Best Valorant Players in 2022 – Top Valorant Players in Each Role & Region

Valorant is quickly climbing to become the best FPS shooter on the scene. With some of the best talent seeking opporunities into the scene, there is plenty of players to pick and choose from to create a list of best Valorant players.

We take a look at player performance and skill showcased during recent Valorant events to provide you with our up to date list of best Valorant players in each role and region. The VALORANT Champions Tour 2022 season is well underway, and we will keep adjusting this list as the season progresses.

For now, here’s our selection of the top Valorant players in every role and region.

cNed – Best Duelist

Acend signed cNed along with the remnants of the Raise Your Edge Gaming roster. He and his team quickly busted into the top level of competition, immediately finding success by placing first in the EU VCT Stage 1 Masters. The team also went on to win Valorant Champions, proving Acend as the best team in the world. While games were close, the deciding factor for many rounds were based on cNed. The primary number of rounds Acend lost had been due to teams completely deciding to play around and avoiding cNed, a duelist that brought fear to his enemies. With his high movement Jett pick on the Operator, cNed is able to fully utilize his agent to get early picks and has even shown to be capable of defending an entire push by himself.

Mehmet Yağız “cNed” İpek

Crashies – Best Initiator

While without a crown in a major global event, Crashies alongside Team Envy has consistently been a top team, placing top 4 in both the VCT NA Masters 1, and VCT Masters 3 in Berlin. Crashies awareness allows him to maximize the use of his utility, giving information and buying space for the rest of his team. He is best know for his Sova, saving his darts for key opportune moments to distract and displace enemies. Make no mistake, aside from being a core member to assist his team, Crashies can hold his own with his precise aim and play making potential.

Austin “Crashies” Roberts

Zombs – Best Controller

It comes as no surprise that Zombs is consider the best controller in Valorant. Zombs has demonstrated he can play all controllers to the highest level. However, he shines best when on Astra, arguably the hardest agent to play in Valorant. While he may fall behind in stats and kills compared to his high fragging teammates like Tenz, Zomb’s presence in any game can be felt. His awareness allows for some of the best timing plays and off angles.

Jared “zombs” Gitlin

Dapr – Best Sentinel

Dapr has time and again proved himself to be an invaluable part of his team, Sentinels, as a.. Sentinel. He is most frequently seen on Cypher and Killjoy, two Sentinels that have the potential to hold their site down, and gain significant information for his team. Dapr has widely always been regarded to be the  best Cypher in the world, responsible for innovating many Cypher setups used in competitive and ranked play even today. Dapr is fully capable of holding his ground with his confidence and laser like aim. This forces enemies to constantly play around him and check every corner, with Dapr at times being able to take advantage of this to stall enemies and wait for his team to rotate.

Michael “dapr” Gulino

Chronicle – Best player in EMEA

With Gambit since the start, Chronicle has largely contributed to the team’s success, especially when he takes on the Sentinel role with his team. Chronicle is amongst the most consistent players in Valorant, a huge factor which allowed Gambit to stay as a top team in CIS, and compete at the highest levels globally.He is able to use his utility effectively not only in defense, but also as an attacker, priming his team to entry a site. Chronicle has proved himself to be an invaluable player.

The importance of his utility usage on top of simply world class aim has crowned Chronical the top player in EMEA. While many may have overlooked chronical before his appearance in Masters Berlin, having been over shadowed by his more charismatic teammates, he shines brightly on the biggest stages, being an anchor his team can always rely upon.

Timofey “Chronicle” Khromov

ShahZaM – Best Valorant player in North America

While Shazam may not be the best player in a specific role, he is the overall best player in North America due to his versatility. He is the in-game leader for Sentinels, one of the Top 3 teams in the world.

