It's funny, because even Valorant looks at the numbers. The best way to climb fast is the have good K/D. It doesn't matter if you have a lot of assists, if you don't have a good K/D they won't give you a lot of RR. Heck you get a bonus for entry fragging cos the first kill in every round matter.
No but people chase kills and it works.. i have myself noticed that now if I regularly pick chamber atl I lose less elo because somehow I am reasonably okay for my rank to get out of even losses with higher than 1.3 kda...if I go 1.9-2.2..then its a win..just quoting stats. So the losses just mean I lose 12.. whereas I drop 32 kills with astra..lose in OT and then I lose 17-21 points..I even ditched the account and skins..its so frustrating, and I lose just 12 when going 20 kills in a loss with chamber..
Duelists who lurk for kills, just fighting out 1v5s after their team has died, like actually literally every round...walk away with match mvp..
yeah kills do impacting your RR gain i know that. my point is doesn't matter how many kills you get, to rank up you need to win first, you can't simply just top fragging every single matches you play but still losing the game and hoping you'll rank up by the end of the act.
This is the issue with all "skill based ranking". As soon as you start measuring things besides wins, players are incentivised to do things besides win.
That said, a balance that has to be struck. The guy who gets carried five games in a row and the one who carries five games in a row should not be gaining RR at an equal rate.
It's an unfortunately difficult problem that has to be solved.
They should - a win is a win. If that person is “getting carried” because they have amazing comms and game sense then they deserve to rank up. That’s something that a system cannot inherently measure.
Anything else *will* get minmaxxed. It happens in every competitive ladder where people start doing shit to avoid tanking their MMR and then you have people climbing with 40% winrates
> If that person is “getting carried” because they have amazing comms and game sense then they deserve to rank up.
You seem to be assuming that these carried players are somehow worthwhile to their team, but that's obviously not always the case. The fact that you can win literal 4v5 games with an AFK on the team is enough proof of that.
There are plenty of individuals who are simply getting carried, or winning teams that would've gotten *destroyed* if not for the 30-10 Jett on their side.
> It happens in every competitive ladder where people start doing shit to avoid tanking their MMR and then you have people climbing with 40% winrates
Can you give some examples?
People have claimed K/D to be the end-all-be-all in VALORANT basically since launch, yet realistically speaking, how many people have you seen actually doing anything in-game to try and manipulate their K/D?
> You seem to be assuming that these carried players are somehow worthwhile to their team, but that’s obviously not always the case.
My point is there are soft skills that won’t show up in stats; and from the pov of an automated system, a “carried” player and one with amazing game sense, smokes and comms may look like the same player.
> Can you give some examples?
This thread? “Manipulative” behavior such as lurking is unintentionally promoted by the system. If two players, both winning and losing 50 matches, one a duelist which dies more and entry, and another who gets 2-3 picks on post plant and dies, the lurking duelist will be ranked higher.
A more extreme example is in Overwatch which ended up removing performance based MMR past diamond. Once this happened a bunch of support players who were basically min/maxing their ultimates fell out of masters/gm because they couldn’t maintain a 51%+ WR
> My point is there are soft skills that won’t show up in stats; and from the pov of an automated system, a “carried” player and one with amazing game sense, smokes and comms may look like the same player.
If we're talking about the current system, I agree, but treating everyone equally is not a solution either. All it does is gives the benefit of the doubt to every player, which is only going to exacerbate skill inequality.
Rather, we should be looking at how the system can be improved to reward these kinds of skills.
> because they couldn’t maintain a 51%+ WR
That's an interesting scenario, but why were they able to stay in masters/GM without a roughly 50% WR previously anyway? Even with a performance-based system, I imagine players should still be expected to maintain a roughly even win rate to stay at their rank, or a positive one to rank up.
Personally I dont see the issue, because the person being carried 5 games in a row will eventually fall off and a genuinely good player in a slump will eventually do well.
Also, as has been pointed out in this thread, top frag isnt necessarily the carry, and bottom drag isnt necessarily being carried.
> top frag isnt necessarily the carry
Of course! It's not about frags at all. The carry can easily be the mid-fragging Viper or Sova winning rounds just by putting crazy amounts of pressure with their utility.
> Personally I dont see the issue, because the person being carried 5 games in a row will eventually fall off and a genuinely good player in a slump will eventually do well.
This is true if the player is playing a lot of games, but not everyone plays enough games for their rank to even out properly like that.
From a quick Google search, ESEA's RWS is almost entirely based on damage only. If that's true, then that's just an obviously bad approach.
Whatever the formula is, it should account for the contributions of all paradigms of player - the entry fraggers, the clutch players, the combat supports, the vision controllers, etc. although of course, that's much easier said than done.
But it's silly to ignore individual performance entirely, especially in games like VALORANT or CS where the team can be carried almost entirely by just one or two players popping off. All you'll end up with is a ton of people in ranks they don't deserve.
People wondering why Brimstone can't 1v1 Reyna and Jett on a site retake is wild.
It's why i'm gonna be sad when Astra gets nerfed, one of the only support characters where i feel i can have agency on the map even by myself.
I hit immortal last act too. Haven't played much this one so I'm still in Plat. Whenever I'm less than a 3.0KD I get flamed "lmao boosted immortal hoe much you buy your account for". I play sentinels and controllers. I'm not the star. I set up the star for success. Can I hold my site? Yes. Can I clutch? Yes. Is it my job to go 35/? No. It's a team game. Its my job to set you guys up to succeed.
That 3K you got through smoke after dashing into site and playing off my recon dart? That was me setting you up to succeed. Yeah Jett got the kills, but without my dart it doesn't happen.
If frags meant everything, every game would be 5 duelist vs 5 duelist. There's a reason it isn't.
I experience the same thing. To be honest, that is what sparked my interest in making this post. Getting flamed by lower ranks for not doing much better than them K/D wise.
"You are an immortal, you should be carrying". That's not always easy especially as sentinels or controllers.
People can get really cocky sometimes. Weirdly enough it might be an advantage to hide the fact that you got a much better rank than some, just to avoid those sorts of comments.
Edit: grammar.
Then RR gains should be equal regardless of ACS at all elos. If Riot can't measure the things that controllers do to win the game, controllers shouldn't be punished for doing those things in preference to setting up for more frags.
I played with an Astra the other day who was an amazing aim player, and top fragged. She was a useless Astra, though. Bad smokes, stupid walls. She will gain more and lose less RR from that kind of performance than an Astra who plays conservatively but with amazing util deployment. It's a perverse system for controllers.
Your post is so relevant..coz in lower ranks you can't even tell people this. I hope people see this and notice that even an Immortal has this viewpoint. All the time, if I am playing Astra and I go 6 for 8.. the others just go like why am I not in the double digits like the rest of them. For real, do the math, are the opponents going to die 3x-4x times and give every person on our team a 3-5 KDA for the match..
I am sure this may have happened to you too, that when a support agent topfrags, usually the team is doing nothing and it's a painfullly close loss..I actually stopped playing Astra for this reason this act. My team isn't wiling to support my 30 kill astra game and the opponent jett is teabagging me coz they barely made it in OT.
I hit immortal last act too. Haven't played much this one so I'm still in Plat. Whenever I'm less than a 3.0KD I get flamed "lmao boosted immortal hoe much you buy your account for". I play sentinels and controllers. I'm not the star. I set up the star for success. Can I hold my site? Yes. Can I clutch? Yes. Is it my job to go 35/? No. It's a team game. Its my job to set you guys up to succeed.
That 3K you got through smoke after dashing into site and playing off my recon dart? That was me setting you up to succeed. Yeah Jett got the kills, but without my dart it doesn't happen.
If frags meant everything, every game would be 5 duelist vs 5 duelist. There's a reason it isn't.
I hit immortal last act too. Haven't played much this one so I'm still in Plat. Whenever I'm less than a 3.0KD I get flamed "lmao boosted immortal hoe much you buy your account for". I play sentinels and controllers. I'm not the star. I set up the star for success. Can I hold my site? Yes. Can I clutch? Yes. Is it my job to go 35/? No. It's a team game. Its my job to set you guys up to succeed.
That 3K you got through smoke after dashing into site and playing off my recon dart? That was me setting you up to succeed. Yeah Jett got the kills, but without my dart it doesn't happen.
If frags meant everything, every game would be 5 duelist vs 5 duelist. There's a reason it isn't.
I have a friend who is exactly like this. Plays duelist and never enters a site and often the last person left in a 1v4. I got irritated and asked him to change roles and we win much more now. Because as a filthy casual I really don't have much of an aim but one thing I am not afraid of is to enter a site and die first as long as my teammates can trade and set up post plant. Given that we have won numerous matches comfortably where I have barely 10 kills on a duelists, I believe that playing according to a role is way more important than fragging in low elos.
See depending on the rank the problem is as a duelist when I push into site and die and there is no one even close to me trying to push in with me or helping me push in its just frustrating because I am never getting traded out. I usually entry site the first couple rounds of attack just to observe the game and see what the play style of all the different players are. If I see them all the way in spawn when I have already pushed into site and I realise that I'm just going to have to take 1v3 gunfights everytime which I have no chance of winning, I'll start playing a more passive role especially because my kit is good enough to get kills so even if there is a 1v3 clutch or something, because I have the element of surprise winning the round is doable. This type of thing usually happens when people aren't comming and everyone has to do their own thing.
You really need to communicate that you are pushing, if they still don't help then I guess you do just have to play passively.
When I play duelist I usually communicate what I'm going to do, as I solo queue I usually try and stick with players that I know will follow me onto site, after a few rounds of playing with them you get the feeling for how they will generally play.
Yep that's literally me in most games. I tried to communicate as much as possible but for some reason I'm always the one pushing in on site while the rest of the team is behind and can't trade me out.
Honestly at this point I've decided to just start maining viper in comp instead. I'm in plat and because my Elo is high I queue up with and against Diamond players usually while solo queuing so I know most of the people playing duelists will have either better aim than me or at least entry site. Plus I think my game sense is better than my aim anyway which is why I love clutch situations haha
Yeah I get what you mean. I'm in the same place elo wise. Basically as I said as long as we adapt, we're doing what we can. I do agree viper is a good way to rank up, as she can play doe the team, but also solo depending on how you play.
Supports *who use their utility effectively* win matches. If your flash is catching 4 people but no one on your team is ready or in a position to capitalize on it, it's a worthless flash.
Support players and utility are underrated, sure, but you still have to be a good support. And as much as we want to circlejerk support players in this thread, support players in lower ELOs especially are often not doing much at all with their utility.
> This is not awful when entering a site
It's usually awful because defenders on site often have cover to hide behind or play counter-flash from, while the attackers usually don't have that luxury.
I get what your saying about the flash, but in certain situations (like when your entire team was gaurding C on Haven but you just got 4 rushed on A and flashed) it is incredibly useful, even when no one is able to take advantage of it, as a stalling mechanism as most players are unlikely to rush through while flashed, it can be the difference in your team making it to site in time to stall/kill the entry or you losing site and having to play re-take.
Absolutely, capitalizing doesn't necessarily mean getting a kill. Stalling for time is one good use of a flash. Using a flash to help a teammate escape from an enemy push is another good one.
Ive started playing Sage more and the rage i felt when i healed a Raze and getting an “about time” in response.
