nah ghost clears

I could lock sage and drop 40 in any lobby you've ever been in

if ur with a duo that means less randoms

if you only care about improving it shouldn't make much of a difference

best way to get better at any agent besides actually playing it is to find a ranked vod of a pro and study how they play. I spent a bit of time doing that for a couple agents, and definitely the most for sova.

For sova in particular alot of people get hyper obsessed with lineups and think thats the only thing that makes a good sova. Your goal in a round isn't to use some fancy lineup you saw on twitter or youtube, your goal is to play the round out and use that lineup when it may become handy.

First thing you wanna do is understand what your job is one each map. I'll give the example of ascent defense. On ascent defense you should ideally be playing towards B main on defense with a high penetration gun like an odin or ares. On ascent defense you always fight for both extremities - the omen or whatever one-ways A lobby, and the Sova plays B. The reason the sova plays B is because the sova is uniquely effective in spamming and harrassing the attack off of that space because you have a dart to spam with, shocks to bounce off the roof, a drone, you can set up an oper on that line, etc. You can also still help your team by sending support darts A or mid, which is a big part of playing sova on that map on defense, so make sure you know those lineups.

After you understand the general idea of your role on the map, look at the pro vod and pay attention to what they're doing and how they do it, not just write down lineups and call it a day:

What do they buy on pistol? Where do they play from on pistol? Where do they play from on gun rounds? When do they rotate? What path do they take when they rotate? Where do they retake from? On site hits are they the 2nd person in? or last? Do they play in or out the site during postplant? What are they playing for on postplant? etc

I'll give you two actual examples of stuff I learned from this process

first example, I watched a S0m vod on ascent where he played the defensive pistol round from market. Why did he do that? Because on pistol your not gonna be buying a sheriff (the shocks + ghost buy is pretty obviously better), so he's not gonna be playing from the spot you spam from. Instead, he plays for a high dart on the wall outside market on the B site hit, and tries to spam them through the market smoke when they get highlighted by it. Btw i saw a really cool dart lineup that's literally ideal for this on my twitter feed today, here it is https://x.com/LearnVAL/status/1838632992916299929
And then he uses the shocks for plant denial (pretty easy to do from sound on B from market)

second example, a sacy vod on icebox. A Site hit on attack. Darts the wall and drones the team in, pretty standard stuff. But what does he do after that? He's usually 3rd or 4th in so he's responsible for some trading, and on the way in he sends 1 shock for kj mollies, and either sends the other towards where someone just shot from, or bounces it on the right wall to hit rafters to hurt someone who's flooding from rafters. Why does he send both shocks like this? because you're not really gonna get any big value saving them for postplant, so might as use them. In fact, there isn't really much to play for postplant on that site as sova anyways, so after he burns all his util getting and assisting on site, he never really runs back to jail, he's on the site playing for kills the rest of the round at that point 'gladiatoring'

I was pretty inconsistent. Some days I would get off after like 3, other times i would literally play all day until like 4-5 AM

But across all accounts I was definitely still playing alot of val

^^^ this guy gave a good answer too, we basically said the same thing about confidence. Gotta play and swing to win

definitely, you get good at things by doing them alot, you get good at video games after playing alot.

Every jiujitsu black belt has spend countless hours on the mat, every great free throw shooter has taken hundreds of thousands of shots, and so on

idk if theres some magic answer to consistency, I haven't had big consistency issues once i hit about that rank ur in. I think a big thing though is just confidence. If you're not playing with confidence, you're just gonna make you aim issue worse. Gotta believe in every swing and duel you take. Maybe lower your sense if you're really having issues?

started taking the game seriously end of episode 6 when I was plat, hit rad for the first time mid episode 8. Also played a bunch across multiple accounts, especially when I was high asc - mid imm. Probably have like 1100 ish hours total if I had to guesstimate. Played a little paladins not so seriously and fortnite semi-seriously before val.

definitely feel that sometimes

He's very fast and 95% of the time he 1-bursts you so you have almost no chance to shoot back. You don't really get second chances with him if you miss your initial shots.

dude its a video game

If you want a serious answer maybe the importance of keeping a good mental and a positive attitude

but dude its a video game

it aint that bad

Probably overthink, aiming shouldn't be something that you're consciously thinking about, you should be ideally flowstating aim so you can focus on your micro/macro. I also think gamemodes where you practice against real people like tdm or dm are better than range bots/kovaaks/aimlabs, but thats a personal thing

I think if you have good fps and good internet the rest won't make a big difference, i'm not a peripheral nerd that needs the latest and greatest

If you think you can change that by talking to them do that, but some people insta-tilt for no reason when you talk to them about stuff like that so its a risk. Otherwise its just something you gotta deal with in val, just focus on your game and what you can do and accept its out of your control.

