Valorant 14: Insane Warmup
My insane warmup strategy:
- No sound (focus on clearing every single angle)
- Good crosshair placement
- Movement-based aiming
Results: 1st place deathmatch sheriff only, breeze
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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:
- 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
- Crosshair placement and preaiming
- Holding for wide swing vs close
- Methodical clearing
- Ability usage
- Have gameplan for ability usage for the beginning of every attack and defending round
- Map awareness
- Look at minimap more
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.
Valorant 4: Thoughts While I’m On Break
Byjack
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.
Aim Training Myths
Byjack
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
- Voltaic guides are good aim guides
Valorant 26: Back to Basics
Byjack
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.
Here is a good video on it:
Valorant 27: Confidence
Byjack
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:
- Check in to how I’m feeling
- Vocalize my feelings
- Check in to how others are feeling
- Let the energy carry action
- Let the plan form in my mind
- Create a challenge at the start of every round