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Valorant 21: Aim Mechanics

Byjack

I’ve narrowed down core aiming principals to a couple of things:

  • General Aim: Pointing your body toward your target
  • Survivability: strafe peeking (strafe out, prediction of enemy location, hit strafe and shoot at the same time as seeing enemy)
  • Preaiming: crosshair placement
  • Flicking: loose mouse hand + some general aim mechanics

Overall, I think the most important technique is just having the mindset of pointing to your body toward your target (what I’m starting to call general aim since it gets you in the general vicinity of your target). This helps massively with confidence, with holding angles, and with tracking and flicking.

Second most important is probably a combination of a loose mousehand and good crosshair placement as this allows you to hit most targets while also being ready for a flick. This pairs with a strong understanding of how to slice a pie and clear a site.

Finally, some sort of strafing is important as it increases survivability by a lot.

There are a couple more aiming techniques that I feel are significantly less important as they are more niche. These will help you in deathmatch and higher elos but are not part of core aim:

  • Strafe shooting: general ability to track and strafe a moving target, paying attention to crosshair
  • Spray control: the ability to crouch spray and spray adjust
  • Angle holding: predicting how close or wide a peek will be

Strafe shooting is probably the most important as it is good for long range fights as movement based aiming is a lot more effective on those fights.

Spray control is pretty niche to close range gun fights and fighting multiple enemies.

Angle holding is very important but general aim and strafe clearing are more key to holding angles.

 

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Valorant: Slow Down During Danger

Byjack

Something that I noticed when playing Valorant today, is that I tend to speed up and rush when I feel under pressure or stressed, when in actuality, I need to slow down.

Last game I trusted my instincts, and really slowed down when I felt danger and I felt it was much better.

I realized that when I feel safe, I can move fast. When I feel in danger, it is time to exercise extreme caution like in real life.

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Valorant 13: Advice From My Brother

Byjack

Today I had a strategy session with my brother who is almost at the rank I want to be (Plat) about major mindset shifts I need to do to get out of Bronze and Silver.

Here are the main areas we came up with:

  1. Learn to play off of contact better: 
    • Swing when you see teammates swinging
    • If you see someone holding, pre-aim and get ready to trade
  2. Crosshair placement and preaiming
    • Holding for wide swing vs close
  3. Methodical clearing
  4. Ability usage
    • Have gameplan for ability usage for the beginning of every attack and defending round
  5. Map awareness
    1. Look at minimap more
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The Valorant Challenge: From Silver 1 to Platinum 1

Byjack

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:

  1. Embracement of pain
    1. Lower expectations
    2. Process emotions
    3. Try new things
  2. Self-reflection is KEY
    1. Need to see yourself
  3. Focus on fun
    1. Play when you want with things you like
  4. Small steps
    1. Don’t need to do everything in one day
    2. Do tiny steps if possible
  5. Prepare yourself
    1. Create an environment for success

Specifics:

  1. Embracement of pain
    1. Don’t set goals
    2. Assume I’m gonna do bad
    3. Slow down and process when I’m doing bad
    4. Always try new strats
  2. Self-reflection
    1. LOTS of VOD reviews
  3. Focus on fun
    1. Only play comp when you want to
    2. Other days do light practice
    3. Focus on agents you have fun with (focus on agent abilities that are fun)
  4. Small steps
    1. Find ways to practice in aimlabs, spike rush and deathmatch
  5. Prepare yourself
    1. Work on environment
    2. 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.

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Valorant 10: Catching People On Your Crosshair

Byjack

I just did it. I cracked the CODE on aim.

It’s not Miyagi do the method. It’s not movement-based aiming. Its not feeling out the timing. It’s not the last bullet method.

It’s a combination of EVERYTHING I’ve learned into a more simple mindset – catch them on your crosshair.

This method works if you are lagging, on low FPS, can’t hear anything and have a bad mental state.

Believe me, last night I was playing on my laptop with low FPS (sub 60) and terrible audio (laptop speakers) and not the best mental (unhappy, nervous and angry) and I still used it to drop tons of headshots.

I outlined the mentality in my earlier post about the “last bullet” exersise, but I’ll break it down again.

  1. Start out by holding a tight angle, and waiting for them to walk into your crosshair
  2. Get the feeling of “catching them” like you would catch a ball, adapt to their movement naturally, and try to click when you catch them on your crosshair
  3. After you feel comfortable with that, try to “catch” people while pushing them aggressively, this requires you to intuitively feel where they might be before swinging. Don’t swing until you are ready. This is an intuitive way to “pre-aim” as we like to say.
  4. When you are warmed up, go into a real match. Go on intuition on whether it is easier to catch them walking into your crosshair or if you need to catch them while peeking out at them. There is usually an option that helps you isolate more kills. 

 

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Valorant 36: Washed Again

Byjack

Today I am officially getting back into the grind right, using the same technique as before where I try to emulate the pros.

Some thoughts:

  • Does a lot of wide swinging in big smooth arcs.
  • A bit of movement based aim
  • Ficks very fast to new angles
  • Two taps, using movement strafing, then crouch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOe664CVI1o&ab_channel=Pimbz-VALORANTCLIPS

Some thoughts:

  • Aspas aim is much more similar to mine, less smooth, but distinctly clears and preaims angles
  • Barely counterstrafes, taps a lot and them spray
  • Does a lot of widepeeks as well
  • Like to hold angles a lot more
  • Good attempt to wide swing, need to hold angles more until the swing
  • Wide swing needs good crosshair placement
  • Make sure you are ready for them to be visible at the edge of your swing
  • Good practice holding angles
  • Good overall but prefire is a bit messy, might be from pain and uncomfortable elbow position
  • Crosshair can also get a bit unstead, not using movement to aim

My games today were frustrating. I felt I was moving too fast when it was dangerous (I have a feeling enemies are nearby). I tend to rush my aim and my peek. What helped a lot with that is the preparing your crosshair in the intuitively most comfortable way to take a fight. It’s engaging and helps me slow down and be more intentional. I won every game after using that technique.