Katie Hong (10): 

I am currently Diamond 1, which took me around two months to reach. 

For some background information about the ranks of Valorant, the highest is radiant, which is around top 500 in a country or server. Next is immortal, and it goes from immortal 3 to 1, from high to low. Immortals are around the top 10,000 in the world. The radiant would be around the top 500, then decrease as you climb the ranks.

I started playing Valorant a year or two ago but not on a consistent basis. I only recently started playing more consistently. What got me into the game was just watching a lot of streamers and clips of it on social media. At the time, I only had my laptop, so I ran it at less than 30 FPS, which is bad for many video games. Then after I got my PC in September, I started playing more and more.

I prefer playing a Duo or trio que where I’m just queuing with either one or two other people, rather than playing solo. This is usually because I don’t want to queue with four other people, because then we’re only going to get queued against another five star player and it’s going to be harder, and having a Duo or a trio keeps you sane while you’re playing.

I usually spend three to four hours playing per day. I just make sure to finish all my school and extracurricular activities. For example, I’ll go to school, go to practice, come back home, do my homework, and then play.

I’ve had a couple of insane plays, including one where I aced all my aces or had a 7k once, when I killed 7 players in a single round, which is hard to achieve because there’s only five people on the team, and you would need to rest, then come back alive, and then get killed again. To clarify, an ace in Valorant is when you kill all five players on the opposing team in a single round.

However, I wouldn’t pursue a career in gaming since it’s more of just a hobby. Currently, a personal goal I have in Valorant is to hit Ascendant, or maybe even a high Ascendant, hopefully by the end of this episode. Some things I can do to reach that point include mainly focusing on mechanics, technique, and training. Some advice I would give beginner players would be  to ignore what mean people say to you, because people are always mean on Valorant. Don’t let it get to you. For me, if I ever encounter toxic or mean people, I try to be the bigger person and not let it affect me. I just focus on the game and make sure we win, instead of being tilted.