If you are here you must already know what Valorant is and most probably you are playing if for a few months and want to be good at this game. You want to improve your game cause
- You get hyped up in a clutch situation and not play your natural game.
- Or you just don’t know how you get killed by a player going in and out of wall corner
- Or you are confused with all the skills and utilities.
Then you are in the right place.
Even with all those different character and skill-set.
Valorant is a “multiplayer tactical first-person shooter.”
It’s not a Hero shooter like Paladins or a Battle Royale like Apex Legends and its definitely not MOBA like Dota and League of Legends.
Its a multiplayer TACTICAL FPS to its very core.
All it matters is the skill you develop with the time, unlike some games where you get a more powerful character and equipment with more time spent.
And that’s the beauty of the FPS like CS:GO & Valorant.
That was a brief description as in what is Valorant, now lets dive right in on
How to master Valorant
Now some of you might be like are you yourself a pro giving us these tips. So Nah I ain’t a pro! But I have been playing FPS(that stand for First person shooter btw) since the last 6 years and I know a thing or two that might help you to get your game right.
So lets start with looking at how a game of Valorant takes place.
When you start a match the Map is choosen randomly by the system out of the four maps. Which are
Split, Bind, Haven, and Ascent
The game operates on an economy-round, objective-based, first-to-13 round competitive format with each round of 1minute 40 seconds with an additional 45 sec on spike plant where you select a unique agent to play for the entirety of the match. Every agent (characters) has four unique abilities (including one ultimate). Each agent has different class and role in the team.
In this article (You can also skip directly to the desired part)
- Different agent classes and their role in the team.
- Smokes and flashes.
- How to maintain a good economy.
- Customizing settings to get most fps out of your machine.
- How to use some most popular weapons in-game.
- How to play in clutch situations.
- Best practices to Follow
Different agent classes and their role in the Team
There are four different classes in “Valorant:” Duelist, Initiator, Sentinel and Controllers.
- Duelists are the ones who push forward into conflicts with the enemy team. Think of them as attackers. They are the berserk of the team and my favorite class. They are equipped with abilities that help them to play more aggressively breaching the enemy lines with the sole focus on getting kills. Their abilities don’t help the team that much tactically but they can help the team by scoring as many kills as possible. It’s a class for kill frenzy fast-paced players who love to rush and kill.
Agents
Role While
Attacking: While on the attacking side, the duelist’s sole purpose is to enter the site and get the first kills opening up the site for the rest of the team.
Defending: While on the defending side, the duelist should play at the point of contact where they can do the most damage to the attacking team.
- Initiators focus on gathering intel and help the team push. They help team to breach into a well-guarded site by using their abilities to block line of sight and taking aggressive peaks. Its a class for those players who love to play the team game.
Agents
Role while
Attacking: While attacking the initiators should coordinate with the Duelists helping them to push into the site by providing them with the player positions and smoking the common corners where the enemy might be.
Defending: While defending the Initiators ususally play a little passive cutting line of sight of enemy entring the site and or giving the enemy positions to the team.
- Sentinels are defenders, usually playing the backline of a team. They block access to areas of the map using various abilities. Some people even consider them to be the most irritating class. Cause they help to stop the players rushing in.
Agents
Role while
Attacking: While attacking the sentinels are suppose to be passive and once the site is taken and the spike is planted it is their duty to stop the enemy reinforcement to retake the site.
Defending: Sentinels shine while defending. Due to all their abilities focusing on defending a site the sentinels are solely responsible to stop the enemy team rushing into the site.
- Controllers are good at blocking off sightlines and generally offer support to the team by smoking important corners or sneaking behind enemy defenses. They bend the flow of the round in favor of their team.
Agents
Role while
Attacking: As Initiators the controllers help the team to reach the site by smoking important points and/or by sneaking behind the enemy, confusing them.
Defending: While defending the controller use abilities such as poison and fire to stop the enemy team to close into the site.
Smokes and Flashes
As any other tactical shooter smokes and flashes is important part of the valorant ecosystem.
There are characters with a different types of smokes and flashes but the objective remains the same i.e. to cut the line of sight.
Smoke:
Smoke cover a particular area covering it making a screen to block the vision. The smokes last for some time giving players to do movement without getting caught.
Flashes:
Flashes are also used to block the enemy sight but unlike smoke they work if the enemy is staring at the area where flash is thrown and its effect time is comparetivly little. It just blinds the enemy making them unable to see anything while with the smoke the enemy can still see just no behind the cover.
To understand, smoke is like you hiding under the bed!
And flash is like someone flashing a light in your eyes making you blind.
Each agent have a different type of flashes and smokes. My suggestion s you head over to the Practice Range and check them all out.
How to maintain good economy
Economy is one of the if not THE most important part of a Valorant match just like in the CSGO.
You need to sync your purchase with the team otherwise you will loose(unless you are a pro)
You need to spent wisely otherwise yow will waste all your money and YOU WILL LOOSE.
You need to help team mate in need if you have funds otherwise he wont have a gun and you MIGHT LOOSE.
Hence economy play an important part in the game.
Some tips to maintain good economy are:
- The most costly weapon isn’t necessarily the best one for you.
- Look at how your team is buying and buy only when the team is buying
- Learn terms like “FULL ECO”, “HALF BUY”, “FULL BUY”
- Full eco/ save rounds means you are supposed to buy nothing and play the round with the pistols only.
- Half buy/ force buy means you can buy a shield and a light gun like SMG.
- And full buy means you should buy the best weapon of your choice with heavy shield and utilities.
- If you lose two rounds in a row it’s most probably that your team might be very thin on fund and at that time it’s best practice to do an eco for coming one or two rounds! Depending on if you win the round.
