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https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/Northspawn%23EUW/overview
Yo, it can be frustrating to not seeing progress or feeling like you can't climb. Unfortunately ranked is a ladder, so you need to win more then those above you to climb. It honestly looks like you are right where you belong, maybe even declining slightly, due to your matches.
If you average your past 40 games you've been 6th out of all 10 players based only on performance. I'm not going to reverse math our encounter MMR system it would take too long, but this is a good indicator that you are performing slightly worse/average in your recent matches. So we can assume your encounter MMR is probably at where it belongs, or slightly going down due to recent performance.
I've said this in other places on social media, but it takes about 20-40 matches for your rank and MMR to meet; so we can assume your MMR and rank are pretty close to each other because of all the matches you've played. If we look at your winrate it's almost exactly 50%. If you are being ranked against other players based on your encounter MMR, and your winrate MMR, and we assume your MMR is close to your rank, you are performing at(and evenly slightly below) those at your rank.
It sucks, but MMR is a ladder both in performance and win/loss. If you win against someone your MMR would rise above theirs and push them down the ladder. Then your increased MMR would increase your RR gains, reduce your RR losses, and push your rank up along with the increase in MMR.
At some point we have to hold you accountable to your MMR, and you are now at the point where you should be looking to improve your skill and not worrying about your rank as much. I hope this helps, and if you have any other questions I'll try to answer when I get time!
I dont understand why performance is only measured by acs which is obviously important, but if i am doing my job and winning games then my MMR should be higher. This system seems to help out duelists like raze whos util does damage and increase acs. I feel like there should be some kind of Acs multiplier for hidden mmr for different roles, because 6th place is roughly where a controller, who cannot be taking risky fights due to the importance of their life, should be. Obviously you cant fix this, but am i best off just instalocking raze if i want to climb? because thats what this seems to indicate.
It's not based off ACS, in fact ACS is purely an end of game stat to help contextualize the match and has 0 relation to MMR/Rank.
You have two MMR's, Win/Loss MMR and Encounter MMR. Win/Loss MMR goes up/down when you win or lose the match. Encounter MMR looks at every "encounter" you had that match and trades MMR between those involved. So if you win a duel, you take MMR from the player you killed. BUT Encounter MMR also looks at ability usage, site takes, bomb plants/defuse, and assists. So if you assist in getting a kill, taking a site, be it with guns or abilities, you would get Encounter MMR for doing so.
Now remember your overall MMR is a combination of the two, so even if you felt like encounter MMR was holding you down you could technically raise up your Win/Loss MMR to make up for it; Also RR will never let you win less then 10 points unless you are above immortal, so you could always out win the system if you think it's wrong.
In lower ranks Encounter MMR is a bigger part of your MMR average and weighted more, in higher ranks your win/loss MMR is weighted more. This is because in lower ranks usually raw mechanics can separate players quite a bit, but at high ranks mechanical skill differences get smaller and game sense becomes king. At platinum your about in the middle, so winning a match is just as important as performing well.
Honestly the system doesn't favor duelists, especially ones playing correctly and entry'ing first. We have various controls on the weight of impact on an encounter, and making sure there isn't a "optimal role" for climbing. But we could always do better and are constantly looking at ways to improve it(no MMR system is perfect otherwise games would all end in overtime).
I get why it looks like it favors duelists, but I think that's a symptom of you often seeing influencers smurf and play duelists to climb, or duelists being the choice of players who like to go for frags. Just know that Encounter MMR matters more about the quality of the kill, not the quantity, and every time you die you are giving MMR to someone else. You could go 10-15, but those 10 kills were on a Diamond player, while the 20-10 Jett on your team was fragging out on the low plat players. Because you took down the higher MMR player there is a good chance you would get the same, if not more Encounter MMR then the Jett.
I hope this helps, and I believe ACS is a big reason why some people get confused about MMR and RR gains. Something we definitely could do better in messaging, but it's also hard because if we are doing our job right people shouldn't have to worry about match making. Have a good week!
This is insightful! Always appreciate you guys giving us a little more insight on how the system works.
Thank you!
I seem to be stuck in some sort of weird MMR fluctuation loop. I get placed with players 2-3 ranks lower than me, completely obliterate them and nearly rank up, and then get placed with players of absurdly high skill, sometimes even on my rankup games.
I still lose a huge amount of RR from these losses against skilled players (I'm bronze 1, and I got placed against silver 1 & 2 players one round and proceeded to lose 30rr). I completely understand having to win against people of higher skill, but the skill gap between my current rank and the ranks I'm playing against is enourmous.
Game I lost recently, note the ranks of the enemy team. Cost me 30RR.
Previous game, where I got placed against lower-rank players.
I just went through your history, and aside from that one game you linked, it looks like you are mostly playing against Irons/Bronze. You did have a good streak of games, one where you even dropped 27 kills, then played in that match with some silvers. So it makes sense that your MMR would go up and you would play against more difficult opponents after that streak. MMR is a ladder, you play against those around your skill, and if you win, you go up and fight people around that new skill level. So when you start to win it makes sense you go against more difficult opponents, then when you lose you go back down. At lower ranks, people tend to fluctuate a lot more. Someone in bronze/silver probably isn't going to have a good game when they are on a map they aren't comfortable with, or someone picks their agent and they have to off-role pick. Remember you are always playing against people around your skill, but if you start to perform better then you will get more difficult opponents for you getting better at the game.
