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It’s Valorant Time

Byjack

I love gaming. The competition. The graphics. The speed, the maps, abilities. The headshots, the camaraderie.

Today I asked myself a question. How do I get to the level of gameplay that I want to get to? How do I play Valorant in the way I want to play it?

I listened to my body and I used connection theory. Your body is tired. It’s aching. Your mind is cloudy and distracted. Your eyes are dry and tired.

I need to feel the magic that Valorant can be.

I turn on the Dark and Dangerous playlist:

It is time to turn off all the lights. To go into my closet. To let everything go silent.

I feel scared and anxious and my head hurts, but my body knows it’s okay to relax now.

I lay on my bed to meditate. Long enough to wonder when I should stop. Long enough for my mind to wander to think of my colleague who left today and wrote a very nice email. Long enough for the magic of nighttime to sink in, for me to want a hot drink and settle down for a night of gaming.

Turned off the lights again. Fired up the playlist again. It feels like the mood.

Had a good few games where I team MVPed every single game until the last one with a smurfing reyna on both teams. The one on my team was classic only, the one on the enemy team was not. Didn’t really like my duo, he annoyed me. Also bottom fragged every game.

Pretty pissed off about that last game.

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Valorant 41: Editing the Trifecta

Byjack

I still believe in the same idea of focusing on fewer things but I’ve made a few adjustments.

First, I increased my sens to .37 on 400 dpi in order to make it easier to hit flicks.

Then I focus on two things:

  1. Clearing angles like I’m attached to a dolly wheels and slide into the peek
  2. Stopping only when I am on someone’s head
  3. Crouching if I don’t hit my shot

Similar concept to: combination of crosshair placement and strafing

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Valorant 22: Mentality

Byjack

I felt that I nailed aiming mechanics for so many times, I realized that I need to combine a whole bunch of hard skills together.

Firstly, I need to imagine enemies where they might peek out from, until I push ( then imagine where they are holding) and face my body in that direction. This is the baseline mentality (plus some crosshair placement). I talk about it here.

In situations when I am afraid of being out in the open for very long, I will try the strafe clearing for a very tight peek window. I talked about it here.

If I am holding an angle, I should employ the “catching people on my crosshair” mentality that I talk about here.

When flicking close range, I need to go back to trying to face my body towards them.

In long fights, I need to focus on strafing my crosshair to their head, but I don’t know if I have a video showing that.

I suppose one thing I haven’t figure out is crouch spraying, but I’m willing to bet facing them is good too.

Finally, overall, I need to learn to accept death as I talk about here.

I think there are two mindsets in Valorant, aggressive and passive. I still haven’t figured out the right balance between the two, but part of what helps me with that is using the “letting the energy carry the action” mentality I talk about here.

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Valorant 16: Initial Thoughts From The Coach

Byjack

I had an initial discussion with a Valorant coach on a couple of things on improving in Valorant and here are the main takeaways:

  • In low elo (gold and below), aim and mechanics are more important than gamesense as low elo doesn’t have much gamesense worth learning
    • I suspect it is because low elo doesn’t have many patterns or strategies that are worth learning to play against
  • In low elo, try to take as many gunfights as possible to get better
  • To train gamesense, try to play with as many people as possible, ideally five stack
  • Stop playing so much sheriff in the deathmatch because it isn’t the gun you use in your games as much
  • In solo queue, try to play off of your teammates more, try to entry together more

 

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Aim Technique Ideas

Byjack

Takeaways

  • Prefiring is not about shooting them before you clear a corner, a prefire is about shooting before your brain registers that they are there
  • Try jiggling with OP, when you repeek shoot without even knowing they are there
  • Try to understand their tempo and timings for when a peek is happening and adjust your predictions of their patterns
  • Can be strong in eco or save rounds
  • Crosshair placement doesn’t replace aim, crosshair place IS aim
  • If you can place crosshair faster and more accurately, you can also clear faster and prevent bad timings
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Valorant 6: Feeling Out Aiming

Byjack

I realized something today. While deathmatch and the practice range are a time to focus on hand-mouse-crosshair connection (basically pure aim), that doesn’t work in competitive game practice.

When I practice Valorant in a comp game, I should be feeling out everything including game sense, movement, and ability usage. See, aim in a real game only matters if the other aspects are set up correctly. It matters which agent you play. It matters how your enter, what your ability usage and game sense tell you. I was able to get so many more headshots when I was starting feeling out the entire game not just my aim.

The one area I realized I need the most practice with is game sense – feeling out where the enemies are hiding and being ready for multiple to peak out at once. I either don’t check corners, keep my crosshair super low or lower my guard after killing just one enemy.

I was able to ace with just game sense, ability usage and a little aim.

In the clutch clip, the one area I can clearly see room for improvement is the use of my ult. It was good for the first shot, but the next two shots should have been very intentionally trying to clear out the enemy hiding spots.

Also, in the clip below for the last round, I can see my decision-making skills need work.

  • I need to do something with phoenix and reyna inevitably who were going to rush me. I also had my ult.
  • I could have jiggled the wall, then try to make my way to long.
  • I could have dodged the phoenix flash by hiding in the corner and facing the left.
  • Or I could have peeked hard and try to make my way to long.

Here are the full game clips.

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Valorant 20: The Combination of Crosshair Placement and Strafing

Byjack

I learned a couple of things when it comes to Valorant. Firstly, I need to either warm up less, or find a different way to warm up, because I notice that both my overall body and my hands get tired after 3-4 deathmatches.

I also learned that it isn’t always good to position for the strafe kill since usually you want good first shot accuracy and even though you are hard to hit when you are strafe shooting, I realized strafing is more of a niche skill rather than how you want to take most gun fights.

However, the best way to use strafe shooting is using cover to shoot.

Here is a step by step breakdown:

 

We strafe to the right to clear left.
As we move to the right, we expect the enemy somewhere on our left.
As we peek out, we try to predict/micro adjust to the head. We are already thinking about moving left now.
As the shot fires off, we are already back behind cover.

Here is a short clip of me demonstrating this concept in a deathmatch.

The point is to always look for cover, if you notice, I get overexposed a couple of times in this clip and I recorrect behind cover quickly. These are a lot of long shots, but it gets even cooler for tight close angles and you can use it hold angles after peeking as well (you don’t need to overpeak everything).