Elevate Your Game: How To Get Better at Valorant

Elevate Your Game: How to Get Better at Valorant

Valorant is a 5v5 Tactical Shooter FPS game by Riot Games. Valorant consists of a wide range of agents with 4 classes, Duelist, Controller, Initiator, and Sentinel, with agents, such as, Jett and Omen. While playing Valorant you will be assigned either Attackers or Defenders side. The objective as an attacker will be to eliminate the enemy or to plant the spike and stop the defenders from defusing. The objective as a defender will be to eliminate the enemy, stop the enemy from planting the spike, or defusing the spike before it explodes. Before we dive into how you can improve in Valorant, let's go over some of the popular game modes in Valorant.

Popular Valorant Game Modes Explained

Valorant has many game modes, but we are just going to focus on few in this article.

• Unrated- Unrated is Valorant's standard game mode. First side to 13 rounds win. This game mode is perfect to practice in before heading into competitive! 
• Swiftplay- Swiftplay is similar to Unrated. However, it is first to 5 rounds win. So if you are looking for a faster pace game, this mode could be good for you!
• Competitive- After you feel like you've gotten the hang of the game, you can head into competitive. Competitive is just like unrated, but you will be matched against people of similar skill level. As you win more games you'll be able to climb the ranks!
• Deathmatch- In deathmatch you don't have a team and the only objective is to get to 40 kills first! Deathmatch can be a great tool to warmup for competitive. Deathmatch can also be great for practicing you aim and mechanics and it's a less stressful environment than competitive!

Expert Tips to Improve Your Valorant Gameplay

Now that we have broke down Valorant's game modes, time to give you some tips on how to improve your game! In this section we will breakdown non-aim related tips. In the next section we will give you aim related tips!

1. Fine-tune your settings! Having the right settings can instantly improve your gameplay even if it seems simple! Here is a few things to look for. The range offers a place where you can adjust your sensitivity and instantly try it out, make sure to utilize this to find what sens feels good to you. You want to make sure you aren't going too fast or too slow! Next take a look at your graphic settings, you want to set pretty much everything to low. This will allow your Valorant achieve a higher frame rate, this will overall make your gameplay feel smoother which will make your experience much better! Finally, take a look at how your minimap in game, can you see all of it all the time? If the answer is no, make sure to toggle off the minimap following your perspective in settings. This will allow you to see your whole minimap in game, so you can see all of the information available to you! This will be a sure-fire way to help you get better and be ready to jump into Valorant rank.
2. Practice in Deathmatch! Do you feel like everyone kills you way faster than you kill them? Then it's time to focus on your mechanics! Deathmatch is the perfect place for this as it allows you to focus on practicing without the pressure of trying to win a match! I recommend practicing your crosshair placement in deathmatch and making sure to look how you are peeking angles. Whenever you peek an angle you always want your crosshair to be as close to the enemy as possible! 
3. Communicate to your teammates! Having good comms is very important in Valorant! You want your teammates on the same page, so make sure to coordinate a plan with them before the round starts! Also as you receive info throughout the round like where the enemy is, don't keep that to yourself! If you are playing a Duelist, such as Jett, you'll most likely get contact with the enemy first. Make sure to tell your teammates what you see! As you communicate more, your game sense will develop even more as well. You want to be close to your teammates and playing with them at all times!
4. VOD Review!!! VOD reviewing is when you record your gameplay and look back it. It is much easier to see the mistakes you are making while watching the game back, rather than when you are playing. VOD reviewing will allow you to pick out your mistakes, like are you pushing too much? Are you not playing with your team? Is my crosshair always in the wrong place? If you VOD review you can figure these things out much faster and know what to practice! VOD reviewing is also a great way to further increase your game sense!
5. Challenge your thought process! After looking back on some of your rounds, ask yourself, what could of been done differently? For example, on offense a lot of teams in ranked will end up pushing as all 5 through main onto site. But what about if you sent two of our teammates mid to crunch onto site together. Once you start thinking of strategies, there are many ways to get better and succeed while playing valorant! There are many more ways to improve than just aim training and using aim trainers!
6. Find your role! Valorant offers four roles, Duelist, Initiator, Controller, and Sentinel. Every role will provide different gameplay. Whether that's dashing into site as Jett, or scanning the enemy for your team with Sova. Make sure to give all of them a test and see what best fits how you want to play Valorant.
7. Bad Habits. Sometimes when reviewing our gameplay, we find that we are making the same mistake over and over again. This is a bad habit. Maybe this is always having low crosshair placement, or we die in the first 10 seconds of the round too often. When we find this in our gameplay we want to mentally think about these things while we are playing Valorant. This way we can realize when we are making these mistakes, which will help us fix them faster and improve as a player even faster!

Strategies for Better Aim in Valorant

Alright now let's focus on some Aim related tips!

1. Prioritize your Crosshair Placement! A lot of what makes you have good aim in Valorant is your crosshair placement. If you have good crosshair placement you should be able to kill your enemies with ease by barely moving your mouse! Having good crosshair placements means consistently having your crosshair at head level, to make it easier to get headshots. It also means when you peek angles you rarely have to move your crosshair towards the enemy, it usually will be right next to them! This can be practiced in Deathmatch where you can get used to how enemies move around the map.
2. Improve your movement. A lot of what makes it seem like players have insane aim is their movement. Making yourself hard to hit in Valorant is the best way to increase your chance of winning a fight. If you are aiming at someone while standing still, most times if you miss the first shot, you won't get the chance to take another shot. Most high elo players utilize the technique of burst strafing/shooting. This is where you shoot 3-4 bullets with a vandal or phantom, move to the left, shoot 3-4 more bullets, move to the right, and repeat. This allows your shots to still be accurate while making yourself much harder. Practicing this technique in deathmatch is a surefire way to land more headshots and level up your gameplay!
3. Aim trainers. Aim trainers are always a popular choice to improve in fps games. Aim training will of course always be a great way to improve your mechanics. There are two main ways of aim training. You can either do this in game within Valorant by either jumping into the range and practicing on the bots, or playing deathmatch and focusing on your aim! Some Valorant players prefer to use external aim trainers, such as aim labs. Aimlab also has a playlist for Valorant, which will give you tasks to help you improve your aim and get better in no time! Whether you are entering the site as Jett, or holding the back lines as Cypher, having good aim is important in every role! 

Conclusion

There are many different ways to approach improving in Valorant. Hopefully this article will help you find the best way for you! Try some approaches yourself today and you'll get better in no time! Now it's time to play the game, good luck in your games out there!