You might’ve noticed that your aim is fairly accurate when you fire a few shots from the weapon, but as soon as you start using the weapon as an automatic gun, it gets increasingly difficult to control your aim. This happens mainly due to the weapon’s recoil.
A recoil is basically the kickback that you get from firing a weapon. It throws off your crosshair from the initial position, lowering your accuracy.
When you shoot the weapon in full auto or continuously, the crosshair will start deviating forming a pattern. Usually, this is known as a recoil pattern.
Valorant switches between a predetermined and pseudo-random recoil pattern randomly to reward players who can adapt in any circumstances. So, you cannot just memorize a gun recoil pattern to negate the effect.
But that being said, having a general idea about the recoil patterns and learning how to control them can help you tremendously in stabilizing the weapon and improving the accuracy while shooting.
What is the Recoil Pattern?
Whenever you fire a weapon in Valorant, its recoil will make your crosshair deviate away from the initial position.
The crosshair will steadily move towards the upward direction, making the rest of your shot very inaccurate.
Most of the weapons with full auto capabilities will have slightly different recoil patterns and inaccuracies. The only exceptions are semi-automatics such as sidearms and sniper rifles.
You can test this out in the shooting range. Pick any full auto weapon (SMG, Rifles, Heavys) and keep spraying the bullet on the shooting range.
You will see that the bullets’ spray pattern will first move towards the upward direction and then sway in a pseudo-random direction, almost making a T or seven-shape pattern.
How to Control the Recoil?
To make sure that your shots are accurate, it’s important that you learn the recoil pattern of your main weapon.
See how many bullets you can shoot before losing the accuracy. Make sure to also test it out on different ranges.
Once you get a general idea about the crosshair deviation from the recoil, there are different countermeasure techniques you can use to control it.
- As I’ve already mentioned, the bullet spray of full auto weapons moves in an upward direction. You can compensate for this bullet inaccuracy by moving your mouse downward. This is done to make sure the bullet doesn’t go over the target’s torso but instead will remain on them.
- Practice controlling the recoil in the practice range. Use your main weapon and try to land all your shots in the middle of the target circle. This will take some time to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes second nature.
- I strongly suggest you practice using short burst fire (tapping 2- 3 shots) instead of going full auto to ensure that you maintain your aim accuracy. Only resort to using full auto if you’ve been cornered by multiple enemies.
- In the case of semi-automatic weapons, make sure to time the delay between each shot to minimize firing error. In the short time gap between your shots, you can strafe in any particular direction to avoid making yourself a sitting duck.
- There are other factors besides your recoil that can affect your aim’s accuracy, such as movement error, crosshair placement, weapon resetting, firing error, etc., so don’t feel discouraged if you can’t nail down the recoil perfectly. You’ll need to be patient while mastering this skill.
- Crouching and aiming down sight can also help to reduce the recoil kickback to some degree. So, make sure to incorporate these techniques in your gameplay when applicable.
- You can learn a lot from watching as much as from playing. There are plenty of professional Valorant players who play and stream the game on a regular basis. I recommend you follow WoohooJin, Jingggxd, Forsaken, AverageJonas, and Jarso. You can learn a lot from watching their streams, such as how to analyze a given scenario and come up with a solution, recoil control, spray transfers, lurking, etc.
