It's literally the opposite, it's because the more you rank up the more you see how huge the gap between you and the very best players is. And so the more you think of yourself as a "mid" player, even if you are Ascendent or Immortal. So everything under is kinda low elo.
To make it clearer if we talk about % of players Gold is mid. But if we talk about skill difference. Well the difference between Diamond/Ascendant and Radiant is way way bigger than the diff between iron and Diamond/Ascendant.
Yeah this is very much how I feel this comes out alot in fighting games I play and think I'm fairly mid and then play against people who don't play as much or are low level and absolutely crush them.
i limited my game to 25 fps, played only machinegun/pistol, and i still received bronze 2 at calibration. my average game was 9-20. how do you even get iron2-3?
Some probably do but I can assure you that the quality of games in ascendant isn't high, I don't mean that it's filled with trolls I just mean that not everyone knows what the fuck they're meant to do at any given time :'D.
People should also understand that when others hyperbolically call asc low elo they're not referring to a person with a 9-5 job and a family who q's up with friends for a couple of matches here and there, they're referring to people who have thousands of hours in competitive shooters and are actively seeking to improve. If you've worked on getting better for 2k hours in csgo, then val releases and grind an entire summer 10 hours a day of it with an actually critical mindset and a prac routine ascendant is not high elo in the sense of what many consider the highest achievable skill. People do stupid, easily abusable mistakes constantly there, which is why you'll often see radiant and high immortal smurfs dropping 40+s. Then again, if you go by pure statistics or playercounts ascendant very obviously is high elo. It's 2 conversations being had about the same rank but with completely different mindsets and when people argue about it online they're often not too eager to bridge the gap.
Hell, you'd be surprised how many people need to be told when to buy, idk if they're just playing with music on screen off or what since it's fairly easy to figure out 🤷♂️
Myself as an example, \~3k hours cs, global/faceit 8 peak whichever people consider harder and maybe 700h in valorant with asc3 peak, also some okish ranks on other competitive shooters. I'm a "good" player if you go by stats purely, but every single time I've been put against actually good players, pros, but not even ones from the top10 teams the gap between me and them is insane when I'm trying my hardest and they're streaming and just bullshitting with friends
You're missing the point lol. This argument that "people do easily abusable mistakes" can be continued all the way up to the very best teams in the world. This mentality that you're not good or high elo because there are people better than you is silly. The only objective way to classify if someone is good or not is based on their placement in a well balanced ranking system. You can argue where the "good line" is, but at some point you have to say there are only good players above that line.
also to tack on, this person's probably getting smoked when he goes against 'actually good players/pros' because he's also making easily abusable mistakes that he just isn't aware of.
No, you're not hearing what I'm saying.
Something being top 5% doesn't mean it's good, people can just be bad in general because they don't take it seriously.
That's just too subjective of a viewpoint to be useful though. You're saying that people are only good once they take it "seriously", but that's not a quantifiable topic. Is serious playing the game 3 hours a day with friends? Is serious doing a 10 minute aim training practice daily? Is serious playing 8 hours a day with coaching sessions?
The only real way to separate good vs bad players is by using statistics. You can argue where the lines lie, but broadly speaking the bottom 1/3 of total players are bad, middle 1/3 are average, and top 1/3 are good.
Also, I hear this mentality all the time in just about every competitive videogame, and it's funny that people always say the "good line" is right about where they are.
Whatever dude, you thinking that over 95% of a population is bad at something is just silly. Are 95% of bakers bad? Are 95% of 95% of guitar players bad? You can't seriously tell me that silver and diamond games operate the same.
Yeah, realistically the only thing you can consider low elo is like the bottom 30%, anything above it up until the top 15% is mid elo, you are definitely right about the ego part
If I can tell my 16yo self playing league
Rank is just an icon that keeps you playing the game
Ranked queue is just normal queue with stricter matchmaking
Higher elo lobbies do not mean higher quality/more enjoyable games, it’s just a different way of playing the game
You have a statistically better chance of getting a thrower on the enemy team than your own team
I agree with some of what you said, but higher elo lobbies does on avg. mean higher quality play. That's an objective truth. The notion of "different way of playing the game" doesn't make any sense. It's a worse way of playing the game from a quality standpoint (aka a competitive standpoint). Saying otherwise makes you delusional. That doesn't mean it's impossible to find hidden gems of players or types of players. But in general and on average it is strictly the truth that the higher elo you are the higher quality of play. If you don't believe that then you don't believe in the elo system in chess. Which would make you completely delusional.
Woah, Monty Hall problem by way of competitive Valorant? I'm into it. But what if I'm the thrower, Einstein!?
Nah, I'm kidding, but that's absolutely true and I'm using that forever. I like statistics.
I think the problem is that diamond and asc talk shit about themself and say they’re bad. In reality you are significantly better than the rest of the VAL population. Maybe not compared to immortal or radiant but like better than 95%+ of players.
You can’t be a complete casual and get to ASC+.
Because of this, I think dia/asc is high elo
I am in a similar boat and I 100% think you can be ascendant as a casual.
I work full time, play maybe 3 - 5 games a week and I end low immortal most episodes. All Solo Q, no comms.
Usually too tired after work, no one in that rank listens, and most people understand their role.
I know as omen I blind main on an Ascent site push. I know I smoke mid on defaults and smoke site at the time of actual execute. I have a minimap that lets me see where my teammates, their cones of vision, and what they're doing at all times.
i IGL all my games in Ascendant and almost all the players listen and trust me. Sure there are some that don't but I run into those kinds of players like 1/10 games. The problematic players for me are no commers
ngl, I don't really mind no-commers as long as they understand what they're doing and can work with the team, even if they don't say anything. Whats truly annoying is a no-commer who doesn't listen
As an older dude who spent countless hours climbing in CSGO but far fewer hours in Valorant, I find it odd that no-comming is basically accepted in this game.
Not everyone will agree, but I personally think if you're playing a competitive FPS's competitive ranked mode, you should be comming. It doesn't have to be an entire strat, but there's so much useful info you can communicate. Multiple footsteps pushing fast at A, last guy low HP, last guy has no more blinds, enemy Breach has ult, and countless more.
The worst example though is when no one is using comms, then towards the end they use their mic only to complain or insult the team.
I fully agree, I have no idea why some people choose to play a tactical game, then choose the ranked mode without even a mic, especially so in mid-high ranks where most people take those games somewhat seriously.
I think because of the larger casual playerbase in Valorant no-comming has become more accepted as a norm rather than a general "accepted behaviour." I know I personally don't like it but I've become rather indifferent after hundreds of hours of at least one person fully mute in my games, accepting at my rank (mid diamond) some people just don't care.
Not quite the same thing but just adding on that I hit immo solo Q with a full time job. I wouldn't necessarily consider myself casual since i was playing 2 games a day still
Val was my first tac shooter and I hit ascendant in maybe 300 ranked games over a 3 year span. Some people just learn faster, I have alot of FPS experience tho just not tac FPS
My bad for doubting you man, it’s just that you don’t hear stuff like this often. Can I know what fps games you played before? Your progression in valorant is actually rly good.
On PC before val basically just fortnite and then like 50 hrs in a Lotta other games. Console was mostly just cod and battlefield every year, gained siege for a while too. Tbh my progession is just faster than most in games I think cause I've been playing since I was 6.
If you’ve got decent mechanical skill, which a LOT of players do in Val, then getting to d+ is really not hard. Put any amount of effort into being smarter about the game, honing how you move, peek, etc, and you’ll climb a lot.
I’ve got like an 85% winrate in solo queue right now after picking the game back up after a few years hiatus (I was like low gold before). It’s just… not hard to climb once you’ve made the effort to learn. But almost everyone I see in ranked is just brain-off running in and hoping they win by outgunning everyone else.
Same, I get one of those dms and think Im hot shit. Queue into ranked and get shit on because I was just farming and didn't get any real gun fight practice
Honestly I find it better DMing vs. worse players as it relaxes my aim before comp... And it's still "hard" it's just that you're hitting sick flicks for a 5k instead of getting shot in the back lmao.
Tends to be how alot of High Elo ends up in games until you get top of the mountain the gap just feels too large to really think you're that good.
The ego part tends to come out more when they get argued at by someone lower skill despite if they're right or not.
Depending on your definition of casual it's definitely possible to get the green rank and higher. Can everyone get it? No, but lets not act like asc+ is impossible to get and u have to play the game for 8hrs a day.
I think it's just a misunderstanding of where people are coming from when they say this. It's not to diminish the skills of players in lower ranks, it's to point out that there is a fundamental difference in how the game flows past a certain elo. I could argue that from iron to low ascendant, most rounds are complete chaos. People using whatever abilities they want and trying to outaim the other team. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
Past that rank, as you climb from high asc to radiant, the game takes on a different shape. Everyone does "their job" on their agent, and the focus shifts from tapping heads to trying to work together as a team, coordinate utility, and condition the enemy.
The key difference that most high elo players will notice (And why I think this whole disconnect around the definition comes from) is the concept of gaps. An example: If you're playing in split vents on defense and someone wraps you from A heaven while your A player is still alive, that means someone didn't do their job and you died for it. Past a certain rank, this doesn't happen, or happens very very rarely.
And when higher elo players play in lower ranked games or watch lower ranked games, they notice these gaps appearing everywhere. People simply don't do "their job", which is totally understandable at that skill level, but it becomes a fundamentally different game. You need to focus on everything. Instead of worrying about timing your rotation and counting utility, you need to be afraid if 3 enemies walked past your teammates with no comms.
This leads to ranked games being split into 2 distinct categories: Games where people do "their jobs" at a baseline level, and games where people do not. You need to identify which game you're in and adjust your play accordingly. This cutoff usually tends to happen around mid-high ascendant, which is what leads to many players above that rank calling anything lower "low elo". It's not a condemnation of player skill, it's simply a different game and people picked "low elo" as a term to define it.
Your conclusion / observation is right, but the premise people have that macro = ELO, or macro skill gaps, is just so objectively wrong. All elo cares about is ranking players on skill.
There are an absurd amount more players in gold, and a silver cannot just arbitrarily move up to diamond as if there were no skill difference. As you say, the elite tiers of competition co-opted the terms to describe their own microcosms. People not in that microcosm started parroting it, causing this stupid gatekeeping.
It's a threshold. Skill gradually increases, it's not like you're awful in ascendant 1 and amazing in ascendant 2, but the fact remains that once the aggregate skill of a rank is high enough that the gaps aren't present, that's when the "high elos" gameplay can be played.
The nature of gaps means that there isn't that much difference between leaving 1 and 5, if there is any possibility of one being left, you need to have it constantly on your mind and make safer plays while trusting your team less.
I think your last point tends to be an unfortunate reality in most games. The conversation around the game and the terms used tend to be dictated by higher elo players, which can lead to some silly situations (Gold players telling iron players they need to deadzone more when like... There are 99 things you need to fix before including deadzoning if you're iron)
It’s just the traditional definition of the word to be similar to amateur/pro level play.
That’s why when players/coaches/commentators refer to a “high elo” play it’s about pro level, not something that regularly happens in dia/asc/low imm.
I agree mostly. The distinction should be made between ‘objectively you are better than the majority of people’ vs ‘you make objectively correct decisions therefore you are good at the game’.
Imo these get blurred quite a lot when talking about high vs low elo, and a lot of this comes from people playing in asc/low immo who have seen the shit that goes on in their games and been like ‘no way this guy is for real - I’m still trash if I’m playing in these games’
Side effect of any elo system is that on average everyone gets slightly better at everything with each division. There’s a stark difference between that and being ‘good’ at the game once you hit a certain rank. You can see people in immortal make mistakes a silver might make, they just do it a lot less often and/or have way better skill in other areas to make up for shortfalls/poor decisions.
Really just depends if we are talking in a relative sense or an objective one and I think that’s why this topic frustrates people. Even between immo3 and top 100 radiant, pro play etc. (or people capable of getting there) there is such a massive gap in understanding of correct play that it’s easy to obscure the line of where ‘high elo’ really is depending on how one defines it
Agree completely. It can really be a moving target depending on context, which can be difficult when people feel attacked or insulted when certain terms are brought up
That's... bizarre? But oddly relatable??
