The Ultimate Guide on How to Derank in Valorant – Tips and Tricks

Are you a Valorant player looking to understand the concept of deranking and its implications?

We explore what it means to derank in Valorant, why some players seek to do so, and the potential consequences of such actions.

We also discuss how deranking can be achieved and provide tips on how to avoid deranking in the game.

Whether you’re curious about the subject or seeking to improve your gameplay, this article has got you covered.

What Is Valorant?

Valorant is a free-to-play first-person shooter game developed and published by Riot Games. Riot Games is the developer of one of the best strategy games, League of Legends. The game was announced with its codename Project A on the occasion of League of Legends 10th anniversary and is primarily known for its blend of shooting mechanics and hero abilities. Valorant was released for Microsoft Windows on June 2, 2020 without a release date for other platforms yet confirmed.

Valorant follows Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege in having characters with unique abilities while keeping the core mechanics of shooting games. The production of Valorant began half a decade ago in 2014 with the idea of combining the FPS genre with strategic elements like agents and abilities. The release date for Valorant’s episode 3 is now known. Episode 3 which includes act 3 of Episode 2 and acts 1 and 2 of Episode 3 are all scheduled for August 12, 2021.

According to the Riot Games official website, there are 17 ranks in Valorant. They are Iron 1, Iron 2, Iron 3, Bronze 1, Bronze 2, Bronze 3, Silver 1, Silver 2, Silver 3, Gold 1, Gold 2, Gold 3, Platinum 1, Platinum 2, Platinum 3, Diamond 1, Diamond 2, Diamond 3, Immortal 1, Immortal 2, Immortal 3, Radiant.

What Does It Mean to Derank in Valorant?

In Valorant, to derank means to have your rank or Rank Rating (RR) lowered in a previous competitive season when you are demoted to a fixed lower competitive tier. Once a player gets demoted to an unintentional lower rank or rank level forced by the game (such as a new act beginning), there is less pressure to hilariously shoot someones head for your new rank and respective opponents’ levels.

Why Do Players Want to Derank in Valorant?

Players want to derank in Valorant because of poor previous placement. Many players do not have accurate matchmaking rankings, which can lead to games with more skilled teammates. This can make the game harder and result in frustration as the player may not be able to keep pace.

There are a number of factors that can cause a discrepancy in a player’s MMR (Match Making Rating). If you improve your match statistics, you may harm your MMR average. If you play in a stack much greater than the average MMR of the game, more difficult opponents and lower chances of winning may arise. If you play during non-peak hours, the MMR distance that will be allowed in the game will be increased.

If you have not played for a very long time the MMR system may overcompensate in further imposing a penalty or reward based on the individual’s progress or deterioration. The mechanism of the automated system means it can occasionally require a little bit of manual correction. That is one of the reasons why deranking may be temporarily valuable, to help players reach the skill bracket that best suits them.

To Play with Lower Ranked Friends

If you wish to derank in Valorant, the simplest way is to play additional rounds with teammates of lower ranks. If you are already ranked as low as possible and have not succeeded in achieving the rank desired, this means you need to create an additional alternate account and go through the creation and qualifier phase again.

Your competitive rank will be reset, and chances are you will rank higher on your main account while you play at a lower level. This is not always accepted by the community as it is comparable to smurfing which can be an issue in the eyes of Riot games and may affect their decisions in the future. If you do not mind this, then to change rank in Valorant this is a valid, yet time-consuming way to go about it.

To Avoid Playing Against Higher Ranked Players

Higher ranked players do not always match against others in their ranks, but smurf accounts derank in Valorant to play against pubs they can easily carry without opponents of similar skill guarding. Rather than smurfing, players can lower their chances of facing smurfs while not smurfing themselves.

