Since Valorant’s release, there’s been a consistent element that has been a crucial part of the game. The Range is Valorant’s introductory stage for new players, and it’s where players of all skill levels warm up before they hop into matches.

The majority of players are familiar with Hard Bots and Practice Mode, but there are actually a lot of lesser known features of the range that can help with the less practiced parts of your aim. This article will first cover some secret tricks from the Range, then some techniques the pros use in their warm-ups, and a final routine that you guys can implement for practice.

Range Challenges

Everybody is likely already with the Easy, Medium and Hard challenges in the range. There is debate about whether practicing with these bots is efficient or not. The truth is, they are a nice warm-up tool to get used to flicking to enemies, but they don’t serve as an all-encompassing warm-up routine. Instead, the Eliminate 50 and 100 challenges serve as a more versatile challenge. Since the enemies don’t despawn after a short period of time, you can take it slower, practicing sprays, strafes, and other skills, while also having the option to flick at your own pace. Additionally, the wider spawn range of enemies allows for more versatile drills, shown later in the article.

Range Spraying Target/Bot

An underutilized aspect of the range is the target/invincible dummy, which is a great place to practice sprays. If your recoil is poor, this is the best way to improve your spray. Start by letting the gun of choice shoot its natural pattern, without moving your mouse.

Then, you can try to think about counteracting that pattern with your hand. Start by trying to get a perfect spray with the first 10-15 bullets at 5m (no need to spray after that many bullets). After this, you can progress to 10m, then 20m. A good indication of having proper spray is being able to hit 13-17 headshots on the invulnerable bot at 20m with a single Vandal/Phantom clip!

Flying Drones

These drones are a lesser used piece of equipment range that can be nice for some warmup and flicking. Unlike the Hard Challenge, the drones provide more variance in distance and location. Additionally, they respawn quite quickly, so there is low downtime between shots. This strategy has been showcased by players like TenZ, who talk about its usefulness for flicking.

Long Distance Aiming

For maps like Breeze and Icebox, there are very long angles that are fought over. Practicing the skills necessary for these fights is typically not achievable with the standard Range challenges, as the distance to the bots is not very far. Fortunately, Valorant has actually designed for this. Near the drone area, there is a piece of bridge that extends off the edge. Standing on this section provides a perfect sightline to the range, at a far distance. You can still activate the challenges, but it’s likely that you would use the Practice mode, with either stationary or strafing bots. This is great practice for precision taps, simulating those long angles that you would fight on in-game.

Sandbags

There are some sandbags to the left and right of the range that can help you practice changing your vertical distance when peeking. This is relevant for maps with ramps that you might need to peek enemies on, so it’s important you know where head level is.

Ceiling

You can actually access a part of the ceiling that is open using any agent with vertical movement. If you use Jett, you can also use her Jett knives for a simulated version of typical small dot aim trainer tasks, focusing on accuracy and switching from target head to target head.

Sage Wall Peeking

One area of the Range that is lacking is that there is no unpredictability with bots. In typical games, you will often have to peek into angles with no information. With the Range, you always know where a bot spawns as you go to shoot it. To counteract this, we can play the Eliminate 50/100 challenge while using a Sage Wall to block our line of sight. This way, we can peek out and isolate bot 1v1s, similar to how we would do in a real situation. It’s best to keep bot strafing on, so you will be unable to predict a bot’s exact location.

Pro Warm-Up Methods

Curry

A typical routine ranked maestro Curry performs involves a simple usage of the Practice mode. He starts off by flicking across bot heads, then proceeds to strafe while shooting bots, then finally practices his spraying by simply shooting at bots. This warm-up is good for seasoned players, and provides some nice priming before a match.

Demon1

Demon1 uses the range mainly to practice micro-flicking, which he claims to be the key to his success. He describes Valorant as a game that is very unpredictable; it’s important to be able to hit headshots from any situation, no matter where the opponent is peeking from.

Recommended Routine

Overall, I would recommend two routines: one for training, which is playing the range for longer periods of time for improvement, and one for warming up, which is priming your gameplay before playing a competitive match.

Training

The structure is as follows:

• Practice Mode: Flicking + Strafe Flicking (10 minutes)
• Practice Mode: Micro-flicks/Free shooting (5 minutes)
• Range Dummy: Spray Control (5 minutes)
• Eliminate 50 + Strafing Bots: Light tracking + strafing (Run through twice)
• Long Distance Aiming: Tapping (5 minutes)
• Sage Wall Peeks: Peeking from walls/flicking (5 minutes)

This is a routine that encompasses both techniques from the pros, and more selective techniques to train specific aspects of your gameplay.

Warm-Up

You can do practically anything for warm-up, as shown in the variety between pros. The important aspect is practicing how you expect yourself to play. A quick routine:

• Hard Challenge: Flicking (Play twice)
• Practice Mode: Flicking + Strafing (3 minutes)
• Drone Challenge: Wide Flicking (1-2 minutes)

Hopefully, you now have a better idea on how to use the Range to target certain areas of weakness in your gameplay. Time to get grinding!