I’m a pretty new player to the game so I’m still getting my bearings around the strategy behind Valorant. One question I’ve thought of a few times is whether jumping with shotguns is a valid (or even beneficial) strategy.

Even while movement error and firing error are set to on for my crosshair, the difference in spread of shotgun bullets at close range (say 10m or less) when running and even jumping looks pretty minuscule, so in my mind the typical stop-and-shoot technique doesn’t seem like the best option for a shotgun. It also feels like being in the air gives a much higher likelihood for enemies to shoot you in the body/foot instead of a headshot, which, in my experience when testing this strategy, does seem to be true.

However, even in modes like Escalation where (for example) you can have a shotgun and fight others with shotguns at the same time, this technique rarely seems to have much benefit when it comes to winning more fights. Is there some aspect of jumping that I’m not understanding that affects a shotgun’s performance more than it seems? Is the spray difference really that influential? Do the Valorant gods just simply hate jump-and-gun? I feel like there must be something that sets this seemingly okay strategy (maybe not the best, sure, but at least it feels like it should work) apart from the stand-and-shoot record performance. Thanks for any and all information!