Valorant Movement Guide: How To Navigate Maps Like A Pro
One of the most underrated aspects of Valorant is movement. Sure, your Agent mastery and your gun skills are going to help you win a few battles here and there. However, all of these will be put to waste if you don’t master the art of movement within the game. How you navigate the maps is just as important as how good you are with a gun.
In this Valorant movement guide, we’re going to share a few important tips that will help you move better in the game.
Crouching Isn’t As Effective As You Think
If you play around in the lower ranks of a Valorant match, you’ll notice that a lot of people tend to crouch more. The common belief here is that crouching helps improve your aim and it helps you dodge headshots mid-fight.
Regarding aim, it doesn’t help you in any way. As for defensive reasons, crouching does help you dodge bullets aimed at your head but that’s only for a few seconds. Your enemies are simply going to have to aim down to hit you. Once that happens, you’re a bigger target than you are while standing.
Since crouching offers no significant advantages, you may as well not do it. It’s not a common practice in the mid to high ranks in Valorant. Don’t believe us? Check out a few low-rank accounts from this cheap Valorant account shop and see it for yourself. Hop into a low-rank lobby and watch as most of the players start crouching.
Let Go Of That ‘W’
A lot of people tend to be too trigger-happy when it comes to their W on the keyboard. The last thing you’d want to do is keep moving forward. Regardless of whether you’re on the attacking or defending side, you shouldn’t make ‘forward’ your default movement. This makes you an easier target for enemies.
If you’re going to charge at an enemy, you can hold ‘A’ or ‘D’ alongside ‘W.’ This makes your movement less predictable, thus making you harder to hit. This is also a good way to clear corners as you’ll be able to peek at angles with more efficiency.
Keep in mind that you can move in all directions. Don’t let charging forward be a habit of yours in Valorant.
Learn To Counter-Strafe
Counter-strafing in gamer terms, means quickly moving and switching directions while moving. It makes you harder to hit as your movement becomes more unpredictable. It’s a common practice in all FPS shooters and as you can expect it plays a huge role when it comes to Valorant.
To counter-strafe in Valorant, you press your movement key in one direction until you’re going at full speed. Once you’re at full speed, quickly change directions, Now, counter-strafing while shooting is definitely hard. In Valorant, your aim is greatly affected by your movement. As such, it’s better to use counter-strafing while on the defensive.
A good instance to use this is when you’re reloading or preparing to use one of your abilities.
Learn To Jiggle Peek
Like counter-strafing, jiggle peeking is one of the core skills of all competitive FPS players. To jiggle peek, you simply need to quickly press ‘A’ or ‘D’ while in a corner. The corner gives you protection from taking shots, while the moment you expose yourself is a good time to gain intel on enemy locations or to take shots as well.
This is one of the hardest skills to master. What makes jiggle peeking more effective in Valorant is that some Agents can give you sight on where the enemy is. That means when you jiggle peak, you have the opportunity to take out enemies right away.
Jiggle peeking is relatively easy to do but what’s hard is making your jiggle peaks count. If you’re able to quickly snipe any enemies while you’re vulnerable, that’s when jiggle peeking truly hurts.
Learn To Bunny Hop
Bunny hopping is another common technique in video games. It’s one of the simplest ones to do as all you need to do is execute short jumps while moving. Bunny hop is also referred to as air-strafing.
Bunny hopping while moving in different directions quickly can be hard at the basic key bindings of Valorant. If your mouse has a scroll bar, you can bind jump to that so that you can easily move around while jumping. This is best used to get to the high ground quickly but it’s also great at making you more elusive when being gunned down.
Learn To Jump Spot
From one movement skill, we’re moving on to yet another. Jump Spotting refers to jumping on an elevated area and then dropping down immediately to get cover. The purpose of jump spotting is to gain intel on the location of the enemies on the map. Unlike jiggle peeking and counter-strafing, jump spotting isn’t applicable in all maps.
The perfect jump spot locations are areas that you can easily reach with a single jump. When you drop down, you should be perfectly covered by the elevated ground you just jumped on. When it comes to gaining enemy intel, this is one of the best movement techniques to use.
Master The Map
All of these movement tips we’ve given you are going to be useless if you don’t know the area you’re moving around in. Mastering the maps of Valorant is very important. Know all of the corners, chokepoints, and potential hiding spots in each area. The more familiar you are with the map, the more comfortable you’ll be when moving around it.
The best players of Valorant actually take the time to study each map. This lets them know the best spots for jiggle peeking, counter-strafing, bunny hopping, and jump spots. It can be overwhelming to master all maps at once so focus on one at a time.
There are lots of websites that let you view the maps of Valorant without having to launch the game itself. It takes time and patience but once you master the map, you can employ all of these movement tips with better ease.