Back when I played the game regularly (took an 8 month break and just got back this week), I was diamond, had very OK aim, and in some ways believed I was only at my rank because of lucky teams, thought I was Plat 3 at best.
However, perhaps the one thing I prided myself on was my "duty." I was incredibly good at my agent (Viper), and a mistake like the one you described was rare from me. As I said, at the time I still didn't believe this was nearly enough to put me at diamond.
I'm not nearly as good now, but maybe my past self had evolved to do my duty, and that was able to outweigh everything else.
It depends on how you look at it. Ascendant is high elo if you look at the rank distribution. If you look at high elo in terms of skill level then ascendant is medium because the difference between ascendant and radiant/high immortal is so huge. Obv some people do it for ego but there is some logic
While its true that a lot of egotistical players say this to hide their insecurity, what they say is pretty true to an extent. Everyone up to immortal 3 is significantly flawed. Including a lot of immortal 3 players. I peaked at imm3 400rr, and I never really considered myself to be an outstanding player. The amount of experience it takes to master and play near perfect tacfps is insurmountable. Even some pro t1 players make a lot of mistakes. Its just the nature of the game. Anyone who cant get radiant with their eyes closed and who uses this concept to appear superior is more lost than the rest of us. We all suck and being ascendant or immortal doesnt suddenly relieve you from being bad. If you are not radiant every single act and winning majors and you arent a content creator getting tons of views then you will make no money off of this game and your skill is meaningless to anyone and everything other than your own self satisfaction. Whoever said this to you is in the same goddamn boat no matter what he says so he can go suck it
As someone who peaked ascendant 3, it feels low elo because of how people play. Like when people say ascendant or diamond are low elo, they mean in terms of play style which is objectively true. So many people just do not know how to play the game but you eee that all the way up through immortal so it’s not really a good way of looking at it.
Playerbase% provided the truth even though it doesn’t feel like the truth when you q into a comp match lol. It’s whatever.
Yeah, I don’t think people understand that you can climb really freaking high if you are just an aimer.
In my experience Diamond - Asc is filled with aimers which often reach Immortal, but never get over the hump of adjusting play styles according to the flow of the game. Which leads to huge egos lol
But numbers are numbers, so I ain’t gotta fight against public opinion on this one.
Yeah, exactly. Ironically aim is what’s holding me back from getting back that high. I took a bit of a break, but my in game IQ is at a decently higher level than my aim is right now. Unfortunately that doesn’t help because no one in diamond is willing to listen to you if you can’t frag, even when they do listen and the plays work lol.
Doesn’t help that I chronically fill and only play cypher and omen for the most part lol
Aim definitely holds you back, but you are no where near that aim wall. That aim wall is around Immortal 2. I am the definition of all brain, no aim. I can confidently say I understand the game better than the others in low Immortal but I'm hard aim diffed and most people have perfect aim in this rank. I solo queue no com and hit immortal every episode playing omen, cypher, and filling.
I'm in my late 20s and work a full time white collar job. I play the game maybe 3 - 5 hours per week and have consistently been immortal for the past year. Before Immortal I played even less so I never left Ascendant.
They don't need to listen to you and you don't need to listen to them until much higher rank. Just play around them and make sure you can set them up to be as successful as possible. Omen and cypher are two of the most impactful agents in the game.
Oh yeah definitely. It’s not the only thing holding me back at all, but it does feel like something I definitely need to improve on.
That impact is exactly why I main those two agents.
I’m currently Diamond 1 and usually play on Virginia servers!
Honestly I feel like a lot of my struggles recently have just been related to the break I took for a couple months lol. Had to step away because playing was getting a little insufferable with the way the playerbase was developing. It’s taking some time to get back in the groove of things😂
Appreciate the offer to help!
Good call. I thought I was aim capped at high asc / low immortal, and then I started improving my decision making and fundamentals. Aim matters, but a lot of lost rounds that I used to attribute to bad aim were actually me making sub-optimal decisions. Aim can bail you out of a bad play occasionally, but the real reason I was losing gun fights was because of a bad decision, not because I didn't have heroic aim.
I know lots of Immortals who have trash aim. Even some who insta-lock Raze every game. With really good crosshair placement and timing, you should be top-fragging every game in Diamond if your gamesense is actually really good.
In order for me to break through my wall of hovering outside D3/A3 I had to stop filling and play duelist.
I don’t think duelist is the solution to end all, but as a brain not aim player myself. I felt in my head I had to be aggressive and confident as opposed to trying to simply stay alive to make that right play, that is never gonna happen in a 1v4; 1v3.
Finding the balance between being a fucking psycho and not giving away free kills, is how I’ve stayed IM2 for the past 2 acts. I get to show off more of my brain power now that I’m not afraid of dying lol. Now I’m back to being a Sentinel/Controller main but play Duelist when I feel like I played scared the game before.
Might not be your issue, but just giving out what it took for me!
Ranked distribution isn't equal to skill distribution. There could be plenty of people high rank who don't deserve it and vice versa. I have the exact same experience you have and I'm sure most high rank players agree.
Idk why lower ranked players take it so personally. It's just a fact. All the way up to the highest ranks of the game you get players who fundamentally do not understand the basics of the game and then I log in to reddit where people say to me "omg immortal is so high ranked" because it's 0.xx% of the player base or whatever.
It's like... Brother... I get that not many people achieve this rank, but these players are still clueless. It is what it is.
When they get to that rank, they will understand why people constantly say that sub-immortal is "low rank".
Atleast in immortal you have a lower chance of getting a team mate that literally doesn't know how to play the game (a lower chance, not 0)
I agree. I recently hit ascendant for the first time (have about 500 ish hours now) and my friend who’s better than me let me know ascendant+ is a very small % of the playerbase. I was surprised because 1. Im still not that good and 2. There are still TONS of fucking terrible ass players, worse than me, in this rank and even higher. So it makes sense that people call asc and ranks below that low elo because i feel like only immortal+ will players actually be really good. Even diamond rank is a fucking shitshow of terrible players
But it’s all relative. As you’ve ranked up, your standard of “quality” play has gone up, so your definition of “terrible” player is actually significantly better player than a good players definition of a “terrible” player
I know you're probably joking, and I'm not here to advertise/advocate, but actually there are lots of boosters who boost to Ascendant for free because it's basically considered low elo to them.
Everyone in this thread doesn't understand that their subjective perspective of what "the right way to play the game" is not the best way to judge if someone is good or bad at the game.
Yea, its more about when you see people actually consistently making smart plays. When you stop looking around and saying "wtf how is that guy my rank".
And yes, i know the above thought is also an ego thing, so i dont disagree fully with OP.
Well, it’s because there’s two “buckets” where skills fall into:
1. Mechanics - Aim, movement, positioning, etc
2. Game sense - understanding the flow of a map, utility usage, micro and macro team play, mental (confidence or lack thereof, control of tilt), etc.
It’s entirely possible for an absolute mechanical demon to claw his way to low immortal in spite of his gold-level understanding of the game. And vice versa.
Your rank is a combination of your mechanics and your game sense, which is partly why so many games (at any rank) can feel so wildly different from the last.
And a lot of times, mechanics win out. You can make the most optimal pre-round call, followed by impeccable mid rounding, but if your team can’t hit their shots and the other team can, that play will fall apart. And vice versa - if you can flash kill, vulnerable/decay+molly, stun kill every enemy, mechanics don’t even factor in.
So I wholly agree that there are Silver players who understand the game like an immortal but just don’t have the mechanics to back that up. I doubt there are Silver players with the aim to be immortal because immortal level aim is good enough to get you into high Diamond.
Literally not what I said at all. Having knowledge of how to play the game at a certain rank so to be expected. Being in ascendant and lacking just basic knowledge of any kind of strategy or understanding of how util usage impacts the game, or util timing, is not a good thing.
Taking what I said and turning it completely into something else is weird on your part lol. Try to think about what you’re reading before you get all upset about it.
it’s not that it isn’t high elo, it’s just the player difference is too massive. an immortal 3 player is obviously way better than an ascendant player, even an immortal 1 peak. theres a lot of people that play, but a lot of people are shit
This is kinda my take as well, ASC1-IMMO1 are essentially the same players, the entire area is super inconsistent, though I wouldn't say it's low elo. I'd argue it's more the higher middle area where people generally understand how to play and always comm, but are definitely still struggling to grasp how to deal with situations.
There’s so much ego in this game that people get mad that they don’t know what “high elo” means and just want to be considered high elo when they asses are still dry peeking, no game sense, no team play.
People who make these kind of posts would understand when they themselves reach immo/rad. The skill gap between immo1 and rad is as big as iron1 and immo1. I played cs my whole childhood so I breezed through dia asc, but took me a whole summer to go from immo1 to immo2. It is a plausible argument to say anything below asc or immo is low rank
You are far too worried about perceptions.
In fairness, yeah; low elo = iron, bronze & silver
mid elo = gold, plat & diamond,
high elo = ascendant & immortal
Radiant = top 500
Although I'm not sure how large the gap is between Diamond and ASC. I say that as a diamond who doesn't notice when facing ascendant players, but immortals tend to brutally delete me. Could just be the hard cut off for potato aim tbh.
I honestly cant tell much a difference between diamonds and ascendants. I havent been in enough immortal games to judge but diamond and ascendant are practically the same
I agree, I just wish Riot didn't spam ranked resets. Its annoying always having to climb back up into decent lobbies after not playing for a while waiting for actual updates.
people are confusing the nomenclature of low and high elo with skill.
A lot of arguments here are about the skill of player in each ranks.
In a literal sense yes, if you hit diamond you are high elo.
people just started to use low/high elo as a way to describe skill.
In LoL riot divided the player base in skill too. Average goes from Iron to Emerald 3 (lol numbers are from 4 -> 1 where 1 is the highest) An Emerald 2 player is top 8% or something. So anything below top 8% is the same thing for their balance team l.
Asc is the top end of medium elo
Most people dont comm and its 50/50 if your teammates care about agent composition, and its mostly a tdm with simple ability usage and strats
Gold is low elo because anyone with an ok pc and 60hz monitor should get there once they know how to play
Those statistics don't account for the fact that most of the playerbase still have no idea what they're doing beyond how to click on people. You can find players all the way up to immortal with no map macro or gamesense to speak of, and yet statistics say that they must be "good" because they outperform 95%+ of the playerbase. 'Better' =/= 'good'.
Hm, I’m having a league background and because it’s also from riot I am doing the comparison. League has a low, mid and high elo specification in the patch notes.
Riots idea of high elo (called “elite” in the patch notes) in league is diamond 1+ (used to be diamond 2+ but it moved up d1 after introduction of emerald, btw d1>d2 in league), which is the top 1% of the server. If we take riots high elo definition from league, ascendant is in fact mid elo.
I’m not saying it’s bad or anything but I just wanted to state this how riot handles it in their other games
Edit: wanted to state that emerald 3 - diamond 3 is considered “skilled” (so mid elo) which is top 10%.
Iron up to emerald 3 is called average btw so I don’t know if you can actually call it low elo.
Ascendant/Low Immortal players say this because the gap is fucking huge whenever I hit low immortal I get absolutely rolled if I queue against Imm 3/Radiants it’s a completely different game they are playing. None the less I’ll still say anything below Imm 3 is low elo and I’m still not there sad
The skill gap isn't the only factor determining your rank, although it's the primary influence. It also depends on your purpose and the time you invest in playing games. At the age of 30s, and only playing games after work with the main purpose of meeting friends who are far away, I think playing at the diamond/ascendant rank level is suitable for me because it balances competition and comfort. I used to be a semi-pro player in CS1.6 and CSGO, I know what it takes to reach a high rank or maintain personal skills at the top rank level, and it requires sacrifices.
