As Riot continues to nerf running and gunning in Valorant with Patch 3.0, it has become increasingly important to learn how to correctly maintain accuracy in Valorant. Counter strafing is one of the most difficult movement mechanics to learn in Valorant, but learning it will give you many advantages in your fights.

What is Counterstrafing?

Counterstrafing is when you shoot accurate bursts while strafing. The idea of counterstrafing can initially sound counterintuitive. Valorant is supposed to be a tactical shooter with no running and gunning, right? Then how can you constantly be moving and also shoot accurately?

The central mechanic to weapon accuracy in Valorant is that while moving or jumping, the game reduces your accuracy and increases bloom, which is the spread of your bullets. This is why you generally don’t want to run and gun and instead want to stand still while shooting. But standing still also makes you an easier target. This is why many players strafe, or move from side to side, to avoid getting shot.

One easier to combine shooting and strafing is to strafe shoot. This is when you strafe between your shots. Shoot, Strafe, Stop, Repeat.

Another way to both shoot and strafe is to counterstrafe. Counterstrafing is when you shoot the moment you change directions between your strafes. This allows you to strafe much faster but requires precise timing.

This works because in the very small timeframe as you are changing directions, your velocity is effectively 0 and the game considers you to not be moving. In this small timeframe, you can usually get one or two accurate shots through. But the timing can be quite difficult and takes practice.

Why Counterstrafe

Although counterstrafing can be difficult, it is worth learning. By comparing the previous gifs, counterstrafing has much faster strafes, and it would be harder to hit and an opponent doing it. There are also many applications for counterstrafing. The most obvious one is being able to shoot and strafe when there’s no cover. Two other scenarios are when jigglepeeking and coming to a standstill by using counterstrafing.

Counterstrafing lets you shoot during your jigglepeek. Otherwise, you would have to completely stop to shoot, which makes it no longer a jigglepeek. Being able to jigglepeek can let you clear common angles extremely safely.

Counterstrafing can also allow you to stop faster when you see an opponent. To do this, you have to press the opposite key of the direction you are moving in, instead of just letting go. This technique can help you stop a few milliseconds faster which can make a difference in split-second gunfights.

Now that you understand the benefits of knowing how to counterstrafe. Let’s go over the steps to learning how to counterstrafe.

Step 1

Let’s start off in the Range. Once you get in, go to your crosshair settings and turn on movement error. This will let you visualize your error and understand the correct timing to shoot. Now take some time to get used to the dynamic crosshair.

Step 2

Pick a weapon and start by counterstrafing in just one direction and focus solely on movement and timing without aiming. To do this start by holding A to strafe left. Then let go of A and press D at the same time while also clicking to shoot accurately. Once you can do this consistently, start doing this in the other direction. You can practice on a wall or the practice range bot.

Step 3

Next, combine the two directions from the previous step and start strafing side to side in both directions and counterstrafe to shoot accurate bursts. Hold A, then counter strafe and hold D, and then counterstrafe and repeat. If this difficult at first you can do longer strafes between each of your bursts. As you improve, try to make the strafes and time between your shots shorter.

Step 4

Now you can start working on hitting still targets and clearing angles using counterstrafes. For this use the Practice Range Spike Defusal on hard. Go through each angle that the bots can be and counterstrafe them with a jiggle. If there is a bot there, react and shoot. Practicing this can help you become accurate a bit faster and also let you go return to cover if you miss.

Step 5

The final step in learning how to counterstrafe is to be able to aim while counterstrafing. You can either practice this in the Shooting Range or against real players in a Deathmatch. A Deathmatch can be more helpful because you can take a variety of different fights. Once you can consistently counterstrafe and subconsciously feel when you’re accurate, you can turn off the movement error because it can be distracting.

Conclusion

Don’t rush yourself through these steps and make sure you can do each one well before you move on to the next one. Learning counterstrafing can take days or weeks if you are new to FPS games, so take your time and pace yourself. After you master how to counterstrafe, go make your opponents mad because they thought you were still running when you actually counterstrafed them. Good luck out there and have fun!