With VALORANT’s ranked gamemode being well underway and the first people rising to its highest rank – aptly named Valorant – I’m sure you’ve also taken your first strides on the road to improvement. Though grinding in ranked is key to getting the hang of things – and loosing every aim duel to high MMR CS:GO players is a given for players on their first fore into FPS gaming is par for the course – there are some things to be gained from every game you’ve previously played.

Counter-Strike:

First and foremost, if you are one of the CS:GO (or any other Counterstrike-esque game) players migrating to VALORANT, you don’t need me to tell you that crosshair placement, map knowledge, and utility usage make the player. What might be a more useful takeaway, however, is that all of your teammates – even in ranked – might not have as firm of a grasp on these fundamentals as you do. Patience and the occasional encouraging comment go a long way when it comes to thriving in ranked and will get you further than backseat gaming and an attitude will. Who knows, you might even find yourself on the receiving end of a Sage resurrect for your efforts and welcoming nature!

Now that we’ve covered the most easily translatable skillset, let’s get into one of the most prevalent.

League of Legends:

Though you won’t have honed your tracking playing League of Legends for the past 10 years and your hours upon hours spent reviewing Faker or Dopa VODs won’t help you avoid the Sova ultimate headed your way, there are still a heap of valuable skills that the game will have taught you along the way.

First and foremost: Don’t commit to fights you know you cannot win. We’ve all been there. You just got solo-killed toplane at level 5 and instead of cutting your losses, buying a Cull, and walking to lane, you immediately TP to a minion, your opponent is a level up on you and proceeds to kill you again. They might just thank you kindly for your 300g donation in all chat.

Just like in League, you can often judge whether a play will end in your favour or not before you decide to execute it. Does their Viper have all of their utility up and your Brimstone has yet to use his smokes? Better not to push into the site. Did an Operator shot just whizz past your head, but you barely got around the corner? Odds are immediately re-peeking the same angle won’t end well for you.

Next up, cooldown and skill management are actually pretty similar between the two games. Though VALORANT’s resources tend to be scarcer, with most abilities coming with one to three purchasable charges, the concept remains the same. You only want to use abilities if you can pinpoint an immediate gain from it. Using your smokes at the start of a round as Brimstone leaves you out of steam, possibly without ever having stopped an enemy push!

Instead, try treating them like you would a high-cooldown ability in League of Legends. When you can make a play with them, go for it, but consider that if it doesn’t work out, you’ll be left vulnerable. This skill can be picked up from a variety of other games as well, of course, whether that be Overwatch, another MOBA or even utility usage in the aforementioned Counter-Strike.

In addition, one of the most underrated skills in lower level League of Legends is map awareness – and VALORANT is no different. Whenever you are not actively engaged in a gunfight, taking frequent glances at your minimap will provide you and your teammates with a constant stream of information. Similar rules as in League of Legends apply! If you just spotted their jungler headed towards the enemy red buff, odds are he won’t show up at his blue for the foreseeable future. Deduction like this can turn a lack of information into information. If you just saw their Phoenix cross through Mid headed for A, he won’t be able to attack B without giving away his position by using a cross-map teleporter or taking a very long way around.

Overwatch:

With the two biggest franchises covered when it comes to inherent interest in VALORANT, Overwatch is perhaps the one with the most high-tier player migration thus far. Whereas many Counter-Strike players are turned off by the ability-focused nature of the game, Overwatch enthusiasts will know this setting by heart. While one’s aim can definitely be honed playing Overwatch – just like in any other FPS-centric game – it is perhaps unique in the fact that as time has gone on, fights are decided less and less by raw aim but rather proper ability usage and ultimate economy.

Ultimates in Overwatch, of course, charge up over time, taking into account the player’s own performance. While damaging and healing won’t get your ultimate to charge up more quickly in VALORANT, killing enemies and planting or defusing the spike will. As such, the way ultimates are used as a resource is quite similar across the two games. In an elo with actual coordination, you can think of one Overwatch teamfight as one VALORANT round. Both teams will throw as much of their arsenal at each other as they deem necessary and someone will come out on top, inching a little closer to their end-goal of winning the match.

However, these games are further alike in this regard. If you can judge that a fight will be won and preserve your ultimate charge in Overwatch, it will give you a significant advantage heading into the next one. Similarly, using your ultimate whenever it is available is usually not the best idea. In a 4v2 situation? Odds are the enemy needs to come to you, the round already being in your favour. Preserving your ultimate will probably help your team in subsequent rounds more than closing this one out quickly would.