Honestly it looks like you have a low headshot % and you struggle to win fights, I wouldn't worry about your teammates, or matchmaking, and try to improve those things. I highly recommend doing some aimlabs before playing, find a valorant warmup playlist; you can search youtube for recommend aim playlists for your rank, or find out how to use aimlabs to improve.
Your headshot % is pretty low, and you have mixed results in your damage per round. If you improve, you will rank up, so instead of worrying about your MMR and what's going on you should worry about shoring up your weaknesses. If you want an easy training method, do this:
-Aimlabs for 15minutes(find a val warmup playlist)but be slow and precise. If you have under 90% accuracy you are going too fast, you want to build good habits and aim; fast and sloppy is not good.
-Warmup with 2 deathmatches before playing, focus on headshots and if you have to use guardian only for this(if you find yourself spraying too much).
-Play ranked, but if you lose 2 matches cooldown with a deathmatch or call it a night.
-Before logging off go to the fire range and set it too 100 bot spawn, no movement, and use a guardian. Stand at the side of the arena, or on a box, and move your mouse in a straight line to the bots head. When you get to the bots head trace around its heads hit box, then shoot the center of the head. Keep doing this; straight line to the head, trace the head, shoot the head. It's boring, but it will help you so much with your mouse control. If you have time do this 1-3 times before logging off.
-Think about switching to the phantom, it's a lot more effective at spraying and it seems like you are better at hitting the chest then hitting the head. You will be extremely more effective with the phantom, and I would avoid the vandal until you break 20% headshot at least. Plus you like playing Brimstone, if you are playing smokes you should probably use the phantom(due to silencers making tracers disappear by shooting through smoke).
This is a great starter to start building core mechanics, and if you are willing, I highly recommend unbinding crouch(or bind it to an inconvenient key like left alt) and avoid crouch spraying until you hit diamond+. Hope this helps, and I know you weren't asking for VAL advice but based on how much you play it would really help you rank up! Have a good week!
(also if you are already doing your own thing to improve or practice, or don't feel like doing this stuff at all, that's okay! Keep on keeping on)
Wow, okay, I was not expecting such a detailed and well-thought out response. Thank you for that.
I am improving in terms of crosshair placement, spray/recoil control, etc. I'm completely confident fighting iron and bronze players, and I'm doing routines to try and improve (although I will give the ones you mentioned a try).
The main issue I have is that, because of the position I'm in at the moment, I am struggling to be consistent across games. Looking through my match history, there's a clear, noticeable trend of me winning and facing opponents of increasingly higher ranks/skill, at which point I begin to play worse and worse, until eventually the game becomes entirely unplayable and I can go multiple rounds without getting a single kill.
I wouldn't have a problem with this if I lost, say, 5-15RR for a game where I get completely destroyed by opponents of way higher skill. The thing that really infuriates me is when the game puts me in a game full of extremely high-skill players, and then penalizes me with a 30RR loss and completely removes all of my progress towards the next rank. Usually a loss is followed by another loss, which tends to be the same amount of RR, and so even if I have a few really good games, I'm essentially softlocked out of the next rank. At one point I was only 2RR off of bronze 2, and then I lost several games in a row and now I'm back down to ~20RR. I get that the system is designed to test me against challenges of increasing difficulty, but it feels too... "polarized", I suppose is the word I'm looking for. As though there's an enourmous gap between my skill level and the skill level of people I'll be fighting after a few good games.
An earlier post mentions that the game, apparently, reduces RR loss and increases RR gains when you're fighting difficult opponents. I've never encountered this, and the only time I've ever noticed my RR losses being reduced is when I do really well and still lose, I tend to only lose about 7-15RR, which is perfectly acceptable.
I suppose the perfect summary of what I don't like about the system is that it feels like the game is punishing me for playing well. I play really well a few games in a row, and then the game goes, "here, play against these guys" and puts me with players I don't stand a chance against. And yet, if I were to throw a game or something, I would be rewarded by getting a power trip playing against lower skill opponents.
Anyway, thank you for the detailed response. I'll definitely try the routines you suggested and see if there's any improvement.
Thank you for the feedback!
We base your RR gains off your MMR and not the difficulty of the opponent. When you get big RR losses it's because your MMR thinks you aren't ready to move into the next rank and it's holding you back. For example, when you played against those silvers and didn't do so well.
It's a tough balance, at some point we kind have to hold you accountable for how you are actually performing. You've hit the point where you are at the rank you belong skill-wise, and in order to climb you just need to improve. You got this, and you seem pretty dedicated and already have a ton of games in this season. That's why my big point was to just try and improve and you'll see results climbing; if our job is to make a system that puts your skill to a rank, then the easiest way to climb is to improve your skill.
Good luck, and thank you for the feedback again!
The goat
no u <3