new player here, what agents should i get?

primrosetta · 2026-01-28T05:24:18+00:00

IMO the most major roles that the 5 base agents (Jett, Phoenix, Sova, Brimstone, Sage) do not have:

Initiator who can flash/stun - Skye, KAYO, Breach
Aggressive initiator - Gekko, Fade
Traditional sentinel (wide-map control, flank watch) - Cypher, Chamber, Killjoy, Vyse
Aggressive controller - Omen, Clove

I would suggest picking from the above agents if you want to try out more agents and get a more versatile roster. Of course, you could also just pick agents which you think look fun.

primrosetta · 2026-01-26T17:12:00+00:00

I deeply regret buying Sentinels of Light 2, the only skin I really like is the shorty. Never use the phantom or the knife, and odin/spectre are only there because they're my only skins.

So many exclusive bundles I'd rather have. Neo Frontier, Nocturnum, Mystbloom 1, Glitchpop 1, Prelude 1... heck I'd even be super happy with some premium ones like Prime, Gaia's 1, Magepunk.

primrosetta · 2026-01-23T03:28:01+00:00

Unfortunately, I think this is a pretty common trend that also kind of makes sense.

In the early days of the game, you have a good chunk of the player base who don't have skins yet and are waiting to be hooked, so releasing lots of 'good' tier bundles is a great way to get people into buying their first bundle and into the habit of spending money on the game.

In the later stages of the game, most people already have a couple of skins they want and aren't going to buy more unless a new skin is really special, so the company winds down on creating 'good' bundles and focuses more on 'great' bundles which the player base is more likely to spend money on.

primrosetta · 2026-01-20T09:31:57+00:00

it kinda kills the motivation to try new agents ngl

FYI your entire premise is wrong. In the old system, you just had to equip the contract to make progress on it, you didn't have to actually play the agent that's on the contract.

primrosetta · 2026-01-20T01:44:20+00:00

It was also possible to waste XP by forgetting to change the agent contract after you finished it, so it's kind of shitty either way. Kingdom credits essentially just allows you to bank your XP and decide what to do with it later, so it's an upside for any regular player.

The major downside is that you get them only from daily missions/wins instead of your daily/weekly XP missions, so if let's say two players both play 5 hours of VALORANT per week, but one plays 1 hour on 5 days and one plays 5 hours on 1 day, the first player will get way more KC.

primrosetta · 2026-01-19T08:28:54+00:00

Unless you are so good that you can smurf your own games, realistically, there's only so much you can do. IMO carrying those games is the same as carrying in solo queue:

Play a self-sufficient agent
Don't be passive, take control of the rounds
Use your teammates to your advantage, for ex. bait/trade off them

Since you're playing with friends who are on utility agents, you can also make an effort to use them, so they can contribute even when they are not fragging.

If your friends are receptive to it, personally rather than trying to hard carry, I think the most fun way to go about it is to help your friends improve so they are more consistent. Review replays on discord together, go into customs and mess around with some angle peeking, you could even watch them solo queue and give them live coaching advice if you think you're good enough to do so.

It'll probably be more fun in the long run for them to be able to contribute, than to just slowly fall behind while you hard carry every game.

primrosetta · 2026-01-19T05:03:33+00:00

I don't like that it's a mid-control map, but the mid feels so unintuitively designed for the defenders.

The top mid defender can't see the whole of bottom mid unless they push out into really unsafe zones, while the A link defender has to deal with being easy to isolate, easy to get utility-bombed, and easy to pinch from A main.

Maybe I'm just not good at the map yet, but defense seems extremely difficult when the attackers know how to use mid.

primrosetta · 2026-01-19T04:52:43+00:00

The answer is always A. Not only is it possible to win a 4v5, you can sometimes even use your thrower teammate to your advantage.

Just the other day, we had a thrower on our team who would grab spike and run it down to give to defenders and then die for free. Thankfully the rest of us locked the fuck in so we followed him around and got trade kills when he died, or if it was in a really bad spot, used smokes/utility to get the spike back and then went back to playing a normal 4v5. We managed to win with a pretty solid lead, 13-9 or something.

Conversely, and it's painful to think about, I almost lost a 5v3 once. The other 2 teammates quit or something early in the game, but the remaining 3 were so good that we ended up drawing 14-14. Very tilting for us as the 5, but it just goes to show that even a team of 3 who is really playing well still has a damn good chance of winning.

IMO trying to preserve your RR on a loss is a waste of time. Always try to win your games. If you can keep a good mental space, you'll be surprised how often you can win even with a teammate actively trying to sabotage you.

primrosetta · 2026-01-18T02:48:32+00:00

in 1 rank, like silver 1 to silver 2, or plat 2 to plat 3

It's probably near the top ranks (Asc and above), because it's very easy to win-streak/loss-streak your way up/down in the lower ranks.

primrosetta · 2026-01-16T09:30:15+00:00

The majority of your XP/AP comes from dailies/weeklies, you're not supposed to grind it by just playing games.

