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Valorant 18: Strafe Clearing
I’ve been killing it on the aim front. In deathmatch, I absolutely own.
I have been working on a new aiming mechanic, what I like to call the strafing clear. First, I went from silver all the way to gold simply off of working on my site clears. A few things I noted:
- Practicing in custom matches is extreemly helpful
- Way more helpful than DM flicks
- Close angles call for very small clears, big angles are for big wide swings
I’ve been trying to pair this with the counter strafing mechanic and I think I figured out something.
Simply by paying attention to which side of the head you expect your crosshair to be on, you can get a much better strafing shot when you peek/clear an angle.
When you clear, you shoot like normal, if your shot is off, you adjust in the direction you need to.
Let’s say you are clearing one angle, and an enemy pops up on your right. Your crosshair is far to the left of your target, so you quickly adjust, while strafing to the right to line up the perfect flick.
This is extremely useful because not only does this mean that your shots can be super accurate, it means you are moving a lot and making it extreemly hard to hit you (or atleast headshot you).
I think the coolest part, is when you strafe out in one direction, realize the enemy is to the other side of your crosshair so you strafe in the other direction to get the shot.
I also abuse the hit slow (how you freeze if you are hit) to get better accuracy and try to tap the enemy down if I am stopped midstrafe.
That being said, I think that there are a couple of different types of aiming mechanics in Valorant.
- Spray control – used for wall spams and smoke spams and long gun fights
- Strafing – used for clearing and gun fights out in the open
- Distance shooting – used for really far fights
- Holding – used to hold again specific peaks
Spray control
- Got no real strat. Just try to watch the bullet tracers
Strafing
- Watch the relationship between the crosshair and the head (whether left or right). Details are above
Distance Shooting
- Use a lot of movement-based aiming for really accurate shots. Tap fire.
Holding
- Prepare to duck behind cover, spray a few shots and duck back.
Valorant 19: The True Warmup
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.
Unsure of What I’m Doing in France
* I wrote this on Jan 15th…gonna leave it as a journal entry for now.
I feel unhappy right now. I feel like I can’t work on the things I want to work on. I feel stressed out that my relationship won’t work out. I don’t know what I’m doing here in France. I actually very much dislike the country. I am worried that coaching is not the thing that I actually want to do. I find it hard to find myself and feel myself in this relationship. I wonder if that is because of me not knowing myself, coaching not being the thing I want to do, or if this is the wrong place for me.
Right now I don’t feel like working on coaching or thinking about coaching.
I want to work on something that is purely interesting to me and something that is actually fun.
I think that thing right now is making a story creation bot in python using large language models.
In order to write a halfway decent story, I believe you need a couple of things:
- Strong characters
- Strong plot
- Premise, moral or lesson
- Great dialog
The Jiujitsu Challenge
I honestly don’t really know what I want to say about this challenge.
I know I wanted to learn jiu jitsu but it was for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I could feel myself falling apart and I couldn’t bring myself to work out. I’ve always loved martial arts and jiu jitsu was always something that I wanted to learn as a martial artist because of its practicality and strengthening an area of fighting that I am particularly weak in – which is grappling.
Secondly, I wanted to see more people in real life and make more friends. My girlfriend joined a running class and it helped her get into exercising more and also just interact with more people. I wanted to do the same with something that I love, which is fighting.
So I signed up to a jiu jitsu gym, one that I was really excited about because it specializes in no gi grappling (10th planet), but now that I’m rolling a few times a week, I kind of don’t know where to go.
I worry about my knee a lot, and that actually has given me more motivation to continue working out.
I feel much happier and have more energy after going to class. I feel myself getting stronger and having better posture.
But I still don’t know what to challenge myself with.
A Taoist Approach to Productivity
I’ve been meditating on productivity and I was curious as to a more taoist approach. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas:
- Make things more empty
- Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
- Focus on one thing at a time and do work to make everything feel empty
- Look to make your to do list more empty
- Delete things off the to do list
- Schedule time sensitive things
- Clear off small tasks immediately
- Moving it to tomorrow
- Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
- Reduce the size of mountains
- Create simple steps to kick off each task
- Seek balance
- Seek out more risk when things are stale
- Seek out more structure when things are too risky
Matches: First impressions of this technique
Match 1
Reflections:
- Need to operate on a meditative state and trust strong intuition in order to reduce brain effort
- Warmup felt a bit unfocused, maybe want to try specific thinking strategies, especially involving exercise
- I have a bit of a headache now, but I don’t think it is because of the way I worked, I think it’s because of how tired I am, maybe need more rest + exercise, would like to try with a more exercise heavy strategy.
- Felt like MUCH longer than an hour, felt like I have been working for 3 hours.
Result Calculation:
- How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth maybe $200-$300. Rather tedious coding type work.
- How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? Maybe a 7.
- What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 30% percentile
- Gains in communication and charisma? A little since I am making the code more readable and clear.
Match 2
Reflections:
- A lot less tension, with additional movement and breathing
- Still trying to get my mind to cut through problems like a knife through butter, not sure how
- Also felt like I was working for hours
Result Calculation:
- How much do I think this work is worth? I feel this work was worth maybe $150-$200. Lots of grooming, project management, some architecture, some coding.
- How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10? About a 7. Maybe 8. Grueling but not that difficult.
- What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation? 40% percentile. Not that innovative but definitely clever and requires some knowledge and experience.
- Gains in communication and charisma? Definitely helped make my flow much more clear. Will help with communication in the future.