Riot devs recently confirmed that they are “looking into ways” to include non-damaging assists on a player’s combat score in Valorant.
Finally, Sage mains have some good news coming their way after their favorite Sentinel healer has been nerfed quite a lot!
This move may also improve the total player pick rate for support agents on Valorant, as they are falling behind duelists and fraggers.
Not much love for supports
A number of Valorant players aren’t fond of picking support-based agents, simply because their performance won’t be reflected in their combat score.
Ian Fielding, senior producer, further discussed the state of VALORANT’s combat score in a recent Ask VALORANT #7 blog post:
Frags remain to be the most influential factor in achieving a high combat score, but rest assured— the devs are currently “looking into ways” to include non-damaging assists add to it.
Total kills do play a massive factor, but there remains several factors that are taken into consideration.
One user asked:
“Is it true that there’s an extra importance on frags when it comes to getting a good combat score? If so, do you plan on increasing the recognition of assists and other forms of contributions to your team (spotting or slowing enemies, healing allies, etc)?”
Fielding answered:
“Your combat score is not just based on kills, although that is a big factor in the score. We also look at damage inflicted, meaning that assists where you help kill an enemy are taken into account, as well as utility that does damage.There are some other factors that help inform your combat score, such as first bloods and streaks. These are called out on the combat score tool tip. Longer term, we are looking into ways to incorporate non-damaging assists into your combat score as well.”
“Regarding competitive, while your combat score indicates how well you performed in core combat during the game, it’s not 1:1 with the performance calculations we use for your rank updates. Rank updates leverage some, not only, of these data points. Simply put, the focus of whether or not your rank updates is primarily focused on wins and the decisiveness of these wins.”
Much-awaited recognition
This move, although slated for “longer term,” would definitely give that much-awaited recognition towards Valorant’s support agents.
Personal performance influences how much players increase or decrease in their specific ranks. However, many pick duelists and rack up kills to speed up the whole progress.
Sentinels are a crucial addition to complete a successful team composition, despite the downside of having lower combat scores.
The announcement to make some planned improvements has been received positively by the Valorant community.
Read the full Ask VALORANT #7 blog post here.
