VALORANT glossary
Every term you will run into in chat, on the scoreboard and in the settings menu — defined properly rather than in four words. 38 entries, grouped by where you actually meet them. The end-of-round callouts are all 6 of the ceremonies in the game files, and the shield prices come from the same buy-menu data the client uses — so those numbers are the game's, not ours.
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Scoreboard and stats
The numbers on the end-of-game scoreboard, and what each one actually rewards. Most arguments about who played well are really disagreements about which of these to read. The round callouts here are the complete set the game ships — read from its own files rather than assembled by hand.
- Ace
- An ace is all five kills in a round by one player. The game marks it at the end of the round, and it is the most recognisable individual achievement in a match. A team ace is the different and less celebrated version where all five of your team each take one kill.
- ACSAverage Combat Score
- ACS is Average Combat Score, the number the in-game scoreboard sorts by. It is your total combat score divided by rounds played, and combat score itself rewards damage dealt, kills, assists and some non-damage contributions. Because it is per-round rather than per-match, it is comparable between a 13-3 stomp and a game that went to overtime. More on ACS
- ADRAverage damage per round
- ADR is your damage divided by rounds. Unlike ACS it counts damage only, with no credit for assists or non-damage contribution, which makes it a narrower but more literal reading of how much harm you did. It is the natural companion to ACS rather than a replacement for it.
- Closer
- A Closer marks the kill that finishes the game. It is the least-discussed of the six ceremonies in the game files, largely because it happens once per match at most and only for one player. Like the rest, it is recognition rather than reward. More on Closer
- Clutch
- To clutch is to win a round alone against the odds, usually written as 1v2, 1v3 and so on. The count is what makes it: a 1v1 is a duel, and it is only a clutch once you are outnumbered. It is the round state that most rewards patience over aim.
- Econ rating
- Econ rating measures efficiency rather than output. It is your damage divided by the credits you spent to deal it, scaled per 1,000. A player who does 300 damage with a Classic scores far better than one who does 300 with a full buy, because the number is asking what the damage cost. More on Econ rating
- Flawless
- A Flawless is a round won five-versus-five to the end: nobody on your team died. VALORANT marks it with one of its six end-of-round ceremonies, alongside Ace, Team Ace, Clutch, Closer and Thrifty. Like all of them it awards nothing and exists purely as recognition. More on Flawless
- KASTKill, Assist, Survived, Traded
- KAST stands for Kill, Assist, Survived, Traded. It is the percentage of rounds in which you did at least one of those four things. Because being traded counts — a teammate killing whoever killed you — it credits rounds where you died usefully, which is exactly what a kill-count statistic misses. More on KAST
- Team ace
- A team ace is five kills spread across five players — everyone contributes one. It is called out because it is genuinely uncommon and because it describes a round that went well collectively rather than one that was carried.
Ranked and rating
How the ladder works underneath the badge — the visible rating, the hidden one, and why the two disagree more often than people expect.
- MMRMatchmaking Rating
- MMR is Matchmaking Rating — the system's private estimate of how good you actually are. It picks your opponents and it sets the exchange rate on your Rank Rating. Riot does not expose it anywhere in the client, so every number claiming to show it is an inference rather than a reading. More on MMR
- Placement matches
- Placements are the short run of competitive games required before your rank becomes visible in a new act. Because your hidden MMR survives the act reset, they tend to confirm roughly where you already were rather than rebuilding your rank from the bottom.
- Radiant
- Radiant sits above Immortal at the top of the ladder. Unlike every rank below it, it is capped by region rather than by rating — only a fixed number of players hold it at a time, so entry depends on where you sit on the regional leaderboard, not on crossing a threshold.
- RRRank Rating
- RR stands for Rank Rating. Every rank is a 0-100 band, and each competitive game moves you along it: win and you gain RR, lose and you shed it. Cross 100 and you promote; drop below 0 and you demote. It is the visible progress bar of the ranked system. More on RR
- Smurf
- A smurf is a strong player on a new or low account. Because the matchmaking rating starts near the middle and moves gradually, a smurf spends their early games against opponents who cannot compete. It is against Riot's terms and remains common enough to be a fixture of the vocabulary.
