Today we are going back to the Valorant Challenge but from a different perspective.
I strongly felt that the one time when I didn’t feel stressed at all, but instead felt the timings of the enemy and where they could be, and how I could systematically take them apart, I was playing Valorant at a significantly higher level.
Some thoughts for today:
Closing eyes to mental reset
Playing music to hype up
Breathing and letting the energy carry the action
Most of all, I will endeavor to feel out the enemy’s position and figure out how I can take the map piece by piece with util, teamwork and aim diff.
I will create another post after the game to review how that went.
Some really interesting ideas I saw when watching this video about aim training:
My main takeaways:
Aim training is not the main practice but rather isolates specific techniques such as hitting A D targets (people strafing from left to right) or flicking.
Sens and muscle memory doesn’t matter.
Sensitivity just changes what muscle groups you use and to be a good aimer you need to be able to use all muscle groups. Low sens is using the arm and wrist, high sens is using the wrist and fingers. When you know how to use all muscles groups by changing your sens around, when you stick to one sens you will have superior mouse control to use that sens in all situations.
Muscle memory doesn’t exist since you cannot memorize a specific shot, it is always changing depending on the game you are in.
Keep warmups really short. 5-10 minutes max for strictly a warmup and 10-15 minutes for a warmup + some longterm aim group/training.
If you warmup for an hour its a training session not a warmup. It causes you to be tired out and overthink the aiming.
Higher DPI mean lower input delay. 800-1600 is desired but it isn’t that important.
Raw reaction time doesn’t matter as much as awareness. If you don’t expect something, raw reaction time matters much more. 190-180 milliseconds is normal.
Higher sens is technically better because it is faster, but it is harder to be consistent and be in control
I’ve been thinking about what small exercise I can do right now to level up my gameplay and progress in Valorant since I haven’t had much time to play or practice recently.
After meditating on it a little bit, I settled on something that I know has held me back in Valorant since I first started playing the game – the fear of death.
The fear of dying in the game:
Makes me stressed out, and not think clearly
Makes me shoot too fast without aiming
Makes me frustrated when I lose
Makes me exhausted after playing for a few games
I’ve decided to learn how to accept death in the game, and to understand it better overall.
For example, understanding the “time to death” from an intuitive sense (and knowing how to extend that time) could be a GAMECHANGER.
It will intuitively let me know:
When to peek
If I whiff, whether I should peek back, crouch down, or keep spraying
How much time do I have to aim before I get killed by the enemy
Stay focused even after dying a frustrating number of times
So I hopped into a couple of deathmatches and gave it a shot!
I started out just trying to predict when I would die, but dying stresses me out too much to tap into my intuition (you need to be relatively clear-headed to feel things intuitively). I focused then on saying “die” aloud every time I died or predicting when I died. This is taken from a sports exercise of intentionality (you vocalize what will happen, for example, if you are playing badminton, you say “hit” when you hit the birdie, and “miss” if you miss). This exercise is supposed to train your intuition and powers of prediction and anticipation.
Some takeaways:
Crouching can make most people miss if they are shooting at you.
The direction you run and bunny hop is very important, need to figure out the most evasive ways. Sometimes running directly at them has zero chance of success. I need to work on sometimes facing the side not just forward to be more evasive.
The timing of peeking is important, how they have been spraying bullets is important.
When you are running behind a wall, before you peek, you don’t need to bunnyhop, just run normally, feel out intuitively, the moment you should peek out
I should start just by shouting out dead, every time I actually die, then try to predict
I need to aim higher to knife to the head, I keep knifing the body.
What I should try next is to stay alive for as long as I can.
I should also focus on letting the shock and frustration from dying play out before going again so quickly.
My intuition also tells me that I should focus on what I’m missing or losing when I’m dying and focus on those feelings right after dying.
Yesterday I returned to Valorant and I wanted to learn a few things since being washed before I get back fully into the Valorant grind.