During the placements individual and aggregate rank decreases relative to the season – especially in early seasons when new smurf accounts are not fully settled – lead to playing against much weaker or stronger players. This results in more volatile ranking bounds with many higher or lower-ranked opponents in matches. In most games, this usually leads to an obvious mismatch where one team gets destroyed. This becomes far less prevalent during the latter phases of the season when most winrate volatility will have settled the player at the material tier in which they belong. The key is to play during the early season when there are still higher ranked smurfs present. Squeezing in some matches on act weekday afternoons at the season start is a perfect time to avoid higher ranked opponents. As for how to derank in Valorant without smurfing, timed multiplayer games now typically give very generous demotion timeframes, leading some players to enter deep losing streaks with their displayed rank before the ranking system can adjust their actual rank.

To Have an Easier Time Climbing Back Up

You can derank in Valorant by having off-tilt games where players are just playing badly and making all importance mistakes, or having bad games on purpose. The first dictate when you are not doing and getting your best and thus your ranking starts falling, while while the latter involves intentionally poor performance. When paired against more equal opponents, this is when you need to shine. When you don’t, the game will lose you rank progress subsequently.

You have an easier time climbing back up after a derank by starting with an assessment of your gear and gameplay to look for easy ways to implement improvements. Once you start looking at why you are performing low, it will become clearer how to fix the issue both technically and mentally. If it is from tournaments, you need to seek out a more collaborative field. If your ranking is down to your off-tilt games, you may be playing the game too much and the pacing of the game cannot keep up with everyone else.

Switching out with different games, freshening the mind, and perfecting strategies are often sadly overlooked paths to victory. By studying your fall from grace, part of your key strategy can be overseeing early game build-outs precisely and stealing win cons from the enemy side. You can definitely turn videos from your previous Valorant games into learning sources which you can review on your mountain climb to a higher ranking. The games which make it obvious why you need to derank offer clearer waypoints during the climb back.

How to Derank in Valorant?

The process of deranking is not something you can control due to the hidden Metrica Valorant Ranking System (MMR) on which the Competitive Rank is based. However, in rare circumstances where players stop trying and their MMR score is lower than a particular venue requirement, they will automatically derank to a level where they belong.

This is what you can do to get better at a game without purposefully losing to derank:

• Try playing with competent high-level players and focus on your game again and again
• If you are given a high rank to compensate for unfair head-to-head matches, try to stay there as long as you can

Remember, just as you always try to be better and avoid losing, there is always someone better than you aiming to get ahead of you. As a competitive player, it is important to remember that other people love and take their games just as seriously as you do; emotions are always involved. The term ‘gaming the system’ to derank is seen as a violation of the player’s integrity, competitive integrity, and even the Respectful Gaming ethos.

Therefore, deranking should only be tied to natural processes because playing well and feeling over-ranked can help you out in the long run by normalizing to a better rank; if you aim to succeed on merit and do so, otherwise competitive gaming environments are degraded.

Lose Matches on Purpose

To derank in Valorant, the most intuitive answer is to throw the game by not coming up with your best performance. Playing the game when you are tired mentally, don’t have the best hardware, or have slow/unreliable internet can all contribute to this. Similarly, using champions you are less skilled with can bring your performance down, and losing on purpose can help you derank faster. It is important to note desisting champions is only a short-term strategy to derank.

Leave Games Early

If you leave matches early, Valorant reacts by giving you a penalty. The maximum amount of negative penalties is if you leave before the first player has left, in which case you are allowed to leave once a vote is initiated. From there, players who leave matches early will have various degrees of penalties applied. Teammates may also have noticed when you have disrupted the game by leaving early, leading to their voting to have you kicked and penalized.

If you want to experience a derank-by-leaving as a game is winding down and your team has already lost from a tactical perspective, you are allowed to leave without too severe of a punishment if you do so with only a certain amount of time left on the clock.

In a headshot-only mode match, training range, or spiking station, leaving both early or late appear to have no negative consequences. This may change later after time passes and Riot sees what emerges in user behaviors and feedback. Deserters in Valorant receive the following penalties (cited from the in-game notice) Either the next match you play, or all competitive matches as punishment. You can come back after finishing your current penalty.

Play with Lower Ranked Players

You will encounter matches with lower ranked players either because you are using an alternate account for casual play or because you played enough games at a lower rank and lost enough matches to drop you down. Playing with lower ranked players is a good way to derank in Valorant. Doing so can take you away from the pressure of playing at a high rank and put you in a lower stress environment where a loss doesn’t matter.

