To preface this, I know most people who are guilty of a lot of these things are going to down vote this post to hell, but I hope it helps those of you who truly want to improve as I don't mean this as an attack at all. I really do want to help even if it's through reddit.

NOTE: A lot of these things plague Plat/Dia 1-3 as well it seems. (I would include Iron-Bronze, but honestly at those elos, aim is what carries you. There's no game sense or logic. People just do random things that are incredibly unpredictable that even high elo players have trouble countering.)

Onto the post:

I'm an Immortal/Radiant player and I've coached a lot in low-mid elo. My friends are hard-stuck in low-elo and I've noticed a lot of things when I watch them play. So instead of making a, how to get better guide, I decided to make a why you're hard-stuck list. Maybe this will stick and help you in the long run.

There are many reasons as to why you're probably hard stuck. Here are a few:

• You can't take constructive criticism
• You focus on everyone else's mistakes and not your own.
• You don't buy a Spectre + Full Shields on the Second Round after winning Pistol Round.

If you get one tapped by a pistol because you didn't buy up, you most likely will cost your team the round) Don't be stupid, just buy up and secure the second round. Remember: MOMENTUM IS IMPORTANT.

Edit: I don't care what you think. If you think spectre buy point is wrong, that's why you're stuck in low-elo. (PLS NOTE THIS DOESN'T APPLY TO IMM/RADIANT - Just worry about this in ranks below Imm/Radiant)

• You're scared of being broke so you don't buy on buy rounds. (This ties in with the point above)
• You force buy even when your entire team can't buy. (I hope you learned basic economics in high-school. The game economy isn't that hard to learn.)
• You don't understand the game economy. There's tons of guides out there.
• You don't play for the spike once your team has planted it; you peek like an idiot and try to take fights after your team plants the spike when you really don't need to. You planted the spike, hold an angle and play smart, not stupid.

Edit: Revised the point above for clarity.

• You hear the spike being defused and instead of jiggle peeking to check if it's a fake, you fully commit to a gun duel.
• You don't use your utility.
• You play incredibly damn slow when the enemy team planted the spike because you're being a chicken who's scared of dying. (Seriously, this one is a major issue in low-elo, y'all gotta stop playing like pussies. If the spike is planted, fucking move-it or lose-it. If you're going to play that slow, just fucking save the gun holy shit.)
• You don't understand the importance of the spike.
• You don't prioritize picking up the spike when your teammate dies and drops it.
• When your teammate kills the spike carrier, your team doesn't flock to protect the spike from being picked up by the enemy team.

Please realize that the attackers need the spike in order to win rounds (aside from killing your entire team). A huge mistake I see is that when mark tthe defending team kills a spike carrier, they don't all go to where the spike was dropped to help defend it. Remember, keeping the attackers from getting it will win you the round most of the time.

• You don't realize that when the enemy drops the spike, playing near the spike is the best option because the attackers HAVE to go to its location (ez kills).
• You don't keep the spike in your FOV and let the enemy team take it back for free.
• You bait your teammates.
• You bait your duelists when they're trying to entry.
• You don't realize duelists are there to help you create space, not to 1v3 a site by themselves and take it over themselves.
• You play scared to die.
• You don't trade or peek with your teammates (because of the point above).
• You "lurk" which in reality is just baiting or traversing the other side of the map like an idiot when your team is trying to take over a site.
• You don't understand what lurking really is. Lurking is catching rotations and/or applying pressure in the center of the map. You need to match your team's entry in order to avoid baiting them.
• Your game sense is awful because you don't think about situations logically.

Edit: I'll try elaborate a little bit on this with a silly example. However, it's literally impossible to cover every scenario.

Let's say, youre playing on Ascent, and It's you and your teammate left, and the enemy team planted the spike at B and it's a 2v2. Your teammate is towards market, and you're going towards site. You see the enemy team at the back of the site and kill him, and while that happens, your teammate dies from mid.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? It means the enemy teammate is mid and you have a bit of time before he/she can make it on to site.

What do you do?

A) Defuse the spike?

B) Fake the spike defusal?

C) Try to go to stairs to fight him?

D) Wait until he/she comes to site while holding an angle?

If you have decent game sense, you should have picked A. You would have plenty of time to defuse the spike without being in danger, even if you die afterwards. What matters is the round win, not if you die or not.

