---
title: 'Zero to Hero. A Valorant Aiming Guide.'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBX-8MzmLsk'
video_id: 'BBX-8MzmLsk'
date: 2026-06-21
duration_sec: 0
---

# Zero to Hero. A Valorant Aiming Guide.

> Source: [Zero to Hero. A Valorant Aiming Guide.](https://youtube.com/watch?v=BBX-8MzmLsk)

## Summary



## Transcript

Welcome to the comprehensive guide to
aiming in Valerant. In this video, we're
diving into the exact blueprint that
will turn your shaking aim into a
highlight reel. We'll cover exactly how
to improve each aspect of your aim from
mastering the game mechanics to reaching
godlike confidence. Whether you're
struggling with consistency or simply
want to hit more headshots, this guide
will provide you a clear, actionable
path to improve your aim. From zero to
hero, let's start with the most crucial
factor, being comfortable with the game
mechanics. There are three ways to take
a fight in Valerant. Tapping, bursting,
and spraying. Each of these methods
requires an understanding of the recoil
and recoil recovery of the gun that
you're using. Even though I have
thousands of hours in Valerant, I start
most my days in the range and practice
each of these methods against the bots.
To train these crucial game mechanics,
enter the practice range and simply
breach ultrange
until you have about four remaining.
First, I like to practice my taps by
simply standing at the entrance and
tapping the bots one by one, replicating
the movement you would do in an actual
game, such as crouching and strafing
between shots. After that, you move on
to bursts, still trying to keep the
movement similar to how you would in
game. And after that, I like to stand
between the boss and practice spraying
two to three bots at a time. And this
way, I can feel confident in my spray.
When replicating your movement, avoid
being too predictable or autopilot
strafing just side to side. Instead, add
in crouches and vary the length of your
stripes. Sensitivity is also a big
talking point in aim, but actually it
isn't super important. Professional
players utilize various types of
sensitivities, and the most significant
factor in deciding which sensitivity to
use is what they feel most comfortable
with or grew up using. Most players have
a range they feel most comfortable with
and choose between the lower end,
resulting in smoother aim and easier
micro adjustments, or on the higher end,
which gives faster flicks and an easier
time dodging flashes or dashing into
sight. Being comfortable with the game
mechanics is essential in Valerant. And
the best aim won't matter if you're
constantly shooting while moving or
before your recoil properly resets. But
to master your raw aim, you're going to
need to understand the importance of aim
training. Although many people overlook
training your aim and say just play the
game, I'd like to argue for the
opposite. During a game, you might
roughly get 15 to 20 kills in a 40minute
match. Meanwhile, in a death match, you
can expect to rack up around 30 to 40
kills in a 10-minute session. It's an
isolated environment where you can try
to work on weaknesses in your aim or
movement without risk. Now, let's
compare to using AimLabs or Kovac. Here,
you have thousands of scenarios to work
on precise areas of your aim, from your
micro adjustments to the smoothness of
your tracking. You receive direct
feedback on your aim, unlike ranked or
death matching, and it provides scores
that allow you to see your progress and
constantly strive to beat them. A good
aim training routine will consist of
both in-game practice and utilizing aim
trainers like Kovac or Aimab. And you
need to understand that mindlessly aim
training won't help either. You need to
understand how to deathmatch and aim
train effectively. Deathmatching is a
key to building good habits that are
transferable to your actual game. The
key to death matching effectively is to
understand what's holding you back the
most in game. Most players autopilot or
play deathmatch without a goal. While
you might sharpen your skills a bit, you
won't be improving as much as a focused
individual would. So, how do we achieve
a focused goal? I recommend reviewing
your gameplay vase or watching a pro
player to understand what makes your aim
so sharp. You may instantly notice his
nimble movement or his calm, precise
crosshair placement. And when you look
at your gameplay, you might notice that
you have a tendency to shoot before
actually visually recognizing your enemy
rather than taking your time and
adopting a calm aim style. These are all
great goals you can set for yourself to
actively improve in deathmatch. And if
you can identify your main weaknesses
that are holding you back and actually
improve it, it'll be better than
spending thousand death matches just
autopiloting. On my last advice on
deathmatching is to actually treat it
like a deathmatch. Too many players
overly on sound or try to hold angles
and shift walk to catch people off
guard. This won't actually improve your