Had a little phase back when i was immortal-ish where I played them like an hour a day, but I barely touch them anymore. Personally think its more worth your time to just play the game or use in-game methods. But I know you or somebody is gonna ask anyways so the ones I played the most were : KovaaKsAcingBrightTank and KovaaKsGlidingPeachController . Don't try to speed through it like your tenz on gridshot, be accurate.

Duelist forsure, and definitely neon specifically rn she's busted. Reyna Jett and Iso are also classics. Being impactful on smokes is a good way too, clove is a good pick for that.

Don't really have a preference, but playing sova with a good team and timing a dart really well and watching them get scanned and the kill feed light up for your side is probably the most satisfying thing

I didn't but my friend got into a game with sayf and got carried by him

Immortal are kinda more tryhard and emo. in radiant people do also comm seriously but it's more chill and laid back. Depends on the lobbies ofc

definitely closer than other ranks, you can literally queue into a lobby with the same people 4-5 times in a row

because cali and west players have a reputation for being dogshit (most of the US population is also near those two servers lol)

im NA so i cant answer the first

i also dont know these guys personally so i can't give you an opinion but if you wanna know what its like to play them in ranked

flyuh - don't know if i've ever played with/against him but his teammate mada is insane and clove diffed tf out of me the other day
brawk - the greatest ascent odin player of all time. the michael jordan of odin spam
runi - dont know if ive ever played with/against him
reduxx - really good aim and really good duelist and one of the best neon abusers
verno - dont know if ive ever played with/against him

They're obv insane players they have trophies for a reason, idk what you want me to say LOL

Theres no one answer to how to get better mechanically, its all super personal. Some people really like aim trainers, some dm, some tdm. I personally like tdm but just do what works for you, i dont have your answer. the only tip i can really give is work on your crosshair placement and always play and swing with confidence your not gonna have a good game mechanically or otherwise if your playing scared

yeah zanders awesome

not yet but i really want to have the honor of getting shit on by them. Less is my goat

i don't watch every game or anything like that but every time i watch less i feel like im watching the best player in the world. I remember watching a game vs navi i think and he was just fucking annihilating them on bind. Then he was 1v5ing prx on split. Idk how he did this year but hes an animal and hes my goat

best players i can name are kangkang less aspas zekken texture meteor riens chichoo leaf sayf forsaken mako tenz karon alfajer

i dont watch everything tho so maybe ill get flamed for this. Also not gonna order them but kangkang gotta be 1 rn

didnt play against all but here you go

zekken- he kinda owns you in a sneaky way you don't know your getting shit on until you hit tab and he's 15/7. I haven't played against his famous neon or raze though so its prob different
cryo - best awper i've ever played against and hes really good on pistols too
demon1 - good aim but he never did anything too crazy
tenz - hes only been in my game once that I know of, he was on my team and we got hard stream sniped but i could tell he was good
sinatraa - he comms, pings, actually tries and gets his so hes a good teammate, his sova def better than his raze tho his raze isn't that special
inspire - don't know i've played with or against him yet
Som - good aim but he has this crazy ability to always peek you at the worst(best for him) time idk how he does it or if he has a sixth sense but its so fucking annoying
Shanks - he really funny so when hes on ur team the vibes are up, when you play against him he doesn't do anything special if you didnt know it was him you couldn't tell it wasnt a random
Curry - good aim and knows how to get his every time. hes really good and he and tdawgg are the best ranked callers ive played with

when hes on your team its great hes funny asf

play alot, don't tilt, don't solo q, work on your crosshair placement

or just forget all that and learn to abuse neon cuz shes stupid broken atm

probably oxy

i always fill but alot of people just lock duelist to get radiant if they're stuck imm3 cuz its obv the role you can have the most impact

I think my actual rankup game i played jett but i was still just filling

its situational, yay and to an extent aleksandar set an unrealistic standard where they never crouched or sprayed, but they were exceptions. all the best aimers in the world go for crouch sprays (sometimes, not always) these days those guys included.