NOTE: Game sense is also knowing where enemies are based on information provided by the minimap or your team, recognizing utility the enemy team used, and making decisions based off of that. Usually you can even know when flankers are coming and where from if you have decent game sense.

• You don't go for the spike defusal even if the last enemy is far away, you waste time and don't fully defuse it even if you have the time.
• You don't halve the defusal even if you have the time to do so safely.
• You fake defuse and instead of holding shift, you walk loudly, letting the person know you faked it.
• You body block your teammates when they're trying to unpeek after attempting to jiggle peek an angle. You have to pay attention to your teammates movement, if they move towards you: MOVE in the same direction they're moving IMMEDIATELY.
• You don't jiggle peek/shoulder peek angles.
• You dry peek. (If you have zero flashes, jiggle/shoulder peek and bait shots and get someone to peek with you)
• You don't comm. (You don't even have to use a mic, you can literally use in game voice lines or pings and text chat)
• You constantly switch site on defender side, throwing your teammates off. Pick a site at the start of the game and STICK TO IT. You can ask someone to switch off, but ASK FIRST. (I can't stress this one enough)
• You insta-crouch when shooting people (people in low-elo shoot at the chest, so you're going to get headshot instantly).
• You commit to gun duels that you don't need to commit to.
• You don't rotate with your team when they call a rotate because you're 100% sure you can win that gun fight with that guy showers that you end up losing to and then your team is left at a disadvantage.
• You force-buy every round.
• You think you're extremely good, that no one's advice is valid, and your ego is massive.
• You don't look up guides on how to improve and play better.
• You don't go to the same side of the map as your team on attacking side.
• You "lurk" as a duelist. (GO ENTRY FOR YOUR TEAM WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!)
• You keep trying the same things over and over again even if you fail each time (don't be insane, switch it up).
• You try to do a super long slow walk flank while your team is being massacred.
• You don't rotate through your spawn. (Literally safest way to rotate. Don't always flank because people will often hold the flank and you WILL die)
• You're toxic and bring team-morale down.
• You don't eco, and you buy deagle/marshal every eco round.
• You push smokes a while after they were placed (ONLY GO INTO A SMOKE IF IT WAS JUST PLACED IF YOU'RE GOING TO AT ALL!)
• You don't help shoot down Sage's wall when it's placed.
• You rotate immediately when defending even if the spike wasn't spotted, or if the enemy team wasn't committing just because you hadn't seen someone in the first 10 seconds of the round.
• You miscommunicate and give bad info.
• You say, "they're all at blank", even if you have no idea how many there are. You'll get your team killed like this. Make sure when making calls, you give the most accurate information you can. If you only hear two you can say, "I hear at least two near Hookah". This will allow your team to maintain their guard up with that information in mind.

There's a lot more but I think the list will never end. Let me know if y'all want me to add more things cause I can definitely keep going. But these are a few that are on the top of my head. Low-elo players have a lot to work on, I can tell you that.

Have a nice day. :)

Edit: Added preface/disclaimer.

Edit 2: Was asleep but now I've added what baiting means (I grabbed it from a google doc and added some of my own input) plus more points below. (If you don't know what something means, you can always google it. There's tons of information/definitions on different terms.)

P.S. Thank you everyone for the awards.

"Baiting:

When you don’t peek/push with your teammates or you wait until they peek/push first and perhaps even die before you even consider peeking. Mainly because you're afraid. You also might wait until your teammate dies in order to get information before you do anything at all.

You need to peek with your teammates as they peek in order to successfully trade or get the kill. There’s power in numbers.

Also considered baiting that people mistake for lurking:

When a player silently traverses the map very, very slowly on the opposite side of their team (as their team is trying to push into a bomb site), doesn’t catch the enemy team off guard, pushes silently behind the enemy team doing nothing impactful, and even when their team is on the bomb site across the map, they continue to move slowly. Perhaps even while the spike is planted they’ll still be moving slowly while their team may be dying. The player “lurking” aka baiting is then forced to try and retake the bomb-site from the defenders and will end up failing 99% of the time. THIS IS NOT LURKING."

• You prioritize kills over rounds and don't realize that kills don't matter
• You are always last alive because you're scared of dying and you don't realize that kills you get on a round you lose don't mean anything.