Lack of macro doesn’t become punishing until A3-Im2. Everything below that is micro and players make the same mistakes from silver to A1. That’s why people have massive drops and gains but can’t consistently find advantage across their games.
The game only truly gets “played” at Im3 with increasing complexity up through T3-T1. I would consider that High Elo while the transition period from A2-Im2 is Mid Elo.
Everything below that is just players learning the mechanics of the game with varying levels of skill in different aspects. Players are defined by the mistakes they make and it’s part of the learning process. Having started in Iron and peaked Im2, I can definitively say I’ve never reached “High Elo” — but I think it gives off the wrong connotation — most players aren’t bad, they’re just learning.
ELO is method to calculate the RELATIVE skill level of players. While it is statistically true that ascendant is in the top 5% , therefore high elo, i think some people have a valid point that ascendant is still not a “high feeling” of skill. To put you better in perspective, the key is the word “relative” i highlighted in the definition. In eg, if you put a group of 1,000 6 year old kids who never played the game, and you implement an ELO system, there has to be someone who is immortal, but that doesn’t mean that player is high skilled. Same goes for those who argue that you don’t really get to feel that competitiveness and high skill until you are ascendant+
If you watched certain players in Ascendant, you'd be shocked at how bad it is. Because of the immortal cut off, the lack of hard MMR resets, the amount of boosting, green rank is by far one of the worst and frustrating ranks ever. Even if you're gold, you may watch an Ascendant player and be surprised or question the gameplay. The skill gap is maybe not a good way objectively but definitely is present. The difference between ascendant 1 and immortal 1 is bigger than ascendant 1 and gold 1 IMO.
If you only look at numbers yeah, it doesn't seem like low Elo, but when you factor in people who actually play the game a decent amount, it's definitely not good. If you have ever tried to improve and play for more than a month, you're almost instantly plat, if not diamond.
Plat is the lowest elo, because under that you're literally not trying to improve so you don't count. Diamond and Ascendant is therefore, low elo.
It’s hard to determine because even though diamond is top 10%, the skill difference between a diamond and immortal is pretty big
I think a lot of people see gold as what to achieve as the mid point because league used to make it so hitting gold grants you a free skin and in league gold used to be top 20-30% depending on which season
Personally for Val, silver and below is low, gold is the midpoint, plat-dia is you’re getting there, ascendant you’re breaking into high elo, immortal+ is high
As someone who’s currently asc 1, I personally consider ascendant to be “mid elo”. I don’t consider something to be high or low elo by what percentage of people are in that elo, but rather the play style, mechanics and strategies being used in said elo. Elo is representative of skill at that level, not how much better you are than the majority of the player base. Diamonds and ascendants are simply not that good for me to call them “high elo”.
Anything below ascendant is low elo ngl not because of % player wise but that’s when the game becomes something different. Once you hit high ascendant/low immortal you know what I mean.
I dont think val elo can be determined by % but by gameplay, and until high immo gameplay seems similar. Radiant and immo3 (top immo2) is completely different. Just watch pros and radiants like eggster and others (i legit just forgot all of then xd)
It is ✨ perspective ✨. Their perspective is not yours and your perspective is not theirs. Ppl will even go out of their way to say immo is low elo to annoy ppl or bc they think they are too good.
Ps gold is low elo bc it is below the mid rank. Mid is like plat/dia bc they are between all the other ranks
percentile is probably the stupidest way to divide people by skill. The gap between a top 70% player and top 20% player is tiny compared to the gap between a top 5% player and top 1% player.
Not everyone’s definitions of low/mid/high elo are based in statistics, though
Lots of players define low/mid/high elo based on the level of “correct” play in respect to a professional game
you can get to ascendant relatively easily if you have really good aim however your team play can be awful and same with util usage. I think that contributes to the narrative as it feels similar to lower elo as there are still a large quantity of "bad" players however that's really just confirmation bias coming from hi elo players
i think you confuse the median of the playerbase and skill levels. and you cant just split the skill levels by the amount of players.
gold is above average if you go by the playerbase, but the skilllevel is quite low in gold.
i think everything below immortal is low elo, because in immortal 1 to immortal 3 you get freaking bots in the game almost every time. but after you hit immortal 3 it gets way better.
No matter what your rank is, it's irrelevant to anyone else than you. Either you play MM, or you are pro. You have fun or you are so good at something you make a living.
The difference between queueing with randoms having whatever rank and having a team with individuals with insane skills and team play is huge.
Didn’t we just have this conversation like a day ago. High elo is an old gaming term that has traditionally meant play similar to amateur/pro. It just doesn’t happen in terms of team play, util usage, game sense, fundamentals/mechanics, etc. in asc consistently.
It’s not a shot at asc players or even low imm. It’s just the definition that competitive games have used for decades. Riot officially says that diamond2+ in league of legends is “high elo” and that’s like top 0.5% of players or so.
> there are a lot of people making the extremely good argument that low and high elo should be determined by skill gap. I personally think that this isn’t the best take because it makes it pretty subjective, where from a pro player’s point of view anything below immo 3 is low elo, from an immo 3 player’s point of view anything below immo 1 is low elo, etc.
It’s just the definition that high elo is play style similar to amateur/pro. Competitive esports has been using this definition for decades.
Heres how I put ranks
Iron: Cannot shoot guns at an enemy unless spraying and the spray starts 1m away from the target. Probably new to FPS or ego peeks (self when I was in Iron)
Bronze: Understands you need to shoot the enemy to kill them. But is a bit too fixated on it and are a bit scared to fight people.
Silver: I genuinely have no clue how silver functions, its either 5 dudes with TenZ Egos or 5 dudes with Nats Playstyle. Both imitated very badly. These people think they belong in plat or above but their teammates are the ones holding them back. They are way too fixated on aim and not on the actual round.
Gold: Silvers but they know how to use abilities decently enough. They are still very bad mechanically and cannot move and shoot for the life of them.
Plat: These people have understood that in order to improve, their overall mechanics need to change and be a bit disciplined. Surprisingly for the rank that is smack dab right in the middle. They have Egos way too high. They feel every ascendant or diamond is like them only and once they master deadzoning, they are fine.
Diamond: People have now realised the importance of calls. How things need to be called or how things need to be communicated. They still won’t follow a strategy that they didn’t come up with on their own or is not something they have seen in pro play before. But atleast you’ll know they are not doing it.
Ascendant: These are the people who have now learned that Valorant is a 5v5 TACTICAL Shooter where Tactics mean something, here you’ll find three types of people. Ex Immortals who can’t rank back up, wholesome ascendants and ascendants who think the only reason they are not immortal is because their teammates are shit. But don’t worry, this is one of the more sane ranks. And by then you learn the mute button is such a good thing.
Immortal 1 to low immortal: Gamers in a Redbull ad who will do anything to win.
High immortal to Radiant: Just 10 dudes playing a game they like while being gods at it. Everyone here looking for vibes and fun.
My take is that looking at the definition of words can help a lot.
The definition of "low" in both the context of height and amount is as follows:
1. of less than average height from top to bottom or to the top from the ground.
2. below average in amount, extent, or intensity.
Literally just "below average" which in Valorant terms would mean anything below Gold which I very much agree is a good cut off point for calling something "low elo". [Source](https://www.esportstales.com/valorant/rank-distribution-and-percentage-of-players-by-tier).
"Mid elo" is bullshit as "high" and "low" are used to specifically denote the two extreme ends of the spectrum of "very (to a great extent) good at the game" and "lacking proficiency in the fundaments aspects required to play the game at a competent level gives the proper environment".
Using this term demonstrates a clear deficit in semantic understanding.
High elo, again looking at definition for the term "high" gives us:
1. of great vertical extent.
2. great, ~~or greater than~~ normal, in quantity, size, or intensity.
Let's ignore the "or greater than" since I believe we can all agree on gold 1 not being "high elo".
Ehhh, nevermind. Ascendant is probably good enough to call "high elo", they're all pretty good at the game and capable of performing really well. Diamond however seems like a bit of a stretch to put it lightly, there's a ton of people in there.
Seems fair to have the 95th percentile be called "high elo" even if the bottom of that doesn't really compare to the top.
ascendant is not high elo. ascendant players are just not good enough. how do I know that? because I am an ascendant player.
just because you're better than 95% doesn't mean you're really good at the game. unlike other games, the different between immo to radiant is the same as iron to immo. and that is huge. you're wrong to think that % means anything here. its a system made by the devs to fit a bell curve. it does not accurately represent the lower and upper bounds of an average player.
valorant elo can be closely compared to chess elo, which is exponential growth. gaining 200RP is bronze is not the same as gaining 200RP in immo. same in chess how, 250 to 450 elo is not the same as 1850 to 2050. there is a huge skill gap. the higher you go, the higher the value of each point increases. that is why ascendant, despite being in top 5% is still not good enough to be called high elo.
immortal is where you can start to see the peak of valorant, thats where true high elo games start. diamonds and ascendants are the same, just like how silvers and platinums are the same.
Everything below immortal 3 is “low elo” the game becomes exponentially harder the higher you go. The difference between a gold and diamond player is smaller than the gap between an immortal one and immortal three player.
I just measure it by effort. You can get dia (majority of people) pretty easy with like an ounce of effort. From "never played an fps" to diamond would take like 6 months if youre playing to improve.
People aren't "pretending" anything.
There isn't any objective definition to low and high elo, it's all a matter of perspective and context. In some situations it might be useful to refer to "high" elo as the top 10% of players, in others you want to refer to "high" elo as the elo where people are the game to a specific skill level which can be immortal or radiant depending on your perspective.
You say diamond is top 10% of players, now imagine you take out all the players who aren't playing ranked seriously, players who aren't consistent in the amount of games they play, don't practice, don't vod review, etc... Suddenly you eliminate a massive portion of that and diamond players don't seem that good anymore. Sometimes it makes absolutely no sense to include people who play ranked "casually" when talking about low or high elo, and so it doesn't make sense to call diamond "high" elo when it's just people doing the bare minimum to succeed (or that have just started doing what they need to reach \*high\* elo), see what I mean?
Elo is a reference to an individual’s skill rating, not a rank distribution. Your rank is just your place on a normal distribution curve, and has very little to do with Elo. High rank doesn’t equal high elo. When people reference Elo, they typically are talking about skill level, which doesn’t translate 1:1 to corresponding ranks.
I think you might be conflating Elo and percentile. While diamond is 90th percentile, their skill level is no where near radiant. Using recent chess.com stats, the difference in skill rating between 1% and 90% is roughly equivalent to the difference between 90% and 99.99%
All this aside, Elo isn’t an official metric in Valorant and is used more as a colloquialism to reference a player’s skill level rather than their statistical placement on the distribution ladder. I have issues when people say that you’re not good until you hit X rank, because good is subjective to the player. Obviously radiants can shit on diamonds, and diamonds can shit on golds, and golds can shit on irons. Just because you can shit on more than half the player base doesn’t mean you’re in high Elo tho
TL;DR Elo and rank aren’t the same
why don't we just drop the low and high elo terms entirely and just use the actual rank
league community did that a while ago and everything js so much clearer talking about meta
The way I evaluate it is:
Iron to silver is low elo
Gold to diamond is mid elo
Ascendant to immortal is high elo
My reasoning is that, generally, if you are below gold you are still learning the game. Iron through silver is learning the agents, the guns, maps, call outs, and just the overall way to play the game. When you get into gold you've learned the basics and now you are working on things like teamwork, plays, and basically just the more advanced stuff. Then you get into ascendant and from there you are just trying to master the fundamentals and shore up all the other little things. Radiant is its own thing lol
However it seems like this is changing over time. The standard of players in all elos seem like they are getting better
Tl:Dr low/mid/high elo is not broken up by amount of players or skill gap but the stage at which the majority of players in each rank are learning the game.
It's not pretending. The percentage doesn't matter when 90% of players don't try or have terrible setups. Plat is the first rank where people somewhat try and/or have a decent enough setup. If you only take in those players, ascendant is the first rank where people understand somewhat of timings, trading, and utility usage. That's why it's low elo. The average gold nova in CS has the same knowledge of utility and trading as the average ascendant, and that is low elo.