Economy and buy rounds
Credits decide more rounds than aim does. These are the words for the buy states and the round types that come out of them.
- Anti-eco
- An anti-eco is the full-buy team's side of an eco round. The advantage is overwhelming on paper, which is precisely the trap: dying to a pistol hands over a rifle and undoes the economic lead. Played properly it means holding distance and refusing close-range duels.
- Eco
- An eco is a deliberate save. Rather than half-buying and losing both the round and the credits, the team spends almost nothing, accepts the round is likely lost, and banks the difference for a full buy afterwards. Winning one anyway is what the game calls a Thrifty.
- Force buy
- A force buy is the opposite of an eco: the team spends what it has rather than saving, usually because the round matters too much to concede. It typically means SMGs, light shields and partial utility against a full buy — worse equipment, but present rather than absent.
- Full buy
- A full buy is the standard complete loadout: a Vandal or Phantom, heavy shield, and every ability you can purchase. It is the baseline the rest of the economy is measured against — eco, force and anti-eco all describe positions relative to it.
- Heavy shield
- Heavy armour is the 1,000-credit shield in the buy menu. Riot describes it as absorbing 66% of incoming damage and breaking after it has absorbed 50, which works out to exactly 150 effective health. Light armour is 400 credits and 125 effective health, and the Regen Shield sits between them at 650. More on Heavy shield
- Save
- To save is to disengage from a round that is already lost and stay alive with your gun. A saved rifle is a rifle you do not have to buy again, which can be the difference between a full buy and an eco on the following round. It looks passive and is usually correct.
- Thrifty
- A Thrifty is one of the end-of-round callouts VALORANT prints above the scoreboard. It fires when the winning team's total spend on the round was substantially lower than the losing team's — you beat a full buy with pistols, or with whatever you saved from the round before. It is purely a recognition banner: it awards nothing, changes no economy, and exists to mark the round as an upset. More on Thrifty
Comms and callouts
What people are actually saying in voice. A large share of it came over from Counter-Strike wholesale, which is why it can be opaque if VALORANT is your first tactical shooter.
- CTCounter-Terrorist
- CT is inherited vocabulary. In Counter-Strike the two sides are Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists, and the enormous overlap between the two playerbases carried the shorthand across. In VALORANT the sides are simply attackers and defenders, so "CT side" means the defending half and "CT spawn" means the defenders' starting area. More on CT
- Default
- A default is the neutral opening: rather than rushing a site, the team spreads across the map, takes uncontested space and gathers information before deciding. It is the shape most rounds start in at higher levels, because it keeps every option available for longer.
- Entry
- An entry is the player who goes in first. The role is to create the opening rather than survive it: taking the first duel, absorbing the utility and revealing where the defenders are. First blood taken by an entry is often worth more than the same kill later in a round.
- GGGood game
- GG is "good game", the standard sign-off in the final round. It is said by both teams and carries no particular sincerity requirement. Typed early — "gg" while a round is still live — it reads as writing the match off, which is why it tends to irritate teammates.
- IGLIn-game leader
- IGL stands for in-game leader. It is the player who makes the team's decisions: which site to hit, when to save, how to set up a retake. It is a role in the organisational sense rather than one the game assigns, and it exists on every serious team and on plenty of casual ones. More on IGL
- Lurk
- To lurk is to detach from the team deliberately and hold a quiet part of the map. The lurker gathers information about rotations, threatens the flank, and forces defenders to leave someone watching an empty corridor. It is slow, and it does not read as productive until the moment it does.
