We've got a handful of great tips to get you aiming better and improving at Valorant. Time to rank up!
It's time to level up your Valorant play. Whether you've been stuck on your rank or you're just looking to impress your friends, these tips will elevate your status.
We've divided the advice we have into 5 sections, but we suggest looking through them all.
How to Get Better Aim in Valorant
3D Aim Training
While we do practice aiming by playing the game at all times, not everyone has developed a powerful initial foundation for good aiming. In order to work on fundamentals, practice makes perfect.
A great method for better fundamentals is to strip away the stress of the game and practice in isolation. You can get started with 3D Aim Trainer, a free training platform for FPS games. This practice mode trainer allows you to sync your Valorant mouse sensitivity and other settings to resemble aiming in the actual game, which is ideal for training. Then, you can start practicing various aspects of aiming, such as flicking, tracking, click timing, and switching.
With no wait times, no deaths, no looting or walking around, you’re focused on improving your aim and develop your muscle memory faster, making you a better Valorant player. There is also a great Valorant Aim Trainer guide on the website, which includes daily exercises that will be a great way to improve. You don't need a coach thanks to this program.
Get back to the game and test yourself out against the bot practice challenges. Try to get 30 bots down consistently on easy every time, then graduate to medium. Make sure to not aim slightly above the heads to line up a perfect headshot. Don't add movement yet and don't flick fast until later, just focus on headshots.
After getting this down quite well, you can start adding a little movement, since you probably won't be standing completely still in the game. You can start taking 2-3 side steps, then stop and shoot when a bot appears, and so on.
Then, move to flicking. Most players will overflick, but you can practice this in 3D Aim Trainer, under the Aim Flicking skill. Get better at this aspect to prepare yourself for real enemy encounters.
Improve Your Positioning
While aiming is extremely important, so is positioning. If you can't create a good situation for yourself, you will more than likely keep losing. How often do you find yourself facing multiple foes at once?
Instead of rushing in, try to hold your position and wait for the opponent to show first, rather than peeking or walking out.
The key here is to put yourself in 1 vs. 1 situations more often than not. Keep the following in mind when thinking about positioning in Valorant:
- Did I try to setup a 1 vs. 1 duel?
- Do I have an easy escape route if things don't turn out in my favor?
- Is this an angle enemies expect?
If you find yourself consistently failing on these, you might need to study the maps a bit more to develop good positioning to set up more favorable conditions that lead to victories.
Improve Use of Abilities
While you're still working on your aiming and positioning, you could always make a difference with the smart use of abilities in Valorant. Think about how you can make an impact with them. Did using your skills make a difference in the encounter?
Practice using your skills in smart ways with the following checklist:
- Did my skill slow down, block, or impact the enemy in any way? For instance, any smokes, walls, tripwires, alarms, traps, etc.
- Did my ability reduce the number of approaching angles for my enemies?
- Did I give myself or my allies any kind of edge during a fight?
- Can you use that to figure out what the enemy might do next?
Develop a sense of purpose and intent while using your abilities and think about how to use them with impact.
Improve Your Game Sense
This skill is a bit more vague, but it basically boils down to being a big brain.
Game sense involves your knowledge of the game and using it to be more predictive. How well can you use your knowledge? Do you know all the abilities in the game? Do you know their cooldowns? Can you use that to figure out what the enemy might do next?
A big part of developing game sense is analyzing your own replays. This is a huge part of getting better in just about any game genre, not just FPSs. Check your own vods to see what happened, how the enemy moved and approached you, and answer questions that arose during gameplay. Reach conclusions and learn from them.
While playing Valorant, we highly recommend using Moments, a free clip-capturing app within the SteelSeries GG software. It has auto-clip functionality with Valorant, so it will capture Aces, Clutch, any headshot kills, and 3+ kills in a round. You can also capture clips yourself with an easy shortcut (default Alt+S).
Use the clips you gather to analyze intense moments in the game to learn from them and develop a stronger game sense in Valorant. How did you get the kills that you did? What prevented you from them? Could your positioning have been better?
Improve Game Strategy
This aspect is a bit more dependent on your soft skills and teammates, so if you are lacking the latter, you might have to expand your circle a bit. It's all about good communication. If your team lacks the coordination to make effective plays, you are much less likely to carry the game, even if you're some sort of big-backed MVP.
For example, it sometimes may be smart to give up a point, wait for your teammates to respawn, and regroup. Splitting up could mean facing a larger force and wasting lives. Also, try to keep your money in the same range as everyone else's, so that everyone can be fully kitted at the same time for a stronger attack and defense round.
Rank up with SteelSeries
Coordination, communication, strategy. Those are the key components of winning as a team. If you have friends to play (or even strangers!) try to come up with basic strategies to put all the other previous tips and tricks to work together. Think about positioning and pair that with available abilities your squad has. Use your game sense and knowledge to effectively utilize your teams' tools as well as predict possible moves from the other team.
As a result, you will find yourself having more map control. Try to take the middle of the map before they do!
That's everything we have for getting better at Valorant. Remember, practicing lots is very helpful, but don't forget to analyze and reflect. Take a break from grinding when you need it. And give 3D Aim Trainer a shot!