The ability to shot call and direct his team toward favorable situations has allowed the individually talented members on Sentinels to shine. When Tenz initially joined Sentinels, despite the short notice, Shazam had been credited for not only scouting the star out, but helping him settle seamlessly into the team. Aside from being a great in-game leader, Shazam has been known to be able to switch freely between Initiators and Duelists. It shows great versatility to improve the composition of a team’s lineup when they need it most.

Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan

BuZz – Best player in Korea

At the age of only 18, and without a strong CS background, Buzz has emerged to be one of the strongest individual players in Korea. Primarily maining Jett, Buzz constantly overachieves, scoring frag after frag for his team. While on Vision Strikers, the team had failed to advance past the quarterfinals of the 2021 VCT Masters in Berlin, Buzz had outperformed his team in all three series played.

Yu “BuZz” Byung-chul

Patiphan – Best player in Asia Pacific

While most would first associate Patiphan with his bubbly and fun personality, his skills are no laughing matter. Patiphan had formerly been a professional Overwatch player, arguably one of the best in the entire South East Asia. Despite being a major risk, Patiphan transferred to Valorant, where he found immediate success with X10. The team broke ground for Thai esports, a vastly underrepresented region across all games. Unfortunately, Patiphan had been forced to take a break from the competitive scene to recover from his wrist injury in Stage 3.

He is said to be returning to Overwatch, but might return to reclaim his position as Asia Pacific’s top player.

Patiphan Chaiwong

Klaus – Best player in Latin North America

Latin North America had widely been under represented in the top levels of play across a variety of games. This initially made many skeptical of KRÜ Esports when they stumbled into the 2021 Valorant Champions. Kru Esports, and the capabilities of Kluas were vastly underestimated. The squad took wins against top teams like Sentinels and Fnatic. Their success had in large part due to Klaus’s vast in game knowledge, with his calls leading to many favorable situations which turned in KRÜ Esport’s favor. While Klaus may not be the best performing on paper stat wise, his strategic ability differentiates himself, placing him as a top player in the global stage.

Nicolas “Klaus” Ferrari

Mwzera – Best player in Brazil

Mwzera is known mainly for his Sova and Kay/O, comfort picks the Brazilian can use to turn entire rounds while also supporting his team by providing them great information. With an R6 background, Mwzera consistently has some of the highest kill counts and k/d ratios in his team. Being a young star, Mwzera while already a strong player, has great growth potential to his Brazil to greater heights.

Leonardo “mwzera” Serrati

And there you have it. Our selection of the Top 10 Valorant players and our reasoning on why they excel in their role and region. We are aware that with limited cross regional play our rankings may be skewed one way or the other, but we will attempt to keep this list as accurate as possible given the circumstance.

Best Valorant Players in 2021

Best Valorant Players in 2021

The best Valorant players are starting to differentiate from the rest after a year of full on competitive play. Some players excel at certain roles and outshine the rest of the competitors. We take a look at top Valorant players in each role and region.

This article will be updated to cover players for all competitive regions as VCT Masters Reykjavik completes and Stage 3 gets underway.

Jay “Sinatraa” Won

Due to a variety in roles and playstyles, selecting a simple best player in Valorant is rather difficult. Especially considering the lack of international events and limited screen time for many of the teams. However, from what we have gathered thus far, we can create a list of players that excel in each individual role within Valorant. Once the VCT Masters Reykjavik and Masters Berlin are concluded, we can create a more definitive list of players which would also feature players from other regions. At this state the current list is very “western” heavy.

With all this in mind, lets dive into the best Valorant Players in 2021 in each role.

TenZ – Best Duelist

Tyson “TenZ” Ngo is shaping up to be the best duelist the game has ever seen to date. His Jett and Reyna playstyle of extremely aggro and duel heaviness, has him carrying his team to victory in both ranked and competitive play. TenZ is a streamer for Cloud9, but currently represents Sentinels at the Reykjavik Masters instead of Sinatraa.

