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.
This is a recap of an exercise I did a few weeks ago. I was watching a ThinkMedia youtube video about how to succeed at youtube. He went through and exercise looking at 3 things in this order: passion, proficiency, and profit.
Basically, he said to make a list of all the things that you are passionate about, either things you like or things you hate, and things you do even if you weren’t getting paid to do it.
My list was:
Making money
Finding leverage
Valorant
Corporate life (hate)
Coaching
Challenges
Superhuman abilities
Graphic novels
Children’s books, fantasy
Health
AI
Surface level thinking (hate)
Then, he said to take that list of things and think about what we have at least 1 year of proficiency in, where we have been doing that thing semi-successfully. So I narrowed down my list to:
Making money
Valorant
Feeling stuck in life
Deeper thinking
Coaching
Health
AI
Then, he said to narrow down that further into things that we could build an audience around, something people need or would want to buy. Here was my list:
How to get started with a business
How to aim
How to get unstuck in life
How to unlock your potential
How to repair your body
How to use AI to improve your life
I don’t know if I have any interest pursuing youtube in this way, but it was an interesting exercise to reflect on.
This idea of finding the same type of gameplay in a pro or radiant player was really interesting, and so I decided to take it into my next vod review.
My vod:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T05HsudTzvQ
Main takeaways:
I’m mad about getting one tapped, but that actually happens at all ranks, Valorant is a quick time to kill game
Controllers don’t smoke as quickly as I do, and they often use them selfishly (smoking mid if they play mid to establish control over the parts they want to take control over)
The smoke on B site creates a wall from pushing onto site, I guess I didn’t know what kinds of smokes would be useful
In terms of playing around smokes, they move quite slowly in and out of smokes
Generally play wide and out in the open for better angle advantage, I play scared and close to the wall
Some really interesting ideas I saw when watching this video about aim training:
My main takeaways:
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.
Sens and muscle memory doesn’t matter.
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.
Muscle memory doesn’t exist since you cannot memorize a specific shot, it is always changing depending on the game you are in.
Keep warmups really short. 5-10 minutes max for strictly a warmup and 10-15 minutes for a warmup + some longterm aim group/training.
If you warmup for an hour its a training session not a warmup. It causes you to be tired out and overthink the aiming.
Higher DPI mean lower input delay. 800-1600 is desired but it isn’t that important.
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.
Higher sens is technically better because it is faster, but it is harder to be consistent and be in control
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.
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.
