Did you ever wonder what improving really boils down to? Or do you think having good aim fixes everything? I will show you a complete overview of what skills you need to learn to master Valorant and how you can improve them.
Mechanics
Mechanics come down to two things: aim and movement.
Improving your aim is as straight forward as it is difficult. The best way to actually do it is by focusing actively on your crosshair placement. You can first load into a custom game and walk around adjusting your crosshair permanently to head level. Later you can try it in a Deathmatch.
For movement I would try to practice basic skill jumps. It will increase your comfort with the general movement. You can just search for "easy skill jumps valorant" on YouTube and try the shown movement. Personally, I recommend the jump from A heaven to generator on Ascent or A heaven to box on Haven. Those are not only pretty doable jumps but also useful ones. What I liked to do is trying out satchel movement on Raze. It gave me the ability of mid-air movement.
Communication
Communication is such an underrated skill set in ranked. There are very few people who can comm properly. It even is relatively easy to do too actually.
You just have to focus on three simple things.
Firstly, call out when you see an enemy and where you saw them. Especially, if you died you should call out the following: location, which agent & damage you dealt.
Second, tell your team what you are doing. Where will you smoke? When are you flashing? Do you want to push or play back for retake? It will make everyones' life so much easier when every teammate is on the same page.
Lastly, ask for help. Do you need a smoke covering an entrance? Should your teammate flash for you? Are you alone and need someone to hold/peek something with you? This simple tip can prevent you from dying so many times.
Mentality
I can't stress enough how having a good mental is such an important factor to winning games. In so many games, I've seen a teammate giving up on winning after just one round.
You have to really watch out to not get into your own head. Don't repeatedly tell yourself how you're just "not good" today after missing a shot. Don't make your teammates responsible for everything (even if they make questionable decisions). And absolutely never use communications (text or voice chat) for blaming somebody. So what should you do?Just tell them nicely what exactly they can do different next time. Your teammates will just play worse after being blamed the whole time.
And what if you aren't happy with your own performance? Try to let that misplay go. Try to stay in the flow and just play the next round. Personally, whenever I am close to tilting, I take a sip of water and say something along the lines of "shit happens" to myself.
As a rule of thumb: only think about the negative things you can improve right away! You got a bad timing? You couldn't hold the site because they were throwing 5 ultimates at you? Those things you can't really control, so don't worry about it. But instead think about the things you can change. Do you really need to push that? Should you have peeked with your teammate?
Gamesense/-knowledge
Generally, watching pro play is a great idea here. Identify how they are rotating, which positions they are playing or when they buy and save. The main things for this category are: positioning, map understanding, ability usage and economy.
For all of those you will probably find guides on YouTube but let me give you an insight.
Positioning is all about understanding the numbers. Do you have a man advantage? Then just play together with your teammates to not get picked off. Does neither team have an advantage in numbers? You should then play according to your role. On attack, a duelist should try to find an entry. On defense, a sentinel should play with his setup and hold a site.
Map understanding means which areas are important. On fracture, you'll want to get dish control on A and tower control on B. These both areas often decide if a retake is successful.
Ability usage is so important because the amount of utility is limited. Only flash, when you intend to peek off it (except skye flashes for info). Use info gathering utility only when you intend on actually taking that space and so on.
Economy management is very important because by force buying every round you won't win a game. Save when at least two teammates can't buy rifle, shield and abilities. Also, if someone has 8k credits while another one has 1k, said one can drop a gun over.
Comments