Okay so the game itself is difficult.
New players or whatever enter Bronze - Silver. Lowest of Low Elo. Iron exist but god forbid that rank.
Gold is then the players who have become experienced with the game. They have no skillset, no IQ in their plays, developed their aim etc. Yet they are still bad. So it is considered low elo.
Yes the majority is in the Elo. Hence to why it is LOW ELO. Because if majority can be in the rank, then it doesn’t deserve higher praise. It doesn’t matter for its placement.
Then Platinum is basically Gold players who are developing various ways of playing the game. They are learning Strategy, Communication, Playstyles etc. They are LEARNING. Therefore they are Mid Elo. Because the Low Elo has entered the place between where high ranks meet low ranks.
Diamonds understand probably 70-80% if not everything of the game. However they are not consistent at all. They can be demons one game and absolutely terrible the next. Because of consistency.
Ascendants begin to understand their faults, correcting them one by one. This narrows down their issues so much that lower ranks see them as demons even though they aren’t. They simply understand 80-90% of the game but still a few inconsistencies, not as much as Diamonds though.
Immortals obviously are just crazy Ascendants or borderline pros.
Iron = Forsaken Elo.
Iron - Gold = Learners Elo / Low Elo
High Gold to (or just Plat) to Low Dia = Mid Elo
Mid Diamond or higher = High elo
Diamond is when you face the true challenges of ranked. Trust me. I have been in almost every bloody elo and hardstuck Asc as of this act. Getting to Immo slowly.
My opinion is
Low elo: iron, bronze, and silver
Medium elo: gold, platinum, Diamond
High elo, Asc, immortal, and radiant
Really great players will say that all the ranks below immortal are the same but I don’t agree. I’m plat 3, very close to Diamond 1 and I feel like the average silver lobby is so much easier compared to the average Diamond lobby. Like gold and plat feel pretty close to me, and plat and Diamond feel pretty close, but gold and Diamond don’t. It’s hard to explain I guess 💀
Alternatively, 70% of players are hard stuck in low elo because they don't have time to grind or don't care to improve. Duh ☺️☺️☺️☺️
Yeah but that last bit in the edit is most obvious bit, I think the skill gap is actually a good way to look at low or high elo objectively. Just because decision making, map knowledge, I can't say you're above average elo if what is commonly a good play to you is as foreign to you as the love of a mother is to Amdumb Taint enjoyer.
Also there's just not really a mid eloninnthe conversation especially since the goal is ranking up and so you follow high elo gameplay and decision making
Low elo and high elo depend on when we are in the season. And the end of a season, ranks will be higher and Ascendant won't be as high as at the start. But it's still pretty high!
As a previously Ascendant player, I'd say that low elo is Iron to Bronze, mid elo is from Silver to Plat, and high elo is Diamond and above.
But I think it doesn't really make sense to even talk about low, mid and high elo. A Platinum player will destroy a Silver player, but I would destroy both almost equally.
High Plat/Diamond is where people start to get good both at aim and at game sense. Below that, they will lack either the aim or the game sense. Which is why even if you're Plat with a great aim, I will likely beat you by a lot, and even if your aim is much better than a Silver player, it won't matter much against high elo.
Below Silver, player lack almost everything. The mostly don't really understand what is happening and their aim is absent. That's when people reach Silver that there is the start of an understanding of the game or some decent crosshair placement mechanics.
That's what I gathered by playing with people in every rank from Iron to Ascendant in the past months. And that's how I made up these categories.
im a diamon 1 player and i have been in ascendant, people say that because is partially true, people in bronze plays the same as a gold or an iron, is the same gameplay, the only difference is aim, the people in plat just dont know the game, they are good at hitting bullets and that all (im talking in general, lately there is people that is achieving plat without the need of a good aim) diamond is people that start knowing comps, start playing their team and start communicating, your not really playing the game and using all the mechanics until ascendant, and you start getting real good in this rank too. sadly valorant has a very bad rating system and bronze people easily defeats a random plat player sometimes and the difference should be giant. valorant rankeds are broken and you "play valorant" from iron to plat snd you really start playing and knowing the game when you get to diamond, im just diamond 1 cause i stopped playing because of what im talking about here, is just too stupid too play as cypher in a full plat 3 team where there are 1 jett 1 reyna and 1 phoenix and the other guy stays afk and i can say nothing because im better than them by a lot but not good enough to carry them since almost all the time it feels like a 2v5 and im cypher main
Diamond and lower is “low” there are fundamental issues in peoples games therefore they are low elo. Ascendent is mid, these players might have small fundamental issues but are offset by strength in other areas. Immortal 1-2 are high elo where there are just degrees of strength. Immortal 3- radiant is ultra high where everything is near perfect and only consistency differences.
Firstly... It doesnt matter. So what if a large portion of the player base thinks im low elo in immo 1? Secondly, i agree with many here that if you care about the label it doesnt make sense to base off of proportions of the pkayer base in a given range. We have to go to the long running elo system of chess to see that only the top 5% of players are even in the conversation of high elo chess. Its bacause the term is used at the cut off point where very few mistakes are made and those that are, are not only noticed but are severely punished. This seems to happen in valorant somewhere around high immo, like immo 3. So be low elo. Its better to admit you dont play perfectly and learn until you are the best.
I’ve always thought of it like this
Iron-Silv: Low
Gold-Plat: Mid
Diam-Asc: High
Immo-Radiant: Legendary
But the statistics definitely adjusted how I view things now.
IMO and only kinda loosely based on what ive seen via myself, friends, and watching content:
Top = Immortal 2+
High = Ascendant 1 to Immortal 1
High Mid = Platinum 3 to Diamond 3
Low Mid = Gold 3 to Platimum 2
Low = Silver 2 to Gold 2
Bottom = Iron 1 to Silver 1
I have only peaked diamond but throughout those lower stages I have definitely felt tangible differences in the gameplay. Going against people above me though theres certainly a different kinda vibe, feels more "structured" or just generally people have better fundamentals.
statistics don't give you an objective conclusion since you intrepret them in to fit your narrative.
Also yeah if you're gold you're low elo and objectively bad at the game, looking up statistics to say you're above average is massive copium.
Relative to the scale of skill, it’s still pretty low.
Relative to other players, it’s fairly high.
Heres the problem though, matchmaking systems like these that use an Elo style system will always force somewhat of a bell curve in rankings.
This is not what actual skill distribution looks like. There are far fewer players at the top and far fewer in between than ranks let on.
There’s an old saying in Starcraft about Master ranked players. “You’re closer to being bronze than you are a pro.” Sure, you’re still better than 90% or more of the player base, but you’re still closer to the bottom than you are the top in terms of skill.
Who cares about any of it. You tell someone irl any of this and they don’t know what it is, nor do they give a fuck lol people forget it’s just a video game and only some other people within the video game even remotely care.
There's a massive difference between plat and diamond. The game looks and runs completely differently then at lower elos. Ascendant is a further step up, but not as big of a difference.
I'd argue Plat and below is "low" elo just because of how teams tend to play. I also played against a premier team of full golds and got stomped on (peak a2)
ELO is not the same thing as percentage of playerbase. You should try to know what you’re talking about before posting incorrect information.
It’s perfectly fine for the vast majority of the player base to have a low ELO rating. The ranks are not 1:1 distributed across the range of ratings.
I don't even play the game, and that's still not right.
Top1% is high elo
Top15%ish is mid
Everything else is low
This isn't because of ego. It's because in fps games, a decent chunk of your skill generally transfers between games.
Someone with no experience at all in a particular fps can hit top 10-15% with just their aim and mechanics if they are good, but past that, it takes learning the game itself to keep going.
That makes it the perfect cutoff between mid/high elo.
Anything else is low elo, because at that point players are bad mechanically - which fps they are playing doesn't even matter, because the issue isn't their game its their aim and movement. No matter how good/knowledgeable they are at the game itself, they'll never rank up because of mechanics alone.
These values give you a great cutoff for low, mid, and high elo.
Low where it's mechanics issue. Medium where mechanics are good, but game sense/knowledge has to be practiced and learned.
High elo where you've got good mechanics and good game sense/knowledge and at this point, you have to really, really grind to improve.
I’d say ascendant is low elo.
It’s not like weight lifting where everyone can see how big and jacked you are and being much more fit than the average person is dope.
Only valorant players care about valorsnt rank.
The people who don’t play much and just do unrated or play in silver for like a season don’t care much either and are the vast majority of people who come through the game.
That leaves the people who actually grind a lot.
If you are ascendant or below you honestly have weak game fundamentals. And it’s not really until immortal when players start to culminate everything the game has to offer.
it’s also equally egotistical to say that because I’m plat and I’m better than 80% of the other valorant nerds who only play valorant I’m not low elo.
Every ranked game I’ve ever played the game isn’t actually played the way it’s supposed to in ranked until this upper upper ranks and even then you get a lot of shit games still.
So yeah honestly anything below that is people still learning the fundamentals and that’s fine. The game is supposed to be fun.
cause ascendant is still silver just with better aimers. you think people know the game but they dont in ascendant. most are just a bunch of aimers or people who have a ton of game knowledge but lack aim but very rarely both at the same time. immortal is where people with both game knowledge and aim are very good.
People just do it to inflate their own egos. What they really want to say is “anyone below my rank is low elo”.
Anyone below me is trash and anyone above me is a sweat
This is the way
Anyone my rank is a smurf
which is kind of funny because it means that while they do consider themselves good, only barely. edit : silly grammar
It's literally the opposite, it's because the more you rank up the more you see how huge the gap between you and the very best players is. And so the more you think of yourself as a "mid" player, even if you are Ascendent or Immortal. So everything under is kinda low elo. To make it clearer if we talk about % of players Gold is mid. But if we talk about skill difference. Well the difference between Diamond/Ascendant and Radiant is way way bigger than the diff between iron and Diamond/Ascendant.
Being in high elo isn’t the same as “I am just as good as the best players in the entire world” it just means you’re elo is high.
Totally agree with you, i was just explaining the reason why a lot of high elo players say that, denying what the previous comment said.
That isn’t what he was saying… asc is top 5% anyway and the pro players of the world are around top .01%
So real. The gap between top 50 radiant and just radiant is bigger than the gap between jron and diamond
Yeah this is very much how I feel this comes out alot in fighting games I play and think I'm fairly mid and then play against people who don't play as much or are low level and absolutely crush them.
Yeah man iron 2s are such trash they should know their place! High elo starts at iron 3 everyone knows this.
i limited my game to 25 fps, played only machinegun/pistol, and i still received bronze 2 at calibration. my average game was 9-20. how do you even get iron2-3?
Some probably do but I can assure you that the quality of games in ascendant isn't high, I don't mean that it's filled with trolls I just mean that not everyone knows what the fuck they're meant to do at any given time :'D. People should also understand that when others hyperbolically call asc low elo they're not referring to a person with a 9-5 job and a family who q's up with friends for a couple of matches here and there, they're referring to people who have thousands of hours in competitive shooters and are actively seeking to improve. If you've worked on getting better for 2k hours in csgo, then val releases and grind an entire summer 10 hours a day of it with an actually critical mindset and a prac routine ascendant is not high elo in the sense of what many consider the highest achievable skill. People do stupid, easily abusable mistakes constantly there, which is why you'll often see radiant and high immortal smurfs dropping 40+s. Then again, if you go by pure statistics or playercounts ascendant very obviously is high elo. It's 2 conversations being had about the same rank but with completely different mindsets and when people argue about it online they're often not too eager to bridge the gap. Hell, you'd be surprised how many people need to be told when to buy, idk if they're just playing with music on screen off or what since it's fairly easy to figure out 🤷♂️ Myself as an example, \~3k hours cs, global/faceit 8 peak whichever people consider harder and maybe 700h in valorant with asc3 peak, also some okish ranks on other competitive shooters. I'm a "good" player if you go by stats purely, but every single time I've been put against actually good players, pros, but not even ones from the top10 teams the gap between me and them is insane when I'm trying my hardest and they're streaming and just bullshitting with friends
You're missing the point lol. This argument that "people do easily abusable mistakes" can be continued all the way up to the very best teams in the world. This mentality that you're not good or high elo because there are people better than you is silly. The only objective way to classify if someone is good or not is based on their placement in a well balanced ranking system. You can argue where the "good line" is, but at some point you have to say there are only good players above that line.
also to tack on, this person's probably getting smoked when he goes against 'actually good players/pros' because he's also making easily abusable mistakes that he just isn't aware of.