You can play with lower ranked friends in their matches just to get a break from the pressure or to help them if they are stuck in a lower rank. If you are permanently trying to prevent playing too high, you can create an alternative account that you play on casually while using main account for competitive gaming. However, make sure that both accounts are not playing on the same network or they can be both suspended/banned, which leads to losing everything without the chance to get it back.

Playing with lower ranked teammates for deranking may not be as good as playing at high levels, but you will need to have a strategy if you want to win matches instead of trying to go down the ladder, you may explore strategies like picking Sage who you can just relax and play, or trying something silly in order to win matches, but most of these strategies don’t always guarantee a win, and may be hard to believe hard to believe, but lowering your MMR(s) isn’t difficult as losing on purpose.

What Are the Consequences of Deranking in Valorant?

The consequences of a deranking in Valorant are mostly a lack of performance and enjoyment from the player. This can result in negatively affecting their team’s performance and enjoyment of the game if they play poorly or at a lower level after being deranked. Although competitive matches in Valorant are generally considered low stakes in which deranks matter little, it can affect a player’s performance if they have higher skill teammates.

A deranked member of a high skill team might be more of a hindrance and liability in a match, whether by poor play, preventable deaths, or simply a lack of valuable map knowledge and information to share. Additionally, the opponent team during a deranked match may feel their own performance and enjoyment is negatively affected if they defeat lower-skilled players for matchpoints that would count for less and cause derank+sad reaction from the more skilled player.

Temporary Bans

Temporary shopping bans is an economic recommendation to help stop overbuying and hoarding. People are encouraged to implement shopping bans in their own lives, help friends and local community members with shopping bans to limit panic buying, or encourage stores to implement shopping bans during time to protect these groups. The idea of shopping bans is to slow down consumer panic and help stabilize the demand for goods, so that shortages are less likely to occur.

Valve has announced the imposition of temporary text and/or voice communication restrictions after issuing multiple low-priority reports. While there are no published details on the length of time these bans may last, the implication is that they are temporary. Valve appears to issue these bans automatically, and there is little possibility of appealing them. And there are no signs the numbers of reported cases is declining, showing whatever Valve programmed seems to have had little effect in Valve’s goal of securing healthier gaming environments.

Losing Progress and Rewards

While deranking refers to losing Matchmaking Rating (MMR) and usually one’s rank due to poor play, losing progress refers to the unintentional loss of Radiant Points. Radiant Points (RPs) are granted to Immortal and Radiant ranked players based on their MMR. More RPs need to be gained to queue for the Radiant rank than to maintain it. If MMR declines, RPs will decline and the Radiant rank may be locked for the remainder of the Act they got into Radiant or they may downrank back down to Immortal.

Unlike MMR, the number of Radiant Points at the end of an Act does not affect anything. Points are only used to queue and not as an end-of-act reward. If someone has gained the Radiant rank and prefer to not play with or against other Radiant players, it is safe to stop playing and avoid any possibility of losing points. Loosing points can never lead to losing the Radiant rank of that Act. The number of RPs is equal to 5000 plus half the RP delta (differences between left and right players) which can take away RP (the player with more RPs can lose 100 RP) or give RP (player with fewer RP gain).

Negative Impact on Teammates

Deranking with account sharing or intentional feeding can have a negative impact on teammates. Teammates are usually friendly and helpful, and may rely on you in clutch moments, so abusing their goodwill affects their experience and breaks the trust necessary to have good teamwork. Leaver Suicide, or ‘going out with a bang is also dissing your whole team at the mid-game’ implies Vergil, a Reddit user, doing streaming panels for Attunely.

The non-osu! video from OCC shows user number 0 (peppy) exiting the osu! game in less than a second. Why? Because peppy is the main administrator. In a Valorant game, betraying such trust does not just hurt the victim, it hurts the entire team and depending on the game stage, can improve the enemy team’s entire chances of winning the game.

Is It Worth Deranking in Valorant?

It is not worth attempting to derank in Valorant because the process of intentionally losing games is toxic and has possible repercussions.