As a rule, if your first bullet hits body or is really close to the target you should tap, or if you have time to reset before you get shot back

If you swing into somebody already holding you you should crouch spray, or if you really need to confim a kill quick because you're gonna get caught in a crossfire, because you're essentially full commiting to a fight at that point

This also isn't something you should be consciously thinking about when ur fighting it should be automatic, you kinda just learn it intuitively. Hope that helps. And yeah long rage you should generally tap

Alright its been like 2 hours im getting off

Alot of people are asking similar stuff so my final tips on if you wanna get better:

1 play alot
2 don't tilt
3 work on your mechanics by whatever works for you, its personal. some people love dm some people love aimlabs, i like tdm personally
4 work on your crosshair placement
5 if your super serious about ranking up don't solo q

sorry for not answering everything, you still might catch me lurking on this site from time to time

reduxx but hes already a pro so probably cane

i clear yay but not el diablo

19 and lilac/violet

awesome

hard to pick one guy but curry if you count him as a streamer is probably the best. Otherwise Poppin Eggster and Roza are the next best imo

Idk if theres a guy specifically who people have the wrong perception on, but when you see people complain about stream sniping that shits a real thing they're not just malding for no reason

You're talking about the DRX guy right? I don't think i have, sorry

LOL

mental wise you just gotta understand some games you're gonna do everything right and still get smoked 13-3. Just accept your gonna lose and get shit on even if you do everything right sometimes and just go next. If you're truly tilted get off for the day, even take a 1-2 day break if you need.

Aim wise I don't really get in huge slumps anymore like i did when i was newer. I just play a couple tdms then queue again. Honestly if you're above immortal ish aim slumps are more about confidence then actual aim. Play and peek to win, you can't play scared because you don't trust your aim and expect to do well

Ranked theres not much difference because everybody is pretty good and will have good/bad games. Pro play is completely different, ive even played in shitter tournies that dont even show up on vlr and its another world completely. Im sure that even though I can keep up in ranked I wouldn't be close to my ranked performance in t1/t2/t3.

Purely ranked speaking its probably game to game consistency. These top guys like oxy zekken curry and whoever are going on crazy winstreaks dropping 25+ every game even in losses

favorite is probably zander. Some pros kinda act and look down on us random ranked guys because we obv aren't as good as guys who play as a career, but zander doesnt have an ego and is always pretty nice. He's insane too so thats nice too

worst is grim this guy genuinely trolls 7 games in a row to hit a wall clip

By worst opponent do you mean hardest to play against? Everyone is good and has good games but the ones that stand out and make me think 'this guy is different' are

Oxy - Peeking this guy is impossible you have to spray him through a smoke to kill him
Narrate - like oxy but even smarter he will also basically always win an 1v2 against you if your teammates fuck up
Tuyz - yall won't believe it but cuz he's not a huge star like oxy but this guy is so slippery. Played against him on breeze a couple times where he was viper and hes actually a fucking magician backsite B no matter what we threw at him we couldnt kill him. His movement is weird too
Eggster - hes the best yoru and its not even close

Plenty of other guys are insane too but thats just my experience, you can tell when you play with or against top pros that they're just operating on a different level from the rest of the lobby

and if you mean worst as in most unpleasant to play against:
Canezerra: He locks iso neon yoru jett every game and runs it down on you hes in your spawn pushing ct 20 secs in the round. What makes it worse is that he's insane

aim, playtime, and mental are probably the biggest things

people can just autopilot decisions that immortals would have to consciously think about because you've been in similar situations hundreds of times

After that its just about shooting and not tilting

yessir

type shit

https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/noxy%23100/overview

I regularly play with and against most of your favorite pros and streamers

Ask me anything

Im not gonna be an active regular on this site so nows ur chance

When your in this elo aim is the most important thing. Play alot of TDM/DM, whatever works best for you. Don't sit in corners and crouch spray every time, try to learn to burst strafe.

Smokes is generally not good for low rank players because it takes alot of game sense, but if you like it and play it alot its fine.

Stack with higher rank friends whenever you can, it will help you get better.

Think alot about 'we last saw this person here, where can he be now/where is he probably now'

And play alot, its the only proven way to get better