Also consider what the best possible usage for your ultimate is. In Overwatch, using a Zarya graviton – a very powerful, fight-changing ultimate – without any follow-up tends to be a waste. Consider that using, for instance, Cypher ultimate, when you are already aware that three of them started pushing into a site moments ago will not yield much information. As the enemy is already on the move, you won’t even force them to abandon a possible angle they are holding.

On the flip side, Sova ultimate is rather weak when compared to a variety of others. However, using it to aid in your teammate’s push by capturing the enemies’ attention with it can work wonders. You might not get a kill, but your teammate will be able to approach far more easily.

Team-Coordination:

Though this skill is not specific to any one game, anywhere below high-level League of Legends, trying to direct your team is bound to get you flamed rather than praised. In a variety of other games, however, be they the aforementioned Overwatch or CS:GO, a Battle Royale game such as PUBG or Apex: Legends or any other game one could find themselves in a position to convey critical information to your teammates in a matter of seconds is bound to improve your skill in VALORANT.

Even if you are not satisfied with your aim and your game knowledge is still in its infancy, absorbing and conveying critical information – gathered through, for instance, the map awareness mentioned earlier – will be sure to swing rounds in your favour. Whether you are still standing to collect the spoils of victory afterward will be of no concern to your teammates when your shot-calling leads to an ace for your best aimer.

However, do keep in mind that even when you are the mastermind anticipating every move the enemy will make before they do, no one likes a backseat gamer. Anyone familiar with a no-respawn gamemode will have had a teammate breathing down their neck, criticizing their every move after they were caught out early in the round. Not only will this get on your teammates’ nerves – duh – you might also just impact their performance negatively.

To summarise: Coordinating a push with a teammate is great! Using your utility together, organising a retake or even offering to drop someone who is doing well – or not so well – a weapon will all benefit your efforts to win the match. But don’t overdo it, especially after you’ve been taken out for the round. Relay what intel you have quickly and concisely, then let the remaining members of your team play it out.

Lastly – though this might seem like second nature to some of you – if you are able to, party up with people you enjoy playing with! Whether you are holding a site together, covering the plant for one another or simply having a laugh in Discord about all the shots your teammate just whiffed, playing together will make the ranked grind a lot less frustrating.

After all, that’s one less person – or many more – on your team that you can trust not to bait you into the entire enemy team just to get a refrag. Well, at least not without sarcastically thanking you afterward.

Ranked attitude:

Finally, and perhaps most universally applicable, make sure you know what your goals are when jumping into ranked. Some players will set out to become the best of the best while others will only want to test their mettle against players of equal skill, no matter what elo.

If you truly want to enjoy the game and improve, don’t worry about your rank for a second. Your goal should not be to improve your rank, but further your skill. You will naturally climb as you improve.

However, there are some final fast-track tips to not stifling your own improvement. First and foremost, there is no point in blaming your teammates. That is not to say your teammates may not be worse than you, but simple maths will tell you that in a game of 5v5, you are the lynchpin that can tip the scales. If the 4 players on your team are all inferior to you, so must the 5 on the enemy team be. That makes you the deciding factor in who wins and who loses.

Of course, that is not to say that every game is winnable. Sometimes the team just doesn’t gel, players are having an off-game and you are so caught up in your teammates’ mistakes that your gameplay worsens. It happens. Take a breather, perhaps a quick break and go into your next game with a fresh and positive mindset.

Secondly – which every League of Legends player will confirm, and most Overwatch players will begrudgingly agree with - stick to a select few characters, ideally just one (with a fallback in case a teammate is first to the punch). Don’t pick the most overpowered of the litter on a whim, go with one you truly enjoy playing. Then play no one else.

When your character’s abilities are second nature to you, you can focus on the game on a grander scale. To call back, once again, to the map awareness mentioned earlier – it sure is a lot easier to spend all of your downtime glancing at the minimap if you don’t need to reconsider where your utility ability needs to be aimed to block off whatever pathway the enemies will take into the site.

Conclusion:

As in every other competitive game, translating skills will only help you get so far. When Overwatch started out, for instance, TF2 players were almost unanimously seen as the top players. But as time went on and more dedicated and hungry players arrived on the scene, they were surpassed despite their skillset.

If you possess none of the experience mentioned above, perhaps because VALORANT is your first FPS or PC game, don’t fret. If you grind ranked you are bound to get better. And who knows, with the right mindset you could find yourself at the top of the ladder soon enough!