I've been there. I ranked down from Gold 3 to Bronze 2, solo queuing, having AFKs and people with a bad attitude in my team all the time. I was frustrated by the level of toxicity and tried to stop the downward spiral by just playing more often.

I used to rank higher, so I should be able to rank up by just playing more. Right? Wrong. Very wrong. I started to hate the game and the player base.

But then, I managed to climb out of ELO hell (back to Gold 2) with a few simple rules I want to share with you. For me, it was less about what I did in game, it was more about my meta game.

My rules for climbing and having fun again:

1. Never solo queue. Just stop it. At least play with ONE person you can trust and talk to. If no one from your friend list is on, go to the official Valorant Discord and use the LFG chat. It is better to invest ten minutes in finding mates than spending 45 minutes in a match you hate.

2. Curate and grow your friend list. If someone from your Discord groups or previous parties was friendly and had good comms, friend them in-game. Use the note feature to remember something about them and keep track of their mains and language (EU servers). This way, you have to use lfg in Discord less and less.

3. Use the One Strike Rule for toxicity. If a mate is toxic, immediately mute his voice and chat. Write a brief info in the party chat: "Muted [character], you can ping to communicate." Don't try to calm him down or argue with him. The chances of him helping you with future calls are not worth dealing with his negative emotions.

4. Take notes. Everytime you die, think about what you did wrong. If you know how you could have played better, write it down in note pad or a Gdoc. This helps you to focus on YOUR improvement and not your team's mistakes. It also helps to get the last death out of your system, learn from it and be mentally prepared for the next round.

5. And finally, don't play competitive when you are not at full capacity. Don't play when you are tired, tilted, intoxicated, not yet warmed-up, exhausted or on a loosing streak. It's just not worth it. Take breaks between competitive matches. Take off your headset and do some jumping jacks. And if you are tired or tilted, just play some spike rush to cool down, log off and work on your season rank later.

This is how I did it. Results may vary. But I hope these rules help some of you to have a better time in Valorant!