VALORANT community explains the best ways to deal with trolls in ranked

We'll never know why some players queue to straight up throw games, but hopefully these tips help you.

VALORANT Omen art, with Omen's cape blowing in the wind.
Image via Riot Games

Everyone who regularly plays ranked VALORANT or any other tactical FPS is bound to come across players who are downright trolling the game on more than one occasion.

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Although there’s no definitive way for players to deal with trolls—that’s a task for Riot Games, at the end of the day—the community has offered a few tips on how to diminish this distress after a Bronze Three player asked for advice.

Redditor SreenidhRG claimed that another player made their team lose because he didn’t get to pick Reyna during the agent select phase. The community offered a couple of good pieces of advice for SreenidhRG or any other VALORANT player who’s tired of trolls to put to use in their future matches:

  1. Ignore the player who’s trolling and don’t react to anything they do.
  2. Focus on your own game and try your best. The troll might stop trying to throw the game if your team starts to win.
  3. Mute the troll so you don’t get extra annoyed during the match.
  4. If the game becomes unwinnable, work on at least trying to strengthen your fundamentals. This way, the match won’t be completely useless. Even a pro like yay can’t carry trolls sometimes.

Related: VALORANT players agree on the biggest red flag in agent select

All those pieces of advice aside, you can also try to troll them back if you just want to have fun and are OK with losing the match. One player shared a couple of phrases that worked for them and they’re all funny, honestly.

  • Say “you tried your best, it’s OK, I still love you” every time the troll loses a gunfight.
  • Say “he is right there, you see him” every time an enemy peeks at the troll.

In my vast experience with a bunch of online games, it’s fair game to throw a little banter at trolls as long you don’t offend them. All that these players want to do is annoy their teammates, so if you lose your temper, it’s their victory.

And next time you come across trolls in VALORANT, don’t forget to report them to Riot.

Author
Image of Leonardo Biazzi
Leonardo Biazzi
Staff writer and CS:GO lead. Leonardo has been passionate about games since he was a kid and graduated in Journalism in 2018. Before Leonardo joined Dot Esports in 2019, he worked for Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte. Leonardo also worked for HLTV.org between 2020 and 2021 as a senior writer, until he returned to Dot Esports and became part of the staff team.