- If you saw a much better/ costly gun dropped on the ground its always good to ask if someone from your team wanted that so that you can pick it up and lower the financial burden on the team. (btw “F” is the key to pick up a dropped weapon),
- If your teammate requests a gun (it’s done by Right-Clicking on the gun in the buy menu! A pop up will appear in your buy menu) and if you have enough funds its always good to buy it for him by clicking on it.
- The important point is there is a threshold limit of 9000 credits in the game i.e. it’s the max amount of funds you can keep hence its always good to look if teammates need drops and to buy the most utilities to assist the team if you are close to it.
Customizing settings to get most fps out of your machine
The Valorant was designed to work even on low power PC and laptops but there is no shame if you can pull the last fps out of the game.
Since the start of the competitive match-making, the players have always focused on the FPS(i.e. Frames per second) rather than the graphic quality. Cause its the fps that help players to better track enemy in the clutch situations.
Hence we will try to reduce the graphic quality increasing the FPS count.
For that head to the Settings > Video
Set everything to low !
That’s it, the Guru Mantra to increase FPS.
Material Quality, Texture Quality, Detail Quality, UI Quality, An-isotropic Filtering anything you see set on high set it to low! You can also alter each setting individually and check change in your fps !
BTW in Valorant there is internal fps counter which can be enabled by
Settings>Video>Stats>Client FPS
From this panel you can also show or hide other stats counter such as ping and others.
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How to use some most popular weapons in game
Valorant allow you to carry 3 weapons actually Two weapons and One Knife.
You have to carry one Side arm, for which you have four options
You don’t need to buy classic as its your default weapon! Others you can buy according to your choice.
Now each sidearm comes with distant feature such as-
Shorty is a sawed off shotgun which gives most destructive result in short range. Its best to hold those close angles from where you can pop one or two head.The disadvantage being only two shots before reload and dont work that good in long range.
Frenzy is an automatic gun with high rate of fire. Its best when you have to push and kill ! the oly downside being slightly less per bullet damage compared to others and Mgzine get empty fast.
Ghost is a silent pistol with the high accuracy and good damage! The drop side being low ammo quantity.
Sheriff is the revolver dealing high body and head damages even in long range with a down side of very high recoil.
Now as for your primary weapon you have tons of options ranging from shotguns to highpower sniper rifles.
I wont be going into each of these weapons but i will explain you about the classes.
- Smg– Smg are the cheap guns with high rate of fire and less damage nd less range! On the positive end their recoil is low hence you can fire them while moving. They are best choice for force buy rounds.
- Rifles– Rifles are costly with sightly less rate of fire but they offer unprecedented damage and long range accuracy! They have high recoil hence tougher to control. But most of them give a one bullet headshot capabilities.
- Shotguns– They are best used for defences! They give high damage on close range but on the long rang they are of no use.
- Heavy– Weapon in this class are machinguns. They provide us with high rate of fire and high quantity magazines with more damage then smg but they are heavy and decrease the movement speed adversely.
- Snipers– These are the most costly weapon on the game. THey have very high damage and one headshot kill capability but on the down side they ar heavy , costly, hard to master, and are bolt actions meaning after firing one shot you hae to wait some time before you can take another and in that time an enemy can kill you.
Each of therse guns have there pros and cons and to find the one for yourself. I advice to go to the practice range and test every gun to see which one suits you best.
P.S.Dont forget to ADS (aim down sight) by right-clicking for more accurate precise shots.
How to play in clutch situations
For those of you dont know what a clutch situation is, “A situation in which only one member of a team is left alive to fight the other team that is clutch situation“. It dosent matter how many members other team has left with it can be 1v1 clutch going all the way up to 1v5 clutch.
Every now and then you come across situation when you are the only one left alive.
All the pressure on you with your dead teammates watching your every step and screaming what to do in mics adding more to the anxiety. This hppens with everyone and most of the times we arent able to play our natural game in this situation and we get killed more easily.
Hence here are some tips on how to play in these situations.
- Ask your team to keep scilent and just give important calls. This is very important as with your team screaming in your ears will make you anxious and stop you from listining to the audio cues of the enemy.
- Keep calm ! Dont just rush into the enemy! Take your time to analyze the situation.
- If an enemy passes you without noticing then dont rush to kill him instantly! wait there might be his team mate coming behind hime and you can take both of them by suprise as the second enemy will definately turn the blind eye on a corner from where his team mate passes without getting killed.
- Try to be as silent as possible use shift(key to make you move slow) as much as possible ! cause if enemy cant hear your footsteaps then you can suprise them by attacking from place where they wernt expecting you.
- Its pretty obvious but “Keep your crosshair where you expect enemy will appear”
- Keep track of your environment and position of your enemies.
Best practices to follow
- Practice a lot, spend time in the Shooting range.
- Know your favorite character, their positive and negative points.
Like I knew that Phoenix heal itself in it’s fire.
- Get to know maps.
- You run faster with a knife
- Always keep your crosshair at the head level.
- Keep your crosshair at a position where you think the enemy is going to appear.
- While peeking the enemy try to shoulder peak it reduces your chance of getting killed.
- Learn Recoil management, as soon as possible.
- Once again, Head over to the Practice/Shooting range and practice everything, from your recoils to your agent’s capabilities.
These were a few tips and tricks using which you can be a better player.
Stay Safe! & Happy Gaming!
A technology enthusiast who loves to create and break things. Love to work on Linux, technology, and Computers. I am a CyberSecurity aficionado, and wannabe wildlife Photographer constantly learning and experiencing new things.