I want to learn how to have comfortable hand positioning
I want to have greater certainty of where all the enemies are at any point in time and a clearer understanding of the game
Class One: Hand positioning (90 minutes)
UNIT ONE: Figure out why
UNIT TWO: Explore Movements
UNIT THREE: Explore aids and relief
Class Two: Greater certainty (3 hrs)
UNIT ONE: Document VOD areas of stress and find equivalent situations in ranked
UNIT TWO: Try to predict decision making
UNIT THREE: Document another VOD
Class One: Hand positioning (90 minutes)
UNIT ONE: Figure out why
I’d say I have a little golfers elbow along with just muscle fatigue. No carpal tunnel syndrome or trigger finger syndrome thankfully.
UNIT TWO: Explore Movements
My perfect position seems to be legs balanced on the floor, chest forwards, armrest angled outwards and level with the desk and pushed backward so I can sit farther forwards.
The results on my sheriff-only account:
I feel mild soreness in my hand and forearm. My whole body feels a bit cramped as well. Overall, massive improvement.
I used a new aiming mentality, which I call the “Zoom In” Method where you pretend you are zooming into where your crosshair is and on the target, sort of getting mental blinders on. It seems to help especially with aiming for very far shots.
Then I played a rank match:
My “greater certainly” class was me looking up at how Som played vs me.
I was really helpful to see the util usage. I ended up using a lot of this information in future matches.
However, I spiraled after playing ranked because I was so frustrated with how I was performing. I ended up playing non-stop from Friday until Sunday sleeping not as much as I would like and always livid from anger that all my opponents were so hard to beat.
I’m gonna try to do something crazy, which is to try to rise from Silver 1 to Platinum in Valorant.
For all of you who don’t know, Valorant is a competitive FPS shooter. Like all popular computer games that are competitive, it is extremely difficult to progress in rank.
When I first started Valorant I was in Iron 1 and after months of playing, I rose to Silver 1. Now I want to make a similar rise from Silver 1 to Platinum 1. But I want to do it faster this time. I want to do it within the course of 2-3 months.
I want to use this experience as a test of my speed learning skills and also how I can make videos for challenges.
I also believe that mindfulness and self-awareness can bring greater success than any brute force tactic, and I want to prove that with my progress in this game (which will be easy to measure and indisputable).
My current philosophy for speed learning:
Embracement of pain
Lower expectations
Process emotions
Try new things
Self-reflection is KEY
Need to see yourself
Focus on fun
Play when you want with things you like
Small steps
Don’t need to do everything in one day
Do tiny steps if possible
Prepare yourself
Create an environment for success
Specifics:
Embracement of pain
Don’t set goals
Assume I’m gonna do bad
Slow down and process when I’m doing bad
Always try new strats
Self-reflection
LOTS of VOD reviews
Focus on fun
Only play comp when you want to
Other days do light practice
Focus on agents you have fun with (focus on agent abilities that are fun)
Small steps
Find ways to practice in aimlabs, spike rush and deathmatch
Prepare yourself
Work on environment
Work on posture
NEXT: What my plan on filming will be.
Also, got recommend How to Fight Thich Nhat Hanh by a friend on how to work on mindfulness.
I’m exhausted – fell asleep for a long time after watching and imitating for a short period of time
Knife to gun transition – keeping knife out until dangerous angles, then switch to gun or do a jump peak while switching if no room
Hold for peeks – clear where they might peek, not where they might be, continue to hold it or switch to another angle they can push you from
Set graphics to low
Don’t push smokes unless with flashes or off of someone else’s contact
Spray with good spray control – pulling down
Fall after spraying to reload
Jiggle if holding close to an angle
Warm up at the start of each round by flicking onto teammate heads
In game what I did very successfully:
Spamming through smokes – I got many headshots through the smoke
Holding peekable angles – I felt I got a lot more intentional to where I was staring
Holding off angles when watching for the flank (specifically I utilized the place Tenz hid on Pearl in the first round to get kills
Being more intentional of when the knife is out, I rarely got caught out with my knife. I figured out how much time it takes to pull out the gun, and I always timed it so that I pulled out my gun before peeking anything.
What I can improve on:
Pulling out the knife more often when I know no one is close
Spam more boxes
Utilizing jump peeking more
Making sure my peeks are still tight and clean and fast
Being much more focused on holding specific peeks when slowly scaling up
