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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 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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Knowing When You Are in Danger

Byjack

What was really striking about this commentary is about how amateurs play chess vs grandmasters, and how grandmasters play vs computers.

This is interesting because Hans Neiman was accused and proven multiple times of being a chess cheater, someone who uses chess engines to play certain critical moves.

If he actually is, his gameplay is more similar to an AI moving rather than a human.

What is interesting about that is that human seem to react a lot to emotional threats, when they are not actually in danger, thus putting themselves in greater danger.

I can relate to this a lot in Valorant, and I wonder if understanding the greater picture better in Valorant will help me understand how much danger I am in, and not unnecessarily put myself in more danger by peeking just because I feel threatened.

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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 23: Hitting Plat

Byjack

It has finally happened. I’ve hit plat in Valorant. A journey that was supposed to take 2-3 months, but instead took a year and two months (14 months).

Blood sweat and tears went into this challenge, and I learned something interesting at each rank.

IRON

Iron was an interesting rank because it was the rank when I was first learning how to use my mouse and keyboard in a game. I had never played a shooter game on the pc, and haven’t played many serious games at all on the PC. 

Getting out of iron was simply learning how not to make extremely basic mistakes such as reloading out in the open, not getting stuck on walls, planting and defusing the bomb.

BRONZE

Bronze was also an interesting rank. I started actually enjoying the game more here since I had a better idea of what was going on. Bronze rank was still stressful because I would get killed out of nowhere all the time.

I don’t really remember what I did to get out of bronze rank, but I think it had something to do with playing off of my util and learning how to check corners where people hide.

SILVER

I was stuck in silver for a long time. Silver was where I learned a lot about aiming and movement and got quite good at it.

What eventually got me out of silver was learning how to preaim angles.

GOLD

Gold is not a very interesting rank, everyone is pretty much like silver but with slightly better util and aim.

However, perhaps the most interesting thing in the whole challenge is how I got out of gold. I got out of gold primarily by getting more confident.

I did this in two ways:

  1. I focused on a few agents and learned how to get reliable value out of their util (Chamber tp locations, Brim lineups, Sova lineups).
  2. I dealt with some of my underlying negative self talk

I hear lots of things that people say about confidence:

“Stay positive”

“Imagine you are the best”

I always thought these ideas were bogus since I always thought confidence was about one thing: Feeling comfortable in your own skin.

But I started to doubt myself when I say professional Valorant coaching advocating (SEN Zellsis) for the “cocky confidence” mentality and I was stuck in silver.

But I think in the end, I was right. In order to be confident, you need to feel safe and at peace. The real question, is HOW?

Here are the main ideas:

  1. In order to be confident, you need to be ok with not being great (not being smart, successful, attractive, etc.)
  2. In order to be ok with those things, you need to process your traumas and limiting beliefs.
  3. In order to process, you must welcome in your limiting beliefs and incorporate it into yourself.

My limiting beliefs were:

  • “If I don’t succeed, I don’t think I’m worth anything”
  • “I need to beat myself up for every mistake and always think I’m worse in order to not mess up”

Simply by saying those things in my head, made me feel clarity every time I started to stress out and I suddenly felt calm. I gave myself permission to continue to berate myself (or not) but simply welcoming these parts in instead of avoiding them (and having them show up as unresolved stress), made me have a clear mentality that made my rise to plat.

I learned I have a huge amount of power, intelligence and creativity that are locked up by stress and fear. Slowing down, focusing on a few things at a time, and embracing my fears allows me to operate at my fullest potential.

What I thought confidence was:

  • Fake it until you make it
  • Cocky
  • Don’t care
  • Aggressive

What confidence actually is:

  • Ok with failing
  • Calm and clear-headed
  • Balanced
  • Trust yourself
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Valorant 32: Washed

Byjack

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.

  1. I want to learn how to have comfortable hand positioning
  2. 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.