Significant changes have been made to Valorant's rank system in preparation for the opening of Episode 2 (aka Season 2) tomorrow. This week's release will introduce a new Battle Pass and Hero Yoru. But Riot has also been working under the hood of Valorant, making dozens of minor changes to Ranked play to make everything fairer and easier to understand.

Most of these changes are minor, but I hope they make my position a little clearer. Progression arrows have been eliminated and a progression bar is now displayed. Rank Rating (RR) values have also been adjusted, and the demotion protection system now gives you one last chance to save your 0RR rank before crashing off the stage.

"With the current rank system, it is not clear where you are between ranks, how much you can generally expect to earn between matches, and why you are moving on," Riot wrote in the patch notes.

"With these changes, we hope to make the rank system easier to understand, fairer, and make it harder to lose ranks quickly because of the game's off days.

Valorant will also get regional leaderboards for the top 500 "Radiant" and "Immortal" players. Players already named to the leaderboard must play at least one match per week to maintain their status.

Episode 1 also adds rank rewards, with increasingly shiny Gun Buddies depending on the highest rank earned in previous episodes. Episode 2 offers similar rewards, and a revamped information page shows what can be expected at any given rank.

Episode 1 ends tonight at 11pm in all regions. If all goes as planned, Episode 2 will begin with Patch 2.0 sometime tomorrow; Valorant is our favorite multiplayer game of 2020, and this week's rollover should make this shooter another strong one for the year.