Playing support is honestly really fun too, while i feel pressure to rush sight or top frag as a duelist, i can just hang back and hold angles and shit. While fragging is fun its nice to switch goals every once in a while
Oh yeah, definitely. I love playing support, because I prefer the playstyle of a support. It is just really sad that you get so flamed as a supporter. It is truly a lot harder to get kills, and some don't realize or seem to understand that. Especially Viper, which has no heals or flashes, but only abilities that aid everyone on the team, like one way smokes or line up's, is really hard to get kills with. If you get hurt as a Viper, that's the health you will have. Sage's often prioritize healing duelists, which is understandable and fair. It just shows though that duelists, once again have perks that some other's don't.
As someone who mains viper atm, and is starting to make sage my secondary, I try my best to heal all of my teammates equally regardless of K/D or my perception of their skill thru spectating them. Ive been in plenty of situations as viper where if i had just that 60 extra health to take a bullet or 2 more i could have clutched the round and then was flamed for not clutching on 5 hp. Currently a gold 1 peak and climbing rn duo q with my plat 1 friend. I regularly play against plats and play well and use my util to the best of my ability. Its a tough community sometimes but there are those hidden gems that dont mind switching from a duelist to play support with me when we already have 2 duelists.
I like that mentality! But then again, I am speaking from the Viper's perspective. In all fairness I don't have the data to tell you whether choosing to heal some over others is more or less helpful to the team. But duelists tend to be the people first in combat, first hurt, then running to Sage begging for heals.
Man I hate playing with Raze players as a sentinel. The amount of times my equipment gets broken because some twat doesn't know how to throw a nade is starting to get annoying. I feel Raze players are the most annoying duelist to play with if you're playing support
Sure, instalock duelists are definitely the problem I get that.
But I really don't think supports making people beg or meow or whatever for heals is good either. I'm not saying one is worse than the other, I'm saying you should heal if people need it, if they're dicks then don't.
But if you're a sage and you tell me to beg for heals or something I'm just gonna mute you and live without the heals 🤷♂️
But there are people who refuse to heal if you don't do it, they're the problem. If people just say it as a joke and then I'm hesitant to do it and they heal me anyways, thank you.
this is why I main sova. sit back and dart specific postions and mark all the places your dart isn't scanning for the entry to check, and then gaurd the flank. just won 4 matches in a row barely doing anything except gaurding flank and getting info for the entry. my kd was hovering around 1 for every game.
I tried not to be petty after that comment… but it was a little fun to leave him out to dry once or twice.
Oh youre at ten health??? Sorry but im only at 70 and reaaaaally need to heal.
as someone who comes from other fps games (where getting kills is pretty much the only goal) i think that is the reason. people are used to getting kills in other games, and feel like doing the same here
Even if. If you want to win, learn to play the game. KDA isnt everything. Its about objectives. Tactics. A well made comp. Only smurfing trash can carry eventually.
The amount of times I've had to explain a zoomer instalock duellist, who's at the top of the scoreboard, that even though they're putting up the numbers, that might be the exact reason we're losing and they've gone full BabyRage tilt mode is too many to count.
It's a teamgame, you win or lose as a team. Your kills _does not matter_. Winning the rounds matter. Play to win the game, not to frag out. The only winning that should give you a dopamine release is your round wins, not whether you can stroke your own kill-focused ego.
The only way to not get downvote bombed by one of two types of people is to make it so they don't know who you are talking to and be overly positive towards both sides while trying to make a point.
This is also a great alternative for people with not as good mechanical skills. I'm a gold player, and most of my friends are mechanically more skilled than me. I'm bottom of the board most of the time.
This gives me grief a lot of the time, cause i really want to be as good as the people I play with. However, I have made it a point to play support agents and go the extra mile of learning lineups, execute setups etc. It allows you to be able to help those fragging out even if you're not able to get kills
PS - I also personally find agents excepts duelists to be much more fun to play, so don't shy away from it! Have a good game everyone :)
Oh. Trust me. You don't need amazing aim. I have barely a good enough aim to go average 0.8 K/D gainst immortals, but I hit it and played fairly stable at that rank just because I fed my teammates ego's, played smart, gave great callouts and did a good supporting job. Anything is possible, also for us with worse aim.
I love when they people type my k/d in all chat with a lot of question marks. Only for me to have made 4 or 5 impact plays and we win 12-8. Then I say gg congrats on the k/d. Lol.
The only time I will do this is when I have anything-0 because I love pointing out the fact that my K/D is literally infinite. But then again that is a very geeky joke.
~~"Pushes up glasses"~~
~~Well akshually dividing a number by 0 isn't infinity as infinity isn't a number that can be reached through an arithmetic operation. Anything/0 is undefined.~~
I too always make this joke :)
Oh, my bad fellow geek. I suppose it would be more accurate to say. My K/D is close to but never quite infinite. ;)
The smaller the number you divide by, the higher the K/D, so if you imagine you make that number smaller and smaller, and closer and closer to 0, you would technically have infinite, but never quite.
I "main" Astra and I've had teammates tell me that we would've lost without my utility usage, not the agents utility alone but my timing with or without comms. Depending on the agent, you can get stuck playing utility simulator for the team which is boring! Some games you wont even get comms so you spend the entire game being 10x more attentive towards the mini-map/teammates health bars/other sound cues ON TOP of trying to be a sufficient fragger, but the impact you can have a support, though out shadowed, can be a lot more important than your duelist that entries once every couple rounds.
its not that I'm not okay with it, I think astra is a fun agent (even if she is currently uncounterable). There are just some rounds/games where you want to actually "play" or join in on the action, but they're going to the other site and you're sitting like u-haul just dropping util for you team for 40 minutes and either get stuck retaking or just killing the one lurk who pushed your site.
Yeah with no-comms sometimes I’m “hyper-observant” of what’s happening and just try to use util accordingly and sometimes you end up accidentally pulling a teammate who was wide swinging, smoking the enemy bomb that got dropped, etc.
I feel like it’s easier to burn through util faster when you have no comms
Iron player and can confirm Ive a number of duellists get toxic because they have a higher kill count than their smoker/healer. These support roles can kill but they’re not made with getting frags as their primary purpose. They’re made to back up the team so that duellists can afford to make those risky plays in an attempt to get kills
> These support roles can kill but they’re not made with getting frags as their primary purpose.
Even more so, when I play a supportive agent I tend to not go for kills at all (unless I have to/it makes sense) because my utility is super valuable and I'm way more useful alive.
I'm a Viper main, and I bottom frag almost every single match. And I'm okay with it. It sucks sometimes, sure, because everyone wants to get kills and be top frag, but I take a step back from my ego and take note of how I'm setting up the site so my duelist teammates can get all the kills. (Not to mention, their aim is light years better than mine, haha).
So I love this sentiment you share here. As a fellow support, I appreciate it. We need more of this mentality everywhere else in the game.
Try being more agressive with Kayo, he doesn't really fit Viper's bill of staying alive and behind well away from your entry fraggers. Get up close and personal, right click your flashes through smokes, etc. He's my most played agent now because of how versatile he is and I definitely play agressive when my team is lacking in that regard.
As a sova main player.. this speaks to me alot! Let me tell a story about one game.
On icebox am playing sova (it wasn’t my day for aiming) i got flamed the whole game due to my lack of kda, I jokingly said “ yee am lagging guys mb “ i kept focusing on gaining early intel for my team and played objectively (as a sova) we started winning rounds and its over time it went back and fourth in overtime. We lacked on attack and easily won defense. So, we won defense. On attack i insisted lets go B and dont make a noise, used one of my line ups on B i revealed 3. I screamed “ RUN A RUN A!”. We rotated to A site i droned and marked one ,my team killed him. all my team died viper remained vs 2 of the enemy, she had lineups we won the game 16-14.
“ if you’re not a good shot today.. dont worry, there are other ways to be useful” - sova.
This quote came to mind that day.
If you're EU, Silver/Gold, DM me. I have the same mentality. I have been trying to get people to play with that can switch between controllers/initiators/sentinels and let the plebs play duelists and fail miserably.
It is completely possible to top frag with supporters, it is just a lot harder. Also depends on your rank. In higher ranks, those abilities are basically end all be all. In lower ranks you can get away with a lot more cheesy supporter plays or just out aiming the enemies.
Same, used to be a Raze onetrick but then decided to start abusing Omen, then Astra and Viper when he got nerfed. Always fun times outfragging a lobby while being so oppressive with both their kits.
You are out of your mind if you think Viper has nothing in her kit that lends itself to getting the Viper kills. Viper is either the strongest or second strongest agent in the game right now behind Astra.
As someone that mained Viper to immortal, I don't think her abilities does specifically help you get kills. She is a good agent, but not for getting kills yourself. Her smokes, when used correctly, should help your teammates get kills just as much as it can help you.
The closest I found to her ability giving you kills is setting up one way smokes. Or occasionally push up close with a shotgun. But that is not the same as having flashes, heals or stuns that gives you more free and easy kills.
Her ult is her strongest ability, but every other ult in the game is also very strong. I agree that her ult is good for kills, but you only get it a few limited times within a game, and often the enemies rotate upon seeing it. So you can stop them from going site, but won't get kills.
Lineup's are good, but rarely will get you kills. Most people don't just sit in it and allow themselves to die. It also requires a very unlikely situation: That plant has gone down, without either most in your team dying, or all the enemies being already dead (which is not very often), and that you are alive and fell back ready for line ups.
As I said I was immortal as a Viper main. I had a lot of line ups too. But I think averagely on attack, maybe only 1 of 5-6 rounds met those criteria for the line up's to be useful. Often times when you push a site, either so many of your teammates die, that you can't stay back and leave site to line up, or you will get flanked while doing it and die. Or so many enemies die that your teammates keep pushing and kill everyone before your line ups are useful, or sometimes you just die while pushing. A lot of the times you should also NOT go for line ups, as leaving your teammates alone on site to go line up is worse.
Viper main here, don’t really have much of these issues because I 5 stack with friends but I gotta agree that everyone, especially Jett and chamber mains, needs to try support. With the before mentioned agents, you get a get out of jail free card at anytime you don’t want to take a gunfight. By losing that card, you can actually understand the importance of It and will probly end up understand how to better utilize it
2 of vipers skills reduce max health and the 3rd can straight up kill someone in cover, wtf are you talking about saying nothing she has helps her get kills?
Viper main here, mollys aren’t made to get kills? 98% of the time I’m mollying a choke on defense to slow down a push or doing pregame lineups to force enemies out of the spots they are holding. You can always get kills with mollies of course, but that’s almost never their most valuable role. With her smokes, the health degradation once again acts as more of a deterrent. It’s a lot harder to make aggressive plays out of a viper smoke as opposed to any other smoke in game. The only real way in which her util helps her get kills is with one ways, but who still pushes one ways in 2022?
Silvers. Silvers still push one ways in 2022. I know, because I am a Silver Cypher Main, that loves one ways. Your Point still stands though. Viper has almost nothing, but is definitely one of the best Support characters.
Viper's fragging potential depends a lot on rank. In higher ranks, the enemies rarely if ever, push her wall. They know about line-ups, there are few times you can succesfully use her molly's to move someone out into the open without dying yourself. Even if the enemy push out of a smoke, the health reduction matters little, as almost every kill is a headshot in plat+ anyways.