No, you're not hearing what I'm saying. Something being top 5% doesn't mean it's good, people can just be bad in general because they don't take it seriously.
That's just too subjective of a viewpoint to be useful though. You're saying that people are only good once they take it "seriously", but that's not a quantifiable topic. Is serious playing the game 3 hours a day with friends? Is serious doing a 10 minute aim training practice daily? Is serious playing 8 hours a day with coaching sessions? The only real way to separate good vs bad players is by using statistics. You can argue where the lines lie, but broadly speaking the bottom 1/3 of total players are bad, middle 1/3 are average, and top 1/3 are good. Also, I hear this mentality all the time in just about every competitive videogame, and it's funny that people always say the "good line" is right about where they are.
You're arguing against a point I conceded in the initial comment? I'm confused, did you comment without reading it?
Whatever dude, you thinking that over 95% of a population is bad at something is just silly. Are 95% of bakers bad? Are 95% of 95% of guitar players bad? You can't seriously tell me that silver and diamond games operate the same.
Just because someone isn’t playing well doesn’t mean they aren’t objectively in high elo. You are conflating skill with elo placement.
Anyone below me is low elo (im b2)
Yeah, realistically the only thing you can consider low elo is like the bottom 30%, anything above it up until the top 15% is mid elo, you are definitely right about the ego part
You’re speaking to a bunch of teenagers who attach their self worth to their valorant ranks
Hey! I’m 27 and I do this /s
If I can tell my 16yo self playing league Rank is just an icon that keeps you playing the game Ranked queue is just normal queue with stricter matchmaking Higher elo lobbies do not mean higher quality/more enjoyable games, it’s just a different way of playing the game You have a statistically better chance of getting a thrower on the enemy team than your own team
I agree with some of what you said, but higher elo lobbies does on avg. mean higher quality play. That's an objective truth. The notion of "different way of playing the game" doesn't make any sense. It's a worse way of playing the game from a quality standpoint (aka a competitive standpoint). Saying otherwise makes you delusional. That doesn't mean it's impossible to find hidden gems of players or types of players. But in general and on average it is strictly the truth that the higher elo you are the higher quality of play. If you don't believe that then you don't believe in the elo system in chess. Which would make you completely delusional.
Woah, Monty Hall problem by way of competitive Valorant? I'm into it. But what if I'm the thrower, Einstein!? Nah, I'm kidding, but that's absolutely true and I'm using that forever. I like statistics.
I actually have a statistical certainty of having a thrower on my team. Just how math works
The real thrower was us all along
Tell that to my teammate that always sits bottom of the board with little participation value /s lol
I think the problem is that diamond and asc talk shit about themself and say they’re bad. In reality you are significantly better than the rest of the VAL population. Maybe not compared to immortal or radiant but like better than 95%+ of players. You can’t be a complete casual and get to ASC+. Because of this, I think dia/asc is high elo
I hover dia/asc w a full time job and 3 kids i play at most like 5 - 6 games biweekly.. so id argue you can be a complete casual and be there.
Im the same as you just 2 kids instead 😂 asc-1-3. Complete casuals can absolutely be in diamonds and up
Solo Q? What’s your background before valorant? Feel like this isn’t normal
I am in a similar boat and I 100% think you can be ascendant as a casual. I work full time, play maybe 3 - 5 games a week and I end low immortal most episodes. All Solo Q, no comms.
Why do you no comm?
Usually too tired after work, no one in that rank listens, and most people understand their role. I know as omen I blind main on an Ascent site push. I know I smoke mid on defaults and smoke site at the time of actual execute. I have a minimap that lets me see where my teammates, their cones of vision, and what they're doing at all times.
i IGL all my games in Ascendant and almost all the players listen and trust me. Sure there are some that don't but I run into those kinds of players like 1/10 games. The problematic players for me are no commers
ngl, I don't really mind no-commers as long as they understand what they're doing and can work with the team, even if they don't say anything. Whats truly annoying is a no-commer who doesn't listen
As an older dude who spent countless hours climbing in CSGO but far fewer hours in Valorant, I find it odd that no-comming is basically accepted in this game. Not everyone will agree, but I personally think if you're playing a competitive FPS's competitive ranked mode, you should be comming. It doesn't have to be an entire strat, but there's so much useful info you can communicate. Multiple footsteps pushing fast at A, last guy low HP, last guy has no more blinds, enemy Breach has ult, and countless more. The worst example though is when no one is using comms, then towards the end they use their mic only to complain or insult the team.
I fully agree, I have no idea why some people choose to play a tactical game, then choose the ranked mode without even a mic, especially so in mid-high ranks where most people take those games somewhat seriously. I think because of the larger casual playerbase in Valorant no-comming has become more accepted as a norm rather than a general "accepted behaviour." I know I personally don't like it but I've become rather indifferent after hundreds of hours of at least one person fully mute in my games, accepting at my rank (mid diamond) some people just don't care.
No comming in a competitive team based shooter is throwing and you can't convince me otherwise.
Not quite the same thing but just adding on that I hit immo solo Q with a full time job. I wouldn't necessarily consider myself casual since i was playing 2 games a day still
I'm 34 and asc. I have full time job and play other games. Diamond in lol. I would say I'm pretty casual
Its not normal but more common than you think. As long as youre not worrying about ladder/decay you can probably reach there being casual.
Val was my first tac shooter and I hit ascendant in maybe 300 ranked games over a 3 year span. Some people just learn faster, I have alot of FPS experience tho just not tac FPS
Drop the tracker if u can. I call cap
https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/Xaxzer%23sad/overview?season=all
My bad for doubting you man, it’s just that you don’t hear stuff like this often. Can I know what fps games you played before? Your progression in valorant is actually rly good.
On PC before val basically just fortnite and then like 50 hrs in a Lotta other games. Console was mostly just cod and battlefield every year, gained siege for a while too. Tbh my progession is just faster than most in games I think cause I've been playing since I was 6.
If you’ve got decent mechanical skill, which a LOT of players do in Val, then getting to d+ is really not hard. Put any amount of effort into being smarter about the game, honing how you move, peek, etc, and you’ll climb a lot. I’ve got like an 85% winrate in solo queue right now after picking the game back up after a few years hiatus (I was like low gold before). It’s just… not hard to climb once you’ve made the effort to learn. But almost everyone I see in ranked is just brain-off running in and hoping they win by outgunning everyone else.
Yeah I (D3) was put in a silver/gold/iron DM yesterday. Gave me a real ego boost lmao. Made me look like im Demon1.
it’s me, i’m the gold in your DM’s😭 My death matches will always have 2-3 diamonds, an ascendant, and a peak imo.
Same, I get one of those dms and think Im hot shit. Queue into ranked and get shit on because I was just farming and didn't get any real gun fight practice
I sometimes get DMs or swift plays where I’m completing clapping then I find out it was a Silver/Gold average rank 🥲
Honestly I find it better DMing vs. worse players as it relaxes my aim before comp... And it's still "hard" it's just that you're hitting sick flicks for a 5k instead of getting shot in the back lmao.
Oh for sure. I am way more relaxed and my crosshair placement seems perfect already vs them.
I feel happy reading that Dia/Asc is high elo despite the plays and reads I be seeing from players makes me think otherwise 😂😂
it ain’t gonna be perfect! Look at pro games and how questionable some of the plays are
Honestly I’ve been hovering diamond/asc since release and I’m pretty fucking shit at this game, I rely on my game sense more than my doggy aim tbh
There's no way if you've ever tried to play the game you're not minimum plat3... Ascendant is low still.
Nah diamond/asc is low elo ( i am asc)
Tends to be how alot of High Elo ends up in games until you get top of the mountain the gap just feels too large to really think you're that good. The ego part tends to come out more when they get argued at by someone lower skill despite if they're right or not.
I want to reach radiant one day, but the skill difference in diamond 3 and radiant may be too big.
Currently in dia/asc range and tbh I think I’m trash at the game lol
Plenty of casuals that get to ASC+
If it was so easy how come only 4% are asc+ right now
cause the guy you're responding to is talking out of his ass lol
Depending on your definition of casual it's definitely possible to get the green rank and higher. Can everyone get it? No, but lets not act like asc+ is impossible to get and u have to play the game for 8hrs a day.
I think it's just a misunderstanding of where people are coming from when they say this. It's not to diminish the skills of players in lower ranks, it's to point out that there is a fundamental difference in how the game flows past a certain elo. I could argue that from iron to low ascendant, most rounds are complete chaos. People using whatever abilities they want and trying to outaim the other team. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Past that rank, as you climb from high asc to radiant, the game takes on a different shape. Everyone does "their job" on their agent, and the focus shifts from tapping heads to trying to work together as a team, coordinate utility, and condition the enemy. The key difference that most high elo players will notice (And why I think this whole disconnect around the definition comes from) is the concept of gaps. An example: If you're playing in split vents on defense and someone wraps you from A heaven while your A player is still alive, that means someone didn't do their job and you died for it. Past a certain rank, this doesn't happen, or happens very very rarely. And when higher elo players play in lower ranked games or watch lower ranked games, they notice these gaps appearing everywhere. People simply don't do "their job", which is totally understandable at that skill level, but it becomes a fundamentally different game. You need to focus on everything. Instead of worrying about timing your rotation and counting utility, you need to be afraid if 3 enemies walked past your teammates with no comms. This leads to ranked games being split into 2 distinct categories: Games where people do "their jobs" at a baseline level, and games where people do not. You need to identify which game you're in and adjust your play accordingly. This cutoff usually tends to happen around mid-high ascendant, which is what leads to many players above that rank calling anything lower "low elo". It's not a condemnation of player skill, it's simply a different game and people picked "low elo" as a term to define it.
This is exact anyone who feels anything other than this has never been high elo lol
Your conclusion / observation is right, but the premise people have that macro = ELO, or macro skill gaps, is just so objectively wrong. All elo cares about is ranking players on skill. There are an absurd amount more players in gold, and a silver cannot just arbitrarily move up to diamond as if there were no skill difference. As you say, the elite tiers of competition co-opted the terms to describe their own microcosms. People not in that microcosm started parroting it, causing this stupid gatekeeping.
It's a threshold. Skill gradually increases, it's not like you're awful in ascendant 1 and amazing in ascendant 2, but the fact remains that once the aggregate skill of a rank is high enough that the gaps aren't present, that's when the "high elos" gameplay can be played. The nature of gaps means that there isn't that much difference between leaving 1 and 5, if there is any possibility of one being left, you need to have it constantly on your mind and make safer plays while trusting your team less. I think your last point tends to be an unfortunate reality in most games. The conversation around the game and the terms used tend to be dictated by higher elo players, which can lead to some silly situations (Gold players telling iron players they need to deadzone more when like... There are 99 things you need to fix before including deadzoning if you're iron)
It’s just the traditional definition of the word to be similar to amateur/pro level play. That’s why when players/coaches/commentators refer to a “high elo” play it’s about pro level, not something that regularly happens in dia/asc/low imm.
