As a shooter firmly in the hit-scan mold, similar to Counter-Strike, Valorant's shooter is old-school, making it one of the hardest to master. Habits and best practices from other popular shooters like Call of Duty just don't work here. Since recoil works much closer to what you'd expect in real life, playing in the same vein as Call of Duty's more arcade style will simply result in death far more often than not.
It takes a lot of practice and discipline to practice shooting the right way in Valorant, but there is help. While not a typical counter-strike option beyond sniper rifles, you have the ability to aim down sights with almost any Valorant firearm, and it's one of the best tools around. to learn the shooting game with.
The Downsights (ADS) option is helpful in the learning process, as it will help you feel how the guns react to your shots. All automatic weapons have a control feature called Tap Efficiency, where the gun will be accurate to exactly where you are aiming for a certain number of bullets before the gun begins to lose control from a spray. It then takes time for the gun to return to a state where it can again benefit from the effectiveness of the tap. Rifles have longer hitting efficiency due to their longer barrel design.
Using ADS to learn how it works is a great first step to improving your aim, especially when trying to focus on headshots, or at longer range when hip firing while your opponent is not so easy to see. The range dummy is also a great resource to test it out as it doesn't move, and you can adjust the distance to judge the recoil of the weapons for yourself. It can also help you find your favorite weapon.
It's important to know that the ADS mechanic does not increase a weapon's accuracy, and your field of view will be severely limited in ADS, meaning it's much harder to be aware of your surroundings. There's enough range in all the maps that it could hurt your gameplay. Moving while using it will also cause your accuracy to drop drastically, with pistols all being much worse when used while moving.
With that in mind, once you start improving your accuracy with ADS, it's recommended to use hip fire and rely on your standard reticle to give you feedback on exactly where you are. aim. From here, limit ADS usage to very long range combat if you're not comfortable with hip fire and when using the scopes on sniper rifles. This should then result in improved accuracy without impairing your game-detection abilities and peripheral vision.
