To get better at Valorant, you must focus on improving your aim, nailing down the movement techniques, understanding the agents and their abilities, learning the game maps., etc.
And while it’s not mandatory, but having in-depth knowledge about some of the basic game mechanics definitely helps to improve yourself.
With that being said, let’s dive into the detailed useful tips that can help you “Git Gud” in Valorant.
Table of Contents
Improve Your Aim
Let’s start with aiming because it’s hands-down the most important aspect of any tactical shooter. Having precise aim with quick reflexes will let you fare well in duels and team firefights.
You might’ve even seen pro players with super accurate aim one-tapping enemies with headshots.
The secret to perfecting your aim relies on a few different factors. Namely, they are your crosshair, crosshair placement, mouse sensitivity, and DPI, a few advanced movements, and a lot of practice.
Let’s quickly go over each of them.
- Crosshair: It’s the dot or the cross icon in the middle of your screen. It’s important that you adjust your crosshair design to something you’re more familiar with. Having a small crosshair with contrasting colors will help you immensely with your aim precision.
- Crosshair Placement: Crosshair placement is basically the idea of predicting where the enemy will show up and positioning the crosshair near their head level. This allows you to minimize the time adjusting the aim and instead focus on shooting as soon as they appear.
- Mouse sensitivity: Although mouse sensitivity/DPI is a matter of personal preference, I recommend you lower it to minimize needless mouse movement and eliminate micro-aim adjustment errors. That being said, feel free to change it to your liking. The goal here is to feel comfortable and confident with your aim.
- Movement: Yes, movement also plays quite a significant role in your aim precision. In short, you should not run-and-gun as it will lower your accuracy tremendously. Bullets will fly all over the place instead of hitting the target. Instead, practice the counter-strafing maneuver, as it will help you be accurate with your shot while making yourself a difficult target.
- Practice: As with any other skill, improving your aim will also require a lot of patience and practice. You’ll need to aim train every day for about 20 minutes by running through different training drills in the shooting range or in other aim trainer applications.
Every weapon has a different recoil pattern and thus requires slightly different weapon handling skills. So, it is also important that you learn how to handle the recoil of your main weapon.
Pro Tip: Shoot your weapon in short bursts instead of going full auto to maintain accuracy, and practice shooting from the hips for more stability.
Mastering the Movement
Another important aspect that you’ll need to build on to get better in Valorant is the movement.
Efficient movement techniques will allow you to get the upper hand on your enemy as you can get the best possible angle and position while also becoming a difficult target yourself.
There are three basic movement techniques that you should learn and utilize in the game.
- Counter Strafing: Counter Strafing is an essential movement technique that you should prioritize learning first thing in the game. This movement allows you to be 100% accurate with your shot while strafing and dodging enemy fire. You do so by strafing sideways and shooting just when you’re about to change direction.
- Peeking: Peeking is yet another great technique that can give you the enemy’s location without exposing and making you an easy target. There are three types of peeking methods. I.e., Jiggle peek, Jump peek, Wide peek. These techniques will throw off the enemy crosshair placement, making it much harder for them to land a shot on you.
- Bunny Hopping: As the name suggests, bunny hopping is an advanced movement technique that involves hopping around like a bunny. It can help you dodge enemy fire and is especially useful when changing cover, repositioning yourself, or escaping enemy gunfire.
Understand The Agents
Agents are a core gameplay element in Valorant, so you’ll need to have a good understanding of them, their abilities, and their roles to improve yourself in the game.
Each agent has a role and different responsibilities they need to fulfill in order to lead their team to victory.
For example, Initiators are responsible for scouting and luring out enemies, whereas duelists should only focus on eliminating the opposing team and securing the area.
So unless you’re still learning how to play the game, don’t just pick a random agent when queuing up for matches.
Analyze your team picks while matchmaking and pick an agent that can fill in the weakness and support the team. Communication also plays a key role here!
Unique abilities and signature ultimate are what make each Agent fun to play around with.
But that being said, it is equally important that you get the useful abilities and time them correctly.
I’ve seen a lot of Phoenix players using curveball in bad positions and flash-banging their own teammates.
So, before picking a new agent, make sure you familiarize yourself with their abilities and test them out in the open range.
Learn the Maps
Next up are maps. Having a good knowledge of the game’s maps can elevate your overall gameplay as you can predict/identify enemy-pushing locations and prepare your crosshair placement.
It will also help you make better callouts and pinging enemies’ locations.
Communicate With Your Teammates
While we’re talking about better callouts, I can’t stress enough how important it is to communicate with your teammates in matches.
Relaying the enemies’ status and location to your allies will help your team predict their next move and form the best strategies.
There are also some other benefits to having proper communication with your team. You can learn new gameplay strategies from other players and can adapt to different challenges.
You will feel confident about your role and, most importantly, make new friends along the way. (Do note that you may also encounter some toxic people in public matches).
The game offers a couple of ways to communicate. You can either use the Voice-comms or the in-game text channel.
Warmup Before Matches
A proper warmup before hopping into matches will help you tremendously improve your performance in the game.
It will prepare your reflexes and jump-start your muscle memory for landing those headshots accurately.
You’ll also see how most pro players and streamers preach the importance of warming up, as it can really make a difference.
I’ve personally seen good results in my own gameplay after incorporating warmups. I was able to react quickly and shoot more precisely.
There’s a variety of different training drills on the internet that you can follow. Find one that suits you the best and be consistent with it. Aim to warm up for about atleast 15-20 minutes.
Watch Pro Players
Besides practicing your skills by playing the game; you can also learn quite a lot by watching how other pro players play Valorant.
Take note of their crosshair placement, weapon selection, ability selection and timing, their strategies and tactics, etc.
You can even capture your own gameplay or replays and compare it with pro players’ streams to find your common mistakes and improve upon them.
Aim for More FPS
Although this might seem a bit far-fetched, your game’s average FPS can also influence your gameplay to some degree.
How? Well, FPS games, in general, require high average FPS for quick reflexes and reaction time.
You might’ve even heard how important it is for an esports player to have a high refresh rate monitor with low response time so that they can get the maximum FPS possible.
If you’re playing the game in sub-30 fps and you’re up against players who are on ~200 fps, you are obviously going to be at a disadvantage as they can react faster than you.
This will hinder your performance and lower your confidence.
So, in order to get better FPS in Valorant, you can either lower the game’s graphical settings or upgrade your system (if it’s outdated).
Final Note
Getting better in Valorant or in any skill takes time. The pro players who are among the best in the world have sunken in more than thousands of hours in the game, understanding the game and perfecting their skills.
But you dont have to do that! I know it is impossible to invest that amount of time in Valorant, or any game for that matter.
But what you can do is play the game consistently. Playing just a few hours every day will help you improve a lot. Just make sure you are practicing your skills and developing strategies in every session to make it fruitful.
On the flip side, if you’ve been playing the game too much and feel like you’re not improving, then perhaps it’s time to take a break from the game. Video game burnout is a real thing that can degrade your performance unknowingly.
Take a few days off the game and play something else (like some relaxing games) or complete your pending tasks. The game will always be there, so you can always come back when you feel like you’re ready.
Remember, video games are supposed to be fun. “If it’s not fun, why bother?” –Reggie Fils-Aimé
