EDIT: user moejkel pointed out that CSGO only counts shots fired that result in kills. Valorant counts all shots that hit, which kind of invalidates this entire article. If you want to read it still, I'll leave it here
TLDR at bottom
In some of my past writeups I noticed how some Valorant players have fairly high headshot percentages, and I wanted to compare these HS% with those of players in CS. I expected CSGO players to have a lower overall HS%, due to factors that makes it's mechanics fundamentally different, such as having definite spray patterns, or the presence of 4 different damage zones. However, the result is not what I expected.
The 5 players with the highest HS from Masters 2 Copenhagen are:
-Pancada: 39%
-SEIDER: 38%
-stax: 36%
-Shao: 35%
-mindfreak: 35%
(via vlr)
The 5 players with the highest HS from IEM Cologne 2022 are:
-b1t: 61.6%
-Twistzz: 61.5%
-fame: 56.6%
-misutaa: 54.7%
-hunter: 54.2%
(via hltv)
This trend of Valorant players having lower HS percentages also continued through LCQs across all regions, with no player getting any higher than 40% HS. Honestly I expected Valorant players to have higher HS% since there are no spray patterns, making headshots all the more important to go for, and also that every pro I watch seems to only click heads and have perfect crosshair placement. However, some possible reasons for this metric include
-Valorant has more vertical movement, requiring flicks up and down that are much harder to hit.
-Valorant also has extremely heavy tagging, making body shots rewarding in some cases
-Some damage dealing ultimate abilities, such as Jett, Neon, and Raze, don't punish the player for going for bodyshots
-Oping is an essential role in Valorant and is sometimes picked up by multiple players. Given the op encourages bodyshots, it could lower ones HS% (However the same argument can be made for CS so im not sure about this one)
-CSGO players are just different
This is outside of my expertise so I am open to criticism on this one. I also must admit that I don't watch professional CSGO the same way I watch professional VALORANT, and that I'm not sure how CSGO's stats collection works as compared to VALORANTs.
TLDR: CS players have a substantially higher HS% than VAL players, not really sure why but might be because of Val's easier mechanics and abilities.