- NTNice try
- NT is simply "nice try", typed quickly. It goes to a teammate who lost a winnable duel or a clutch that did not come off. It is one of the few pieces of VALORANT chat shorthand that is unambiguously friendly, and it is used most often at the end of a round the team lost. More on NT
- Rotate
- A rotation is a move between sites. Defenders rotate to reinforce whichever site is under pressure; attackers rotate to attack a site they have just convinced the defence to leave. Most rounds are decided by which team's rotation happened at the right time rather than by a duel.
- T side
- T side is the attacking half of a match. Like CT, it comes from Counter-Strike, where the attacking team are the Terrorists who plant the bomb. VALORANT calls them attackers and the spike, but the older shorthand persists in comms.
- Trade
- Trading is killing whoever just killed your teammate. The point is that a one-for-one exchange preserves the numbers, where an untraded death loses the round on the spot. Playing in positions where you can trade is most of what good positioning means in practice, and being traded counts towards your KAST.
Accounts and systems
Accounts, progression and the parts of the game around the match itself.
- APAccount Points / Agent Points
- AP usually means Account Points: the progression earned from playing matches that raises your overall account level. The same abbreviation is also used for Agent Points, the separate progression on an individual agent's contract that unlocks that agent's rewards. Which one is meant depends on whether the conversation is about your level or about an agent. More on AP
- Remake
- A remake cancels a match that was broken before it started. If a player never connects or disconnects immediately, the remaining players can vote in the opening rounds to end it. The match closes without counting as a normal defeat for the players who stayed, which is the whole point — a four-versus-five is not a game worth playing out. More on Remake
- Tagline
- A tagline is everything after the hash in a Riot ID. Riot IDs are a display name plus a tagline, and the tagline is what allows thousands of players to share a name without collision. You need someone's full ID including the tagline to add them as a friend. More on Tagline
Settings
Options in the menu whose names explain nothing — including one that does not exist at all.
- Anti-aliasing
- Anti-aliasing softens the stair-stepping on edges that appear at any finite resolution. It makes the image cleaner and costs performance. In a game where distant player models matter, the trade between a smoother picture and a higher frame rate is a genuine judgement call rather than an obvious win either way.
- FOVField of view
- FOV is field of view — how wide a slice of the world the camera shows. The answer for VALORANT is that there is no setting for it: the field of view is locked and identical for everyone. Riot treats it as a competitive-integrity matter, since a wider view is a straightforward advantage. More on FOV
- Network buffering
- Network buffering deliberately holds incoming network data briefly so that jitter — packets arriving unevenly — is smoothed before it reaches you. The cost is added delay. On a stable connection it is a straight loss; on an erratic one it can be worth it, which is why the setting has more than one sensible answer.
- Raw input buffer
- Raw input buffer reads mouse movement directly from the hardware buffer instead of letting Windows process and deliver it. In practice it removes a layer of interference — accessibility features and background software that alter pointer behaviour stop affecting your aim. Most players leave it on.
Common questions
What does ACS mean in VALORANT?
ACS is Average Combat Score — your combat score divided by rounds played. It rewards damage, kills and assists, which is why it reads higher than a kill count for players who deal damage without taking the final shot.
What is a thrifty in VALORANT?
A Thrifty is the end-of-round callout for winning a round while spending far less on weapons than the enemy team did. It awards nothing — it exists to mark the round as an upset.
What does KAST stand for?
Kill, Assist, Survived, Traded. It is the percentage of rounds in which you did at least one of those four things, so it measures consistent contribution rather than fragging.
What does CT mean in VALORANT?
CT means the defending side. It is borrowed from Counter-Strike, where the defenders are the Counter-Terrorists. VALORANT itself only ever says attackers and defenders.
What is RR in VALORANT?
RR is Rank Rating — the 0-100 points inside each rank that you gain for wins and lose for defeats. How much you get per game is weighted by your hidden matchmaking rating.
Does VALORANT have an FOV slider?
No. Field of view is locked and identical for every player, which Riot treats as a competitive-integrity matter. Anything claiming to change it is doing something else.