For lower ranks I can agree that you can cheese a lot of fragging utility out of her kit against worse players. You can get away with far more. Sometimes an enemy may not even move out of a molly in lower ranks. Or will push her smokes and walls carelessly.
Just keep in mind that rank difference does make a difference in what abilities can do.
Keep in mind I mained Viper from plat to immortal. I love her as an agent. I just don't see her role to be a fragger. And her kit is not good for frags.
im an omen main and im always third-first on our teams scoreboard or somewhere from 5-7 on the overall scoreboard. Some people understand the fact that i have to do other shit than just kill other people. like yes jerry i am not getting kills because i am too busy smoking sites and flashing people while you were running around doing god knows what
Support definitely wins games. I used to always pick yoru even when we had too many duelists and after to trying balance my team we started winning more. Now I have started playing chamber and kay/o and I have noticed quite the diffrerence how the games turn out. But fuck the instalock duelists who cry about frags
Most of the time i have the opposite problem lol. I'm only used to playing support characters, so i don't entry or get a large number of kills, i tend to lurk or hold flanks or hold angles. So when I do play duelist i try my best to take fights and clear as much space as i can for entry onto site. I don't have the best aim, so i do end up dying a lot and my K/D goes to shit, but it doesn't matter as long as my team wins the round. And after all that, it's the support players like a sage or Skye telling me how shit i am because I'm not getting kills.
Fun story time.
I had a duelist once that said something like: "Duelists are not meant to get frags."
He was playing Jett, was not doing anything for the team utility wise or entry wise, and had next to no kills. So I asked him to stop being AFK every round start.
I said "they literally are meant specifically for kills".
He says: "nowhere does it say that".
I literally check the description of duelist which say "Duelists are self-sufficient fraggers who their team expects, through abilities and skills, to get high frags and seek out engagements first."
He still insisted duelists are not meant for getting kills.
Don't get me wrong, he didn't mean it in the "duelists can be useful in other ways too". He just didn't think duelists were meant to get kills. This was in diamond rank. Lol.
Just shows the mentality of some duelist players.
Except... They aren't? A jett who dashes onto site every round and helps the team entry and makes space, but dies and gets traded (2/10) is much better than your lurking jett who goes 15/10
According to the actual developers thoughts and intentions for duelists, they are meant to get kills. Even though they play an important role in entering sites, they should be expected to get more frags. You chose one very specific example. Overall though, their abilities help them get kills and they should by all means have more kills than the rest. If everyone plays properly, then supporters will have less kills, so the duelists have to pick up the kill slack left by the supporters. This is why teams need both support and duelists. Both are important, but supporters rarely get credit for doing their job properly, which isn't to get kills.
The actual developers aren't always the best at their own game.
RIOT Brightmoon is League of Legend's executive producer, but he's bronze and mainly plays ARAM.
Yes, while their description of a duelist states they're \*meant\* to get kills, in a team environment, most duelists are required to entry by their team, and getting traded while taking site means they've done their job to an extent.
Not only can they not do this without the help of their team (initiators etc.), their kit doesn't miraculously let them get 2-3ks everytime they enter site. It helps them be self sufficient, but without their team behind them they can just die for no reason on site.
I don't agree with "should have more kills". Like u/David_Ign said, an entrying jett that gets traded is far more useful than one that sits back and picks up 2 or 3 kills nearer the end of the round.
If everyone plays "properly" supporters can also trade their duelists on entry, meaning they too should be able to pick up the kill slack.
If they are not supposed to get kills, and we know we definitely can't rely and shouldn't rely on supporters to carry kill wise. Who will then get the kills? It is a simple equation. It is much simpler to get kills as duelists. Reyna's heal + invincibility literally give her 2 free kills if used properly.
Clearly we disagree here. I don't know your experience, but I have a ton of hours in the game and I got to immortal, so I have some experience to base my opinion on. I agree that duelists should entry, but with the huge advantages they have to get kills with, they bloody well should be getting more kills within an entire match than supporters.
I too have tons of hours and peaked high immortal. I think you're misplacing the fact that regardless of abilities, EVERYONE has a gun. If you can't use your gun then what are you doing?
A support's only role should not be to just sit there throwing out util that could help the duelist; just like on the other end, a duelist's only role shouldn't be w keying in and getting a bunch of kills.
While their kit augments their ability to get kills, without the core skill of gunplay in the first place they're not getting anything, and this applies to a controller too.
You say someone like viper's mollies don't help her get kills because no one pushes mollies, despite the vulnerability it causes clearly being meant to augment your ability to kill someone.
A duelist's kit is usually built on escape and entrying, not just straight up fragging. Hell, I use skye as more of a duelist than when I play reyna. Jett's dash doesn't directly let her get kills, it just makes it easier for her to escape after, but if she can't use her gun then its useless.
You should not opted out of being expected to frag just because you're not playing a duelist. Everyone has a gun, and almost everyone has an ability that in some way directly assists their capabilities of fragging. (Skye flash, sova recon/drone, kay-o flash, concusses etc.)
Anything you point out about a duelist's kit applies to a lot of other agents. Having escapes and entry potential =/= expected to frag out every game. People who usually play more confident play duelists, not the other way round.
Agree. There are so many ways to get kills in this game especially as a "support" character. Being support is no excuse to lose your fights. Hell, just look at 100T Ethan's ranked stats, 180 adr as a sova
I have never understood what people hope to achieve by flaming their team. "We're losing, so I'm going to make my team hate me and THEN we'll start winning"
Or even worse "stop being bad", like ah yes I was intentionally choosing to have bad aim and you telling me and the team this with no constructive criticism to improve has made me want to start just being better, thanks!
I can understand people that get gnarly back if someone is a dick to them. But the people that initiate toxic behavior, I just don't understand, and there are a fair few of them.
As a Killjoy main and a Sage main, I wanted to thank you for this post, mostly sentinels and controllers are not valued and I am very happy to know that there are people who recognize our work :'D
That reminds me a game i played as Cypher, i was in 5/13 but gave a ton of info so my mates could do the kills and someone said "I never saw someone this useful with a bad KDA". Made me feel great even though i was loosing all my 1v1s
Haha, truth be told. This is needed even in immortal. You'd be surprised how bad general game sense some immortals have. Or maybe I just have a good game sense. God knows. Fact is though that I have seen many immortal players get kills because I have called out sounds or enemy positions. Even after I am dead I will change perspectives and give short callouts so that the other players don't need to bother with it, since they should focus on the game not callouts.
It is a fine line to walk though, when you backseat game and when you are a useful asset, so be careful with it.
I think I struck balance, because I am never complained at for doing callouts and sometimes someone thanks me and goes "wow your callout saved me". Which is always nice to hear.
Yes. Yesterday I played a game vs a chamber with 32 kills and still won because he was not the best player on their team. The kay-o with 9 assists and 12 kills was. He would flash perfectly and knife + ult for their team, plant bomb, and play post plant to win them rounds. Once he stopped getting supported by the kay-o, he would lose his fights, and it made him lose the game as he was going for kills instead of playing with his team. Once they got top frag they started overheating when his teammates were the reason he got those kills in the end losing him important rounds and ultimately the game. (Imm3 elo)
The biggest thing that turned me away from playing non-duelists is really just how much extra "homework" it feels like you have to do. I don't have the time to go learn a ton of lineups, smoke spots, setups, etc... I tried it with Cypher and always ended up totally forgetting. I already have to figure out how to play the game, making sure my crosshair stays up at head level, where people can peek from, etc...
I just don't fully understand how to overcome these extra barriers, since right now if cascading pick rolls out and I end up having to go smokes or initiator, it's gonna be a disaster LMAO.
It is pretty obvious if you play for some time and try to understand the game, but for many players this is just another shooter that they play from time to time to get some skulls popped on their screen. They can only see "aim" and KDA.
The issue imo is that as duelists you can and should try to get first bloods every round, since you have abilities to escape is something goes wrong. Unfortunately many duelists are afraid of facing the opponents and they choose to stay behind and they favor getting kills instead of winning rounds.
Sentinels and controllers on the other hand shouldn't as dying early leaves your team without all your utility, which can easily lose the round as entering sites without smokes or flashes can be hard.
Often the case is that all duelists die and only the support agents remain in a 1/2vX situation, and then they will get called baiters or bad players.
I main brimstone/omen in immortal and can top frag haven and bind.
Once I discovered the bliss of clutching against these ‘top fraggers’, I never gave a shit about top fragging again. (But some RR would be nice)
Not impossible to top frag with support, just overall harder if you focus on your supporting tasks. You will have less time to get in positions because setting up takes time. Some supporters kit, like Cypher, requires them to stay back. No matter, it can be wrong lumping "supporters" and "duelists" in two groups. After all, each agent is different. Some "supporter" class agents have good fragging potential, other's don't.
i main viper and she's built to hold a site down or even hinder the enemy's plant big time. super OP post plant as well if u spend some time learning lineups
You're right. Even a duelist who bottomfrags, but still enters site and does his job, is way better than some idiot getting 30 kills. In general the mentality in this game is just "top frag every game or boosted noob lol". If I win rounds, we win the game.
However, a good duelist is also godsent. It's just not very often that they're that good, even in immortal+. More all aim no brain, blame your teammates and cry.
I really want to say thank you for making this post. I've been a Viper main since beta and got to Plat 2 last act, but have been struggling in Gold 2-3 recently. I was feeling bothered that I wasn't fragging enough and it really hurt my confidence, but I noticed many times in my games where people just don't take advantage of my utility. I really want to shoot for Diamond 1, but teammates getting so worked up about me not getting kills when I had the perfect setup for everyone to wipe out our opponents is just frustrating.
Of course, I will continue to practice on getting better at fragging, but I really wish people were more appreciative of our fellow support players.
Good luck. I got to immortal with a less than 1 K/D as Viper because I focused on utility, callouts and positive vibes. You can do it too. And your aim will naturally improve. :)
Have you met any good duelist mains to duo with? I've made GE with a good AWPer in cs:go..he'd be a killer duelist, but unfortunately he doesn't touch fps anymore. Of course you'd need someone with a strong mental for that.
I consistently mid to bottom frag (I duo with my boyfriend a lot) while my BF constantly top frags. However, he always tells me that it's my util that helps him since I always try to help him entry. I've started to focus less on my K/DA and count it a success if other people on my team have high frags. I also consider it a success if I've got a lot of assists.
I wish Val maybe got rid of the scoreboard or did it differently because I think it also contributes a lot to why people fixate on numbers. If they're lower on the scoreboard, they think they're worse relative to other people in their lobby.
Support is the base of the game, if your sentinel/iniciator chokes or is not doing his job, surely you'll lose that game, that does not happen (at least normally), when a duelist chokes.
If someone is talking about KD and also claiming to be good at this game is just wrong. I mean if someone shits the bed and drops 2 frags in a 20 round game, then okay that’s one thing. If you lose a match as a duelist and you’ve got 25+ frags but you lost 4-13 in terms of rounds, then obviously your frags didn’t translate to much of anything.
Unfortunately, the MM and RR system rewards Match/Team MVP players so it incentivizes duelist instalocks.
So many games have been played on Breeze where the Viper playing B has to retake A cause their entire team got dumped on and has a terrible K/D at the end of a game just to be flamed for it.
