I see like 10 posts a day where OP will ask why they cannot improve/climb. I am posting my guide to reduce those.

BACKGROUND:

I go by 1v9Khan and Valorant is my first shooter outside of briefly playing casual overwatch as a tank. I climbed from Iron to Immortal in about 6-9 months of playing (I took 3 months off of gaming). I peaked rank 6,000 and am currently rank 6,100.

If you are trapped in low elo, I've been where you are, I know exactly how you feel. If you are high elo, these techniques are still crucial if you would like to improve. Fundamentals are fundamental because they can be worked on every day, you can chase perfection with them but you cannot reach it. To all of you, here is my advice.

HUMILITY:

As a low elo player, accept you know nothing and are bad at the game. You MUST swallow your pride. Understand that pretty much every aspect of your gameplay needs to be leveled up. Understand that the vast majority of the player base is better than you and you can learn from them.

PRACTICE:

Watch pro play and high elo streams (just not PROD). Pay close attention to where they are putting their crosshair. How they move around the map, and how they interact with angles. A trained eye can tell the difference between high and low elo players just by how they navigate around the map. Compare it to a recording of your gameplay. If you put both side by side and theirs clearly looks different, then something is wrong and you need to figure out why.

Go into deathmatch with these differences in mind. Try to mimic how you saw their gameplay look. Even if you dont fully understand it yet. Don't pay attention to the score in deathmatch. Your goal is the take note of head level and maintain good placement and focus on good movement that isolates angles so you take one fight at a time. (A tip for crosshair placement is to, in general have placement that is wider than the corner. Unless you are a triggerbot you cannot instantly react to someone appearing.) Take your reaction time into account. Don't focus on just getting a kill. Focus on getting a kill at the highest level of execution possible. Do not fall into old habits like full crouch spraying or run and gun. If you cannot break this habit, unbind crouch entirely. This will force you to tap/burst and play around cover. Run a dm with every gun you buy in your games before playing.

Go into game with the concepts you practiced in DM in your mind. This is the hard part. In comp matches there is a lot of pressure that pushes players to fall back into their bad habits. This pressure is why everyone is a god in DM but not in comp. Will crouch spraying body shots win you this one fight against this iron player? Probably. Will doing so work as you climb and make you a better player? Hell no. Even if its uncomfortable, even if it makes you lose games and fights at first, play correctly. I can guarentee that after fixing your mechanics you will initially play worse and lose more. Give yourself time to adjust. Your goal is not to win that individual fight or even that individual game. Your goal is to impliment proper fundamentals that will scale as you hone them further, and will remain effective even as you climb. Eventually you will notice you are starting to win more and more fights. Be strict with yourself in game and play properly even if it is tiring and uncomfortable.

This is how you translate practice into tangible improvement. After awhile of strictly applying correct mechanics in real games, you will find that you play correctly automatically, you dont have to actively think about it anymore. Your goal is to be a slightly better player after each game.

AIM/AIM TRAINING:

Aim trainers have their uses, but they are often leaned on a bit too heavily. Your goal with aim should be to gain CONTROL over your crosshair. You want to be able to manifest whatever is in your brain, into the game. Your goal should be to never think to yourself "I just couldn't put my crosshair where I wanted to" or "I lost control over my crosshair there". Use Aim trainers to elevate aspects of crosshair control that you struggle with, so that you never feel physically limited by your hands. Aim trainers have an advantage over deathmatch in this respect for a few reasons. The main reason is time compression. In deathmatches you only realistically take less than a hundred total fights, each only consisting of a few instances of aim correction. Aim trainers let you take thousands of shots in a short period of time, very quickly allowing you to improve overall crosshair control. Deathmatch should be used primarily to practice angle switching, positioning, crosshair placement, and movement. Aim trainers are given too much credit, you can be amazing at them but have garbage mechanics that hamstring your kill potential.

Remember that aim really only has 2 main uses.

1.correct for flawed crosshair placement or a lack of info.

2. Switch between angles and maintain control over the crosshair so it remains at head level.

Don't kid yourself into thinking aim is the end-all for valorant. Its not. Good aim is really just a safety net to correct for human error. It should not be your go-to.

PLAYSTYLE:

Dont try to be flashy. Try to be consistent. The fundamentals that will make you climb are not cool, they are not flashy, they are not sexy. Often times they are hard to even notice. But they are things that you can improve slightly every day. Things like crosshair placement, positioning, and movement. These are mechanics that, when polished, will win you fights with minimal aim required. Fundamentals are necessary no matter what agent or role you are playing. And developing them will help you climb no matter which agent you play. Your goal is to slowly build a fundamental base that gradually raises your probability of winning, so that over a large sample size, the law of large numbers states that you WILL climb. It is statistically guarenteed.

MINDSET:

Keep a good mindset. It is not your team's fault you cannot climb. Period. Is there a player on planet earth you could have handed your mouse and keyboard to and they could have won that game? In most cases yes. What would that player have done? If you are racking up many kills without winning then the kills are likely not impactful. Impact kills are first contact kills (killing someone on entry on Attack side or aggressive peeking on Defense side to get first blood). To carry you must set the tempo of the game yourself. This means being the first guy the enemy team meets each round and securing first blood without dying. Low elo players often get lurk kills, exit kills, and rotational kills. These kills sometimes mean absolutely nothing. It can inflate numbers without increasing chances of winning. Get the kills that matter. Do not let the enemy make a move without losing a man at the start of the round.

CONCLUSION:

This is how you improve and carry. If you want to get good there is no way around some elbow grease. There is no singular secret to climbing. Valorant is a puzzle where you can use many different combinations of pieces to climb. This advice is guaranteed to work if you take it to heart.

Hope that helps. And sorry for any spelling errors.

EDIT:

AN EXPLANATION OF IMPACT KILLS:

A rule of thumb to remember is that a 1 for 1 trade is always worth it to T side. This is because it is much harder to retake a site than it is to take a site initially. So the foundation of T side is the entry fragger enters first to gain information. This player is expected to die because they do not have perfect info on enemy positioning. The second player is expected to trade out the kill to complete this 1 for 1 trade. This is worth it. However, if that first player DOESN'T die, and instead kills one or more opponent on entry, it is HUGE, because a scenario where even a 1 for 1 would have been beneficial is now a 1 for 0 or 2 for 0, and an already difficult retake for the enemy team becomes even more difficult. These kills carry insane weight, and are thereby "impactful kills".

Hope that makes sense.

EDIT 2: I have added all the bare essentials to this post and it is already too long. I post videos and stream if you feel like you want more information. My reddit profile has these socials. I go by 1v9khan on every platform other than reddit.