Based on how dominant Sentinels became after taking in TenZ, he might be offered a permanent spot on the team very soon. Currently, Sentinels are the also the hottest team for Valorant betting internationally.

Tyson “TenZ” Ngo

Sinatraa – Best Initiator

Despite the recent scandal surrounding Sinatraa, he continues to stand as one of the best Valorant players in the world. Sinatraa popularized the use of Ares and Odin in combination with Sova drone and recon arrow. It allows for a multitude of wall bang kills throughout both solo queue and professional play. Sinatraa’s success on Sova is accredited to his ability to fully utilise his kit, a skill he developed from his successful career in the ability heavy FPS, Overwatch. His status as one of the best Valorant players stands despite taking a break. Being unable to play competitively due to the recent scandal has put him on the sidelines.

Yet, with Sinatraa dominating games right away on his return stream following a two-month hiatus, he will remain one of the best initiators if he keeps his competitive career going.

Grimm – Best Sentinel

Grim may not be the highest ranked Sentinel player, nor does he play in the competitive scene. However, Grim has pioneered the battle Sage playstyle with his numerous off-angle and unexpected walls. Numerous top players have even studied and copied Grim’s sage walls for use in professional play. Sentinels like Sage were originally designed to be heavily favored on the defenders side, however, Grim has managed to excel with Sage even on the attackers side to clearly stand out from other Sentinel players.

Grim’s frequently uploads on Youtube, but despite his numerous collection of videos, Grim still continues to find new Sage walls. His mastery over the champion alone qualifies him as one of the best Valorant players in the world. You can find his videos on his dedicated Grim YouTube channel.

Zombs – Best Controller

Zombs is currently playing for Sentinels, the top team in North America. He excels at two primary controllers, Omen and Astra. Many controllers in the Valorant scene are overly passive and rely too much on utility. What sets Zombz apart as one of the game’s top controllers is his ability to balance his use of utility in key moments. He can also hold sites down with precise gunplay to top it all off. Zombs also frequently scores amongst the top of his team despite being a controller, a difficult feat considering the competitive scene have team compositions with two or more duelists.

Who is the best Valorant player in Europe?

ScreaM currently plays for Team Liquid, Europe’s top team following their win in the Valorant Champions Tour 2021: EMEA Stage 2 Challengers Finals. Individually, ScreaM is regarded as the best player in Europe. This is due to his ability to single-handed change the outcome of a game.

ScreaM strong presence on EU is obvious, with the Belgium setting many major milestone in the First Strike Regional Finals at the end of 2020. ScreaM achievements set in single maps include; scoring 39 kills, fragging 10 first bloods and even scoring 40 head shots! Given ScreaM’s experience playing against top international CS:GO teams, it is expected he will adapt better against teams from other regions compared to other less experienced players. This places Team Liquid as a Valorant betting favourite for the upcoming Valorant Masters Rejkjavik.

Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom

Who is the best player in North America?

While there are many in contention for the best player in North America, we have ranked Asuna above them all. Asuna plays for 100 Thieves, consistently trop fragging and carrying the team to victory. The team had swept the NA VCT Stage 2 Challengers 1, but unfortunately fell to an early exit in the VCT Stage 2 Challenger Finals. However, while the team failed to qualify for Masters, it does not take away from Asuna’s individual strength.

At only 17 years old, Asuna has great growth potential which will enable him to contest being the best Valorant player in the world. At this stage hes compared in Valorant to what young S1mple was in his early days in CS:GO.

Honorable mention

Tarik had recently stepped down from the Evil Geniuses CS:GO competitive line-up. However, despite only recently picking up and streaming Valorant consistently, Tarik has already reached Radiant in record speed. Tarik had been able to reach Radiant primarily with the transfer of his CS:GO accuracy. Reaction time and game sense to Valorant, now amongst the top 0.3% of players. As time passes, he will likely continue to improve and be considered one of the best valorant players in the world. Especially as Tarik develops greater mastery over agent utility.