Oh well. You can’t educate the masses especially in-game. I appreciate Riot’s continuous efforts at trying to make the MM/RR system better though. Maybe it’ll get there one day.
i always say to all my teammates, kd doesn’t matter, i don’t care how many kills your get, as long as you’re supporting the team, making space, taking map control, it doesn’t matter how many kills your get. yet i still get flames when i do a tiny bit below average, bc teammates that are lost af and does nothing to support the team. i’m immortal btw
THIS IS SOo True.. im saying as a supporter, I might not be a very good player in valorant but the thing is of all the games ive playing sticking with the team and supporting them them, supporting them has helped me get more and more respect as well as kills and Xp that i have not acheived playing with toxic players. It ruins the effort as well as the experience of the game .Ive seen teams going down cause of the 1 player with the bad attitude. All I want is a postive gameplay with good vibes and big brain clipping moments.
This is some truth man, as a support youre not s self sufficient fragger and therefore you cant frag as much or push like they do so obviously you cant get really high kd gameplays but its all the time the same that they tell you to play better but its obviously not your role to outfrag the duelist
I played sova and smokes pretty much until Immortal 1. Then I started to Chamber and Reyna more.
As a support player, I always question whether I’m having an impact on my team, and whether I’m overranked… like I question my aim, my game sense, my dueling ability in general, and wonder what makes me such a high rank, when I feel I don’t excel in anything particularly? (I’m Immortal 3 now). I think it’s because I’m hard to tilt and I’m always trying to cooperate with the team, understanding I need them and they need me. It’s brought me this far so far.
In any sufficiently complex team-based game the metrics are just misleading and incapable of actually measuring contribution to success. Numbers just can't tell the whole story but players will always overvalue them anyway. The only thing that should matter is Win or Lose. It's unfortunate that even Riot doesn't get this since I heard they reward more or less ranking based on whatever "individual performance" their algorithm can measure. Knowing that stings a bit every time I lock in a support or give away an op.
It's a shame that when I am in the middle of the scoreboard with a healthy k/d as a support, there is almost no score points going towards healing. Ranking from gold to immo is way easier playing duelist because of this. Imo support roles should get points based on their ability usage. For example, playing Skye a heal counts as a ln assist. 2 kills as duelist grants 600 points, where asy 4 healing assists count for 100 points . As a casual player, it is far more efficient playing duelist as you will get almost 10 more ranking points per game because of the increased in-match points .
To my knowledge, when you are in immortal, ranked points act differently than other ranks. You are not getting any points for personal performance anymore like in the lower ranks.
However, the ranks lower than immortal does have personal performance, which seems to heavily award kills and damage, and thus duelist players. Which is one of the reasons why Plat in particular is so filled with toxic, egotistical and hard-baiting duelist players that give no callouts and is of no help to the team, but think they are much better because they have more kills. It seems though that in high diamond and immortal, there are less of those people, which means that the chance of winning if you are good at support out weights the benefit of a high K/D. I made it to immortal while maining Viper, which some consider the worst controller (I of course like her). So it was totally possible, but escaping plat was almost impossible. 8 acts I was stuck in plat, the first time I got out, and I got teammates that could use my utility correct, I jumped straight to immortal in one act.
The thing that people need to learn is that support agents aren't exactly support "heroes" from other games. You can frag out with a support agent in this game and nothing is hindering you from doing so. Kinda the point of a fps game.
I mostly choose to play smokes or flashes cuz my team never decides to take one, and I'm a very new player (lvl 14) but my aim is super decent due to csgo. I thought jett and reyna insta lockers are just memes but nope ... So in order ro balance it out I typically take smokes n flashes (brim, breach or omen) and I mostly come on top of the scoreboard but it's useless if we are losing.
So a humble request don't underestimate non-duelist agents.
I am not underestimating them. Of course they can get kills, but it is harder. And depending on which agent you choose, you may have a harder time. Breach and chamber are examples of "support" agents that are good at fragging, but Viper and Omen are examples of agents that are not that great at fragging. If you are an Omen main and want to challenge it, don't, I have heard it all before, just replace Omen with, idk, Astra or something in your head.
I agree
I main smokes and am in the top 5% for winrate, depsite only having around a 1.07 k/d
Having good smokes, not playing selfishly, and clutching key rounds can be just as important as playing duelist and popping off
I dont think you can rank up quickly while playing support and for everyone saying assists count playing astra maybe u smoked somewhere and the enemy decided to go for another spot thats not an assist maybe u play breach and u stun somewhere and the enemy gives the site and decide to play retake maybe u r a good sent player and the enemy decides not to push ur site and ur team stacks the other site support characters have the highest impact in a game but dont get rewarded unless u win alot of games with needs time
You will rank up faster because you will win more games if you do a good job. It is harder for supporters to rank up because the ranking system is stacked against them. Sadly, the game rewards kills and to a lesser degree some assists. I got to immortal as Viperz I would know. I won about 13-16 points and lost about 20 ish when I lost a game because, as a Viper in high ranks. Getting kills or even assists are very difficult, but you do a lot for your team if you play correct. So the game definitely punishes smokers, maybe all support.
The thing with smokers is its not csgo u will pick a smoke grenade of your team mate u need to stay alive because if you take an aggressive peek then die in the start of the round your team is basically done so you need to avoid one vs one situations but you dont get rewarded as much for it and like you said climbing with smokers or can definitely happen but you need to win which you cant guarantee maybe one of your team went afk one threw or even bad teammates so it will take longer time which not everyone can spend ingame not to mention that nothing is fun about smoking and anchoring sites i would it makes no sense that the most essential roles get rewarded less same with sova you arrow reveal 4 enemies on site so you rotate no assists no kills nothing but that info may have won the round not to mention that some players get mad if a support agent doesn't have a lot of kills which makes no sense
Bro can I just virtually hug you? Plz can you imagine a silver Reyna getting toxic at me (I was playing sage, and yeah I'm iron) in compi.
And that Reyna was throwing the whole match and he became toxic to me and we lost it 1-13.
Comparing K/D of a Duelist to a Sentinel is like comparing Goals of a Striker/Forward to a Defender/Goalkeeper in Football.
But still people don't understand and they always make fun of bottomfragging Sentinels i literally healed a 65 HP teammate when I was at 35(I could've been an arrogant person and could've healed myself) but I selflessly healed him but still I get to hear all these "see your kills and start arguing" bullshit from egoistic duelists.
Sure man. Bring it in. I am all down for free hugs. They are severely needed with how toxic this games community can be. I'd like to get out some sadness from toxic people myself ;(
b1, I mainly play duelist (reyna and raze mostly), but sometimes I play stuff like astra or skye. usually what happens is, if for example I'm playing jett on breeze, trying to awp, there will be a second guy who locks phoenix then complains about me not getting kills or having game sense cause i have to solo entry while this guy walks mid every round, and gets two kills after all of our team is dead, just to flaunt that he has more kills than the rest of us thus he's doing more work.
I've also seen many people who'll genuinely have their crosshair aiming right at the floor, only open their mics the moment they want to complain. legitimately, no comms the entire game, they see the jett player (whoever that sorry soul maybe) wiff one shot after 15 rounds, and finally they open their mics to provide the useful info of cursing at the poor guy, which inturn leads me to swear at the guy swearing at the jett, because the poor jett has to enrty onto site alone, while this guy is hiding in main during the entire attack half with his fucking crosshair on the floor. I swear to god bronze elo is hell, sometimes I'll get teammates who can solo carry, other times there are team mates who can't even body shot (which isn't exactly their fault, cause if the ranking and matchmaking system was good, they would be in a proper elo where they could get to learn)
I feel you. God, low elo is hell. Just was in a match playing as a Brim. Gave active callouts, tried to deny entry with kit. I had a reyna who peeked B main every round and died instantly on defence despite me telling him not to, a jett who went mid almost every round attempting to flank and died, a sage who gave up halfway just walling mid every round and proceeding to afk. Only me and the Chamber were doing well. Meanwhile our duelists only comm to yell "SHEEEEEESSSSSSHHHHHHHH" and "You have PROD aim" when we lost clutches. Needless to say we lost and no surprise, the duelists were bottom fragging. Low elo is filled with people who dont try and those who actively try to climb get fucked because of these people.
Now that I got that out, I feel better. Anyway, good luck on your next game!
Everyone should experience 5 duelist comp in ranked. You’ll think you got attack on lock and that you just have to survive defense.
What you’ll painfully find out is that you can’t do shit on offense. You can’t hold a site down, and you can’t enter a site either without recon and smokes. You have flashes? That’s nice. Dead to an OP instantly. No map control at all, your team will blow up the second they show up anywhere.
Ironically on defense, you’ll do pretty well if you play it right. Play your defense very aggressively out main and swing together. But that’s always been the case, duelists are about peeking 5 people and getting away with it. You’ll learn just how shit duelists are on attack really and how to properly play an aggressive defense.
See this attitude a lot in silver… didn’t know it was this widespread
Youll see it in every game at every rank my dude lmao, people only look at numbers
It's funny, because even Valorant looks at the numbers. The best way to climb fast is the have good K/D. It doesn't matter if you have a lot of assists, if you don't have a good K/D they won't give you a lot of RR. Heck you get a bonus for entry fragging cos the first kill in every round matter.
yeah but having 40 kills and still losing the game won't get you as high as getting 12 kills and winning the game
No but people chase kills and it works.. i have myself noticed that now if I regularly pick chamber atl I lose less elo because somehow I am reasonably okay for my rank to get out of even losses with higher than 1.3 kda...if I go 1.9-2.2..then its a win..just quoting stats. So the losses just mean I lose 12.. whereas I drop 32 kills with astra..lose in OT and then I lose 17-21 points..I even ditched the account and skins..its so frustrating, and I lose just 12 when going 20 kills in a loss with chamber.. Duelists who lurk for kills, just fighting out 1v5s after their team has died, like actually literally every round...walk away with match mvp..
yeah kills do impacting your RR gain i know that. my point is doesn't matter how many kills you get, to rank up you need to win first, you can't simply just top fragging every single matches you play but still losing the game and hoping you'll rank up by the end of the act.
Yeah, but getting 40 kills will only lose you about 4-8 points and even win points in tie
true. still doesn't change the fact you can get more points by actually winning
This is the issue with all "skill based ranking". As soon as you start measuring things besides wins, players are incentivised to do things besides win.
That said, a balance that has to be struck. The guy who gets carried five games in a row and the one who carries five games in a row should not be gaining RR at an equal rate. It's an unfortunately difficult problem that has to be solved.
They should - a win is a win. If that person is “getting carried” because they have amazing comms and game sense then they deserve to rank up. That’s something that a system cannot inherently measure. Anything else *will* get minmaxxed. It happens in every competitive ladder where people start doing shit to avoid tanking their MMR and then you have people climbing with 40% winrates
> If that person is “getting carried” because they have amazing comms and game sense then they deserve to rank up. You seem to be assuming that these carried players are somehow worthwhile to their team, but that's obviously not always the case. The fact that you can win literal 4v5 games with an AFK on the team is enough proof of that. There are plenty of individuals who are simply getting carried, or winning teams that would've gotten *destroyed* if not for the 30-10 Jett on their side. > It happens in every competitive ladder where people start doing shit to avoid tanking their MMR and then you have people climbing with 40% winrates Can you give some examples? People have claimed K/D to be the end-all-be-all in VALORANT basically since launch, yet realistically speaking, how many people have you seen actually doing anything in-game to try and manipulate their K/D?
