Valorant Tips to Dominate Matches
Riot’s 5V5 first-person shooter has garnered a lot of player attention since its release thanks to the wide variety of utilities and Agents available. As such, the game has become extremely competitive with the plethora of players that have migrated to it from other FPS titles.
However, if you are a beginner or just want to step up your game to perform better in ranked games, we’ve got some quick and simple tips to get the ball rolling!
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Tips To Get Better At Valorant
If you’re hardstuck at Bronze or Silver, and can’t seem to remove that red streak from your Match History, we’ve got just the thing for you. Below, we’ve listed some essential tips that can practically guarantee you success (mostly) if you start implementing them in your Valorant games:
Know Your Role
Valorant has a unique assortment of Agents, each with its own weaknesses and strengths in certain maps. All these Agents fulfill a specific role in your team composition, which is an essential component of winnable games. The roles are classified as follows:
- Initiator
- Controller
- Sentinels
- Duelists
Knowing what each role does or is supposed to do is essential if you want to improve your Valorant skills. Here’s a short summary of each role:
Initiators
Initiators, as the name suggests, initiate an attack for your team and challenge the site’s control on the opposing team. Their job is to clear corners, and smoke sites, gather information, and allow your team a clear path to enter the site. Having an initiator makes it extremely simple for the team to push or re-take a site with their specialized skill set.
Controllers
Controllers are Agents that are able to manipulate the map according to their team’s needs. This includes blocking the enemy’s line of sight by either using smoke or walls. People playing Controllers should position themselves in the backlines since their death can open up their team to get gunned down from all angles.
Sentinels
Sentinels are passive agents whose main purpose is to lock down sites on Defense and make it extremely difficult for enemy players to enter. While on the attack, their utility is best used to watch flanks for their team. These, similar to Controllers, are positioned at the backline to make sure no enemy can backstab your team.
Duelists
The most popular category of Agents that players like to play is Duelists. The Agents belonging to this role have a pretty dynamic gameplay and a simple objective: grab as many frags as you possibly can. Duelist utilities are packed with blinds, stuns, and ways to escape after a duel. If you’re looking to play a Duelist, you need to position yourself on the front and not quiver in the face of death.
Communicate With Your Teammates
Communication is perhaps the most important thing in Valorant as it is a 5-person game, after all. The game requires you to constantly provide callouts to your teammates and let them know what you are about to do so that they can react accordingly. Communication is especially necessary when you’re playing a role like an Initiator or Controller (basically any utility-dependant Agent) since you don’t want your utilities to interfere with your teammate’s plans.
Furthermore, letting your teammates know when the enemies are entering a site or when you think that they are rotating to the other site can be the difference between winning and losing. On the other hand, if you’re hesitant to use comms, you can always make use of Riot’s efficient ping system.
The ping system comes in extremely handy to let your teammates know the position of enemies on the map or what move you’re planning with just a click of the Z key (default keybind).
Warmup And Practice In The Range
When it comes to testing out new weapons or Agents, the Range is your best friend. Valorant’s Range is a pretty convenient method to practice new Agents or improve your aim. You have access to unlimited ammunition and utilities, so you can go all-out berserk!
Apart from using the Range to learn new weapons or Agents, you can also utilize your time there to warm up for your ranked games. Shooting a couple of robot heads surely gets the blood pumping, and most importantly, it revitalizes your muscle memory which can help you get easier headshots inside an actual game.
Learn From Watching Professional Valorant Players
While spending time playing the game is important if you want to improve, however, watching professional players and learning their tactics can be a great help. It’s recommended to watch streamers or players who play your main Agent, so you can learn more and easily apply that to your games.
Learning how these players use your Agent and push their limits is definitely something to consider if you want to develop a better understanding of Valorant. Furthermore, professional players also often upload a step-by-step analysis of their game to let newer players understand what they were thinking while making specific moves.
Understand Buyouts
Managing your economy alongside your team and knowing when to buy and when to save greatly affects how you and your teammates perform in the game. This should be taken into special consideration during the starting rounds of any half since wasting your economy here can easily tip the game in the enemy’s favor.
Usually, it’s always a better idea to save one round and play with a pistol rather than force-buying a cheap SMG every round to match up with your team’s economy. If you notice that your team is struggling with the economy already, make sure to communicate and ask them to completely save for a round.
Similarly, if you see any of your teammates struggling with buyouts while you’re sitting with ample credits in the bank, be kind and share a gun with them. This is especially recommended if you’re sitting at 9,000 credits since any further credits from round wins won’t stack.
Bonus tip: You can see how many credits you’ll have in the next round by opening the in-game weapon shop and checking out the top-left corner, right under “MIN NEXT ROUND”.
Use A Smaller Crosshair
When it comes to your crosshair, size matters. Having a smaller crosshair can be pretty useful, especially when you’re holding a long angle. This is due to the fact that a larger crosshair will make it significantly more difficult for you to track and stay on top of your enemy’s head, especially if your recoil goes berserk.
A smaller, static crosshair not only gives you a clearer view for one-tap headshots but makes it easier to spray or burst without losing your accuracy. Here are some small crosshair codes you can try out:
- 0;s;1;P;c;5;o;1;d;1;z;3;f;0;0t;6;0l;0;0a;1;0f;0;1b;0;S;c;6;s;0.949;o;1
- 0;P;h;0;f;0;0l;5;0o;0;0a;1;0f;0;1b;0
- 0;P;c;4;h;0;d;1;f;0;0t;6;0l;1;0o;1;0a;1;0f;0;1b;0
- 0;P;h;0;f;0;0l;4;0o;0;0a;1;0f;0;1b;0
- 0;P;h;0;f;0;0t;4;0l;1;0o;2;0a;1;0f;0;1b;0
Final Thoughts
While these steps might not feel like much, they can make a huge difference in the long run, especially when you play against more competitive teams. We hope that these steps will help you rank up in your game. In case of any new tips and tricks that might come with the introduction of a new meta in the game, we will make sure to post the updates here.
