Valorant is often ridiculed for being an inferior game to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and how it isn’t as difficult as some players make it out to be. However, world-class players from CS: GO like Nitro, Hiko and Mixwell have failed to cement their place as the best Valorant player in the world. In fact, new faces like nAts, Cned and Asuna have been labelled as the best players throughout the first year of competitive Valorant tournaments.
The quality that makes them rise above their competition is that these players have excelled at both the parts that make up Valorant: the mechanics and the tactical ability. We will categorize the concepts into smaller sub-concepts, making it easier for you to improve your own skillset.
1- Crosshair Placement
We have seen thousands of players searching for how they can improve their aim, and that’s why we want to start with the topic of Crosshair Placement. It doesn’t matter how much you can score against the bots in range if your crosshair placement isn’t on point in the actual game. If you don’t know about crosshair placement, don’t worry. We have got you.
Crosshair placement is a concept that asks the players to always have their crosshair at the head height of an opponent. When you play while focusing on your crosshair placement, you’ll notice a lot more headshots since your flicks will be more precise and accurate.
It is perhaps the thing that will improve your skillset massively without effort because your first shot is pivotal to you being more accurate. There is no recoil control needed!
You also won’t need to adjust your flicks up or down and will only need to focus on bringing it either a little to the left or right. You’ll also be able to control recoil better if you aim your crosshair at head level. Hence, improving your crosshair placement is the start of the journey to Radiant.
The way to improve your crosshair placement is to walk around different maps and keep your crosshair at head level. The best thing about Valorant maps is that so many indicators are built in the maps to help you adjust your crosshair. The boxes are the best tool. Whenever you see a box and notice your crosshair isn’t aligned with its top end, immediately bring your crosshair there!
An excellent strategy to try out in the firing range is to turn on the bots’ armour and set the difficulty to medium. You are only allowed to use a Vandal and need to land headshots. You should only increase the difficulty once you quickly get more than a 24 score on medium bots.
2- Prefiring Angles
A common mistake that separates the best from the rest is prefiring angles. The concept of prefiring angles simply means that you are confident that an opponent agent will be at the next angle you are clearing. That’s why you start shooting a split second earlier before actually seeing the enemy.
This will give you an advantage over the enemy agent. You will obviously deal more damage than they will be able to. A common concept to pair up with prefiring is pre aiming. In pre aiming, you won’t fire until you see someone. This is the more used concept, but when you are confident an enemy will be at the spot you are clearing, don’t be afraid to deal some damage with prefiring.
3- Play with lower sensitivity
If you want to improve your aim, start playing on low sensitivity. We are serious. If you are playing on low sensitivity, you reduce your error room. A decreased sensitivity allows you to monitor opponents more consistently, resulting in more reliable accuracy. Tracking is perhaps one of the most underrated concepts in Valorant. Still, you will see considerable gains in your win rate when you learn the art of tracking.
Anything between 200-320 eDPI is considered low sensitivity. However, if you have a small desk, you could find yourself sliding your mouse around the screen several times to clear angles properly. You will get better at Valorant if you stick to one sensitivity to develop muscle memory.
4- Warm-Up!
Warming up will make you feel more prepared to participate in a match and boost your confidence. We often see Valorant players asking what warm-up routine is the best. Still, we believe the answer to that is pretty subjective. Everyone needs to find what works for them by themselves. A good warm-up routine that helps me is doing three things: aim training tools like Aimlab/Kovaaks, Valorant Range and Deathmatch.
I head into each of these modes with a clear objective in my head. An excellent way to warm up my hands for the following drills is to play Gridshot in Aimlab. I only focus on doing the task as swiftly as possible, which gets me into the flow. A good practice is to do several Aimlab tasks after that and only focus on one thing at a time, like accuracy or speed.
I do several tasks for 20-30 minutes and then head into the practice range in-game. This doesn’t take much time but gets me familiar with the actual environment I will play in. A good practice is to do the Medium bots 5-7 times before heading into the Deathmatch.
In the end, I will play a Deathmatch with the audio disabled. This allows me to only focus on what’s in front of me and improves my cognitive skills. 2 or 3 Deathmatches are enough, and you are ready to hop into the game!
That’s my warm-up routine, but you can take whatever parts of it you like and create your very own warm-up routine too!
5- Stop Ego Peeking!
If you feel on top of the world and are landing headshots consistently, good for you! However, this is a once in a day occurrence and many times, you will need to be careful of how you peek at different angles. You need to stop overextending and start isolating angles. Ego Peeking is one of the worst bad habits you could have!
Isolation is meant to keep your interactions one-on-one. In Valorant, it’s critical to avoid battling many people at once or by yourself. The goal of reducing your exposure is to offer enemies as few opportunities as possible to damage you. Hence, the less the enemy knows about your position, the better.
6- Stop Playing Alone!
A common mistake that many players make is trying to be the hero. We don’t need to be the hero as long as we stick to a game plan! If you are pushing alone and engaging in a lost duel, then it’s your fault! Another scenario is that you are lurking the whole round and your team died pushing together, then once again its your fault! If you abandon your team and push the other side for a sneaky move, then it’s your fault!
This tip summarises that please stop playing alone and stick with your team. It is always to have a bad plan rather than no plan at all. This practice will also improve your game sense in the long run!
7- Economy Management
The best players are extremely good at managing their economies. You often will keep your mediocre guns like Spectre or Ares and opt for a bonus round, but the opponent turns the tide of the game with their better guns. Learning the art of managing the economy can only be obtained through watching better players.
We recommend watching players like Hiko and Tenz get a better idea of how the highest-ranked players manage their economy throughout the game. It is such an important skill to master, but not many players put the effort to start their journey to being rich throughout the game!
8- Learn your lineups!
There is so much variety in using your abilities in Valorant. However, you need to master the abilities that require specific lineups for proper usage. A Viper snake bite is useless if you aren’t using it in a post-plant situation. Similarly, a Sova is futile in the game if you aren’t using your recon dart properly to let your team into the site!
Every agent class except the duelists requires you to use your creativity and elevate your team’s chances of winning the round.
Conclusion
Whether it’s mechanics, confidence, or tactical ability, the factors that make up your skills are critical in creating durable consistency in your games. If you disregard them, you’ll find yourself not improving and lacking the drive to work on yourself.
We will bring specific guides for different agents and maps, so stay tuned! You can check out our Breach guide here!
