If you ever ask someone-"How do I get better at playing Valorant?", you will receive the old plain suggestion which is to maintain crosshair placement, learn recoil and spray pattern, and whatnot.I am not saying that they are totally useless, however, if your shots don't even connect then what's the point in learning them?
From my personal experience, switching from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to Valorant brought me so much randomness that I couldn't understand why my shots weren't hitting and WHY WAS I NOT GETTING BETTER! But upon realizing some major faults, I was able to turn the tables on Valorant.
Key points that we are gonna discuss-
- Tracing
- Micro Flicks(vertical or horizontal twitch)
- Counter-Strafing
- Shouldering
However, keep in mind, DO NOT OVERDO IT. Practice the following methods for about 30-40 minutes(overall) a day, in order to notice a significant change in your gameplay. But don't go beyond an hour as you will end up injuring yourself.
You can practice these following methods in the "Open Range/Shooting Test" menu available in-game.
Tracing
As the word suggests, the following practice is to keep on staring at the head of the dummies(bots basically) while moving for about 2-3 minutes. You can repeat the process for about 3 times but do remember to take breaks in-between. However, the target is not to kill the dummy but keep on staring at its head, which will help you to get familiar with your sensitivity and memorize the position of their heads and as a result, it will improve your crosshair placement automatically.
Micro Flicks
This one is going to be a bit hard, where you can practice by flicking to the heads of the dummies keeping the crosshair approximately an inch away. It enables you to hit shots at close or mid-range pretty damn slickly. This practice, in particular, is quite hard to do and will require multiple sessions to master. However, upon mastering, you will be able to hit some decent shots instinctively as you will have memorized certain positions and your reflexes will act automatically.
Counter-Strafing
Counter-Strafing is basically canceling out momentum by walking in a direction and after a brief stop, immediately pressing the key which enables you to walk in the opposite direction. For example, you press D to strafe left, so after a brief stop, you have to press A to make you Counter-Strafe. What it will do is make your shots accurate by resetting the accuracy of the weapon, similar to the accuracy while your standstill. This practice will immensely improve your accuracy and help you evade shots fired by enemies.
Shouldering
Shouldering is quite similar to Counter-Strafing while staying behind an object. This helps you to quickly kill enemies(because you are Counter-Strafing and your first shot will be 100% accurate) if you sight the enemy first and it even helps you to block incoming shots as you are quickly shifting behind objects. This method comes in handy at situations when you have information on enemy's position.
Conclusion
If you are new to Valorant, I am quite optimistic that by practicing the following methods will definitely help you to improve and enjoy the game to its fullest. Last but not least, be friendly and try to communicate with teammates to obtain intel on enemies, so that you get the upper hand. That's all there is to it, Peace out!
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