Hi, I've learnt a lot of things during this act (and last act) of ranked. I was initially immortal 2 before the new rank ascendant was added, and ever since it was added i struggled to climb out of ascendant 1. But after some time I've developed a new play style and honestly it was the best thing I could've.

I'd just like to share some tips and tricks you guys could implement and learn in order to further advance yourself into the rank ladders.

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Heres a link to my tracker.gg for reference: https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/yuuki%23634o/overview

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1. Crosshair placement is (almost) everything

This is always said, but I honestly cannot stress enough on how important this is, by having good crosshair placement, not only have the advantage of being able to shoot first when you see the enemy, but the shot also becomes easier to hit. Crosshair placement is obviously boring and nothing as cool as being able to flick shots. But trust me, yay is one of the best aimers in this game, not because he has insane flicks and can 180 tap anyone, but because simply he has one of the best crosshair placement in the game. With that being said, I started to worry less about flicking and trying to take aim duels by just swinging, and focused more on clearing each angle and ALWAYS expecting an enemy with each angle I clear.

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2. Changing up your game tempo

Now I have no idea if there is an actual term for this, but I'm just going to call it your tempo. Basically what I mean by this is to change up the speed of how you play and how fast you react to certain situation. For example, if you are always wide swinging everything, fast pushing and fast clearing angles, then this would be a fast tempo, but if you are always taking it slow and letting your enemies make the first move, its a slow tempo. The reason I say to change up your tempo, and to not always just be aggressive/passive, is because in certain scenarios its better to play the round slow, while other times its better to play aggressive, so it all depends on the situation, and the only way to get better at this is to watch pros and playing the game yourself. Having different tempos also makes you less predictable. eg: if you're always wide swinging and hard pushing, the enemies will start to pick up on that and start to hold tighter angles and let you peak first, leading you to die.

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3. Gear actually matters

Despite what some people may think, the type of mouse, monitor, and even mousepad can greatly affect how you play, if you really want to improve don't just cheap out on a bad mouse pad that will start to wear down easily, leading to slow spots and inconsistent glide. Sure, you can still climb with cheap gear, but you'll be way less consistent. Having a 144hz monitor is honestly a life changer, you can actually notice the difference and if you really are trying to get to imm+ I would highly suggest you get one, as it will make the climb WAY easier. Of course, you can still climb despite having a cheap peripherals and a 60hz monitor, but once again, it will make a world of a difference if you upgraded your gear. (This doesn't mean spend a 500$ on a custom keyboard)

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4. STOP CHANGING YOUR IN GAME SETTINGS

Please stop, pretty self explanatory, do not change your sens just because you want to match your favourite players sens, or because you have a couple of bad games. Changing your in game settings will make you inconsistent, and that pretty much it, just take time to figure out what works for YOU, not your friend, not your favourite pro tenz, YOU. I got to admit, when i stopped changing my sens and crosshair etc, i became so much more consistent.

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5. When you should change sens + why low sens is considered 'better'

Okay so, I know it is said that changing sens is bad but hear me out. There is a time where changing sens can actually be beneficial, lets say your mouse control sucks, and you are always shaking and wobbly with your sens, upping you sens and forcing yourself to play on a high sens for a couple of weeks, then slowly progressing back down to your normal sens can greatly help you with the stability of your mouse control. By doing this, you will be able to remove shaky aim and it'll help you in the long run. So lets say you play on 0.3 800 dpi and your aim is really shaky, but you actually feely comfortable with the sens, instead of lowering the sens even more, try upping it to 0.35 or even 0.4 and forcing yourself to play on a high sens, then slowly lowering it back. This will help you learn to control a mouse better and you'll be more steady with a lower sens.

Now, for why I lowered my sens to a lower sens from 0.47 - 0.3 800dpi and think it's better is because if you do play on a high sens and find yourself sometimes having cracked aim on certain days, but then having god tier garbage aim some other days, this could be due to a inconsistent aiming problem and could be a result to your high sens. Low sens can allow you to be more consistent on your aim, but of course this is still personal preference, but I'd say most people are probably going to be at their best at a lower sens.

Let me give an example that really helped open my eyes to why lower sens is generally 'better' than high sens. Imagine there is a dot on your mouse pad, and the dot on the mouse pad is where your mouse sensor needs to be on top of in order to shoot a head in valorant, the higher your sens is, the smaller the will become dot on your mouse pad will become, which means the chances of missing your shot is much higher. So if you have a lower sens, the chances of you missing your shot is much lower as you have more "surface area" on your mousepad to shoot the head.

Now I know that was a pretty bad explanation, but if you need me to explain it again please comment below and I'd be gladly to do so, once again, sens is a personal thing, but for me and many others, lowering our sens made a huge improvement, and i'd recommend you trying out a lower sens if you haven't already.

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Other tips:

a) Warming up before you play, deathmatch, range, kovaaks, aimlabs etc.

b) Watch pro players play and see how they play the game.

c) Aim trainers will help, but in all honestly the range and dming is much better

d) When you play dm, play with no sound, it'll force you to clear every angle and force you to have good crosshair placement

e) The 3 game rule, play a set of of 3 games, if you lose 2/3 stop playing for the day, if you win 2/3 keep playing another set until you lose 2/3

f) Mental, be confident in your abilities, know you limits, know when to test you limits, and never underestimate yourself. If you don't feel confident, you'll play trash, if you feel too confident, you'll become cocky and start auto piloting, so find a balance

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If anyone has any questions on how to improve please let me know down below, I kind of got lazy writing everything and honestly kind of started rambling. So if you have any questions please let me know down below and I'll answer them.

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Happy climbing