What Is KAST in Valorant?

KAST is the percentage of rounds in which you did at least one of four things: got a Kill, an Assist, Survived, or were Traded. One round, one yes-or-no. If any of the four is true, the round counts. KAST is the share of your rounds that count.

It measures contribution, not raw frags. A round where you trade two enemies counts exactly the same as a round where you laid smokes, took no kill, and simply lived. That is the point: KAST credits the quiet, useful rounds that K/D ignores. In this corpus, ~71% is the average KAST — and the number shifts by role, so judge it against players who play your role.

What each letter means

Per round, Riptide checks the four conditions independently. Only one has to be true for the round to count toward your KAST.

Because Assist and Survive both count, KAST is far fairer to Controllers and support players than kill-based stats. You can post a strong KAST on a low-frag night by doing your job: holding space, trading well, and staying alive. See how roles shift the baseline for why a duelist and a sentinel read differently here.

The Trade rule, exactly

The T is the subtle one. A death is traded when the enemy who killed you is killed by someone on your team within a fixed window after your death. Riptide uses a 4-second trade window:

So if you die but a teammate refrags your killer inside 4 seconds, that round still counts for you — your death bought a trade instead of giving the enemy a free advantage. Outside 4 seconds, the refrag no longer rescues the round. This is why good team trading lifts everyone's KAST, not just the player who got the refrag kill.

How Riptide computes KAST

For each round, Riptide evaluates four booleans — gotKill, gotAssist, survived, and wasTraded — and the round counts if any is true:

Riptide also splits KAST by side, tracking attack and defense KAST separately (sides.attack.kastPercent and sides.defense.kastPercent). A wide gap is diagnostic: a low attack KAST usually means you over-extend on entries; a low defense KAST means you trade your life on dry peeks. Open your player page to see your split.

How KAST feeds your Impact rating

KAST is one half of the FRAG axis of Riptide's Impact rating. Impact collapses to three decorrelated axes, and the fragging axis is the average of your standardized KAST and standardized ADR:

Pairing KAST with ADR is deliberate: KAST says how often you contributed, ADR says how much. Together they form the fragging signal, and Impact is competitive-only — casual modes never move it. Read the full Impact breakdown to see how the three axes combine into a 0–100 percentile, banded Poor <30, Subpar <45, Average ≤62, Good ≤80, Great >80.

How to read your KAST

• ~71% is average — Riptide grades against its high-Immortal corpus, and KAST runs lower at lower ranks. Below ~66% means too many dead, untraded rounds; ~76%+ is excellent round-to-round presence.
• Compare to your role. Duelists trade fragging for entries; sentinels and controllers lean on Survive and Assist. KAST is role-dependent — never compare across roles blindly.
• Watch the side split. A lopsided attack/defense KAST tells you which half of the round you keep losing your life in.
• High KAST, low ADR? You're present but not impactful — you survive and assist but rarely close rounds. Push for damage.