hi! with the episode finally being over i would like to share with the community how i managed to go from silver 1 to immortal 1 in one episode in the hopes that you guys will have a great next episode!
it's not a lot but hopefully it helps out people in this sub that seem to be relatively stuck in lower elo and want to raise their rank

1. you are the problem

i know it sounds rough and it's gotta be to be sometimes demoralizing to constantly queue into people you don't work well with. Valorant is a game with many variables but if you manage to play 300 games in one episode, there won't be as many similarities in ALL of those games besides YOU. You are the 1 thing consistent in all 300 games. I say this because a lot of posts i see in this sub are complaining about smurfs in their or bad matchmatching etc etc. If you deserved the rank, riot would put you there. Being honest with yourself will help you self improve faster. There weren't smurfs in all 300 of those games and blaming your faults on someone who might not even be a smurf but just having a good game prevents u from taking accountability where its needed

2. crosshair placement is more important than raw mechanical aim
a common misconception that i see is people looking for ways to improve their aim. crosshair placement is far more important than raw aim because if you're positioning yourself in a way that you need to hit multiple flicks on a person, your aim is not the problem if you lose that!!! having good crosshair placement makes it easy to hit shots because all you have to do is hit a micro adjustment and it's easier to hit a shot. watch youtube videos on how to fix this, but the best way to improve it is to just play the game a lot. aim is something that should be fixed after your crosshair placement

3. gamesense matters more the higher you climb
there's not really a point to learn gamesense and overthink about the game at certain ranks. i would say everything under platinum, there's not really a point to learning gamesense (besides basic things) under platinum. the reason for this is that people in these ranks are generally unpredictable and it's not as easy to outplay someone who doesn't have a strategy to begin with. the most it gets is seeing certain patterns that people do or notice where certain people play. if you don't understand something or you die from something you dont get, clip it and vod review. understand why you died and avoid it

4. Know how to manipulate hidden MMR / climb ranked
MMR is what the game uses to calculate your rank. Essentially, it's the rank that isn't displayed on your screen, and Riot will try and move your real rank (the one you see) to match your hidden mmr. Ever wonder how you're getting +26 or losing a lot of rr? That's your MMR trying to boost you to what the game believes that your ACTUAL rank is. i would recommend checking out @ RiotEvrMoar on twitter, he explains how the game works.

mmr is two things, your "encounter mmr" and your "win/lose". Encounter is how often you win a duel against the rank of the opposite team. If you're consistently killing people higher rank than you in a game, it will inflate your mmr and move it higher and higher. Win/loss is pretty self explanitory, it's if you won the game or not against the rank you're put against. You can move this up by going on really high winstreaks

it's not helpful to just keep playing and tilt queuing when you really aren't feeling good or your aim is good. if you underperform, just stop playing entirely and reset (play a different game, play swift play)

5. good mental is the MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE
it sounds hard and it is!!! i fall victim to this a lot and everyone else does. having good mental is great because you can lift your team up and help people who aren't doing good. valorant is a game that is momentum based both economically and mentally. having good mental will improve your aim. i'm one of those people who are really supersitious, so i do everything i can to make my mental good, so here's some stuff i do to improve mental

- mute people on the team without second chances if they say something crazy or a shit comm
- listen to music i like in q and agent select (and even in game if im having really bad mental although i cant recommend this)
- play with skins that i feel give me aimbot, like sometimes it's a reaver day and others it's an rgx day
- only queue when i feel like im playing my best
- playing only agents i feel im comfortable on
- dodging maps i don't feel like i deal with
- switching crosshairs if im not hitting shots
- igling
- talking in party chat instead of discord because sometimes i stop thinking about the game if someone can hear me all the time

thanks for reading my guide and i wish you all luck, if you have anything to add comment and i maybe add it, or if you disagree please say something because i'm new to playing this game competitively and im doing my best

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