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Play Valorant Like A Pro

Byjack

I feel compelled to do another Valorant challenge, and I feel this video is the most excellent way to learn how to treat Valorant like a pro:

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Valorant 29: My Valorant Fears and Emotions

Byjack

I wanted to do a bit of a post to understand how I am feeling right now about the Valorant challenge. I know I feel incredibly stressed, angry, and depressed because I feel like I wasted all my time on Valorant. So much time trying so hard to be good, but nothing seems to really come of it. Sometimes looking at my VODs I feel like my gameplay is the same as it was before.

I don’t really know what is going on and why it seems like I’m new to the game every time. I don’t know why I’m overthinking everything. Why is everything so hard?

I wish I could see major mistakes in my old gameplay.

I guess watching more VOD reviews will help me understand. But that takes so damn long. Maybe it means that there are still opportunities to play much much better. I feel that I maybe have gotten much better but it doesn’t seem to translate over to comp. Maybe it’s also something about understanding the maps better. I really get the sense that I got to plat last time by playing more comfortably on agents and on maps. I think I understood just how to play each map better. But I want to be a more complete player. I want to play with better movement and peeking.

Something else that I feel that I missed out on was just having more posts about the emotions I was feeling. It makes me sad that all my Valorant posts were about techniques and none of them were about emotions.

Valorant has a lot of nice emotions for me. I met my girlfriend on Valorant, I had a lot of friends on Valorant. These days I play mostly alone, but I still like the world. Cool agents and fun to get on to all these different teams. I love it when I have some really fun crazy game sense timing lurks. I guess that is one way that I got significantly better than before.

I wish I had VODs from when I was in iron. I feel that jump from iron to silver was the large one. The jump from silver to plat is weirdly small.

Ok. So I just spent a good hour or so just watching my VODs from bronze until plat then back to gold. I actually feel my overall movement is better and more consistent. The only difference in plat is that I was calmer and held an angle for longer. I also did more wide jiggles. I know for gold I held a lot more angles, and made sure to hold them wide because they would often wide swing everything.

Looking forward, I would be so happy if I kept calm and held angles for longer when moving around the map, held for the wide swing more often. Then when fighting an angle, I want to be more aggressive, swinging very fast and hard, but stopping at the edge and fighting, not leaving until I try to kill them, maybe just letting go of movement keys or crouch spraying. I would love to see my fundamentals get really really good, to a level I know they can get to.

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Keeping the Hand Loose

Byjack
Me struggling until I figure out this simple trick.

I recently figured out a really helpful technique for my aim. I do aim practice every single day but I have some day where none of my aim seems to translate over to games. I usually start to get angry and frustrated and this causes my aim to get even worse.

I tried many things this time to get a better aim, but nothing worked.

And then I had the last game, in which I actually did really really well, even though the enemy team was no slouch. I only changed one thing.

I kept my wrist and arm very very loose, using my movement keys to move the crosshair around, but also ready to tense my wrist and arm and flick at any moment. This for some reason, unlocked better movement and aim.

Also, I used phantom which seemed to reward more strafing and close range battles.

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Aim Training Myths

Byjack

Some really interesting ideas I saw when watching this video about aim training:

My main takeaways:

  1. 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.
  2. Sens and muscle memory doesn’t matter.
    1. 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.
    2. Muscle memory doesn’t exist since you cannot memorize a specific shot, it is always changing depending on the game you are in.
  3. Keep warmups really short. 5-10 minutes max for strictly a warmup and 10-15 minutes for a warmup + some longterm aim group/training.
    1. If you warmup for an hour its a training session not a warmup. It causes you to be tired out and overthink the aiming.
  4. Higher DPI mean lower input delay. 800-1600 is desired but it isn’t that important.
  5. 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.
  6. Higher sens is technically better because it is faster, but it is harder to be consistent and be in control
  7. Voltaic guides are good aim guides

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Valorant 26: Back to Basics

Byjack

So I’ve been stuck in Silver 3 forever after the rank reset and it seems that I need to do a second climb to Plat again. Perhaps I just need to relearn the basics better.

So there is a peeking guide by Noted that I’ve been trying to apply for the longest time and I think I finally understand a good mentality and visualization that can make the peeks good. It is interesting because I’ve been feeling so down about Valorant recently but I always tell myself that the lower elo I go, the more freedom I have to innovate, and innovation is definitely the thing I like to do.

So here is Noted’s peeking guide:

He talks in the peeking guide that its just something you “get used to”. But I wanted to find a way to break it down do that anyone could learn it and that you would never overpeak and angle even if you are not far away enough. This idea of drawing a line to the contested “fighting area” allows for a simple visualisation that will ensure you don’t overpeak, and to do noted’s peek, you simply have to think about drawing a longer line.

I demonstrate it here:

Another note, the best way to peak safely with this method is to have the “line” end close to the edge of the wall, allowing you to peek back in if you miss your shot.

The next piece I might need to refine is just counter strafing because that still isn’t that solid for me, especially for moving targets that I need to constantly adjust for. The initial research into this yields that miyagi-do/looking at distance between crosshair and head is the best solution so far. Results have been good, but it hurts my wrist. I am experimenting with a looser grip and using more of the arm to aim.

Here is a good video on it:

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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 19: The True Warmup

Byjack

In my Valorant journey right now, I’m very interested in perfecting strafe shooting and proper clearing. 

I heard that one of the elements of getting really good is about focusing on fewer things. What I’m really working on right now is getting something out of my warmups.

I usually play deathmatch until I feel like I’m hitting my shots and then jump into a match. But, now I’m thinking I need to let go of trying to push off from the confidence in a good deathmatch and instead working on making the mechanics more intuitive…meaning I need to deathmatch until I can hit shots even if I’m not match mvp, my clears, peeks and jiggles feel COMFORTABLE. Even if that means going into some deathmatches where it is really hard and everyone on taps me. The point of warmup should be when I feel like I’m not having trouble hitting shot anymore.