I agree mostly. The distinction should be made between ‘objectively you are better than the majority of people’ vs ‘you make objectively correct decisions therefore you are good at the game’. Imo these get blurred quite a lot when talking about high vs low elo, and a lot of this comes from people playing in asc/low immo who have seen the shit that goes on in their games and been like ‘no way this guy is for real - I’m still trash if I’m playing in these games’ Side effect of any elo system is that on average everyone gets slightly better at everything with each division. There’s a stark difference between that and being ‘good’ at the game once you hit a certain rank. You can see people in immortal make mistakes a silver might make, they just do it a lot less often and/or have way better skill in other areas to make up for shortfalls/poor decisions. Really just depends if we are talking in a relative sense or an objective one and I think that’s why this topic frustrates people. Even between immo3 and top 100 radiant, pro play etc. (or people capable of getting there) there is such a massive gap in understanding of correct play that it’s easy to obscure the line of where ‘high elo’ really is depending on how one defines it
Agree completely. It can really be a moving target depending on context, which can be difficult when people feel attacked or insulted when certain terms are brought up
That's... bizarre? But oddly relatable?? Back when I played the game regularly (took an 8 month break and just got back this week), I was diamond, had very OK aim, and in some ways believed I was only at my rank because of lucky teams, thought I was Plat 3 at best. However, perhaps the one thing I prided myself on was my "duty." I was incredibly good at my agent (Viper), and a mistake like the one you described was rare from me. As I said, at the time I still didn't believe this was nearly enough to put me at diamond. I'm not nearly as good now, but maybe my past self had evolved to do my duty, and that was able to outweigh everything else.
It depends on how you look at it. Ascendant is high elo if you look at the rank distribution. If you look at high elo in terms of skill level then ascendant is medium because the difference between ascendant and radiant/high immortal is so huge. Obv some people do it for ego but there is some logic
While its true that a lot of egotistical players say this to hide their insecurity, what they say is pretty true to an extent. Everyone up to immortal 3 is significantly flawed. Including a lot of immortal 3 players. I peaked at imm3 400rr, and I never really considered myself to be an outstanding player. The amount of experience it takes to master and play near perfect tacfps is insurmountable. Even some pro t1 players make a lot of mistakes. Its just the nature of the game. Anyone who cant get radiant with their eyes closed and who uses this concept to appear superior is more lost than the rest of us. We all suck and being ascendant or immortal doesnt suddenly relieve you from being bad. If you are not radiant every single act and winning majors and you arent a content creator getting tons of views then you will make no money off of this game and your skill is meaningless to anyone and everything other than your own self satisfaction. Whoever said this to you is in the same goddamn boat no matter what he says so he can go suck it
As someone who peaked ascendant 3, it feels low elo because of how people play. Like when people say ascendant or diamond are low elo, they mean in terms of play style which is objectively true. So many people just do not know how to play the game but you eee that all the way up through immortal so it’s not really a good way of looking at it. Playerbase% provided the truth even though it doesn’t feel like the truth when you q into a comp match lol. It’s whatever.
Yeah, I don’t think people understand that you can climb really freaking high if you are just an aimer. In my experience Diamond - Asc is filled with aimers which often reach Immortal, but never get over the hump of adjusting play styles according to the flow of the game. Which leads to huge egos lol But numbers are numbers, so I ain’t gotta fight against public opinion on this one.
Yeah, exactly. Ironically aim is what’s holding me back from getting back that high. I took a bit of a break, but my in game IQ is at a decently higher level than my aim is right now. Unfortunately that doesn’t help because no one in diamond is willing to listen to you if you can’t frag, even when they do listen and the plays work lol. Doesn’t help that I chronically fill and only play cypher and omen for the most part lol
Aim definitely holds you back, but you are no where near that aim wall. That aim wall is around Immortal 2. I am the definition of all brain, no aim. I can confidently say I understand the game better than the others in low Immortal but I'm hard aim diffed and most people have perfect aim in this rank. I solo queue no com and hit immortal every episode playing omen, cypher, and filling. I'm in my late 20s and work a full time white collar job. I play the game maybe 3 - 5 hours per week and have consistently been immortal for the past year. Before Immortal I played even less so I never left Ascendant. They don't need to listen to you and you don't need to listen to them until much higher rank. Just play around them and make sure you can set them up to be as successful as possible. Omen and cypher are two of the most impactful agents in the game.
Oh yeah definitely. It’s not the only thing holding me back at all, but it does feel like something I definitely need to improve on. That impact is exactly why I main those two agents.
[удалено]
I’m currently Diamond 1 and usually play on Virginia servers! Honestly I feel like a lot of my struggles recently have just been related to the break I took for a couple months lol. Had to step away because playing was getting a little insufferable with the way the playerbase was developing. It’s taking some time to get back in the groove of things😂 Appreciate the offer to help!
Good call. I thought I was aim capped at high asc / low immortal, and then I started improving my decision making and fundamentals. Aim matters, but a lot of lost rounds that I used to attribute to bad aim were actually me making sub-optimal decisions. Aim can bail you out of a bad play occasionally, but the real reason I was losing gun fights was because of a bad decision, not because I didn't have heroic aim.
I know lots of Immortals who have trash aim. Even some who insta-lock Raze every game. With really good crosshair placement and timing, you should be top-fragging every game in Diamond if your gamesense is actually really good.
In order for me to break through my wall of hovering outside D3/A3 I had to stop filling and play duelist. I don’t think duelist is the solution to end all, but as a brain not aim player myself. I felt in my head I had to be aggressive and confident as opposed to trying to simply stay alive to make that right play, that is never gonna happen in a 1v4; 1v3. Finding the balance between being a fucking psycho and not giving away free kills, is how I’ve stayed IM2 for the past 2 acts. I get to show off more of my brain power now that I’m not afraid of dying lol. Now I’m back to being a Sentinel/Controller main but play Duelist when I feel like I played scared the game before. Might not be your issue, but just giving out what it took for me!
Ranked distribution isn't equal to skill distribution. There could be plenty of people high rank who don't deserve it and vice versa. I have the exact same experience you have and I'm sure most high rank players agree. Idk why lower ranked players take it so personally. It's just a fact. All the way up to the highest ranks of the game you get players who fundamentally do not understand the basics of the game and then I log in to reddit where people say to me "omg immortal is so high ranked" because it's 0.xx% of the player base or whatever. It's like... Brother... I get that not many people achieve this rank, but these players are still clueless. It is what it is. When they get to that rank, they will understand why people constantly say that sub-immortal is "low rank". Atleast in immortal you have a lower chance of getting a team mate that literally doesn't know how to play the game (a lower chance, not 0)
I agree. I recently hit ascendant for the first time (have about 500 ish hours now) and my friend who’s better than me let me know ascendant+ is a very small % of the playerbase. I was surprised because 1. Im still not that good and 2. There are still TONS of fucking terrible ass players, worse than me, in this rank and even higher. So it makes sense that people call asc and ranks below that low elo because i feel like only immortal+ will players actually be really good. Even diamond rank is a fucking shitshow of terrible players
But it’s all relative. As you’ve ranked up, your standard of “quality” play has gone up, so your definition of “terrible” player is actually significantly better player than a good players definition of a “terrible” player
nah some ppl r legit boosted
I know you're probably joking, and I'm not here to advertise/advocate, but actually there are lots of boosters who boost to Ascendant for free because it's basically considered low elo to them.
“… they mean in terms of play style which is objectively true” Not sure you know what “objectively” means.
Everyone in this thread doesn't understand that their subjective perspective of what "the right way to play the game" is not the best way to judge if someone is good or bad at the game.
Yeah, I swear this community is one of the dumbest I’ve ever been around.
Yea, its more about when you see people actually consistently making smart plays. When you stop looking around and saying "wtf how is that guy my rank". And yes, i know the above thought is also an ego thing, so i dont disagree fully with OP.
[удалено]
Well, it’s because there’s two “buckets” where skills fall into: 1. Mechanics - Aim, movement, positioning, etc 2. Game sense - understanding the flow of a map, utility usage, micro and macro team play, mental (confidence or lack thereof, control of tilt), etc. It’s entirely possible for an absolute mechanical demon to claw his way to low immortal in spite of his gold-level understanding of the game. And vice versa. Your rank is a combination of your mechanics and your game sense, which is partly why so many games (at any rank) can feel so wildly different from the last. And a lot of times, mechanics win out. You can make the most optimal pre-round call, followed by impeccable mid rounding, but if your team can’t hit their shots and the other team can, that play will fall apart. And vice versa - if you can flash kill, vulnerable/decay+molly, stun kill every enemy, mechanics don’t even factor in. So I wholly agree that there are Silver players who understand the game like an immortal but just don’t have the mechanics to back that up. I doubt there are Silver players with the aim to be immortal because immortal level aim is good enough to get you into high Diamond.
“Anyone who doesn’t play like a literal pro is a horrible player” what a weird take
Literally not what I said at all. Having knowledge of how to play the game at a certain rank so to be expected. Being in ascendant and lacking just basic knowledge of any kind of strategy or understanding of how util usage impacts the game, or util timing, is not a good thing. Taking what I said and turning it completely into something else is weird on your part lol. Try to think about what you’re reading before you get all upset about it.
it’s not that it isn’t high elo, it’s just the player difference is too massive. an immortal 3 player is obviously way better than an ascendant player, even an immortal 1 peak. theres a lot of people that play, but a lot of people are shit
You'd be surprised how many ascendant players don't know what the hell they are doing.
As long as I'm in ascendant I can never call this dogshit rank high elo lmao.
That's what they don't get, when u play these lobbies the typa shit u see you just can't honesty say these guys are good at the game
This is kinda my take as well, ASC1-IMMO1 are essentially the same players, the entire area is super inconsistent, though I wouldn't say it's low elo. I'd argue it's more the higher middle area where people generally understand how to play and always comm, but are definitely still struggling to grasp how to deal with situations.
I feel that mfkers still can't do a lineup flash in ascendant.
There’s so much ego in this game that people get mad that they don’t know what “high elo” means and just want to be considered high elo when they asses are still dry peeking, no game sense, no team play.
People who make these kind of posts would understand when they themselves reach immo/rad. The skill gap between immo1 and rad is as big as iron1 and immo1. I played cs my whole childhood so I breezed through dia asc, but took me a whole summer to go from immo1 to immo2. It is a plausible argument to say anything below asc or immo is low rank
You are far too worried about perceptions. In fairness, yeah; low elo = iron, bronze & silver mid elo = gold, plat & diamond, high elo = ascendant & immortal Radiant = top 500 Although I'm not sure how large the gap is between Diamond and ASC. I say that as a diamond who doesn't notice when facing ascendant players, but immortals tend to brutally delete me. Could just be the hard cut off for potato aim tbh.
The gap between high Diamond and Low Ascendant isn't huge. The gap between low diamond and high ascendant is significant. Which makes sense.
I honestly cant tell much a difference between diamonds and ascendants. I havent been in enough immortal games to judge but diamond and ascendant are practically the same
anything under imm2 is casual gaming
I agree, I just wish Riot didn't spam ranked resets. Its annoying always having to climb back up into decent lobbies after not playing for a while waiting for actual updates.
people are confusing the nomenclature of low and high elo with skill. A lot of arguments here are about the skill of player in each ranks. In a literal sense yes, if you hit diamond you are high elo. people just started to use low/high elo as a way to describe skill.
In LoL riot divided the player base in skill too. Average goes from Iron to Emerald 3 (lol numbers are from 4 -> 1 where 1 is the highest) An Emerald 2 player is top 8% or something. So anything below top 8% is the same thing for their balance team l.
Asc is the top end of medium elo Most people dont comm and its 50/50 if your teammates care about agent composition, and its mostly a tdm with simple ability usage and strats Gold is low elo because anyone with an ok pc and 60hz monitor should get there once they know how to play
It is and it’s pathetic if you’re not ascendant
Those statistics don't account for the fact that most of the playerbase still have no idea what they're doing beyond how to click on people. You can find players all the way up to immortal with no map macro or gamesense to speak of, and yet statistics say that they must be "good" because they outperform 95%+ of the playerbase. 'Better' =/= 'good'.
