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How to get better at Valorant: tips, tricks, and tools

From training your aim to training your brain, here's how to get better at Valorant, and dominate the ranks in developer Riot Games' competitive FPS game.

Yoru, a man in a purple and orange jacket holding a knife

How do I get better at Valorant? Valorant is a game of inches. If you want to be the best at Riot Games’ shooter, then your aim has to be crisp, your game knowledge on point, and your mental impenetrable. It’s a tall order, and for most just being able to play a few games casually with friends is enough.

However, if you’re reading this Valorant guide, you’re probably different. Maybe you’ve been hardstuck on your Valorant ranks climb, and are looking for something to give you that extra edge in the competitive FPS game. Maybe you’re getting out-macro’d, and want to develop your game sense. Or maybe you’re just tired of losing aim fights and going negative on Duelists, and need to figure out how to click heads better.

Fortunately for you, we’ve also pondered how to get better at Valorant – after all, how can we write about competitive games if we’re not competitive ourselves? Here in this guide, you’ll find all of the wisdom we’ve been able to collate, which will hopefully point you in the right direction, and help you get better at Valorant.

How to get better at Valorant

Below you’ll find our full breakdown of how to get better at Valorant, as well as links to a few helpful resources:

Aiming

There is no greater rush in Valorant than racking up an ace. Picking off the entire enemy team over the course of a round is the ultimate flex – but to do it you have to hit your shots. Right now, this may seem like a bit of a pipe dream if you’re barely trading one for one from round to round, but we’ve got you covered.

The first thing you should do to optimise your aim is appropriately set up your mouse sensitivity. While it’s usually ideal to have a large surface area for your mouse, while opting for a lower sensitivity to ensure better ergonomics and a smoother level of control, this is situational based on how much space you have and what is comfortable for you. ‘SkillCapped’ has a great video on how to properly set up your sensitivity, which you can see below.

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If you’ve come over to Valorant from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and still haven’t quite been able to get your sens how you like it, then check out our handy CS:GO to Valorant sensitivity converter.

The second thing you have to do before you so much as fire a Vandal is set up your crosshair. Ensuring you have the reticle which helps you find your opponents’ heads the easiest is the key here. As a starting point, check out what the pros are using in our Valorant crosshair settings guide as a starting point, then tweak as necessary.

So now you’re ready to actually practice you aim, but what are the best ways to go about it? Well, you can either make use of Valorant’s Practice Range, or opt for an external solution. The Practice Range comes packed with a number of different challenges, which can be set to different difficulty levels in order to practice certain aspects of your aim. This routine from ‘Sondo301’ is a solid example of that.

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Alternatively, if you’re looking for something more granular – perhaps your flicks are weaker going from right to left than left to right, or you have bad habits that you need to fix – then Aim Lab is widely regarded as the gold standard for aim training tools. You can check it out on Steam right here.

Make sure that you use either of these training tools to warm-up for a decent amount of time before heading into your first game of the day, as part of a proper warm-up regiment – you can thank us later when you hit that five-k.

Game knowledge

There is a wealth of information out there that will help you develop your Valorant brain, and over time your game sense. Here are some of the types of content we’d recommend you consume to bring your game knowledge to the next level.

  • Pro games
  • Your own VODs
  • Map guides
  • Specific agent guides

Naturally, if you want to be the best, you have to watch the best. Although a lot of the high-level macro play in pro games won’t apply to standard Competitive games, watching what top players are doing and reflecting on exactly why they’re doing it will automatically elevate your game. Additionally, high level games will give you a baseline as to what can be considered the right and wrong ways to play Valorant. If you can’t catch the Valorant Champions Tour games live, ‘Valorant VODs’ has a complete catalogue.

But you shouldn’t just watch what others are doing, because there is a great deal you can learn from watching your own play. Although perhaps not as high-quality as the pros, watching your games back can help you identify what you’re doing right, highlight those bad habits and other deficiencies in your play, and ultimately figure out how to play the game better the next time round. Keep a notebook or word document handy while doing this so you can refer back to your thoughts later.

How to get better at Valorant: a Viper, Raze, and Cypher covering a defuse

Digging a little deeper, learning all the callouts on the Valorant maps will dramatically improve your ability to communicate with your teammates, and more accurately describe where the action’s happening.

Finally, finding educational content on your preferred agent pool will help you get the most out of them. For example, ‘Snapiex’ is a dedicated Sova player who regularly experiments with new lineups that not even the pros may know. Learning how to get the most out of utility and cementing the nastiest lineups will put you a cut above any mirror matchup.

If you haven’t quite figured out which agents you want to really dedicate yourself to yet, then check out our Valorant agent tier list for inspiration.

One final tip

Above all else, keep well-hydrated, maintain a healthy lifestyle, and take plenty of breaks. If you feel good mentally and physically, that will translate into your gameplay. There’s a reason why the top teams place a huge amount of emphasis on ensuring their players eat the right foods, get plenty of sleep, and exercise regularly.

And with that, you should have everything you need to get better at Valorant. Like anything in life, smart repetition is the key to rapid improvement. So don’t just practice hard, practice smart. See you in Radiant… or maybe Platinum.