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So, you’ve been playing a ton of Valorant, and you think you should be getting better, but you keep getting killed by random headshots and people turning the corner faster than you can react. You might be saying to yourself: “This is impossible!” or, “I should be getting better with practice, not worse!”
Thoughts like these are totally normal as you work to improve on your skill in Valorant, so don’t be discouraged if you aren’t as good as you feel like you should be. Everybody, and we mean everybody, has to start at the bottom before they’re good enough to compete with the best of the best.
Here are 4 of our best tips in order for you to level up your skill quickly in Valorant!
1. Always Be Pre-aiming
In case you aren’t familiar with the concept of pre-aiming, this is when you aim your crosshair at roughly head-height as you clear corners and check for enemies in new areas.
By looking up at people and making eye-contact as soon as you see them, and not staring at the ground or the sky instead, the time it will take for you to swing your mouse over to click on their head will be way faster, and will result in you getting a ton more headshots than you normally would.
Even if you’re a Valorant pro and you have god-like aim and reaction speed, there’s literally no reason to not be pre-aiming people as much as you possibly can. It’s just good practice for everyone regardless of skill level.
2. Learn the maps
No two maps in Valorant are the same, and it would strongly benefit you to learn all the ins and outs of every single map in the game that’s in the current rotation. In addition, you should really learn how your preferred agent should be playing in certain maps based on what they can do.
Let’s take Omen on Bind and Breeze as an example. Omen is a controller; he specializes in blocking off areas with smokes to cut the enemy’s vision off. For this reason, Omen typically does extremely well on Bind, since there are lots of narrow walkways which are the perfect size for you to block off with his smoke ability. However, if you try to do the same thing on Breeze you will notice lots of issues.
Breeze is a huge map with very large entrances at both bomb sites, so Omen’s smoke is not as effective here. For this reason, you may want to consider a different character, such as Viper, who has very large wall that blocks off vision on Breeze perfectly.
A good player can make Omen work on either map, but the idea here is to tilt the odds as much in your favor as possible.
This is just one of countless examples. We strongly recommend you visit each map with your favorite character in a practice game just to get a feel of what they do well there.
3. Learn your guns (and the economy in general)
This ties in with the last tip about learning the maps. Just like how you can expect the maps to have lots of diversity, the guns on offer in Valorant are very similar. But in addition to knowing the guns, you should know how to manage your money on guns as well.
You need to have a basic understanding of the in-game economy for buying guns in between rounds, as well as a good knowledge of how each gun handles, and when you should consider using it. If you haven’t already, go to the practice range and practice using each gun until you feel comfortable using it. Shoot at targets, bots, look down sights, spray, do everything you can until you feel ready.
As far as the Valorant economy goes, here are some quick general tips:
For pistol round, if your team loses, just save up your money and don’t buy a gun next round, try and save about 4000 credits for the next round.
After the 2nd round, whether you win or lose, you will now have enough money to buy full armor and a vandal or a phantom as your gun, which are the two big guns you should always be using if you can afford either of them.
If your team wins pistol round, you should usually buy a spectre, as well as heavy armor, or if you can afford it, a vandal/phantom plus light armor. In either case, make sure your team is all on the same page when buying weapons. You need solidarity in your team so that you can minimize the chances of people dying with expensive weapons and losing the team money for no reason.
The general idea here is that you want to swing the momentum of the game in your team’s favor. Valorant is an extremely momentum-heavy game. If you’re in a position where nobody on your team can afford a good weapon, and the enemy team has more money than they can spend, it’s going to feel nearly impossible to make a comeback.
The best way to not fall behind is by starting off ahead, as simple as that sounds.
4. Practice aiming (but not too much)
Valorant is a first-person shooter. So, obviously you’re going to want to be pretty good at aiming at people quickly if you want to get those frags. Should you make a concentrated effort to practice your aiming? Bottom line: yes, but be careful not to overdo it.
See, there’s a problem with how lots of Valorant players assume skill in this game works: lots of people assume that if you have perfect aim, that should be enough and you’ll be able to climb into the highest ranks with that skill alone. But that’s not actually the case at all, not even close.
Valorant is as much about movement and map knowledge as it is about aiming. You simply can’t win games with only one or the other; you need good fundamentals in addition to pretty good aiming. In some cases, even if you’re bad at aiming you can still outplay people in other ways and get kills over them through creative means.
When dueling with others, practice firing at people without moving, practice strafe-firing (firing, then moving quickly, then standing still and firing again), and practice doing a combination of controlled bullet sprays with your gun, as well as quicker controlled bursts. As a general rule, bursts are better for longer ranged fights, and sprays are generally a better option up close.
That’s gonna do it for our Valorant tips and tricks, feel free to let us know in the comments section if there’s anything we missed, or if you have any other techniques you like to focus on to improve!
