The introduction of Valorant’s Act II came with some competitive rank changes as well. These changes came in the way of “Act Ranks”.

What is an Act Rank?

In a nutshell, an Act Rank is a player’s highest rank in a season. This is based on the “9 best-ranked wins of the Act”. This means that if a player wins nine games in Platinum 1 but then de-ranks to Gold 3 as the season ends, their Act Rank is Platinum 1. This is all kept on your profile with a badge which also shows ranked match wins at different ranks through different, rank-colored triangles.

While this concept is fairly unique in an FPS game, it has little use from a competitive standpoint. The Act Rank is NOT your Matchmaking Rank (MMR). After an act ends, a player has to play three placement games to get their rank back. This placement will be based on “MMR from the prior Act”. So, essentially, your Act Rank means very little when it comes to your actual placement.

What’s the Use?

If the rank gotten after an act is based on MMR and the rank used to queue in competitive is still your regular matchmaking rank, what’s the point of all this? The only uses we could think of were team tryouts, rank anxiety, and simple bragging rights.

Act Ranks could make trying out for a team a bit easier. A team would be able to see someone’s ability peak, even if that’s not where they currently are. As for rank anxiety, it might help to show people that your current rank might not be what you’re capable of achieving.

Either way, both of those scenarios are mostly focused on showing off how good someone is or how good they can be. In the end, Riot Games said one of its top priorities is “improving transparency and clarity into your rank changes”. Hopefully, the next rank update will be more focused on actual ranks.

How do you feel about the new Act Ranks? Do they have a use in-game? Join the discussion happening right now on our Discord. And as always, for more news, exclusive interviews, and Valorant guides, follow us at Run It Back.