How to Dodge a Match in Valorant, Queue Dodge Guide

Riot Games's immensely popular first person shooter, Valorant is high stakes shooting action at its finest, combining sharp skills, strategic planning, and won or die team coordination.

But sometimes you might want to duck a match, be it from a bad team composition, previous bad interaction with a player, or connection issues.

In this guide, you will discover everything you need to know about dodging matches in the Valorant match, including penalties, tips, and more. If you aim to up your game without having to dodge, use valorant elo boost for a ranked performance boost and unlock new potential.

What Does It Mean to Dodge a Valorant Match?

Exiting the game during the pre-match phase is called dodging a match and usually happens before selecting an agent.

This queue-dodging action kicks you from the game queue back to the lobby. Queue dodging can be helpful in not playing matches that could hurt your team’s chance, but it is considered disruptive behavior and can lead to penalties.

How to Dodge in Valorant?

Not Selecting an Agent: The easiest way to dodge a game is to let the Agent selection timer run out. This removes you automatically from the queue.

Using ALT+F4: Forcing a close game with ALT+F4 while selecting the agent. This quick approach costs the same penalty as failing to choose an agent.

Exiting the Game Client: Closing the client while instantly leaving the game dodges the queue.

Riot Games wants to avoid people using bad behavior like excessive AFK behavior and repeated queue dodging.

These methods will work perfectly but have different consequences, and abruptly leaving the game ban a match will receive harsher penalties.

Penalties for Dodging Matches in Valorant

One common offense is dodging matches, and penalties are in place to stop this from happening. These penalties increase in severity based on the frequency of dodging:

First-Time Offense: A cooldown period of a few minutes so that you cannot requeue.

Repeated Queue Dodging: Longer queue bans and ranked rating loss affect your progress in our competitive queues.

Serial Queue Dodging: If you do this often, you can be severely punished with game bans or restricted competitive play.

Riot Games has put systems in place to differentiate between purposeful competitive queue evasion and unavoidable problems such as faulty routers or problems with the connection as if you were disconnected due to a server issue on their end; they'll forgive any AFK or queue dodge penalties incurred while the issue was live. However, players are severely punished for minor infractions such as abrupt disconnections.

Why Do Players Dodge Matches?

Dodging is often motivated by the following factors:

Unbalanced Team Composition: A bad game can feel like an uphill battle from the get-go because of the team's chances because of a lack of synergy amongst agents.

Disruptive Teammates: When players display bad behavior like excessive AFK behavior or trolling, they can push their teammates to dodge.

Personal Connection Problems: Dodge is an issue like high ping and unreliable internet, but Riot Games is somewhat lenient with getting dodged because of connection issues.

Avoiding Dodging Penalties

You must proactively solve issues to avoid penalties, such as previously introduced ranked restrictions. Here are some tips:

Ensure a Stable Connection: Use a LAN cable instead of Wi-Fi to prevent interruptions.

Communicate Effectively: Avoid dodging issues with the team outright during agent selection.

Plan Around Your Schedule: If unsure you can be there, avoid queuing for long matches.

Riot’s approach to discourage dodging

Riot Games updates its systems to disrupt disruptive behavior often effectively. Ranked restrictions already introduced are meant to prevent such actions as friendly fire, leaving matches, and dodging.

However, players who frequently engage in such things face the consequences and harsher penalties and find themselves less credible in matchmaking, potentially pushing towards a permanent account ban.

Conclusion

Valorant has a dodge, which seems like a great solution in these extremely frustrating other scenarios, but you need to think about what you’re doing. Understanding Riot Games’ penalty structure and removing the things that cause you to dodge will help prevent bad games and the disruption to other people’s gameplay.