Valorant is a strategical and prudent 5v5 character-based shooter, set in a near-future version of Earth. With around 10 main characters, all of them have been bewitched with four unique abilities, inspired by Overwatch. However two among the four are free abilities and to avail the other two, you need to pay some compensation earned between rounds and the time when you buy weapons and armor.

 Gameplay

Though the abilities seem inspired by Overwatch, Valorant has some key distinctions that make it a lot more like Counter-Strike. For one, each character’s “ultimate” ability has an extremely long cooldown that can last multiple rounds, so you won’t be constantly firing wall-piercing arrows, laying trip mines, or triggering poison-cloud ambushes.

The name of the character with their brief description is as follows-

• Sova – Fires deep magic arrows with the capacity to penetrate walls and travel across the map.
• Phoenix – Can curve flashbangs around corners.
• Cypher – A defensive powerhouse who can lay trip mines and stick a camera to a wall to watch for flanking attacks.
• Jett –  leaps into the air and attacks with knives for quick kills.
• Viper – Can Release poisonous clouds that blind the foe and zone them into a deadly ambush.
• Brimstone – rescues friends and obliterate enemies.
• Sage – Valorant’s resident medic who can revive allies.
• Omen – A shifty rogue who can get enemies temporarily blind.
• Breach – gifted with a unique force,  it disorients enemies and ignores the boundaries of walls.
• Raze – An explosion expert that can kill enemies with grenades.

Once you are done with your character, you don’t have any choice of changing, terminating, or swiping other characters. You have compete those 24 rounds with sudden death in the event of a tie with the same one character only. So take your time! be wise enough to face this hurdle of choosing the character. But there is one relaxation. Characters aren’t bound to using one type of gun. This means that you can change your weapons as per your required gameplay. Most rifles will kill characters with three to four shots to the torso. At the beginning of each round, try out a variety of different weapons along with some secondary abilities with a limited number of charges. However, Valorant’s combat emphasizes on the usage of skilled gunplay more than high-powered unique abilities, owing to the deadly and destructive nature of gunplay.

Some of the deadly weapons include-

• Sidearms – Classic pistol, Shorty sawed-off shotgun, Frenzy auto pistol, Ghost silenced pistol, Sheriff revolver
• SMGs – Stinger (for high fire-rate), MP4 (for silenced SMG)
• Shotguns – Bucky (for pump action), Judge (automatic)
• Rifles – Bulldog (burst), Guardian (DMR), Phantom (silenced carbine), Vandal (AK-47)
• Sniper Rifles – Marshal (for Scout), Operator (AWP)
• Heavies – Ares (LMG), Odin (HMG)
• Melee – Strategic knife

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How to get into the Valorant closed beta

Officially released on 7th April 2020, the closed Valorant beta has already launched in countries like the US, Canada, Europe, Russia, and Turkey. You can pave your way into videogame betas by pre-ordering or purchasing a ‘founder’s pack,’ But this won’t be applicable when it comes to Riot’s  CS: GO-like shooter. So, the only way to get access into the Valorent closed beta is through discrete selection. Unlike most betas, here you’ll have to get a random beta key by watching qualified Twitch streamers.

Here’s how to sign up:

• Register for a Riot account click here to create a Riot account)
• Link your Riot account to a Twitch account (click here to create a Twitch account)
• When closed beta activates in your region (EU and NA for now), watch specific Valorant stream  highlighted on Twitch for the opportunity to be entitled to Closed Beta access

Riot Games had explained earlier in a post that after the first day of the beta, that you will be eligible for a beta key once you’ve watched a couple of hours of streams with your linked account. Don’t get turn down if a key doesn’t turn up, or you are not led to the beta version by any means. It’s just a matter of luck that at certain times, demand has been incredibly high for Valorant Beta. With so many people beholding Valorant streams (around one million at the time of writing), your chance of getting hold of the beta version is probably pretty slim right now.

“We want to support a stable, competitive, high-fidelity gameplay experience above all, even if that means limiting the number of people we can support for now,” as claimed by the developers,  “We can’t and won’t undermine gameplay quality for the sake of getting everyone in.”

While Riot is keeping most of the things confined, it has laid out a few guidelines that can help you be efficient about your Gaming. You need to watch streams straight for about 2 hours to be eligible for a beta drop. But the good news is that you need not actively watch it to get the drop. All you need to do is stay Online.

Prevent from buying a closed beta Account  

Don’t be a spendthrift to buy closed beta account since this could lead you to further disappointment when Riot games will block you. Gaming enthusiasts desperately wanting to have a glimpse of Valorant’s closed beta have gone to the extent of purchasing accounts worth $150. Riot Games has raised a warning alarm that these accounts will be looked into and banned as soon as possible. Riot’s looking out for bots and account sellers and this banning their access.

When is Valorant’s release date? 

There hasn’t been any official confirmation from Riot Games do far.  But it’s planning to release it in the summer of 2020. The exact release date will be confirmed once the feedback for  Valorant’s beta is received. Take a look at the trailer released by Riot Games.

All Valorant ranks

As per the new official breakdown, we now know the eight different ranks. In ascending order, the Valorant ranks are:

• Iron
• Bronze
• Silver
• Gold
• Platinum
• Diamond
• Immortal
• Valorant

Each rank comprises three different levels within it: Iron 1, Iron 2. Iron 3, then Bronze 1, and so on except for the top rank “Valorant” which has no tiers.

There’s no rank decay even if you’re inactive

Riot Games claim that there won’t be rank decay for being inactive. If you don’t play a match for a number of days, your rank will be hidden in Competitive mode. But fortunately, you won’t actually lose any tiers. So cheers!  You don’t have to face any loss! Once you become active again, your rank will be displayed again as usual. Though Riot has confirmed that your closed beta rank will not carry over to launch. After that, it’s not known if ranks will be reset or Remain as they are.

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Here’s how Valorant’s Competitive mode works

For beginners,  you’ll need to play 20 matches of Unrated game to unlock Competitive mode. Once Unlocked, form a pool of five members but you’ll all have to be within 2 ranks (or three tiers) or one another.

Riot claims that initially, the personal performance will have a greater impact on the rank change than just wins or losses. As the system gets a general measure of your personal skill, personal performance will take a backseat to wins. Further, the judgment in the competitive mode will depend on the number of your winning matches, whether it’s a close call or a landslide.

Valorant system requirements

For Minimum (30fps) and recommended (60fps) –Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit) with RAM of 4GB, CPU installed with Intel i3-370M and GPU with Intel HD 3000 (1GB VRAM) serves the purpose.

High-end (144+fps) – Windows 7/8/10 (64-bit) with 4 GB RAM and Intel Core i5-4460 3.2Ghz and Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti (1GB VRAM) for CPU and GPU respectively meets the high-end specs.

Even if you haven’t upgraded your device from time immemorial, Valorant will probably run like a dream since the specs requirements are too low and compatible as compared to the other games.

If your PC has met the above-mentioned specs then what are you waiting for? Click here to download the game!