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With the launch of Episode 5 Act 1 of Valorant, the developers at Riot games are looking to implement a few changes to the competitive matchmaking system. A new rank, Ascendant, will be added to the hierarchy. The new Ascendant rank is just below the Immortal rank and above the Diamond rank.
The developers believe that the lower ranks have too many Bronze and Silver players. If the developers were to move the lower-ranked players up, it would overpopulate the higher ranks. So adding a new rank will help maintain the prestige of higher ranks while helping to clearly define the skill level of players.
Valorant Episode 5 Act 1 Dimension brings massive changes to MMR
The developers have mentioned the following in the Valorant 5.0 Patch Notes:
"We believe our lower ranks have a few too many of you, especially Bronze and Silver. When we were looking at rank distribution, we realized that if we were to move some of you up and out of those lower ranks, it would overpopulate Platinum and Diamond. So by adding a new rank we can better distribute you across ranks, keep the prestige of high ranks, while helping better define the skill level of each rank."
The developers have moved the MMR rank to determine the rank down due to the addition of the new Ascendant rank, although the MMR target for getting into Immortal and Radiant has been moved up.
MMR is basically a cut-off mark that determines the rank of an individual player in the system. A player must have a minimum MMR value to get into a particular rank, and the cut-off gets higher as players start moving up the ranks (with the highest MMR belonging to the Radiant rank).
So players who are below the new Ascendant MMR will move up in rank. Immortal players and those ranked above Immortal will find it harder to move up the ranks due to this rebalancing of the MMR system. This also means that the Immortal rank will have a smaller leaderboard in all regions.
The seasonal reset that happens at the end of every Valorant season means that players may not be able to see a rank increase at the start of the Episode without putting in some work.
The Valorant developers have assured players that this reset will be “less harsh” when compared to the previous Episode. While the introduction of the new ranking system will push players upwards, the reset will not hit most players as hard. However, the next Episode’s seasonal reset may hit harder because of this.
With the start of Valorant's Episode 5 Act 1, the grouping restrictions are also going to change. A five-stack team incurs a 25% total penalty on the total MMR value when matching up against an opponent team that doesn't have a five-stack team, and this penalty is going to start at Immortal 1 (previously Diamond 3).
Diamond 3 and above could only solo, duo, and five-stack, but this restriction will now start at Immortal 1. The developers also mentioned that due to the naming clash between Sage’s tier 8 Agent Contract unlock and the new rank, the Contract has been renamed “Dauntless.”
