I’ve been traveling for the past two weeks and haven’t been able to play any Valorant, but today I was thinking about some of the things I wanna try.
I saw this amazing video by scream (a professional EU valorant player known for his aim).
Some major takeaways:
Warm up wrists
Practice jett knives in practice range
Practice not only one tapping but also burst spraying
Should take longer with Vandal, spray burst with phantom
Crosshair placement is key for getting kills, be ready for a wide swing or a small jiggle depending on the situation
Always look to play off of your team, solo carrying is VERY hard even for pros, Valorant is a combo game
Other things I’ve been thinking to try:
I need to get used to all sorts of movement, play around with it like I do with dance
I should aim with movement a lot more
In general, I feel like I need to apply what I learned from dance – keep feeling out the things that feel uncomfortable. Try different ways to do the same thing. Look for something that feels good. Understand my body as well as just the ingame mechanics.
I’ve done it, started to waver on my sleep challenge. The main issue is that I no longer take a hard stance on when I go to sleep, but the one thing that is holding over, is that I get to my bedroom by 11.
I want to recommit to getting into my bed by 11, even if I continue to stay up after.
However, despite wavering, and getting into bed at 11:30, I have started to innovate and think more carefully on how I spend the rest of the hours of my day:
I stop playing Valorant at 9 (or in the case of yesterday, don’t even play Valorant)
I started writing in my journal every night before bedtime to process any feelings that need to be processed
I started doing cupping before sleep to improve circulation
I also usually work on posture and my knee exercises
Now that I think about it, I actually succeeded pretty good at this challenge because I’m starting to feel like doing all sorts of things before bedtime such as drawing and reading books.
Another thing I like to do at night is listen to videos that are about AI and are interesting to me to keep up with the latest AI news.
I really like where all of this is going, and writing this at 5 AM in the morning makes me feel like it is nighttime and I’m feeling the vibes. I want to spend more time at night creating worlds. Either drawing, writing a novel or learning.
A excellent video of someone reaching radiant from silver
A video of how to aim well by Scream a team liquid professional valorant player
What I realized is that there are many ways to improve and win valorant games and climb to plat. There are somethings that will make it easier but you don’t need to do all of them.
Valorant, like life, is a game with specific rules, but how you play it is up to you.
A few different examples:
You can play only solo queue (deciding to team up with random people)
You can play only with people you know
You can play the game to gain rank
You can play the game to try out the different agents
You can play the game for the high reaction time and mechanical skill like aiming
You can play the game for the strategy required
I decided to make a list of how I want to play Valorant in the context of this challenge.
I want to play with people who are fun to hang out with
I want to make the entire game comfortable to play for me
I want to focus on the actual objective, killing all the enemies and winning each round
Step 1: Finding people to play with
The most efficient way is just to focus on playing with people I already like playing with and try to meet new people by adding new people from games I play. I should also focus on unadding people I don’t like playing with.
Step 2: Making the game comfortable for me
The areas I need to focus on being more comfortable:
Minimap
Being able to visualize where everyone is just looking at the map
Aiming
Being able to comfortably get the physical mechanics of aim and crosshair placement down
Movement
Knowing the different ways and distances to peek comfortably
Abilities
Knowing lineups and ability planning
Clearing
Knowing how to path through a site properly
Switching weapons
Knowing the physical coordination of switching knife, pistol and main weapon
Step 3: Focusing on winning rounds
Usually, I am laser-focused on two things:
Abilities
Killing people and not getting killed
I want to reframe Valorant for me.
Generally, you want to either play for a plant/defuse or try to kill every member of the enemy team.
As a result, I want to think about Valorant in the following plays:
Brute force brawl with team, if team is pushing site together
Try to get the enemy to trip up and make a mistake by confusing them and holding weird angles or lurking
Try to set myself up for an ace by having my abilites and pathing planned out
Overall I think Valorant meets the following needs for me:
Growth: Getting better over time
Significance: The chance to practice my learning techniques in a measurable area
Love and connection: Playing with people who I like hanging out with
Here is what I think my routine should generally be:
Warmup physically, and stretch, get pumped up with music
Warmup in deathmatch, get a feeling for the mouse
Warmup in the range and spike rush and defuse
Meditate
Play a game, focus on winning rounds
Vod review, focus on the minimap awareness
Practice in custom game lineup and setups to win next time or win by more
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.
