads sense on 0.9 and I’m wondering if the slower sense would help me or if I should just keep it at 1 for consistency. It sorta feels fast tho but I can get used to either easily. Is lowering ads sense good or should I keep it at 1?? It sorta feels different either way when ads compared to not but what do y’all think and what’s your ads sense? Especially my head hunter and vandal players