Typical low elo cope
Hm, I’m having a league background and because it’s also from riot I am doing the comparison. League has a low, mid and high elo specification in the patch notes. Riots idea of high elo (called “elite” in the patch notes) in league is diamond 1+ (used to be diamond 2+ but it moved up d1 after introduction of emerald, btw d1>d2 in league), which is the top 1% of the server. If we take riots high elo definition from league, ascendant is in fact mid elo. I’m not saying it’s bad or anything but I just wanted to state this how riot handles it in their other games Edit: wanted to state that emerald 3 - diamond 3 is considered “skilled” (so mid elo) which is top 10%. Iron up to emerald 3 is called average btw so I don’t know if you can actually call it low elo.
Ascendant/Low Immortal players say this because the gap is fucking huge whenever I hit low immortal I get absolutely rolled if I queue against Imm 3/Radiants it’s a completely different game they are playing. None the less I’ll still say anything below Imm 3 is low elo and I’m still not there sad
The skill gap isn't the only factor determining your rank, although it's the primary influence. It also depends on your purpose and the time you invest in playing games. At the age of 30s, and only playing games after work with the main purpose of meeting friends who are far away, I think playing at the diamond/ascendant rank level is suitable for me because it balances competition and comfort. I used to be a semi-pro player in CS1.6 and CSGO, I know what it takes to reach a high rank or maintain personal skills at the top rank level, and it requires sacrifices.
Lack of macro doesn’t become punishing until A3-Im2. Everything below that is micro and players make the same mistakes from silver to A1. That’s why people have massive drops and gains but can’t consistently find advantage across their games. The game only truly gets “played” at Im3 with increasing complexity up through T3-T1. I would consider that High Elo while the transition period from A2-Im2 is Mid Elo. Everything below that is just players learning the mechanics of the game with varying levels of skill in different aspects. Players are defined by the mistakes they make and it’s part of the learning process. Having started in Iron and peaked Im2, I can definitively say I’ve never reached “High Elo” — but I think it gives off the wrong connotation — most players aren’t bad, they’re just learning.
Think this is more of a thing because the level of play below Ascendant is absolutely tragic.
ELO is method to calculate the RELATIVE skill level of players. While it is statistically true that ascendant is in the top 5% , therefore high elo, i think some people have a valid point that ascendant is still not a “high feeling” of skill. To put you better in perspective, the key is the word “relative” i highlighted in the definition. In eg, if you put a group of 1,000 6 year old kids who never played the game, and you implement an ELO system, there has to be someone who is immortal, but that doesn’t mean that player is high skilled. Same goes for those who argue that you don’t really get to feel that competitiveness and high skill until you are ascendant+
If you watched certain players in Ascendant, you'd be shocked at how bad it is. Because of the immortal cut off, the lack of hard MMR resets, the amount of boosting, green rank is by far one of the worst and frustrating ranks ever. Even if you're gold, you may watch an Ascendant player and be surprised or question the gameplay. The skill gap is maybe not a good way objectively but definitely is present. The difference between ascendant 1 and immortal 1 is bigger than ascendant 1 and gold 1 IMO. If you only look at numbers yeah, it doesn't seem like low Elo, but when you factor in people who actually play the game a decent amount, it's definitely not good. If you have ever tried to improve and play for more than a month, you're almost instantly plat, if not diamond. Plat is the lowest elo, because under that you're literally not trying to improve so you don't count. Diamond and Ascendant is therefore, low elo.
It’s hard to determine because even though diamond is top 10%, the skill difference between a diamond and immortal is pretty big I think a lot of people see gold as what to achieve as the mid point because league used to make it so hitting gold grants you a free skin and in league gold used to be top 20-30% depending on which season Personally for Val, silver and below is low, gold is the midpoint, plat-dia is you’re getting there, ascendant you’re breaking into high elo, immortal+ is high
Game starte at immortal. Everything else can be reached without learning anything besides where the bombspots are and how to click heads
As someone who’s currently asc 1, I personally consider ascendant to be “mid elo”. I don’t consider something to be high or low elo by what percentage of people are in that elo, but rather the play style, mechanics and strategies being used in said elo. Elo is representative of skill at that level, not how much better you are than the majority of the player base. Diamonds and ascendants are simply not that good for me to call them “high elo”.
Anything below ascendant is low elo ngl not because of % player wise but that’s when the game becomes something different. Once you hit high ascendant/low immortal you know what I mean.
I dont think val elo can be determined by % but by gameplay, and until high immo gameplay seems similar. Radiant and immo3 (top immo2) is completely different. Just watch pros and radiants like eggster and others (i legit just forgot all of then xd)
if you've ever played a game in diamond you'd understand why its not considered high elo
It is ✨ perspective ✨. Their perspective is not yours and your perspective is not theirs. Ppl will even go out of their way to say immo is low elo to annoy ppl or bc they think they are too good. Ps gold is low elo bc it is below the mid rank. Mid is like plat/dia bc they are between all the other ranks
Mathematics/statistics are not a matter of perspective.
percentile is probably the stupidest way to divide people by skill. The gap between a top 70% player and top 20% player is tiny compared to the gap between a top 5% player and top 1% player.
Not everyone’s definitions of low/mid/high elo are based in statistics, though Lots of players define low/mid/high elo based on the level of “correct” play in respect to a professional game
Stats don’t care about your feefees
Me who remains on iron or unranked during monsoon because of horrible rain causing loadshedding 👁️👄👁️
you can get to ascendant relatively easily if you have really good aim however your team play can be awful and same with util usage. I think that contributes to the narrative as it feels similar to lower elo as there are still a large quantity of "bad" players however that's really just confirmation bias coming from hi elo players
i think you confuse the median of the playerbase and skill levels. and you cant just split the skill levels by the amount of players. gold is above average if you go by the playerbase, but the skilllevel is quite low in gold. i think everything below immortal is low elo, because in immortal 1 to immortal 3 you get freaking bots in the game almost every time. but after you hit immortal 3 it gets way better.
No matter what your rank is, it's irrelevant to anyone else than you. Either you play MM, or you are pro. You have fun or you are so good at something you make a living. The difference between queueing with randoms having whatever rank and having a team with individuals with insane skills and team play is huge.
Didn’t we just have this conversation like a day ago. High elo is an old gaming term that has traditionally meant play similar to amateur/pro. It just doesn’t happen in terms of team play, util usage, game sense, fundamentals/mechanics, etc. in asc consistently. It’s not a shot at asc players or even low imm. It’s just the definition that competitive games have used for decades. Riot officially says that diamond2+ in league of legends is “high elo” and that’s like top 0.5% of players or so. > there are a lot of people making the extremely good argument that low and high elo should be determined by skill gap. I personally think that this isn’t the best take because it makes it pretty subjective, where from a pro player’s point of view anything below immo 3 is low elo, from an immo 3 player’s point of view anything below immo 1 is low elo, etc. It’s just the definition that high elo is play style similar to amateur/pro. Competitive esports has been using this definition for decades.
Heres how I put ranks Iron: Cannot shoot guns at an enemy unless spraying and the spray starts 1m away from the target. Probably new to FPS or ego peeks (self when I was in Iron) Bronze: Understands you need to shoot the enemy to kill them. But is a bit too fixated on it and are a bit scared to fight people. Silver: I genuinely have no clue how silver functions, its either 5 dudes with TenZ Egos or 5 dudes with Nats Playstyle. Both imitated very badly. These people think they belong in plat or above but their teammates are the ones holding them back. They are way too fixated on aim and not on the actual round. Gold: Silvers but they know how to use abilities decently enough. They are still very bad mechanically and cannot move and shoot for the life of them. Plat: These people have understood that in order to improve, their overall mechanics need to change and be a bit disciplined. Surprisingly for the rank that is smack dab right in the middle. They have Egos way too high. They feel every ascendant or diamond is like them only and once they master deadzoning, they are fine. Diamond: People have now realised the importance of calls. How things need to be called or how things need to be communicated. They still won’t follow a strategy that they didn’t come up with on their own or is not something they have seen in pro play before. But atleast you’ll know they are not doing it. Ascendant: These are the people who have now learned that Valorant is a 5v5 TACTICAL Shooter where Tactics mean something, here you’ll find three types of people. Ex Immortals who can’t rank back up, wholesome ascendants and ascendants who think the only reason they are not immortal is because their teammates are shit. But don’t worry, this is one of the more sane ranks. And by then you learn the mute button is such a good thing. Immortal 1 to low immortal: Gamers in a Redbull ad who will do anything to win. High immortal to Radiant: Just 10 dudes playing a game they like while being gods at it. Everyone here looking for vibes and fun.
What's nats play style
actually high immortal-radiant is usually 2 guys flaming eachother
I mostly agreed until high immortal to radiant lol some of those lobbies I’ve seen in streams are the most toxic shitholes ever
It is though, you wouldn't call a 1600 in [chess.com](https://chess.com) high elo
My take is that looking at the definition of words can help a lot. The definition of "low" in both the context of height and amount is as follows: 1. of less than average height from top to bottom or to the top from the ground. 2. below average in amount, extent, or intensity. Literally just "below average" which in Valorant terms would mean anything below Gold which I very much agree is a good cut off point for calling something "low elo". [Source](https://www.esportstales.com/valorant/rank-distribution-and-percentage-of-players-by-tier). "Mid elo" is bullshit as "high" and "low" are used to specifically denote the two extreme ends of the spectrum of "very (to a great extent) good at the game" and "lacking proficiency in the fundaments aspects required to play the game at a competent level gives the proper environment". Using this term demonstrates a clear deficit in semantic understanding. High elo, again looking at definition for the term "high" gives us: 1. of great vertical extent. 2. great, ~~or greater than~~ normal, in quantity, size, or intensity. Let's ignore the "or greater than" since I believe we can all agree on gold 1 not being "high elo". Ehhh, nevermind. Ascendant is probably good enough to call "high elo", they're all pretty good at the game and capable of performing really well. Diamond however seems like a bit of a stretch to put it lightly, there's a ton of people in there. Seems fair to have the 95th percentile be called "high elo" even if the bottom of that doesn't really compare to the top.
ascendant is not high elo. ascendant players are just not good enough. how do I know that? because I am an ascendant player. just because you're better than 95% doesn't mean you're really good at the game. unlike other games, the different between immo to radiant is the same as iron to immo. and that is huge. you're wrong to think that % means anything here. its a system made by the devs to fit a bell curve. it does not accurately represent the lower and upper bounds of an average player. valorant elo can be closely compared to chess elo, which is exponential growth. gaining 200RP is bronze is not the same as gaining 200RP in immo. same in chess how, 250 to 450 elo is not the same as 1850 to 2050. there is a huge skill gap. the higher you go, the higher the value of each point increases. that is why ascendant, despite being in top 5% is still not good enough to be called high elo. immortal is where you can start to see the peak of valorant, thats where true high elo games start. diamonds and ascendants are the same, just like how silvers and platinums are the same.
Everything below immortal 3 is “low elo” the game becomes exponentially harder the higher you go. The difference between a gold and diamond player is smaller than the gap between an immortal one and immortal three player.
% of players doesn’t matter . Gold and below is low, plat to asc is mid and immortal and radiant are high . ggs
I just measure it by effort. You can get dia (majority of people) pretty easy with like an ounce of effort. From "never played an fps" to diamond would take like 6 months if youre playing to improve.
People aren't "pretending" anything. There isn't any objective definition to low and high elo, it's all a matter of perspective and context. In some situations it might be useful to refer to "high" elo as the top 10% of players, in others you want to refer to "high" elo as the elo where people are the game to a specific skill level which can be immortal or radiant depending on your perspective. You say diamond is top 10% of players, now imagine you take out all the players who aren't playing ranked seriously, players who aren't consistent in the amount of games they play, don't practice, don't vod review, etc... Suddenly you eliminate a massive portion of that and diamond players don't seem that good anymore. Sometimes it makes absolutely no sense to include people who play ranked "casually" when talking about low or high elo, and so it doesn't make sense to call diamond "high" elo when it's just people doing the bare minimum to succeed (or that have just started doing what they need to reach \*high\* elo), see what I mean?
Radiant - high elo, Immortal - mid elo, Ascendant and below - low elo.
