Not confident in your ability to frag? Follow these tips to boost your chances of winning your gunfights. Every little detail counts toward winning duels, don’t put yourself at a disadvantage before you even shoot your gun.
There are certain steps to follow when committing to a fight in Valorant. Assessing the situation and taking these steps to execute a duel should be routine for every player, especially those who main Duelists. Although killing the opposition is a main aspect of the game, it is not the biggest. When going for a kill, it must have a purpose. It reminds me of this quote from the legendary football manager Pep Guardiola:
“I loathe all that passing for the sake of it, all that tiki-taka. It’s so much rubbish and has no purpose. You have to pass the ball with a clear intention, with the aim of making it into the opposition’s goal. It’s not about passing for the sake of it.”
In Valorant terms, the quote means this; Do not go seeking and winning duels just for the sake of fragging and getting numbers up on the leaderboard. You have to fight with intention, whether it is clearing an area, or making it safer for your teammates. Do not just “go kill” for the sake of eliminating the opposition. You must answer, “Why am I taking this duel?”
Answering this question is the first step to taking a successful duel. If you don’t answer this question, you might be fighting in a perilous position, where you are outnumbered and outplayed. Answering this question and taking a smarter fight will be more advantageous, resulting in a higher chance of you winning the fight.
After asking and successfully answering this question, you can move onto an action phase where you follow these steps:
Playing to the advantages of your gun should be your priority. You should not take a long-range fight with a Spectre in hand, while the opposition is rocking with rifles. You should not take a close-range fight with a Vandal in hand when the opposition is on an economy round. Understanding what weapons are involved in the round is the first step to taking a successful duel.
The best non-mechanical chance you can give yourself is by playing the fight tactically. If there is a way to isolate multiple targets into a series of 1v1 fights. Do that first before you go gung-ho into battle. The easiest and best way to isolate the opposition is by the use of smokes. If you are trying to clutch as a Controller agent, use smokes! Too many times have players forgotten about their abilities and challenged opponents through a dry peek. If you’re a Duelist, use your flashes and your positioning to isolate these fights.
A proactive isolation is using something like Raze’s Paint Shells to force an enemy to peek at you. A more passive isolation would be the use of smokes so that you can peek at them.
Pre-aiming and crosshair placement in general is the most important aspect of winning fights. The less work you have to do adjusting your mouse, the quicker you are at neutralizing your opponent. Take a moment to stand still before you swing, adjust your crosshair placement to head level and then swing to fight the opponent. Here is an article that helps you use your environment to help place your crosshair at head level.
Pre-aiming your crosshair before the fight will allow you to win more duels than just running in and moving your crosshair at the first sight of the opposition.
You might not know this, but there are different types of swings that you can do when taking a fight. There is wide swing vs peek and there is far swing vs close swing. Each one is interchangeable, but one must be chosen from each type (i.e., wide far swing, wide close swing, etc.)
The further you are away from the wall dividing you and your target the more of an advantage you have. We go more in-depth with the relationship between aiming and positioning in this article, but understanding what position you're in and what is most favorable will ultimately help you win your duel.
For example, you do not want to wide swing from far away if you have a Spectre or a Bucky. This is a duel you will most likely lose, no matter how good your crosshair placement is. A far wide swing would best be paired with a Vandal. Deciding what kind of swing you will deploy combines your understanding of the weapons involved, isolating your duel, and pre-aiming.
Players should tend to default to far swings, where they move as far away from the wall dividing them and the opposition and then swinging strictly with either their A or D keys. Close swings are only good for playing inside of a smoke, or with weapons like shotguns and SMGs. Players should wide swing if they believe their opponent is already pre-aiming their corner. The goal here is to catch the opponent off guard with your exaggerated movement. Peeking can be done to gain information, since peeking might result in a higher chance of death.
Once you have broken down your duel with these steps, it is time to fight. Remember that this checklist is something that is done almost instantaneously in-game. If the duel does not work out in your favor, you can always break down the play by referring to the checklist and thinking back at which step it went wrong. Sometimes you can isolate a problem in your gameplay and fix it, sometimes it is just a skill difference. Going into a duel must be done with purpose; if it is not, then you can end up throwing rounds by dying early just trying to frag for the purpose of fragging. Successful plays aren’t always centered around kills, but when you do need to frag, do whatever is possible to help yourself win those duels.