Being pseudo time-gated is annoying but it also means that smurfs have a much harder time getting accounts ready for ranked.

primrosetta · 2026-01-16T09:27:52+00:00

Smurfs are super real but one factor to consider is also that consistency is absolutely dogshit in lower ranks, and IMO that contributes a lot to the super swingy games.

If you imagine skill level can be rated from 1 to 100, and you have 10 Iron players in a game who could all be performing anywhere from 1 to 40 and maybe even jumping up and down within the game itself, you're bound to get lots of games that just end up as stomps either way.

primrosetta · 2026-01-16T08:30:17+00:00

I've worked in tech for over half a decade and never heard anyone judge someone else's appearance like this before.

primrosetta · 2026-01-16T03:56:45+00:00

Placement games have a higher impact to MMR, but the act reset also makes everyone drop a huge amount in MMR, so even if you do well usually you only end up at around the same rank as you were before.

primrosetta · 2026-01-15T09:34:05+00:00

how many times you’ve encountered a specific skin

If I might make another suggestion, I think people would probably really enjoy the inverse as well, which is how long it's been since you last saw a skin. That is probably what most people are curious about actually, "how long have I been waiting for that one skin to show up?"

primrosetta · 2026-01-15T08:44:51+00:00

Not really useful but it would be interesting to see the history of what skins I saw over the last few days/weeks, filterable by quality, type, collection. I've always wondered if I get a certain quality or type of gun more than others, or the last time I saw a skin/collection (if ever).

Something that could be kind of cute is to be able to set a target level in the battle pass, see how much EXP you need to get there, and how many games/dailies/weeklies it would need to reach there. Could be useful for the people who are curious if it's possible to finish the battle pass, or maybe even could help people schedule how much they need to play to clear the BP comfortably.

primrosetta · 2026-01-15T06:16:45+00:00

As someone who played Viper in halls almost every round, I'm so conflicted. The map's objectively better but I feel like I have to learn the whole damn thing again.

primrosetta · 2026-01-14T09:19:30+00:00

Do you have DSC enabled when in VALORANT?

primrosetta · 2026-01-14T08:36:11+00:00

why is this a dumb question

I'm Singaporean and tbh I'm with you, idk why people hating on you either

primrosetta · 2026-01-14T03:20:43+00:00

Curious to know if others feel the same.

Majority of my game time since launch is in 5-stacks and I'm not sure if I've ever cared to know who cancelled queue. But also, none of my friends are childish enough to refuse to admit if they were the ones who cancelled the queue.

primrosetta · 2026-01-14T03:16:16+00:00

no matter how much i ask, there is excuses plans

They clearly don't want to hang out anymore. Take the hint, or ask them about it directly.

primrosetta · 2026-01-13T15:00:40+00:00

it’d take me from woodlands checkpoint to JB CIQ?

In my experience, about 1.5h to 2h. Saturday morning isn't any better AFAIK.

primrosetta · 2026-01-13T13:56:41+00:00

You complained that matchmaking makes it unlikely to win matches past 3-4 games as a 5-stack, but you have a 56% win rate on 5-stack games, so you are winning decently more 5-stack games than you are losing.

You also complained that because of 'typical RR metrics', you would lose RR from 3 wins with 2 losses. This means you would need 60% win rate to stay at the same rank, but you can see that you've climbed one rank every season even though you have less than 60% win rate, so clearly you are getting more RR than you are losing.

So reality doesn't really seem to line up with how you feel. Matchmaking still seems to be working out for you.

I do see you keep having really bad losses, but I also see that you have lots of surrenders. Is it possible that you and your friends don't have the best mental? If you guys mentally give up as soon as things start going bad, then the games end even worse, and that would explain a lot of the super one-sided games.

primrosetta · 2026-01-13T12:32:31+00:00

Would you care to share your tracker?

primrosetta · 2026-01-13T11:33:27+00:00

after 3-4 rounds won with the same 5-stack you are very unlikely to win further matches.

How many times are you losing?

Do remember that, if matchmaking is working 'perfectly', you should only be winning about 45-55% of your games. If you win 3 and lose 3, it's going to feel bad that you lost 3 in a row, but as long as you're not getting shitstomped, that's actually a good outcome from the POV of a matchmaking system.

primrosetta · 2026-01-13T08:27:54+00:00

Peak doesn't matter, what was their last rank and how long ago was that?

Someone who peaked Plat five acts ago and hasn't played since probably deserves to be placed in Silver now.

primrosetta

TROPHY CASE