The Guard’s Sova main Trent “trent” Cairns has been nothing short of phenomenal for his team. The 17-year-old now finds himself at the top of North American Valorant, a mere three months after getting signed to his first organization.
In fact, trent is so good that he doesn’t even notice when he’s playing with a handicap. The team is now practicing in Iceland ahead of Masters Reykjavik 2022, and trent has reportedly been playing at 60Hz without even realizing it.
In a Twitter post poking fun at the player, The Guard manager Seo “Seowulf” Myung-jun said that trent was playing completely fine at the lower refresh rate, and had not noticed any differences.
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Trent doesn’t need a 144Hz monitor
Given trent’s performance so far in VCT NA Stage 1 Challengers, pros and fans reacted with incredulity.
While it’s likely that the refresh rate mix-up is an isolated incident in Iceland, the California native appeared unsure of his settings.
“Honestly I don’t even know,” replied the 17-year-old, when Complexity coach Corey “ruin” Hartog asked if he had also been playing at 60Hz in Stage 1.
The Guard could just be trolling all of us, but it’s tempting to imagine the Sova player as a beast unleashed, now that he’s got the right settings.
A high refresh rate is especially important in twitch-reaction shooters like Valorant. A 144Hz or 240Hz screen reduces motion blur and makes aiming feel far smoother.
In addition, they help reduce input lag, which is the time it takes for your actions to show up onscreen. For instance, a 60Hz display has an input lag of 16.67 milliseconds, while a 240Hz monitor cuts that down to just 4.16 milliseconds.
If you pair a high-end graphics card with a 60Hz screen, you could experience screen tearing as well, where the display fails to keep up with the frames that are being fed to it. It may display two halves of different frames, leading to split images that appear disjointed and distracting.
But if you’re trent, maybe all that doesn’t even matter. After all, all you have to do is move your mouse over your opponent’s head and left-click.
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