New Valorant Rank: Ascendant

Patch 5.0 is full force with the likes of a new Valorant map Pearl, temporary removal of Split, and an entirely new rank! The addition of another rank has resulted in a handful of changes impacting the ranked system to accommodate the Ascendant.

Where does Ascendant fit?

Ascendant is a new rank that has been added between the Diamond and Immortal Valorant ranks. Like the other ranks aside from Radiant, there will be 3 subdivisions inside, Ascendant 1, Ascendant 2 and Ascendant 3.

Image Credits | Riot Games

Why was Ascendant added?

1. Riot had indicated their desire to improve the rank distribution as Valorant grew. However, simply pushing players up away from Silver and Gold would over inflate the Platinum and Diamond ranks. As a result, Ascendant will allow for better rank distribution, and better alignment of players according to their skill level without harming the prestige of established high ranks.
2. Make it harder to achieve the highest ranks in the game. Immortal in major regions has thousands of players on the leaderboard, a much greater number than the rank was initially intended for on the game’s launch. Adding the Ascendant rank will reduce the number of players on the leaderboard, making it all the more meaningful for the game’s top players. A trend has also been observed where due to these player’s high MMR, they only needed to play a handful of games following an Act’s reset before hitting and idling in Immortal. The addition of Ascendant will force these players to play more, thereby being filtering only the best consistent players to advance on to Immortal.

Changes impacting ranked

• The MMR targets in the background that correlate with rank have been diluted. It means players who are below Ascendant now will earn more RR on wins and lose less on losses until they receive their correlated rank.
• The current rank reset will be less impactful this episode as Riot aims to fill the Ascendant rank first. However, in future rank resets, the MMR impact will almost definitely be harsher.
• Highest rank you can now achieve following placement is now Ascendant 1 instead of Diamond 1. While this change does essentially make it so that the top few players are still only 1 division away from Immortal following reset, as there will be fewer Immortals, only a small group would be placed in Ascendant 1.
• 25% RR penalty for 5-stacks will only apply from Immortal 1 instead of Diamond 3.
• All ranks below Immortal can now duo, trio and 5-stack. This will allow more serious parties to play together even in higher ranks.