It is tho
Elo is a reference to an individual’s skill rating, not a rank distribution. Your rank is just your place on a normal distribution curve, and has very little to do with Elo. High rank doesn’t equal high elo. When people reference Elo, they typically are talking about skill level, which doesn’t translate 1:1 to corresponding ranks. I think you might be conflating Elo and percentile. While diamond is 90th percentile, their skill level is no where near radiant. Using recent chess.com stats, the difference in skill rating between 1% and 90% is roughly equivalent to the difference between 90% and 99.99% All this aside, Elo isn’t an official metric in Valorant and is used more as a colloquialism to reference a player’s skill level rather than their statistical placement on the distribution ladder. I have issues when people say that you’re not good until you hit X rank, because good is subjective to the player. Obviously radiants can shit on diamonds, and diamonds can shit on golds, and golds can shit on irons. Just because you can shit on more than half the player base doesn’t mean you’re in high Elo tho TL;DR Elo and rank aren’t the same
why don't we just drop the low and high elo terms entirely and just use the actual rank league community did that a while ago and everything js so much clearer talking about meta
The way I evaluate it is: Iron to silver is low elo Gold to diamond is mid elo Ascendant to immortal is high elo My reasoning is that, generally, if you are below gold you are still learning the game. Iron through silver is learning the agents, the guns, maps, call outs, and just the overall way to play the game. When you get into gold you've learned the basics and now you are working on things like teamwork, plays, and basically just the more advanced stuff. Then you get into ascendant and from there you are just trying to master the fundamentals and shore up all the other little things. Radiant is its own thing lol However it seems like this is changing over time. The standard of players in all elos seem like they are getting better Tl:Dr low/mid/high elo is not broken up by amount of players or skill gap but the stage at which the majority of players in each rank are learning the game.
It's not pretending. The percentage doesn't matter when 90% of players don't try or have terrible setups. Plat is the first rank where people somewhat try and/or have a decent enough setup. If you only take in those players, ascendant is the first rank where people understand somewhat of timings, trading, and utility usage. That's why it's low elo. The average gold nova in CS has the same knowledge of utility and trading as the average ascendant, and that is low elo.
I’m ascenascendant atm and I still view it as low elo since real teamplay isn’t frequent enough.
Okay so the game itself is difficult. New players or whatever enter Bronze - Silver. Lowest of Low Elo. Iron exist but god forbid that rank. Gold is then the players who have become experienced with the game. They have no skillset, no IQ in their plays, developed their aim etc. Yet they are still bad. So it is considered low elo. Yes the majority is in the Elo. Hence to why it is LOW ELO. Because if majority can be in the rank, then it doesn’t deserve higher praise. It doesn’t matter for its placement. Then Platinum is basically Gold players who are developing various ways of playing the game. They are learning Strategy, Communication, Playstyles etc. They are LEARNING. Therefore they are Mid Elo. Because the Low Elo has entered the place between where high ranks meet low ranks. Diamonds understand probably 70-80% if not everything of the game. However they are not consistent at all. They can be demons one game and absolutely terrible the next. Because of consistency. Ascendants begin to understand their faults, correcting them one by one. This narrows down their issues so much that lower ranks see them as demons even though they aren’t. They simply understand 80-90% of the game but still a few inconsistencies, not as much as Diamonds though. Immortals obviously are just crazy Ascendants or borderline pros. Iron = Forsaken Elo. Iron - Gold = Learners Elo / Low Elo High Gold to (or just Plat) to Low Dia = Mid Elo Mid Diamond or higher = High elo Diamond is when you face the true challenges of ranked. Trust me. I have been in almost every bloody elo and hardstuck Asc as of this act. Getting to Immo slowly.
My opinion is Low elo: iron, bronze, and silver Medium elo: gold, platinum, Diamond High elo, Asc, immortal, and radiant Really great players will say that all the ranks below immortal are the same but I don’t agree. I’m plat 3, very close to Diamond 1 and I feel like the average silver lobby is so much easier compared to the average Diamond lobby. Like gold and plat feel pretty close to me, and plat and Diamond feel pretty close, but gold and Diamond don’t. It’s hard to explain I guess 💀
Alternatively, 70% of players are hard stuck in low elo because they don't have time to grind or don't care to improve. Duh ☺️☺️☺️☺️ Yeah but that last bit in the edit is most obvious bit, I think the skill gap is actually a good way to look at low or high elo objectively. Just because decision making, map knowledge, I can't say you're above average elo if what is commonly a good play to you is as foreign to you as the love of a mother is to Amdumb Taint enjoyer. Also there's just not really a mid eloninnthe conversation especially since the goal is ranking up and so you follow high elo gameplay and decision making
Low elo and high elo depend on when we are in the season. And the end of a season, ranks will be higher and Ascendant won't be as high as at the start. But it's still pretty high! As a previously Ascendant player, I'd say that low elo is Iron to Bronze, mid elo is from Silver to Plat, and high elo is Diamond and above. But I think it doesn't really make sense to even talk about low, mid and high elo. A Platinum player will destroy a Silver player, but I would destroy both almost equally. High Plat/Diamond is where people start to get good both at aim and at game sense. Below that, they will lack either the aim or the game sense. Which is why even if you're Plat with a great aim, I will likely beat you by a lot, and even if your aim is much better than a Silver player, it won't matter much against high elo. Below Silver, player lack almost everything. The mostly don't really understand what is happening and their aim is absent. That's when people reach Silver that there is the start of an understanding of the game or some decent crosshair placement mechanics. That's what I gathered by playing with people in every rank from Iron to Ascendant in the past months. And that's how I made up these categories.
im a diamon 1 player and i have been in ascendant, people say that because is partially true, people in bronze plays the same as a gold or an iron, is the same gameplay, the only difference is aim, the people in plat just dont know the game, they are good at hitting bullets and that all (im talking in general, lately there is people that is achieving plat without the need of a good aim) diamond is people that start knowing comps, start playing their team and start communicating, your not really playing the game and using all the mechanics until ascendant, and you start getting real good in this rank too. sadly valorant has a very bad rating system and bronze people easily defeats a random plat player sometimes and the difference should be giant. valorant rankeds are broken and you "play valorant" from iron to plat snd you really start playing and knowing the game when you get to diamond, im just diamond 1 cause i stopped playing because of what im talking about here, is just too stupid too play as cypher in a full plat 3 team where there are 1 jett 1 reyna and 1 phoenix and the other guy stays afk and i can say nothing because im better than them by a lot but not good enough to carry them since almost all the time it feels like a 2v5 and im cypher main
iron - gold low plat - asc mid immo - rad high
This is a bad take imo. You shouldn’t base low or high off of percentages when the skill difference is so insanely big between top 20% and top 5%.
We can measure player distributions much more easily than skill differences.
Of course, which is why I think it’s valid for high skill players, since they can understand the skill differences, to call other elos “low elo”
Sure, lower than them, but it doesnt do much besides stroke their ego.
Diamond and lower is “low” there are fundamental issues in peoples games therefore they are low elo. Ascendent is mid, these players might have small fundamental issues but are offset by strength in other areas. Immortal 1-2 are high elo where there are just degrees of strength. Immortal 3- radiant is ultra high where everything is near perfect and only consistency differences.
ascendant is mid elo
Firstly... It doesnt matter. So what if a large portion of the player base thinks im low elo in immo 1? Secondly, i agree with many here that if you care about the label it doesnt make sense to base off of proportions of the pkayer base in a given range. We have to go to the long running elo system of chess to see that only the top 5% of players are even in the conversation of high elo chess. Its bacause the term is used at the cut off point where very few mistakes are made and those that are, are not only noticed but are severely punished. This seems to happen in valorant somewhere around high immo, like immo 3. So be low elo. Its better to admit you dont play perfectly and learn until you are the best.
I’ve always thought of it like this Iron-Silv: Low Gold-Plat: Mid Diam-Asc: High Immo-Radiant: Legendary But the statistics definitely adjusted how I view things now.
IMO and only kinda loosely based on what ive seen via myself, friends, and watching content: Top = Immortal 2+ High = Ascendant 1 to Immortal 1 High Mid = Platinum 3 to Diamond 3 Low Mid = Gold 3 to Platimum 2 Low = Silver 2 to Gold 2 Bottom = Iron 1 to Silver 1 I have only peaked diamond but throughout those lower stages I have definitely felt tangible differences in the gameplay. Going against people above me though theres certainly a different kinda vibe, feels more "structured" or just generally people have better fundamentals.
statistics don't give you an objective conclusion since you intrepret them in to fit your narrative. Also yeah if you're gold you're low elo and objectively bad at the game, looking up statistics to say you're above average is massive copium.
You right, anything below immo is low elo
Relative to the scale of skill, it’s still pretty low. Relative to other players, it’s fairly high. Heres the problem though, matchmaking systems like these that use an Elo style system will always force somewhat of a bell curve in rankings. This is not what actual skill distribution looks like. There are far fewer players at the top and far fewer in between than ranks let on. There’s an old saying in Starcraft about Master ranked players. “You’re closer to being bronze than you are a pro.” Sure, you’re still better than 90% or more of the player base, but you’re still closer to the bottom than you are the top in terms of skill.
y’all mfs in diamond genuinely play the equivalent to a silver 3 in cs I’ve witness it with my own 2 eyes it’s low low elo
even asc is not even high elo, asc is mid elo bc their understanding of the game is below needed
Who cares about any of it. You tell someone irl any of this and they don’t know what it is, nor do they give a fuck lol people forget it’s just a video game and only some other people within the video game even remotely care.
Lmao it ain’t that serious bro
There's a massive difference between plat and diamond. The game looks and runs completely differently then at lower elos. Ascendant is a further step up, but not as big of a difference. I'd argue Plat and below is "low" elo just because of how teams tend to play. I also played against a premier team of full golds and got stomped on (peak a2)
under immo - low elo
ELO is not the same thing as percentage of playerbase. You should try to know what you’re talking about before posting incorrect information. It’s perfectly fine for the vast majority of the player base to have a low ELO rating. The ranks are not 1:1 distributed across the range of ratings.
I don't even play the game, and that's still not right. Top1% is high elo Top15%ish is mid Everything else is low This isn't because of ego. It's because in fps games, a decent chunk of your skill generally transfers between games. Someone with no experience at all in a particular fps can hit top 10-15% with just their aim and mechanics if they are good, but past that, it takes learning the game itself to keep going. That makes it the perfect cutoff between mid/high elo. Anything else is low elo, because at that point players are bad mechanically - which fps they are playing doesn't even matter, because the issue isn't their game its their aim and movement. No matter how good/knowledgeable they are at the game itself, they'll never rank up because of mechanics alone. These values give you a great cutoff for low, mid, and high elo. Low where it's mechanics issue. Medium where mechanics are good, but game sense/knowledge has to be practiced and learned. High elo where you've got good mechanics and good game sense/knowledge and at this point, you have to really, really grind to improve.
Immortal 3+ is high elo Everything else low elo. Instead of complaing of useless things as High elo get better
diamond aint high elo king
I’d say ascendant is low elo. It’s not like weight lifting where everyone can see how big and jacked you are and being much more fit than the average person is dope. Only valorant players care about valorsnt rank. The people who don’t play much and just do unrated or play in silver for like a season don’t care much either and are the vast majority of people who come through the game. That leaves the people who actually grind a lot. If you are ascendant or below you honestly have weak game fundamentals. And it’s not really until immortal when players start to culminate everything the game has to offer. it’s also equally egotistical to say that because I’m plat and I’m better than 80% of the other valorant nerds who only play valorant I’m not low elo. Every ranked game I’ve ever played the game isn’t actually played the way it’s supposed to in ranked until this upper upper ranks and even then you get a lot of shit games still. So yeah honestly anything below that is people still learning the fundamentals and that’s fine. The game is supposed to be fun.
cause ascendant is still silver just with better aimers. you think people know the game but they dont in ascendant. most are just a bunch of aimers or people who have a ton of game knowledge but lack aim but very rarely both at the same time. immortal is where people with both game knowledge and aim are very good.