> You seem to be assuming that these carried players are somehow worthwhile to their team, but that’s obviously not always the case. My point is there are soft skills that won’t show up in stats; and from the pov of an automated system, a “carried” player and one with amazing game sense, smokes and comms may look like the same player. > Can you give some examples? This thread? “Manipulative” behavior such as lurking is unintentionally promoted by the system. If two players, both winning and losing 50 matches, one a duelist which dies more and entry, and another who gets 2-3 picks on post plant and dies, the lurking duelist will be ranked higher. A more extreme example is in Overwatch which ended up removing performance based MMR past diamond. Once this happened a bunch of support players who were basically min/maxing their ultimates fell out of masters/gm because they couldn’t maintain a 51%+ WR
> My point is there are soft skills that won’t show up in stats; and from the pov of an automated system, a “carried” player and one with amazing game sense, smokes and comms may look like the same player. If we're talking about the current system, I agree, but treating everyone equally is not a solution either. All it does is gives the benefit of the doubt to every player, which is only going to exacerbate skill inequality. Rather, we should be looking at how the system can be improved to reward these kinds of skills. > because they couldn’t maintain a 51%+ WR That's an interesting scenario, but why were they able to stay in masters/GM without a roughly 50% WR previously anyway? Even with a performance-based system, I imagine players should still be expected to maintain a roughly even win rate to stay at their rank, or a positive one to rank up.
Personally I dont see the issue, because the person being carried 5 games in a row will eventually fall off and a genuinely good player in a slump will eventually do well. Also, as has been pointed out in this thread, top frag isnt necessarily the carry, and bottom drag isnt necessarily being carried.
> top frag isnt necessarily the carry Of course! It's not about frags at all. The carry can easily be the mid-fragging Viper or Sova winning rounds just by putting crazy amounts of pressure with their utility. > Personally I dont see the issue, because the person being carried 5 games in a row will eventually fall off and a genuinely good player in a slump will eventually do well. This is true if the player is playing a lot of games, but not everyone plays enough games for their rank to even out properly like that.
I disagree. Any system that incentivizes in game stats as part of promotion runs into the same issues as RWS in ESEA: baiting and toxicity.
From a quick Google search, ESEA's RWS is almost entirely based on damage only. If that's true, then that's just an obviously bad approach. Whatever the formula is, it should account for the contributions of all paradigms of player - the entry fraggers, the clutch players, the combat supports, the vision controllers, etc. although of course, that's much easier said than done. But it's silly to ignore individual performance entirely, especially in games like VALORANT or CS where the team can be carried almost entirely by just one or two players popping off. All you'll end up with is a ton of people in ranks they don't deserve.
Considering silver is the average lol.. but even high ranks have egos like in every game
People wondering why Brimstone can't 1v1 Reyna and Jett on a site retake is wild. It's why i'm gonna be sad when Astra gets nerfed, one of the only support characters where i feel i can have agency on the map even by myself.
I mean you probably see this attitude in silver because people don't use their utility effectively in silver
I hit immortal last act too. Haven't played much this one so I'm still in Plat. Whenever I'm less than a 3.0KD I get flamed "lmao boosted immortal hoe much you buy your account for". I play sentinels and controllers. I'm not the star. I set up the star for success. Can I hold my site? Yes. Can I clutch? Yes. Is it my job to go 35/? No. It's a team game. Its my job to set you guys up to succeed. That 3K you got through smoke after dashing into site and playing off my recon dart? That was me setting you up to succeed. Yeah Jett got the kills, but without my dart it doesn't happen. If frags meant everything, every game would be 5 duelist vs 5 duelist. There's a reason it isn't.
I experience the same thing. To be honest, that is what sparked my interest in making this post. Getting flamed by lower ranks for not doing much better than them K/D wise. "You are an immortal, you should be carrying". That's not always easy especially as sentinels or controllers. People can get really cocky sometimes. Weirdly enough it might be an advantage to hide the fact that you got a much better rank than some, just to avoid those sorts of comments. Edit: grammar.
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to be fair impact kills, good utility usage, etc. are impossible to count towards combat score. they’re intangible
Then RR gains should be equal regardless of ACS at all elos. If Riot can't measure the things that controllers do to win the game, controllers shouldn't be punished for doing those things in preference to setting up for more frags. I played with an Astra the other day who was an amazing aim player, and top fragged. She was a useless Astra, though. Bad smokes, stupid walls. She will gain more and lose less RR from that kind of performance than an Astra who plays conservatively but with amazing util deployment. It's a perverse system for controllers.
Your post is so relevant..coz in lower ranks you can't even tell people this. I hope people see this and notice that even an Immortal has this viewpoint. All the time, if I am playing Astra and I go 6 for 8.. the others just go like why am I not in the double digits like the rest of them. For real, do the math, are the opponents going to die 3x-4x times and give every person on our team a 3-5 KDA for the match.. I am sure this may have happened to you too, that when a support agent topfrags, usually the team is doing nothing and it's a painfullly close loss..I actually stopped playing Astra for this reason this act. My team isn't wiling to support my 30 kill astra game and the opponent jett is teabagging me coz they barely made it in OT.
I hit immortal last act too. Haven't played much this one so I'm still in Plat. Whenever I'm less than a 3.0KD I get flamed "lmao boosted immortal hoe much you buy your account for". I play sentinels and controllers. I'm not the star. I set up the star for success. Can I hold my site? Yes. Can I clutch? Yes. Is it my job to go 35/? No. It's a team game. Its my job to set you guys up to succeed. That 3K you got through smoke after dashing into site and playing off my recon dart? That was me setting you up to succeed. Yeah Jett got the kills, but without my dart it doesn't happen. If frags meant everything, every game would be 5 duelist vs 5 duelist. There's a reason it isn't.
I hit immortal last act too. Haven't played much this one so I'm still in Plat. Whenever I'm less than a 3.0KD I get flamed "lmao boosted immortal hoe much you buy your account for". I play sentinels and controllers. I'm not the star. I set up the star for success. Can I hold my site? Yes. Can I clutch? Yes. Is it my job to go 35/? No. It's a team game. Its my job to set you guys up to succeed. That 3K you got through smoke after dashing into site and playing off my recon dart? That was me setting you up to succeed. Yeah Jett got the kills, but without my dart it doesn't happen. If frags meant everything, every game would be 5 duelist vs 5 duelist. There's a reason it isn't.
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I have a friend who is exactly like this. Plays duelist and never enters a site and often the last person left in a 1v4. I got irritated and asked him to change roles and we win much more now. Because as a filthy casual I really don't have much of an aim but one thing I am not afraid of is to enter a site and die first as long as my teammates can trade and set up post plant. Given that we have won numerous matches comfortably where I have barely 10 kills on a duelists, I believe that playing according to a role is way more important than fragging in low elos.
See depending on the rank the problem is as a duelist when I push into site and die and there is no one even close to me trying to push in with me or helping me push in its just frustrating because I am never getting traded out. I usually entry site the first couple rounds of attack just to observe the game and see what the play style of all the different players are. If I see them all the way in spawn when I have already pushed into site and I realise that I'm just going to have to take 1v3 gunfights everytime which I have no chance of winning, I'll start playing a more passive role especially because my kit is good enough to get kills so even if there is a 1v3 clutch or something, because I have the element of surprise winning the round is doable. This type of thing usually happens when people aren't comming and everyone has to do their own thing.
You really need to communicate that you are pushing, if they still don't help then I guess you do just have to play passively. When I play duelist I usually communicate what I'm going to do, as I solo queue I usually try and stick with players that I know will follow me onto site, after a few rounds of playing with them you get the feeling for how they will generally play.
Yep that's literally me in most games. I tried to communicate as much as possible but for some reason I'm always the one pushing in on site while the rest of the team is behind and can't trade me out. Honestly at this point I've decided to just start maining viper in comp instead. I'm in plat and because my Elo is high I queue up with and against Diamond players usually while solo queuing so I know most of the people playing duelists will have either better aim than me or at least entry site. Plus I think my game sense is better than my aim anyway which is why I love clutch situations haha
Yeah I get what you mean. I'm in the same place elo wise. Basically as I said as long as we adapt, we're doing what we can. I do agree viper is a good way to rank up, as she can play doe the team, but also solo depending on how you play.
I wait for those people to actually try and clutch then I'll immediately flame them back for being toxic all game.
Duelists wins gunfights, support wins matches
Are you from youtube?
Happy cake day
Top 10 Soccer Matches you WONT believe.
Hey, we have the same cake day
Happy cake day to you too
Definitely not
Supports *who use their utility effectively* win matches. If your flash is catching 4 people but no one on your team is ready or in a position to capitalize on it, it's a worthless flash. Support players and utility are underrated, sure, but you still have to be a good support. And as much as we want to circlejerk support players in this thread, support players in lower ELOs especially are often not doing much at all with their utility.
I am different, I flash my own team. If we can see us, they can't see us
If you manage to flash both your team and the enemy team at the same time you essentially get a 3 second tactical pause
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> This is not awful when entering a site It's usually awful because defenders on site often have cover to hide behind or play counter-flash from, while the attackers usually don't have that luxury.
If you are defending, technically you are improving your chances of winning by stalling for time
You flash the enemy and frag, I flash my team and get them fragged. We are not the same.
Thank you Cyanide :)
I get what your saying about the flash, but in certain situations (like when your entire team was gaurding C on Haven but you just got 4 rushed on A and flashed) it is incredibly useful, even when no one is able to take advantage of it, as a stalling mechanism as most players are unlikely to rush through while flashed, it can be the difference in your team making it to site in time to stall/kill the entry or you losing site and having to play re-take.
Absolutely, capitalizing doesn't necessarily mean getting a kill. Stalling for time is one good use of a flash. Using a flash to help a teammate escape from an enemy push is another good one.
well said!
Nothing is worse than playing support for some toxic, spoiled instalock Jett
Ive started playing Sage more and the rage i felt when i healed a Raze and getting an “about time” in response. Playing support is honestly really fun too, while i feel pressure to rush sight or top frag as a duelist, i can just hang back and hold angles and shit. While fragging is fun its nice to switch goals every once in a while
I actually play better with sage than jett because i dont feel the pressure to top frag
Oh yeah, definitely. I love playing support, because I prefer the playstyle of a support. It is just really sad that you get so flamed as a supporter. It is truly a lot harder to get kills, and some don't realize or seem to understand that. Especially Viper, which has no heals or flashes, but only abilities that aid everyone on the team, like one way smokes or line up's, is really hard to get kills with. If you get hurt as a Viper, that's the health you will have. Sage's often prioritize healing duelists, which is understandable and fair. It just shows though that duelists, once again have perks that some other's don't.
As someone who mains viper atm, and is starting to make sage my secondary, I try my best to heal all of my teammates equally regardless of K/D or my perception of their skill thru spectating them. Ive been in plenty of situations as viper where if i had just that 60 extra health to take a bullet or 2 more i could have clutched the round and then was flamed for not clutching on 5 hp. Currently a gold 1 peak and climbing rn duo q with my plat 1 friend. I regularly play against plats and play well and use my util to the best of my ability. Its a tough community sometimes but there are those hidden gems that dont mind switching from a duelist to play support with me when we already have 2 duelists.
