North American First Strike champion Steel calls stats, ELO, and rank irrelevant in Valorant

Joshua "steel" Nissan, North American First Strike champion with 100 Thieves, recently said that stats, ELO, and rank are irrelevant in Valorant.

The First Strike champion said that stats, ELO and rank can often result in players growing a superiority complex. Valorant is a game that requires intense focus at all times. Players getting distracted and distracting others because of said superiority complex can often turn out to be a disappointing result.

Mini-rant on stats/elo/rank and why it ultimately doesn't mean anything.Played games on a new account and the amount of people in plat/diamond/immortal that have this superiority complex that they're better cause they have more kills or a higher rank is actually sad and gross. pic.twitter.com/agfd52q4ms

— 100T steel (@JoshNissan) January 2, 2021

Steel suggests that players should be focusing on their gameplay instead of their ranks. The First Strike champion went on to add that when a player starts performing well, his stats, ELO and rank automatically start reflecting it. Steel also admitted that stats in Valorant can be an extremely unreliable source of information due to the huge number of factors involved in the game.

Here's everything to know about what Steel said and why stats, ELO, and rank are indeed irrelevant for players who genuinely want to improve at Valorant.

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Stats, ELO, and Rank in Valorant

Valorant's Ranked matchmaking has already witnessed a fair amount of shuffles and updates. However, the system cannot be termed as ideal in spite of multiple changes. Similarly to what steel said in his video, it doesn't matter if he gets a lower rank in Valorant, he just won First Strike North America with 100 Thieves.

Understandably, Valorant is a complex game which involves a lot of factors when it comes to determining the skill level of a player. However, stats don't truly determine the skill level of player in Valorant. Given that utilities are limited to each respective agent in Valorant, it is obvious that some agents would draw better combat stats while others setup that combat with their utilities.

The conversation in chat started as something along the lines of "im stuck in x rank as sage but I go 25-15 every game. should i use a different agent to carry". I explained that I'm only given one piece of info to diagnose when I need upwards of 20 pieces. Then went on a tangent

— 100T steel (@JoshNissan) January 2, 2021

Steel had to say the following regarding the involvement of stats in Valorant,

"Stats in a vacuum don't mean shit. A player will have better stats on a team that's winning. A player will have better stats on a team if they are baiting, 2nd/3rd one in instead of first in, chasing ecos, going for exit kills, playing agents that have abilities that kill, etc."

I completely agree. But compared to CS, this game has a poor ranking system. Everyone is focused on trying to take duelists, and kills, and majority of diamond-immortal elo sucks. I'm sorry it's how it is. They lack gamesense, ++

— p. harmon (@bitterzie) January 2, 2021

To get over this meta, picking duelists should be a high risk high reward thing. If you have less than 3-4 entries with a duelist and have less impact compared to an initiator or sentinel, you should be punished more.

— p. harmon (@bitterzie) January 2, 2021

Nevertheless, the North America First Strike champion admits that at the end of the line, the only thing that matters is a player's dedication towards getting better at the game. In other words, stats, ELO, and rank do not reflect the skills of a player, but the skills of the player determines all other factors.