You need to realize that if you have more kills than your teammates and most of your kills were on rounds where you lost the round and you were last alive, that you are most likely baiting your team and that your kills mean absolutely nothing but evidence that you're a baiter.

• You are toxic to your bottom fragger (Maybe they've been getting baited all game and die because of it, or are just having a bad game - but they can usually turn their performance around with positive reinforcement)
• Your mental is weak and you think the game is over just because a round went south early on.
• You give up because of the point above and you start surrendering and being toxic/debby downer and you tilt your team. (Be positive, attitude can change the outcome of a game!)
• You don't aim head level when you traverse the map (Stop aiming at their crotch, humans can still live without their reproductive organs)
• You don't practice your aim.
• You play at an extremely high eDPI. (The average eDPI is about 260-280. You can calculate it by Doing [In Game Sens * DPI] = eDPI)
• You don't clear site before planting the spike or helping your team clear site before they plant the spike.
• You don't protect your teammate when they're planting/defusing the spike.
• You don't realize that a duelist's job is not to carry you.
• You don't flash or initiate for your duelists when entering a site as an initiator.
• You play when you're in either in a bad mood/tilted/tired/intoxicated/high.
• YOU BUY A VANDAL/PHANTOM SECOND ROUND (after winning the first round), YOU DIE WITH IT BECAUSE YOU HAD LIGHT SHIELDS AND THE ENEMY PICKS IT UP AND BEAMS YOUR ENTIRE TEAM FROM ACCROSS THE MAP BECAUSE THEY ONLY HAVE SPECTRES. DON'T DO THIS. DON'T BE STUPID.
• You don't understand peekers advantage/ peeking angles. Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WGcTY8-B_c
• You peek too close to the wall so enemies see you first before you see them: https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/g29wic/heres_an_illustration_to_explain_how_the_distance/ watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcBYosA_qig
• Your movement is bad.
• You wide-swing everything. (This exposes you to tons of angles which will result in your untimely demise more often than not) Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE1eTaFuaxY
• You walk peek. (NEVER WALK PEEK : Easiest kill of the enemy's life is when someone's head slowly moves into their crosshair)
• You don't full-stop/counter-strafe before shooting with rifles.
• You don't control your recoil (Yes, you still need to control your recoil even if you burst unless you're only shooting two bullets at a time)
• You think everyone who's better than you is smurfing.
• You peek more than 1 angle at once, opening yourself up to be shot from several different places.
• You look at the same direction as your teammate when pushing up instead of covering the side he or she is not looking at. I can't stress this one enough. You need to cover each other's asses.
• You all watch the same spot instead when holding a site. You don't all need to watch the same spot! Watch a spot that isn't already being held/watched!
• You reload immediately after getting a kill even if you have 20 bullets left in your clip.
• On the contrary, you don't find a safe spot to reload when your clip is almost empty or you don't reload even when you have plenty of time to reload.

I'll add more points as I recall them.

• You push on defending side (you act as an attacker when you're defending)
• You take ego-duels every round as a defender.
• You keep peeking when you should be holding angles as a defender.

Remember, attackers have to come to you, not you to them.

Another two points I remembered:

• You pick duelist but bait your team and you don't entry for them. Both duelists on the team should be helping each other enter site simultaneously. (with the help of initiators)

• You constantly ADS. The only time I ever use ADS is when I have a marshal or an OP. Not only does it slow down your movement speed, but it halves your firing rate.

​

Edit: A lot of people are upset about smurfing. Truth is, I mainly play unrated with my friends. (Sure I've smurfed, but I usually only used a sheriff and played supporting agents)

Most of the time I watch their comp games through Discord or coach them through their games when they ask for it. I also used to coach individually in CSGO and a lot of the issues listed here plague both games.

NOTE: This below is directed at the people crying and whining:

ITT: People crying about smurfs instead of spending their energy on improving. Sure smurfing can be an issue, but holy fuck. If you spent more time improving than crying, maybe you'd be able to beat these "smurfs". You don't realize that sometimes high-elo players get placed low and they have to climb their way out all over again. It's a part of the game. If a smurf doesn't belong, he or she will eventually rank up even if they don't want to. Downvote me all you want but at the end, the only person you can blame for being bad is yourself.

NOTE: This is above directed at the people crying and whining ^