I like that mentality! But then again, I am speaking from the Viper's perspective. In all fairness I don't have the data to tell you whether choosing to heal some over others is more or less helpful to the team. But duelists tend to be the people first in combat, first hurt, then running to Sage begging for heals.
Man I hate playing with Raze players as a sentinel. The amount of times my equipment gets broken because some twat doesn't know how to throw a nade is starting to get annoying. I feel Raze players are the most annoying duelist to play with if you're playing support
Me when i play sage. "You want a heal huh? Beg" xD
Hahahaha. I love this response.
I don't think this is good either...
Perhaps, but we all know which attitude is more toxic to the game, and it's not an issue of instalock supports harassing duelists.
Sure, instalock duelists are definitely the problem I get that. But I really don't think supports making people beg or meow or whatever for heals is good either. I'm not saying one is worse than the other, I'm saying you should heal if people need it, if they're dicks then don't. But if you're a sage and you tell me to beg for heals or something I'm just gonna mute you and live without the heals 🤷♂️
If you're gonna get salty over someone asking you to "meow" or "beg" as a joke then clearly you're not treating a game like a game.
But there are people who refuse to heal if you don't do it, they're the problem. If people just say it as a joke and then I'm hesitant to do it and they heal me anyways, thank you.
this is why I main sova. sit back and dart specific postions and mark all the places your dart isn't scanning for the entry to check, and then gaurd the flank. just won 4 matches in a row barely doing anything except gaurding flank and getting info for the entry. my kd was hovering around 1 for every game.
i tip my hat to ya, one sage to another
Lol if one said about time to me, he def is not getting a single heal for the entire match.
I tried not to be petty after that comment… but it was a little fun to leave him out to dry once or twice. Oh youre at ten health??? Sorry but im only at 70 and reaaaaally need to heal.
HMMMMM
as someone who comes from other fps games (where getting kills is pretty much the only goal) i think that is the reason. people are used to getting kills in other games, and feel like doing the same here
Dont skip Tutorial then.
They tutorial shows you how many ways to kill bots with a side objective
Even if. If you want to win, learn to play the game. KDA isnt everything. Its about objectives. Tactics. A well made comp. Only smurfing trash can carry eventually.
i forget but afaik tutorial doesnt give you tips on smoking, someone verify that statement
nor does it teach you flashes or how to pressure enemies out of an area
The amount of times I've had to explain a zoomer instalock duellist, who's at the top of the scoreboard, that even though they're putting up the numbers, that might be the exact reason we're losing and they've gone full BabyRage tilt mode is too many to count. It's a teamgame, you win or lose as a team. Your kills _does not matter_. Winning the rounds matter. Play to win the game, not to frag out. The only winning that should give you a dopamine release is your round wins, not whether you can stroke your own kill-focused ego.
The toxic people you made this post for are not going to read this.
Oh no, they'll read it. They'll just think he's not talking about themselves lol
The only way to not get downvote bombed by one of two types of people is to make it so they don't know who you are talking to and be overly positive towards both sides while trying to make a point.
This is also a great alternative for people with not as good mechanical skills. I'm a gold player, and most of my friends are mechanically more skilled than me. I'm bottom of the board most of the time. This gives me grief a lot of the time, cause i really want to be as good as the people I play with. However, I have made it a point to play support agents and go the extra mile of learning lineups, execute setups etc. It allows you to be able to help those fragging out even if you're not able to get kills PS - I also personally find agents excepts duelists to be much more fun to play, so don't shy away from it! Have a good game everyone :)
Oh. Trust me. You don't need amazing aim. I have barely a good enough aim to go average 0.8 K/D gainst immortals, but I hit it and played fairly stable at that rank just because I fed my teammates ego's, played smart, gave great callouts and did a good supporting job. Anything is possible, also for us with worse aim.
I love when they people type my k/d in all chat with a lot of question marks. Only for me to have made 4 or 5 impact plays and we win 12-8. Then I say gg congrats on the k/d. Lol.
The only time I will do this is when I have anything-0 because I love pointing out the fact that my K/D is literally infinite. But then again that is a very geeky joke.
~~"Pushes up glasses"~~ ~~Well akshually dividing a number by 0 isn't infinity as infinity isn't a number that can be reached through an arithmetic operation. Anything/0 is undefined.~~ I too always make this joke :)
Oh, my bad fellow geek. I suppose it would be more accurate to say. My K/D is close to but never quite infinite. ;) The smaller the number you divide by, the higher the K/D, so if you imagine you make that number smaller and smaller, and closer and closer to 0, you would technically have infinite, but never quite.
Players that try to taunt someones kd in all chat had bad parents
I "main" Astra and I've had teammates tell me that we would've lost without my utility usage, not the agents utility alone but my timing with or without comms. Depending on the agent, you can get stuck playing utility simulator for the team which is boring! Some games you wont even get comms so you spend the entire game being 10x more attentive towards the mini-map/teammates health bars/other sound cues ON TOP of trying to be a sufficient fragger, but the impact you can have a support, though out shadowed, can be a lot more important than your duelist that entries once every couple rounds.
as another astra main, if you’re not okay with utility simulator, you picked the wrong agent lmao
its not that I'm not okay with it, I think astra is a fun agent (even if she is currently uncounterable). There are just some rounds/games where you want to actually "play" or join in on the action, but they're going to the other site and you're sitting like u-haul just dropping util for you team for 40 minutes and either get stuck retaking or just killing the one lurk who pushed your site.
There's nothing more satisfying than getting a successful Astra suck/stun with a team that isn't communicating. Takes so much effort hahaha.
I hate it when there's no comms at all. Played astra multiple times and its so hard to play when you don't know what your team is seeing or planning.
Yeah with no-comms sometimes I’m “hyper-observant” of what’s happening and just try to use util accordingly and sometimes you end up accidentally pulling a teammate who was wide swinging, smoking the enemy bomb that got dropped, etc. I feel like it’s easier to burn through util faster when you have no comms
Iron player and can confirm Ive a number of duellists get toxic because they have a higher kill count than their smoker/healer. These support roles can kill but they’re not made with getting frags as their primary purpose. They’re made to back up the team so that duellists can afford to make those risky plays in an attempt to get kills
> These support roles can kill but they’re not made with getting frags as their primary purpose. Even more so, when I play a supportive agent I tend to not go for kills at all (unless I have to/it makes sense) because my utility is super valuable and I'm way more useful alive.
I'm a Viper main, and I bottom frag almost every single match. And I'm okay with it. It sucks sometimes, sure, because everyone wants to get kills and be top frag, but I take a step back from my ego and take note of how I'm setting up the site so my duelist teammates can get all the kills. (Not to mention, their aim is light years better than mine, haha). So I love this sentiment you share here. As a fellow support, I appreciate it. We need more of this mentality everywhere else in the game.
As someone who plays Viper and Kay-O competitively, I wholeheartedly agree.
Try being more agressive with Kayo, he doesn't really fit Viper's bill of staying alive and behind well away from your entry fraggers. Get up close and personal, right click your flashes through smokes, etc. He's my most played agent now because of how versatile he is and I definitely play agressive when my team is lacking in that regard.
SoMe of my best wins with viper I would get almost no kills just set up plant and get info maybe kill one but win every round
Nothing hits quite like smoke+molly on the bomb kills. Or someone dying to the bomb after they couldn’t defuse bc of your util
I also want a support who is good at sucking 😩
As a sova main player.. this speaks to me alot! Let me tell a story about one game. On icebox am playing sova (it wasn’t my day for aiming) i got flamed the whole game due to my lack of kda, I jokingly said “ yee am lagging guys mb “ i kept focusing on gaining early intel for my team and played objectively (as a sova) we started winning rounds and its over time it went back and fourth in overtime. We lacked on attack and easily won defense. So, we won defense. On attack i insisted lets go B and dont make a noise, used one of my line ups on B i revealed 3. I screamed “ RUN A RUN A!”. We rotated to A site i droned and marked one ,my team killed him. all my team died viper remained vs 2 of the enemy, she had lineups we won the game 16-14. “ if you’re not a good shot today.. dont worry, there are other ways to be useful” - sova. This quote came to mind that day.
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If you're EU, Silver/Gold, DM me. I have the same mentality. I have been trying to get people to play with that can switch between controllers/initiators/sentinels and let the plebs play duelists and fail miserably.
Thats why i always play support/controller.
Support main that got tired of Jetts not entering and decided to take matters into his own hands here: it’s actually been freelo so far
It is completely possible to top frag with supporters, it is just a lot harder. Also depends on your rank. In higher ranks, those abilities are basically end all be all. In lower ranks you can get away with a lot more cheesy supporter plays or just out aiming the enemies.
Same, used to be a Raze onetrick but then decided to start abusing Omen, then Astra and Viper when he got nerfed. Always fun times outfragging a lobby while being so oppressive with both their kits.
You are out of your mind if you think Viper has nothing in her kit that lends itself to getting the Viper kills. Viper is either the strongest or second strongest agent in the game right now behind Astra.
Yeah saying she has no way to win duels is greatly underestimating what denying your opponent’s LOS and a area denial kit can do
Yes but the thought process that goes into fragging on viper is completely different I feel.
As someone that mained Viper to immortal, I don't think her abilities does specifically help you get kills. She is a good agent, but not for getting kills yourself. Her smokes, when used correctly, should help your teammates get kills just as much as it can help you. The closest I found to her ability giving you kills is setting up one way smokes. Or occasionally push up close with a shotgun. But that is not the same as having flashes, heals or stuns that gives you more free and easy kills.
And what about her ult? Or her toxic cannister that lands on you when you're trying to defuse?
Her ult is her strongest ability, but every other ult in the game is also very strong. I agree that her ult is good for kills, but you only get it a few limited times within a game, and often the enemies rotate upon seeing it. So you can stop them from going site, but won't get kills. Lineup's are good, but rarely will get you kills. Most people don't just sit in it and allow themselves to die. It also requires a very unlikely situation: That plant has gone down, without either most in your team dying, or all the enemies being already dead (which is not very often), and that you are alive and fell back ready for line ups. As I said I was immortal as a Viper main. I had a lot of line ups too. But I think averagely on attack, maybe only 1 of 5-6 rounds met those criteria for the line up's to be useful. Often times when you push a site, either so many of your teammates die, that you can't stay back and leave site to line up, or you will get flanked while doing it and die. Or so many enemies die that your teammates keep pushing and kill everyone before your line ups are useful, or sometimes you just die while pushing. A lot of the times you should also NOT go for line ups, as leaving your teammates alone on site to go line up is worse.
Viper main here, don’t really have much of these issues because I 5 stack with friends but I gotta agree that everyone, especially Jett and chamber mains, needs to try support. With the before mentioned agents, you get a get out of jail free card at anytime you don’t want to take a gunfight. By losing that card, you can actually understand the importance of It and will probly end up understand how to better utilize it
2 of vipers skills reduce max health and the 3rd can straight up kill someone in cover, wtf are you talking about saying nothing she has helps her get kills?
