How to Get Better Aim in Valorant?

Have you ever wondered how pro players in Valorant can instantly kill opponents with one or two shots? Well, that’s because they have superior aiming skills that allows them to land headshots consistently.

Having a good aim is basically how well you can accurately move your crosshair between the targets.

In games like Valorant, where you have relatively low TTK, it is important that you have the best aiming skills to win duels and team fights.

There are a few aspects that you need to know about if you’re looking to improve your aim.

You’ll need to learn about the crosshairs and proper crosshair placement, some advanced movements, and aim training drills that you should perform every day.

Let’s discuss it!

Note: Mouse sensitivity and DPI settings will also highly influence your aim’s accuracy. So make sure you adjust it beforehand so that you feel more confident with your aim. You can try lowering these settings to reduce the errors while micro-adjusting the aim.

Crosshair

The most important aspect to improve your aim is perhaps the crosshairs. It’s the dot or the cross in the middle of your screen that marks the position where the bullet will hit.

Unlike other games, Valorant does not have bullet drop-off, so your shot will always hit the crosshair mark.

You’ll be given the four-lined crosshair by default, but you can easily change it to your preference.

Having a small, familiar crosshair with contrasting colors will help you clearly see where you’re shooting, thus improving your aim accuracy.

You can adjust your crosshair in Settings > Crosshair tab. 

Crosshair Placement

Besides adjusting the crosshair, placing it in a proper position is also equally important. You can call this pre-aiming.

Here, you’d have to predict where the enemy will show up from and place the crosshair at their head level.

This minimizes the aim-adjusting time, allowing you to shoot the enemy as soon as they show up.

With that being said, this is a skill that comes with time. So, don’t stress about it too much, and make sure to practice a lot.

Having a good knowledge of the map and directional sound cues will also help you accurately predict the enemy’s location. 

Movement

Another important yet underrated aspect of having a good aim is the movement. How? Well, efficient movement skills can help you safely learn the enemy’s location, aiding in crosshair placement.

And secondly, it will also make your shots accurate while makling yourself a difficult target. There are two movements that you should focus on while aiming. i.e., Peeking and Strafing.

Peeking

Peeking is basically the act of checking your angles for enemies without exposing yourself too much.

Knowing the enemies’ location will help you predict where they will show up, giving you enough time to adjust your crosshair placement.

There are a few different variations of peeking. They are as follows:

• Jiggle Peek: It involves quickly tapping the directional keys (A, D) to get in and out of the cover.
  
• Jump Peek: This involves jumping slightly out of the cover without being exposed too much.
  
• Wide Swing: This maneuver allows you to move out of cover while maintaining a distance. This move is very situational and requires a lot of practice for flawless execution.
  

Strafing and Counter Strafing

I’ve seen a lot of new players struggle with their aim because they’re moving and constantly shooting, like in other FPS games. 

This does not work in Valorant. Shooting while strafing will affect your aim and significantly lower your accuracy. Your shots will spread out instead of hitting the target on your crosshair.

In this game, you need to be standing still before shooting for maximum precision.

But with that being said, standing perfectly still will also make you an easy target. So, you’ll have to incorporate some movements between your shots. This brings us to our next topic, Counter-straffing.

Counter-strafing is basically a movement technique where you would stop for a split second to shoot while strafing. 

Here’s how you execute this movement.

• You strafe from right to left or vice versa and repeat the movement. 
• Just when you’re about to change the direction of your strafing, you stop and shoot.
• Keep repeating this cycle.

The split second when you’re changing the direction is enough to make your shots 100% accurate, so we’ll be taking advantage of it.

This movement will take some time to get used to, so make sure to practice it in the shooting range.

Aim Training

Moving on, let’s talk about practicing your aiming skills. Like with any other skill, perfection takes time.

If you want to improve your aim, then you have to practice aiming and shooting. You can use the in-game shooting range or a third-party aim trainer to hone your skills.

If you’re unsure how to practice your aim, here are some training drills that you can try.

Metronome Shooting

In this method, you’ll be shooting targets on the beat of the metronome. This rhythmic training drill will help improve your flicking speed while maintaining accuracy. Here’s how to perform this drill.

1. Boot into the shooting range and start 100 elimination practice mode.
   
2. Open a metronome on your browser. You can start from 60-100bps.
   
3. Now, place your crosshair at the head level and shoot on the metronome’s beat. You dont need to strafe; just shoot and focus on being accurate with your shots.
   
4. After getting comfortable and consistently landing headshots, repeat the process by increasing the metronome bpm and moving further away from the target.
5. Practice this drill for about 5 minutes.

Once you get the hang of this drill, you can also incorporate the counter-strafing movement. This allows you to be precise with your aim while also making yourself a difficult target.

Eliminate 100 Bots

The next exercise is to play the eliminate 100 bots mode in shooting range, where you’ll shoot bots one at a time at different positions. The goal here is to develop good muscle memory and aim-adjusting skills.

Many pro players treat this as a good warm-up before hopping into actual matches. I’ve personally used this drill as well, and it has helped me tremendously improve my performance in the game.

Here, you should focus on aiming and shooting the bot’s head while minimizing the mouse/crosshair movement.

Start off slow and be precise with your shots. Remember, “slow is accurate, and accurate is fast.”

Target Tracking

As I’ve mentioned previously, constant movement is key to making yourself a difficult target. As such, it is also important to practice target tracking to make sure you can consistently land your shots on the enemy.

The main objective of this drill is to be able to place your crosshair on the target at all times. Here’s how to perform this drill.

1. Select strafing bots in the shooting range.
2. Place your crosshair on the bot’s head and try maintaining the position as it moves.
   
3. Once you’ve adapted to tracking the head comfortably, incorporate shooting.
4. Practice this drill for about 5 minutes.

Remember the mouse sensitivity adjustment that we’ve done earlier?

Well, if the sensitivity and DPI that you’ve chosen are just right, you should be able to get the hang of target tracking pretty easily. If not, you can always go back and change it in the settings.

Deathmatches

Deathmatches is one of the two main game modes in Valorant. This mode involves eliminating as many opponents as possible in the given time limit, making it a perfect place to practice our aim.

Remember, we’re not playing the death match to win, but we’re playing to improve our aim in actual gameplay. So, try not to focus too much on your score. 

Instead, focus on improving your crosshair placement, micro-aim adjustment skills, movements, quick reflexes, etc.

Here’s a video showing the above training drills in action.

Some Final Words

I can’t stress enough how important practice really is. As such, you should incorporate all the above drills every day for atleast 20 minutes.

You should slowly notice the improvement as your kill count will start increasing in matches. 

You can also record your gameplays or watch replays to learn and analyze your weaknesses and improve your targeting skills.

Watching and learning from pro-player matches is also an excellent to expand your knowledge of aiming.