How to Improve Aim in Valorant

Aiming in Valorant is a critical skill that can make or break your performance in competitive matches. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced player, improving your aim is always a game-changer. While it may feel challenging at first, with the right techniques and practice, you’ll see significant improvement in your accuracy and reaction times.

Mastering your aim boosts your confidence and helps you land those crucial headshots in high-pressure situations. This guide will walk you through effective tips and training methods to enhance your aim and give you the edge you need to dominate your games.

Adjust Your Sensitivity Settings

Before you set your sights on improving your aim in Valorant, review your in-game sensitivity settings. Mouse and controller sensitivity is key, allowing you to adjust how quickly the crosshair (your visual aim marker) moves based on your mouse movement.

Sensitivity settings aren’t a one-size-fits-all solution. The best settings for you will depend on your play style, but there are some best practices. Lower sensitivity is most common as it helps you improve your accuracy, meaning you have to move your controller more to turn and aim. However, higher sensitivity settings allow for quicker movement but can make aiming more challenging, sacrificing precision in the process.

Because you can spend a lot of time waiting to come across enemies in the game, we suggest opting for a lower sensitivity as this can help you make more precise movements, and improve your headshot accuracy, and ensure less twitchy aiming.

Optimize Your Crosshair Placement

Proper crosshair placement is fundamental to improving aim, reaction time, and overall performance in the game. Here are some tips to help you improve your crosshair placement so you can take more accurate shots:

Aim at Head Level

It’s good practice to keep your crosshair head level to minimize the distance you need to move when an enemy comes onto the screen. Keep your crosshair around the height where enemies' heads would be when they peek or move. If you're standing or moving behind cover, adjust the height of your crosshair accordingly, so aim towards the top of doors, windows, or walls where enemies are most likely to peek out from.

Align Your Crosshair with Common Angles

Valorant maps are full of predictable angles and choke points. As you approach corners, doorways, windows, and clear angles (spots where enemies might hide), pre-aim and align your crosshair with those common sightlines so you’re already on enemies as soon as they peek out.

Anticipate Enemy Movement

This last tip for optimizing crosshair placement comes with practice and experience. As you continue working to improve your aim, you’ll eventually be able to anticipate moves enemies are likely to make.

Try predicting where enemies will pop out based on your knowledge of the map and the round. For example, if you’re defending A site on Split, anticipate that enemies may be pushing through mid or B and adjust your crosshair placement accordingly.

Practice Spray Control Techniques

Spray control is the ability to manage a weapon's recoil pattern while firing continuously. Spray control in Valorant is essential to becoming a more accurate and consistent shooter, especially for using automatic rifles like the Vandal or Phantom. Each automatic weapon in Valorant has its own unique spray pattern.

The spray control technique relies on knowing the spray pattern of your weapon so you can counteract it by moving your mouse in the opposite direction. When you continuously fire a weapon, the bullets follow a predictable, circular pattern. For example, the Vandal's spray pattern goes upward, then drifts to the left and right. Try memorizing the specific spray pattern of your weapon of choice.

If you’re just getting the hang of your weapon, start with controlled bursts to familiarize yourself with how the gun behaves instead of immediately going for full sprays. Try firing in 2-3 round bursts and control the recoil by pulling down and adjusting your aim after each burst. Breaking it down like this as a beginner helps you get used to your gun’s pattern and reduces the chance of overfiring or spraying too much.

Engage in Deathmatch Games for Real-Time Practice

Playing deathmatch rounds applies the pressure you need to improve your aim in Valorant. In Deathmatch mode, you get the chance to go against enemies repeatedly to help you reinforce your shooting and aiming muscle memory.

Engaging in constant action and fast-paced encounters helps sharpen your reflexes and reaction times since you’re encountering a constant stream of enemies that are actively moving and shooting back at you. This is also a good opportunity to get familiar with various weapons and proper crosshair placement without the pressure of having to win round after round.

Analyze Gameplay and Study the Pros

When in doubt, look to the pros. Valorant is played by professional gamers who you can learn a lot from and get some inspiration for your own playing strategies and style. Some players we recommend checking out are TenZ and Tarik. Whoever you watch, here are some key things to pay attention to, which can help you improve your own gameplay:

• Crosshair Placement: Focus on where players are positioning their crosshair in different situations, like when they turn corners or while their player moves across the map.

• Gun Control: Study how players adjust to different weapons to ensure control and accuracy while shooting. For example, with automatic weapons like the Vandal, players will pull their crosshair down to compensate for the recoil. On the other hand, for long-range rifles, players often leverage burst or tap firing, which means firing multiple rounds at once.

• Weapon Choice: The pros use different weapons for different situations in gameplay. Adapting your weapon choice for different situations, like firing from a long-range to up-close combat, can help you improve your accuracy.

• Positioning and Angles: Strategizing your movement and positioning is key to improving your aim in Valorant. Don’t go out guns blazing. Be strategic and watch how top players hold an angle, use utility, and pre-aim in battles.

• Situational Awareness: Part of what makes professional Valorant players so good is their ability to make quick decisions, anticipate enemy movement, and utilize the various maps. In Valorant, part of improving your aim isn’t just mechanical skills, but game sense as well.

It can also be helpful to record your own gameplay and watch it back to identify areas of improvement. Pay attention to aiming mistakes, crosshair placement, and where you could have landed a better shot or optimized your flick shot.

Use Aim Training Software

When in doubt, practice makes perfect. While Valorant doesn’t have an in-game aim trainer, there are plenty of tools you can leverage for practice. Aim trainers are programmed to replicate the environment of different games so you can practice shooting targets and know that practice will translate into your gameplay.

Some aim trainers, like 3D Aim Trainer, have a Valorant-specific training curriculum to help you improve your reaction times, practice micro-flicking to improve your shooting accuracy, familiarize you with spray control for various weapons, and help you master recoil for each.