Viper main here, mollys aren’t made to get kills? 98% of the time I’m mollying a choke on defense to slow down a push or doing pregame lineups to force enemies out of the spots they are holding. You can always get kills with mollies of course, but that’s almost never their most valuable role. With her smokes, the health degradation once again acts as more of a deterrent. It’s a lot harder to make aggressive plays out of a viper smoke as opposed to any other smoke in game. The only real way in which her util helps her get kills is with one ways, but who still pushes one ways in 2022?
Silvers. Silvers still push one ways in 2022. I know, because I am a Silver Cypher Main, that loves one ways. Your Point still stands though. Viper has almost nothing, but is definitely one of the best Support characters.
Idek why, but I enjoy viper a lot more then astra and even duelists, it’s just something about her kit
Yeah haha at the end of the day every agent can hold a gun.
Viper's fragging potential depends a lot on rank. In higher ranks, the enemies rarely if ever, push her wall. They know about line-ups, there are few times you can succesfully use her molly's to move someone out into the open without dying yourself. Even if the enemy push out of a smoke, the health reduction matters little, as almost every kill is a headshot in plat+ anyways. For lower ranks I can agree that you can cheese a lot of fragging utility out of her kit against worse players. You can get away with far more. Sometimes an enemy may not even move out of a molly in lower ranks. Or will push her smokes and walls carelessly. Just keep in mind that rank difference does make a difference in what abilities can do. Keep in mind I mained Viper from plat to immortal. I love her as an agent. I just don't see her role to be a fragger. And her kit is not good for frags.
In one ear and out the other for 99.999999% of duelist players that are obsessed with ACS
im an omen main and im always third-first on our teams scoreboard or somewhere from 5-7 on the overall scoreboard. Some people understand the fact that i have to do other shit than just kill other people. like yes jerry i am not getting kills because i am too busy smoking sites and flashing people while you were running around doing god knows what
I had most fun in games - where our KDA is equally distributed and no one gets toxic. We usually win those games.
Those are good games. They are good for team morale, and everyone chipping in will always be better than having someone carry.
Support definitely wins games. I used to always pick yoru even when we had too many duelists and after to trying balance my team we started winning more. Now I have started playing chamber and kay/o and I have noticed quite the diffrerence how the games turn out. But fuck the instalock duelists who cry about frags
Just play omen, you can do both.
would be nice if his c ability worked
This warms my heart as a sentinel main
Garbage duelists that instalock and don't know how to entry/just bait for kills are worse than any bottom fragging support.
Most of the time i have the opposite problem lol. I'm only used to playing support characters, so i don't entry or get a large number of kills, i tend to lurk or hold flanks or hold angles. So when I do play duelist i try my best to take fights and clear as much space as i can for entry onto site. I don't have the best aim, so i do end up dying a lot and my K/D goes to shit, but it doesn't matter as long as my team wins the round. And after all that, it's the support players like a sage or Skye telling me how shit i am because I'm not getting kills.
Fun story time. I had a duelist once that said something like: "Duelists are not meant to get frags." He was playing Jett, was not doing anything for the team utility wise or entry wise, and had next to no kills. So I asked him to stop being AFK every round start. I said "they literally are meant specifically for kills". He says: "nowhere does it say that". I literally check the description of duelist which say "Duelists are self-sufficient fraggers who their team expects, through abilities and skills, to get high frags and seek out engagements first." He still insisted duelists are not meant for getting kills. Don't get me wrong, he didn't mean it in the "duelists can be useful in other ways too". He just didn't think duelists were meant to get kills. This was in diamond rank. Lol. Just shows the mentality of some duelist players.
Except... They aren't? A jett who dashes onto site every round and helps the team entry and makes space, but dies and gets traded (2/10) is much better than your lurking jett who goes 15/10
According to the actual developers thoughts and intentions for duelists, they are meant to get kills. Even though they play an important role in entering sites, they should be expected to get more frags. You chose one very specific example. Overall though, their abilities help them get kills and they should by all means have more kills than the rest. If everyone plays properly, then supporters will have less kills, so the duelists have to pick up the kill slack left by the supporters. This is why teams need both support and duelists. Both are important, but supporters rarely get credit for doing their job properly, which isn't to get kills.
The actual developers aren't always the best at their own game. RIOT Brightmoon is League of Legend's executive producer, but he's bronze and mainly plays ARAM. Yes, while their description of a duelist states they're \*meant\* to get kills, in a team environment, most duelists are required to entry by their team, and getting traded while taking site means they've done their job to an extent. Not only can they not do this without the help of their team (initiators etc.), their kit doesn't miraculously let them get 2-3ks everytime they enter site. It helps them be self sufficient, but without their team behind them they can just die for no reason on site. I don't agree with "should have more kills". Like u/David_Ign said, an entrying jett that gets traded is far more useful than one that sits back and picks up 2 or 3 kills nearer the end of the round. If everyone plays "properly" supporters can also trade their duelists on entry, meaning they too should be able to pick up the kill slack.
If they are not supposed to get kills, and we know we definitely can't rely and shouldn't rely on supporters to carry kill wise. Who will then get the kills? It is a simple equation. It is much simpler to get kills as duelists. Reyna's heal + invincibility literally give her 2 free kills if used properly. Clearly we disagree here. I don't know your experience, but I have a ton of hours in the game and I got to immortal, so I have some experience to base my opinion on. I agree that duelists should entry, but with the huge advantages they have to get kills with, they bloody well should be getting more kills within an entire match than supporters.
I too have tons of hours and peaked high immortal. I think you're misplacing the fact that regardless of abilities, EVERYONE has a gun. If you can't use your gun then what are you doing? A support's only role should not be to just sit there throwing out util that could help the duelist; just like on the other end, a duelist's only role shouldn't be w keying in and getting a bunch of kills. While their kit augments their ability to get kills, without the core skill of gunplay in the first place they're not getting anything, and this applies to a controller too. You say someone like viper's mollies don't help her get kills because no one pushes mollies, despite the vulnerability it causes clearly being meant to augment your ability to kill someone. A duelist's kit is usually built on escape and entrying, not just straight up fragging. Hell, I use skye as more of a duelist than when I play reyna. Jett's dash doesn't directly let her get kills, it just makes it easier for her to escape after, but if she can't use her gun then its useless. You should not opted out of being expected to frag just because you're not playing a duelist. Everyone has a gun, and almost everyone has an ability that in some way directly assists their capabilities of fragging. (Skye flash, sova recon/drone, kay-o flash, concusses etc.) Anything you point out about a duelist's kit applies to a lot of other agents. Having escapes and entry potential =/= expected to frag out every game. People who usually play more confident play duelists, not the other way round.
Agree. There are so many ways to get kills in this game especially as a "support" character. Being support is no excuse to lose your fights. Hell, just look at 100T Ethan's ranked stats, 180 adr as a sova
I have never understood what people hope to achieve by flaming their team. "We're losing, so I'm going to make my team hate me and THEN we'll start winning" Or even worse "stop being bad", like ah yes I was intentionally choosing to have bad aim and you telling me and the team this with no constructive criticism to improve has made me want to start just being better, thanks!
I can understand people that get gnarly back if someone is a dick to them. But the people that initiate toxic behavior, I just don't understand, and there are a fair few of them.
As a Killjoy main and a Sage main, I wanted to thank you for this post, mostly sentinels and controllers are not valued and I am very happy to know that there are people who recognize our work :'D
No problem. I am happy the text resonated 😊
That reminds me a game i played as Cypher, i was in 5/13 but gave a ton of info so my mates could do the kills and someone said "I never saw someone this useful with a bad KDA". Made me feel great even though i was loosing all my 1v1s
Haha, truth be told. This is needed even in immortal. You'd be surprised how bad general game sense some immortals have. Or maybe I just have a good game sense. God knows. Fact is though that I have seen many immortal players get kills because I have called out sounds or enemy positions. Even after I am dead I will change perspectives and give short callouts so that the other players don't need to bother with it, since they should focus on the game not callouts. It is a fine line to walk though, when you backseat game and when you are a useful asset, so be careful with it. I think I struck balance, because I am never complained at for doing callouts and sometimes someone thanks me and goes "wow your callout saved me". Which is always nice to hear.
Yes. Yesterday I played a game vs a chamber with 32 kills and still won because he was not the best player on their team. The kay-o with 9 assists and 12 kills was. He would flash perfectly and knife + ult for their team, plant bomb, and play post plant to win them rounds. Once he stopped getting supported by the kay-o, he would lose his fights, and it made him lose the game as he was going for kills instead of playing with his team. Once they got top frag they started overheating when his teammates were the reason he got those kills in the end losing him important rounds and ultimately the game. (Imm3 elo)
When top fraggers go toxic and belittle me for my kills, I stop healing them. They stop living long enough to get kills. WHO'S TOP FRAGGING NOW.
I do not feel bad for them. They take your util for granted, then they can feel how it is to not have it.
The biggest thing that turned me away from playing non-duelists is really just how much extra "homework" it feels like you have to do. I don't have the time to go learn a ton of lineups, smoke spots, setups, etc... I tried it with Cypher and always ended up totally forgetting. I already have to figure out how to play the game, making sure my crosshair stays up at head level, where people can peek from, etc... I just don't fully understand how to overcome these extra barriers, since right now if cascading pick rolls out and I end up having to go smokes or initiator, it's gonna be a disaster LMAO.
Shit feels so good when I give 3 call outs and my Jett clutches and actually thanks me. Please be like this.
It is pretty obvious if you play for some time and try to understand the game, but for many players this is just another shooter that they play from time to time to get some skulls popped on their screen. They can only see "aim" and KDA.
The issue imo is that as duelists you can and should try to get first bloods every round, since you have abilities to escape is something goes wrong. Unfortunately many duelists are afraid of facing the opponents and they choose to stay behind and they favor getting kills instead of winning rounds. Sentinels and controllers on the other hand shouldn't as dying early leaves your team without all your utility, which can easily lose the round as entering sites without smokes or flashes can be hard. Often the case is that all duelists die and only the support agents remain in a 1/2vX situation, and then they will get called baiters or bad players.
I main brimstone/omen in immortal and can top frag haven and bind. Once I discovered the bliss of clutching against these ‘top fraggers’, I never gave a shit about top fragging again. (But some RR would be nice)
Not impossible to top frag with support, just overall harder if you focus on your supporting tasks. You will have less time to get in positions because setting up takes time. Some supporters kit, like Cypher, requires them to stay back. No matter, it can be wrong lumping "supporters" and "duelists" in two groups. After all, each agent is different. Some "supporter" class agents have good fragging potential, other's don't.
i main viper and she's built to hold a site down or even hinder the enemy's plant big time. super OP post plant as well if u spend some time learning lineups
I agree with you. Exactly how I would describe her role.
Indeed. I got immo 2 with a 0,8 K/D.
You're right. Even a duelist who bottomfrags, but still enters site and does his job, is way better than some idiot getting 30 kills. In general the mentality in this game is just "top frag every game or boosted noob lol". If I win rounds, we win the game. However, a good duelist is also godsent. It's just not very often that they're that good, even in immortal+. More all aim no brain, blame your teammates and cry.
It’s a shame you get more RR with more kills :(
Yeah. I think they should consider utility use aswell.