In the past, Riot Games has issued WARN and CRF penalties for matching with players of an unequal rank in order to derank. The specific punishment will depend on a player’s previous history of bad behavior in Valorant according to Riot Responds support agent Aidan Gonzalez.

To complete the process of inting and deranking, tens or even hundreds of games need to be intentionally thrown. One player describes the process of getting from diamond to iron as ‘such a chore’ according to theunderkill in another IGN forum.

Just let it happen over time. A player who stops caring and just plays off meta picks, refuses to communicate or coordinate with their opponents, or writes off their normally priced hardware purchases may find that their rank starts to fall on its own according to one Ex-game reviewer Shagufta Iqbal in a Quora post.

It is a waste of time and energy to derank in Valorant, and it is not a guarantee that toxicity and trolling will prevent a competitive advantage over their opponents. There are also unintended real-life consequences within and outside of the game that may occur. For these reasons, it is better to avoid and ignore the toxicity of other players without engaging in the same behavior.

It Goes Against the Spirit of the Game

This is stated by two gamers. Spirit of the Game simply refers to the idea that all players adhere to the implicit goals, guidelines, and the overall spirit of the game. Valorant players have technique ‘cheeses’ they like, if the opposing team cannot come up with a legit way to beat a cheese in the time granted by the match – then the opposing team should get rolled by the cheese. In the words of GamerPower who posted on the Valorant forums, ‘I would rather lose to a group of people who know a line-up that is hard to stop than win maybe from a person being punished.'” VIOLATING THE RUDDER is a concept that has no physical expression in real life. It is a core principle of meritocratic competitive sports. By extending honor and respect to all opponents (to treat them as if they too have social value) allows people to strengthen the bonds of friendship by associating and aligning in groups to subjugate the opposing team. Displaying loyalty by always declining “free kills” would certainly enter the realm of DBag behavior as it would quite literally be an acknowledgment that you cannot overcome the challenges given to you during the match. Even if the cheese is hard to beat, there is still a chance.

It Can Be Frustrating for Teammates

If they accept the general notion of the team needing to derank, some team members may view intentionally performing poorly to derank as inadequate or disingenuous. After all, the purpose of competitive matchmaking is to match different skill levels against one another. If being paired against significantly worse skilled teams is accomplished without dealing with the forthcoming losses implicitly, it is likely that at least some teammates will be frustrated with the player perhaps not trying their best.

It May Not Be Effective in the Long Run

If getting matched against easier opponents is your primary goal, deranking may not be the best strategy. When you derank, you get matched against easier opponents, but your opponents are facing harder opponents, which lowers the skill level of your team and raises the skill level of the opposing team, making the game harder to win.

If a player’s only goal is to improve their MMR by consistently trying to derank in Competitive or Spike Rush, to have a more favorable matchmaking, that runs counter to their objective. By manipulating against your own skill level, you sabotage the competitive integrity of the game for both your own and the opposing team. This has been one of the primary arguments against players deliberately trying to derank in Valorant.

How to Avoid Deranking in Valorant?

Deranking in Valorant can be avoided by following these steps:

1. Do not solo queue. Playing Valorant with a team is more likely to produce successful results.
2. Warm up in practice mode or unranked mode before starting a competitive match session.
3. Take a break and do other things to improve your mental break periodically. Play Block Champ or spend time with friends and family playing Mobile Pictionary.
4. Download a free Overlay tracker that tracks your daily progression/deranking to track your short-term performance.
5. Keep notes of long-term progress using a free notebook-sized A5 notebook for tracking long-term progress and early-warning signs of deranking.
6. Watch instructional videos or streams of high-skilled players on YouTube and Twitch to enhance your performing skillset.
7. Contact other players to queue with. This can be accomplished by joining an active Valorant community that assists with queueing.

Developing and customizing these habits according to preferences during gameplay will help prevent deranking in Valorant.

Practice and Improve Skills

Players can naturally derank in Valorant by speaking with their keyboard and actually using the in-game communication system according to blizzca.eu. They go on to state that “losing players usually don’t communicate at all, so if you can use full VOIP communication and do this effectively on the rounds that your team wins, then you’ll give yourselves a better chance of getting a precious seed round.” So while focusing on skills to improve individually is important, finding ways to work together and communicate plays and plans is also a way to detract more wins than losses, so that deranking in Valorant is more likely.

