Why Connor Chang is Bad at Valorant

By: Christian Chan

Valorant is a game that requires extreme aim and precision while also needing teamwork and coordination skills to be able to succeed. It is a 5 v 5 shooter with the first team reaching 13 round wins winning the game. At the beginning of the game each team gets randomly placed on a side: attackers or defenders and after 12 rounds they swap sides, which doesn’t allow any team to win completely on one side. The goal of the attackers is to either kill all of the defenders, or to plant and protect a bomb until it explodes. The goal of the defenders is to either kill all of the attackers, prevent the attackers from planting the bomb until the end of the round, or defuse the bomb after it has been planted. Each game there is also a randomly selected map that the game will take place on. There are many different types of maps but they are all based around the same layout. One side of the map is the defender side and on the opposing side is the attackers, both teams always spawn on their own sides, in between of the attacker and defender sides of the map are 2 to 3 bomb sites, which are designated areas on the map that the attackers are allowed to plant the bomb and that the defenders have to protect. 

Typically both teams mainly try to eliminate all of the opposing side because of the difficulty of defusing or planting the bomb while opposing players try to kill you. To assist this, at the start of every round, all players are given credits which are the in-game currency system, which can be used to buy guns, abilities, and shields to give them advantages over the other team. 

While being an FPS (first-person-shooter) game, Valorant heavily relies on not only aim but also team coordination and strategy involving abilities. In Valorant there are 21 different agents that players can choose from before the game begins. Every agent has different abilities which are powers that can heavily impact the game. The main types of abilities are flashes, smokes, and damaging abilities. Flashes are abilities that are thrown and as the name states, flash any players that are looking at it for up to 5 seconds, completely blinding them. They are typically thrown in places that only the enemy would be looking at, as flashes can also blind teammates and potentially endanger them. Smokes are abilities that can be typically deployed anywhere on the map and look like large spheres that you can walk through but not see through, they are meant to either cover places where you could be shot from or conceal players hiding inside of them. Damaging abilities are usually in the form of projectiles that when they land, they create an area of damage or effect that slowly does damage to any player in contact with them, they are usually used to push back players in certain positions but have to be carefully used as they can also damage teammates. 

Connor Chang, otherwise known as c0nn0r70, PigeonCarrier, or CatConsumer is terrible at the game, Valorant. He usually plays agents with many abilities that are typically helpful to the team and are some of the key parts of winning rounds such as flashes and powerful damaging abilities but his playstyle and ability usage completely contrasts the way his agents are meant to be played and in the end, turn out to be harmful to his own team.

Connor’s playstyle is what many call a KDA playstyle which stands for Kills-Deaths-Assists which is the way players are scored. KDA players typically do not help their team and instead play not to win, but only to keep their own personal score high by getting high amounts of kills. Many times KDA playstyle this will show during games when the entire team with the bomb goes to one of the bomb sites, say A site, but while his entire team is going one place he chooses to go to the opposite B site. In this scenario his own team is losing essential abilities that Connor provides and is also down a player and instead of being a fair 5 v 5 it’s a 4 v 5, with Connor missing. What typically happens in this scenario is that Connor’s team loses the round because of lack of one of their key players, but as the opposing team is killing off his own team Connor will pick them off as they are distracted. This strategy is commonly called baiting which is essentially using your own teammates as bait, and as the enemy is distracted killing your own teammate you kill them, gaining your self free kills but destroying your team and chances of winning in the process. In the end Connor’s team ends up losing almost everything, but Connor ends up with a higher score and large amount of kills which allows him to seem like he performed well, while in reality he was the downfall of his own team. 

Another common scenario that happens when Connor leaves the team, is that the team attacks a site and plants the bomb, but all get killed because of being down a player. Normally in this scenario if Connor would have gone with the team there is typically only 1 or 2 enemies left which is a winnable situation, but because Connor is all the way across the map looking for kills, the enemy is able to easily defuse the bomb and win the round without even having to fight Connor.

Connor also has extremely poor ability usage in game and for the team. As stated previously he commonly plays agents that are key to winning the game with abilities that can change the swing of entire rounds, but he commonly uses them incorrectly. One of the abilities he commonly misuses are stuns, which create a shock line that stun enemies for up to 5 seconds, which partially flashes and slows them. Instead of using these stuns on the enemies however like typical people would do. He uses them on his own team ‘accidentally’ but never learns from his own mistakes. Because of this, many times his own teammates are killed as they are stunned by Connor. 

In the end, Connor is just bad at Valorant, his KDA playstyle commonly leads others into thinking he is good but it is the complete opposite. His playstyle leads to the destruction of his own teams, mixed with his terrible ability usage, there is no hope if you are playing with Connor Chang.