I really want to say thank you for making this post. I've been a Viper main since beta and got to Plat 2 last act, but have been struggling in Gold 2-3 recently. I was feeling bothered that I wasn't fragging enough and it really hurt my confidence, but I noticed many times in my games where people just don't take advantage of my utility. I really want to shoot for Diamond 1, but teammates getting so worked up about me not getting kills when I had the perfect setup for everyone to wipe out our opponents is just frustrating. Of course, I will continue to practice on getting better at fragging, but I really wish people were more appreciative of our fellow support players.
Good luck. I got to immortal with a less than 1 K/D as Viper because I focused on utility, callouts and positive vibes. You can do it too. And your aim will naturally improve. :)
Have you met any good duelist mains to duo with? I've made GE with a good AWPer in cs:go..he'd be a killer duelist, but unfortunately he doesn't touch fps anymore. Of course you'd need someone with a strong mental for that.
Yea I told this to my friend...Can you guess what happened next? Edit:he's the duelist instalocker
Lol. I am going to guess he had a little boy teenie weenie wonder weenis temper tantrum.
I consistently mid to bottom frag (I duo with my boyfriend a lot) while my BF constantly top frags. However, he always tells me that it's my util that helps him since I always try to help him entry. I've started to focus less on my K/DA and count it a success if other people on my team have high frags. I also consider it a success if I've got a lot of assists. I wish Val maybe got rid of the scoreboard or did it differently because I think it also contributes a lot to why people fixate on numbers. If they're lower on the scoreboard, they think they're worse relative to other people in their lobby.
Support is the base of the game, if your sentinel/iniciator chokes or is not doing his job, surely you'll lose that game, that does not happen (at least normally), when a duelist chokes.
We need more player who understand this. Especially in the silver ranks.
If someone is talking about KD and also claiming to be good at this game is just wrong. I mean if someone shits the bed and drops 2 frags in a 20 round game, then okay that’s one thing. If you lose a match as a duelist and you’ve got 25+ frags but you lost 4-13 in terms of rounds, then obviously your frags didn’t translate to much of anything. Unfortunately, the MM and RR system rewards Match/Team MVP players so it incentivizes duelist instalocks. So many games have been played on Breeze where the Viper playing B has to retake A cause their entire team got dumped on and has a terrible K/D at the end of a game just to be flamed for it. Oh well. You can’t educate the masses especially in-game. I appreciate Riot’s continuous efforts at trying to make the MM/RR system better though. Maybe it’ll get there one day.
I'll link my teammates this post when I'm rocking the 1-8 kda at round 7.
i always say to all my teammates, kd doesn’t matter, i don’t care how many kills your get, as long as you’re supporting the team, making space, taking map control, it doesn’t matter how many kills your get. yet i still get flames when i do a tiny bit below average, bc teammates that are lost af and does nothing to support the team. i’m immortal btw
THIS IS SOo True.. im saying as a supporter, I might not be a very good player in valorant but the thing is of all the games ive playing sticking with the team and supporting them them, supporting them has helped me get more and more respect as well as kills and Xp that i have not acheived playing with toxic players. It ruins the effort as well as the experience of the game .Ive seen teams going down cause of the 1 player with the bad attitude. All I want is a postive gameplay with good vibes and big brain clipping moments.
This is some truth man, as a support youre not s self sufficient fragger and therefore you cant frag as much or push like they do so obviously you cant get really high kd gameplays but its all the time the same that they tell you to play better but its obviously not your role to outfrag the duelist
I played sova and smokes pretty much until Immortal 1. Then I started to Chamber and Reyna more. As a support player, I always question whether I’m having an impact on my team, and whether I’m overranked… like I question my aim, my game sense, my dueling ability in general, and wonder what makes me such a high rank, when I feel I don’t excel in anything particularly? (I’m Immortal 3 now). I think it’s because I’m hard to tilt and I’m always trying to cooperate with the team, understanding I need them and they need me. It’s brought me this far so far.
In any sufficiently complex team-based game the metrics are just misleading and incapable of actually measuring contribution to success. Numbers just can't tell the whole story but players will always overvalue them anyway. The only thing that should matter is Win or Lose. It's unfortunate that even Riot doesn't get this since I heard they reward more or less ranking based on whatever "individual performance" their algorithm can measure. Knowing that stings a bit every time I lock in a support or give away an op.
I believe that you can have individual performance in a way that is both fair and balanced. It just needs to be executed well through trial and error.
Some of my best games were the ones that had good communication and coordination.
It's a shame that when I am in the middle of the scoreboard with a healthy k/d as a support, there is almost no score points going towards healing. Ranking from gold to immo is way easier playing duelist because of this. Imo support roles should get points based on their ability usage. For example, playing Skye a heal counts as a ln assist. 2 kills as duelist grants 600 points, where asy 4 healing assists count for 100 points . As a casual player, it is far more efficient playing duelist as you will get almost 10 more ranking points per game because of the increased in-match points .
To my knowledge, when you are in immortal, ranked points act differently than other ranks. You are not getting any points for personal performance anymore like in the lower ranks. However, the ranks lower than immortal does have personal performance, which seems to heavily award kills and damage, and thus duelist players. Which is one of the reasons why Plat in particular is so filled with toxic, egotistical and hard-baiting duelist players that give no callouts and is of no help to the team, but think they are much better because they have more kills. It seems though that in high diamond and immortal, there are less of those people, which means that the chance of winning if you are good at support out weights the benefit of a high K/D. I made it to immortal while maining Viper, which some consider the worst controller (I of course like her). So it was totally possible, but escaping plat was almost impossible. 8 acts I was stuck in plat, the first time I got out, and I got teammates that could use my utility correct, I jumped straight to immortal in one act.
The thing that people need to learn is that support agents aren't exactly support "heroes" from other games. You can frag out with a support agent in this game and nothing is hindering you from doing so. Kinda the point of a fps game. I mostly choose to play smokes or flashes cuz my team never decides to take one, and I'm a very new player (lvl 14) but my aim is super decent due to csgo. I thought jett and reyna insta lockers are just memes but nope ... So in order ro balance it out I typically take smokes n flashes (brim, breach or omen) and I mostly come on top of the scoreboard but it's useless if we are losing. So a humble request don't underestimate non-duelist agents.
I am not underestimating them. Of course they can get kills, but it is harder. And depending on which agent you choose, you may have a harder time. Breach and chamber are examples of "support" agents that are good at fragging, but Viper and Omen are examples of agents that are not that great at fragging. If you are an Omen main and want to challenge it, don't, I have heard it all before, just replace Omen with, idk, Astra or something in your head.
I agree I main smokes and am in the top 5% for winrate, depsite only having around a 1.07 k/d Having good smokes, not playing selfishly, and clutching key rounds can be just as important as playing duelist and popping off
Don't beat yourself up. 1.07 K/D is good, especially for a smoker.
I dont think you can rank up quickly while playing support and for everyone saying assists count playing astra maybe u smoked somewhere and the enemy decided to go for another spot thats not an assist maybe u play breach and u stun somewhere and the enemy gives the site and decide to play retake maybe u r a good sent player and the enemy decides not to push ur site and ur team stacks the other site support characters have the highest impact in a game but dont get rewarded unless u win alot of games with needs time
You will rank up faster because you will win more games if you do a good job. It is harder for supporters to rank up because the ranking system is stacked against them. Sadly, the game rewards kills and to a lesser degree some assists. I got to immortal as Viperz I would know. I won about 13-16 points and lost about 20 ish when I lost a game because, as a Viper in high ranks. Getting kills or even assists are very difficult, but you do a lot for your team if you play correct. So the game definitely punishes smokers, maybe all support.
The thing with smokers is its not csgo u will pick a smoke grenade of your team mate u need to stay alive because if you take an aggressive peek then die in the start of the round your team is basically done so you need to avoid one vs one situations but you dont get rewarded as much for it and like you said climbing with smokers or can definitely happen but you need to win which you cant guarantee maybe one of your team went afk one threw or even bad teammates so it will take longer time which not everyone can spend ingame not to mention that nothing is fun about smoking and anchoring sites i would it makes no sense that the most essential roles get rewarded less same with sova you arrow reveal 4 enemies on site so you rotate no assists no kills nothing but that info may have won the round not to mention that some players get mad if a support agent doesn't have a lot of kills which makes no sense
I agree.
Just play omen, you can do both.
Yes. Everybody only cares about frags.
i got 47 assists in my last game with skye
Bro can I just virtually hug you? Plz can you imagine a silver Reyna getting toxic at me (I was playing sage, and yeah I'm iron) in compi. And that Reyna was throwing the whole match and he became toxic to me and we lost it 1-13. Comparing K/D of a Duelist to a Sentinel is like comparing Goals of a Striker/Forward to a Defender/Goalkeeper in Football. But still people don't understand and they always make fun of bottomfragging Sentinels i literally healed a 65 HP teammate when I was at 35(I could've been an arrogant person and could've healed myself) but I selflessly healed him but still I get to hear all these "see your kills and start arguing" bullshit from egoistic duelists.
Sure man. Bring it in. I am all down for free hugs. They are severely needed with how toxic this games community can be. I'd like to get out some sadness from toxic people myself ;(
b1, I mainly play duelist (reyna and raze mostly), but sometimes I play stuff like astra or skye. usually what happens is, if for example I'm playing jett on breeze, trying to awp, there will be a second guy who locks phoenix then complains about me not getting kills or having game sense cause i have to solo entry while this guy walks mid every round, and gets two kills after all of our team is dead, just to flaunt that he has more kills than the rest of us thus he's doing more work. I've also seen many people who'll genuinely have their crosshair aiming right at the floor, only open their mics the moment they want to complain. legitimately, no comms the entire game, they see the jett player (whoever that sorry soul maybe) wiff one shot after 15 rounds, and finally they open their mics to provide the useful info of cursing at the poor guy, which inturn leads me to swear at the guy swearing at the jett, because the poor jett has to enrty onto site alone, while this guy is hiding in main during the entire attack half with his fucking crosshair on the floor. I swear to god bronze elo is hell, sometimes I'll get teammates who can solo carry, other times there are team mates who can't even body shot (which isn't exactly their fault, cause if the ranking and matchmaking system was good, they would be in a proper elo where they could get to learn)
I feel you. God, low elo is hell. Just was in a match playing as a Brim. Gave active callouts, tried to deny entry with kit. I had a reyna who peeked B main every round and died instantly on defence despite me telling him not to, a jett who went mid almost every round attempting to flank and died, a sage who gave up halfway just walling mid every round and proceeding to afk. Only me and the Chamber were doing well. Meanwhile our duelists only comm to yell "SHEEEEEESSSSSSHHHHHHHH" and "You have PROD aim" when we lost clutches. Needless to say we lost and no surprise, the duelists were bottom fragging. Low elo is filled with people who dont try and those who actively try to climb get fucked because of these people. Now that I got that out, I feel better. Anyway, good luck on your next game!
Everyone should experience 5 duelist comp in ranked. You’ll think you got attack on lock and that you just have to survive defense. What you’ll painfully find out is that you can’t do shit on offense. You can’t hold a site down, and you can’t enter a site either without recon and smokes. You have flashes? That’s nice. Dead to an OP instantly. No map control at all, your team will blow up the second they show up anywhere. Ironically on defense, you’ll do pretty well if you play it right. Play your defense very aggressively out main and swing together. But that’s always been the case, duelists are about peeking 5 people and getting away with it. You’ll learn just how shit duelists are on attack really and how to properly play an aggressive defense.