Valorant, Valorant, Valorant… The game I can never quite escape. I have more hours in this game than I want to admit. Lets just say if I put the same time into it I could be a Black Belt or maybe Grandmaster in chess but alas I have chosen to dwell in the Ascendant – low Immortal queues. This new episode and act has gotten me reinspired after receiving my 15th Immortal buddy (omg yay!) to hit the queues once more.
This episode we have some rotations to the map pool, Fracture and Lotus are back, and a new agent, Tejo, joins the game. I will be deeply missing Ascent as that map is my favorite map by far. As for why I have taken a break there are a few reasons:
- I was getting tired of the meta. I took a break somewhere around Neon meta after I hit immortal again. I wanted to grind it out to get my rank but once I got there I was exhausted. Battling through a broken agent, a run it down meta where W keying is king, and toxicity continuously on the rise made it difficult to find the motivation to play and grind like I used to.
- Marvel Rivals was released. This game immediately had me hooked and excited to grind out a new game. I was really having fun just like when I first started playing Valorant. I have spent a good bit of time learning fun heroes and enjoying the playfulness of a hero universe. If there is one thing I love, it is learning and mastering something new.
- I wanted to practice. The original reason I started playing Rivals was because I wanted to work on my tracking. Though my mechanics have gotten so much better over the years, I have only ever played Valorant when it comes to fps. This left my aim feeling really bland and static and boring for lack of better terms. I wanted to improve my aim and thought playing some other games might give me a totally different feel. Maybe something different would awaken something inside of me. I have also been aim training a bit and just enjoying the process. It wasn’t until this past year that I realized just how much work outside of the server will affect you in the server when it comes to Valorant.
These three reasons are what eventually made me have enough and take some time off the game. I have been continuously playing Valorant almost every day for several years so this break was well deserved. However now that it is the new act I do want to get ranked. It takes five placement games to get your rank for the act reset. Everyone in my placements have been Diamond – Ascendant so I assume I will place around there. (Update: I placed Diamond 2)
Now after taking a substantial amount of time off I got a little nervous. I was already struggling to keep up before what about now after a break? What if it breaks my mental after having so much fun on Rivals? I certainly didn’t want to play bad especially with how toxic people can be in the game. With all of that in my head this is what I did to get back into the swing of things:
- Hit the range. It is going to feel wonky when you first get back. When you play Valorant a lot you get this immersive feeling like you are in the game. When you come back after a while you are going to feel so weird. I suggest going into the range and shooting some bots. Practicing your movement, strafes, sprays, taps, etc. Get a feel for the game again.
- Queue some dms. Deathmatch is not going to perfectly translate into game but it will give you a feel for shooting real players with real movement. I suggest doing 5-10 if you have the patience. If you are like me and get the immediate urge to play, try to do at least 2-3 you will thank yourself later.
- Queue some Unrated/ Swifts / TDMs (optional). I did not do this but I can totally see this being helpful with getting back in the swing of things. Eventually it’ll all come back to you. Valorant is like running. It is a demanding game. If you take a day or two off let along weeks or months it feels like you have totally lost your skill. But never fear just take some time to ease in and you’ll be just fine.
- Send it into Comp. Ahhhh there is only so much preparing you can do before you have to just go in and try your best. I suggest picking an agent you are familiar with or can kinda chill on. My first two games I played Killjoy and just worked around my setups. This allowed me to bring value to my team while easing back into things. Today for my next two games, I played clove where I could take more fights and dying wasn’t as much of a problem. No matter what just go into it with some confidence!
With all that being said I have the utmost confidence in you to get out there and get your elo. I promise it is not as bad as you think and remember at least you aren’t as bad as your instalock duelist… unless that is you. I bottom fragged my first game out of the whole lobby and quite frankly I did not care so get out there, get your rank, and try to have a little fun along the way.