Third on the list, xQc says they are bad players which could either mean they are not that good that he can rank up or they are not that good and are deranking. Being the best in a team of bad players is still a challenge which xQc has been known for in Overwatch

Finding some capable and experienced friends, such as through the scores of Valorant discord groups and other similar forums, with whom to game is one way to help with your deranking in Valorant or a lack of rise in ranking as communication is as crucial a skill as anything else.

Communicate and Coordinate with Teammates

Have a conversation with the team, do not immediately…wi…th other members, avoid constantly pinging or providing unnecessary sound barriers, consistently support, take time to understand the best way to communicate, and finally assess your communication

1. Have a conversation with the team: Talking with the team itself is one clear and easy method of communication. It should be done by everyone during timeouts/round breaks to ensure this time is maximized.
2. Do not immediately mute toxic players: One should not just immediately mute comms of players who are spraying out toxic things, particularly since sometimes they turn out to be good shot callers.
3. Avoid excessively pinging or providing unne……cessary sound barriers: If somebody is spamming too much, then you can kindly tell them to break the habit.
4. Consistently give support: Being particularly uplifting during a stressful point in the game, encouraging others at more inconsistent times, providing frequent peak reminders, or instructing during chaotic rounds are all helpful.
5. Assess: Is the way I am communicating actually working? Observing behavior is a meaningful way to assess if your communication style is effective. If the team is paying attention and adapting even during tense rounds, then your communication is likely effective.

Shankar explains why bad communication can make it easier to derank:

On the flip side, if you find that your communication pattern isn’t achieving the desired result quickly enough, then select a different communication style, whether that means engaging less preemptively, providing more encouragement or warnings, providing less encouragement or warnings, adjusting tone, or replacing aggressive text with concise details in the chat.

Take Breaks and Manage Stress Levels

Here are suggestions for How to Derank in Valorant?

• Go on social rants, political rants, or have poor sportsmanship by asking your team to report you in Valorant chat.
• Queue onto low ranked accounts to boost the averages in your team. Leave at the beginning of the match to avoid a penalty.
• Take breaks and manage stress levels.

If you really want to have a bad effect on the competitive scene, the practices of going on social rants about politically charged issues or simply throwing because someone else threw, are some ways to derank in Valorant. Practicing good sportsmanship is the best way to maintain communication with the Valorant community. If you want to go afk for the wrong reasons, queue up on low ranked accounts to boost the averages on your team as this will only anger those who try seriously to improve their skill level and division. The best way to avoid adverse affects in your mental health and the success of your team is by taking breaks and relaxing via listening to music, meditating, or engaging in other hobbies.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is deranking in Valorant and how does it affect my gameplay?

Deranking in Valorant refers to intentionally losing matches in order to decrease your rank in the game. This can affect your gameplay by placing you in lower skill level lobbies and potentially making it easier for you to win matches.

Why would someone want to derank in Valorant?

Some players may want to derank in Valorant in order to play with their friends who are in a lower rank, or to have a more relaxed gameplay experience.

Is deranking allowed in Valorant?

No, deranking is not allowed in Valorant and it goes against the game’s fair play policy. Players who are caught intentionally deranking may face penalties or bans from the game.

How can I derank in Valorant?

There is no guaranteed way to derank in Valorant, as the game’s ranking system takes into account various factors such as individual performance and win/loss ratio. However, some players may intentionally throw matches or play with a lower ranked friend in order to decrease their rank.

Will deranking affect my overall stats and progress in the game?

Yes, deranking in Valorant will affect your overall stats and progress. Your rank will decrease, and your win/loss ratio may also be negatively impacted.

Are there any risks to deranking in Valorant?

Yes, there are risks to deranking in Valorant. Aside from potential penalties or bans from the game, intentionally losing matches can also lead to frustration and decreased enjoyment of the game. Additionally, deranking may also affect your ability to improve and progress in the game.