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.
Start out by holding a tight angle, and waiting for them to walk into your crosshair
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
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.
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.
I’m thinking ahead to my next goal in Valorant. I think the next step is getting to Ascendant. It is going to take a lot of work just getting back to plat. Here is a VOD review where I got 1 kill the entire game. I reviewed the VOD with my brother’s friend who is a big brained diamond player.
It’s actually interesting, I think I need people who are higher elo but not too much higher because I need someone who can explain a few things, not everything all at once.
Some of the main takeaways from the VOD review on areas I can work on:
Playing off of teammates (using the analogy of treating them as a sky dog / sova drone / skye cabbage)
Follow them in
Use them as a distraction and to gather information
If they die, no biggie, they aren’t worth anything to me dead
If I cannot trade, I can just fall off
Gather notes on what the enemy patterns are
Think about how they play worked for them in the past rounds
Peek and clear more confidently
Don’t be afraid to make noise and util to clear a site, even if they know I’m there, it’s better than planting with no knowledge of where they are
Use skye binds to peek, don’t waste the util
Any information on someone in the vicinity or at the areas of no control (at the start of the round, or when we give up control) should be treated with extreme caution
I’ve been thinking more about confidence in Valorant and it actually made me think a lot more about what makes confidence. I originally was interested in how to multitask because I thought that was what would make me stronger in Valorant, but I wasn’t able to find any useful information on it.
I ended up searching multitasking in sports, and I was specifically in interested in the basketball videos when they talked about confidence.
The first video was this:
Ideas:
Confidence is not about positive or negative thinking
There are two ways of thinking
Logically and analytically
Intuitively
Confidence is about trusting the second type of thinking
Timing cannot be thought
Ideas:
People often rely on outside sources of confidence
Success
External Validation
Comparing ourselves with others
These outside sources of validation are not reliable
Confidence comes from being able to trust yourself
Trustworthiness is from people who follow a code
Ex: Warrior code “no man left behind” (inspires confidence in your unit because other people won’t leave you behind)
Ex: Courage over success, valuing courage over failure or success validation
Code must be specific and have specific actions you take to fulfill it
Mantras can be helpful
So as they say in the video to do, I am writing down the things I use for confidence in Valorant:
Success – high KDA, increasing elo
Comparison – high KDA compared to others, higher rank
Knowledge and practice – learning techniques and practicing them
Performance – being able to predict moves, hitting my shots
What I admire in other players:
Clarity in thinking
Creative plays
Fast reactions
Precise mechanics
Boldness/confidence
I’ll take each of these a step further to draft out my code. I’m going to see if I can break down what I make each of these things mean:
I make success mean that I’m smart that I’m special
I make comparison mean that I’m special, that I’m a valuable or worthy person
I make knowledge and practice mean I’m smart and that I deserve to be heard
I make performance mean that I’m special and I’m capable
For the second list:
I make clarity mean that someone is smart
I make creativity mean intelligence, specialness, worthy of love and admiration
I make fast reactions means someone is attractive
Precise mechanics I make it mean someone is capable, valuable and worth a lot
Boldness and confidence I make it mean someone is valuable and special
To think about it further my code might need to address:
Inner value – what is valuable about myself
Inner specialness – what do I think is special about myself
Inner love and admiration – what do I love and admire about myself
Inner capability – what makes myself capable
I don’t really know what my code can be but one aspect that keeps coming up for all of these things are valuing feelings and focusing on radical permission.
Those are two things that I feel make me unique, I value myself and are a way to find freedom and give myself love and admiration.
I suppose I can also focus on the challenge in life, the idea of courage or challenge over success is something else that I admire about value about myself. Deep thinking, letting the answer of hard questions come to me as well.
The ways that I could act out this code in Valorant:
The most interesting part of these videos is the last part of the second video, where they talk about inner game.
What I find interesting about inner game is the idea that mentally telling yourself to do something won’t work, but noticing will make your mind automatically make the change. This is the essence of connection theory and it is so interesting that psychologists have studied it.
I realized something today. While deathmatch and the practice range are a time to focus on hand-mouse-crosshair connection (basically pure aim), that doesn’t work in competitive game practice.
When I practice Valorant in a comp game, I should be feeling out everything including game sense, movement, and ability usage. See, aim in a real game only matters if the other aspects are set up correctly. It matters which agent you play. It matters how your enter, what your ability usage and game sense tell you. I was able to get so many more headshots when I was starting feeling out the entire game not just my aim.
The one area I realized I need the most practice with is game sense – feeling out where the enemies are hiding and being ready for multiple to peak out at once. I either don’t check corners, keep my crosshair super low or lower my guard after killing just one enemy.
I was able to ace with just game sense, ability usage and a little aim.
In the clutch clip, the one area I can clearly see room for improvement is the use of my ult. It was good for the first shot, but the next two shots should have been very intentionally trying to clear out the enemy hiding spots.
Also, in the clip below for the last round, I can see my decision-making skills need work.
I need to do something with phoenix and reyna inevitably who were going to rush me. I also had my ult.
I could have jiggled the wall, then try to make my way to long.
I could have dodged the phoenix flash by hiding in the corner and facing the left.
Or I could have peeked hard and try to make my way to long.