game though. Instead, actively run
around the map trying to take as many
duels as possible. If you're not sure
what goals to work towards while
deathmatching, that's where coaching can
help. Figuring out your mistakes is a
significant part of Valerant, but
identifying them on your own can be
extremely challenging. But if you want
to reach mechanical mastery to compete
at the highest level, like your student
TMS, who recently hit Radiant and Z, who
hit 900 RR radiant in EU, then look no
further than the Immortal Romat program.
IRP is for serious players like you who
want hands-on help from worldclass
coaches to perfect their gameplay. So,
if you're tired of feeling lost in your
games and you're tired of relying on
luck to get good teammates, use the link
below to book a call with me or one of
our coaches to see if you'd be a good
fit for a 500 RR in 10 weeks money back
guarantee. Now, outside of death
matches, if you want to work on the
nuances of your aim, aim trainers can
come in. While it's easy to overlook aim
trainers, the sheer number of scenarios
available, the data you receive, and the
ability to isolate weaknesses make it
worthwhile for me. The key once again to
practical aim training is to identify
weaknesses and work on improving them.
Luckily for aim trainers, that's much
easier. I recommend using the Voltaic
Valerant benchmarks on Aimlabs. This
will provide you with 21 AML scenarios
designed explicitly for Valerant. Simply
click play and every time you complete a
scenario, it'll automatically update on
the website, which gives you a rank
based on your high score. By playing
every scenario in this playlist, you can
see which areas of your aim you're
strong in and which you are weak in.
This makes it super easy for you to
target your weak areas such as tracking
while recognizing that your
microcorrections are your strength. Then
you can just keep practicing and pushing
yourself. The website will automatically
identify your strengths and weaknesses
which enables targeted practice. You
will still, however, need to create a
dedicated daily routine. Your daily aim
training routine will depend mainly on
the time you have available, personal
preferences, and your strengths and
weaknesses. A good routine, however,
will consist of all three of the
mentioned factors: in-game mechanics,
deathmatching, and aim training. A
general rule of thumb is that total aim
training should be about 1/5 of the
total time played. So, let's say if you
can play 2 hours a day, then 25 minutes
of aim training is all you should be
doing. If you can dedicate 4 hours a
day, then we can allocate around 45
hours for aim training. Playing any more
than that leaves you no time for
actually playing the game, which is
still the most important part of aim.
Playing less than this is not enough to
make decent marginal improvements over
time. Now, you can begin your routine in
Aimlabs by focusing on your worst
scenarios that are holding you back. You
may have a favorite scenario or two that
you enjoy to simply warm up, but try not
to ignore your weaknesses. You only need
three to five runs per scenario, but
ensure you put maximum effort into each
one. Suppose you're struggling to
understand how to improve at a
particular scenario. Gamelabs lets you
watch the replays of people who achieved
a high score on the leaderboard and
compare them side by side to your own
gameplay. Next, hop into the range and
align yourself with the core gameplay
mechanics. And don't skip on practicing
tapping, bursting, and spraying with the
guns that you commonly use, even if it's
only for 5 minutes a day. Then, finally,
deathmatch. Hopefully, you have an idea
of what you actually want to work on.
Maybe you felt yesterday that you were
rushing your shots. If not, consider a
more general goal, such as how Obas is
known to almost exclusively use the
guardian in deathmatch to practice his
first shot accuracy and be punished more
heavily for missing. Aim training will
help you reach the peak of your aiming
ability, but if you're going from zero
to hero, the importance of good
crosshair placement cannot be
overstated. Crosshair placement is key
in Valerant. Almost all great aimers are
backed by great crosshair placement, and
no amount of speed or aim training can
overcome the benefit of simply having
your crosshair pre- aimed at the enemy's
head. However, it's more than just
having your crosshair at head height.
The actual skill of crosser placement is
intertwined with your game sets. Just
think about it. If you had wall hacks,
you would have the best crosser
placement in the world. It comes down to
how well you can guess where an enemy's
head will be. The best way to start
improving your crosser placement is to
pretend that you have wall hacks. Okay,
I know it's silly, right? But actually
try it. While playing, try thinking of
all the possible spots the enemies could
be. Imagine their body behind each wall.
Then as you swing, simply pre- aim the
spots they could be. This isn't just
about clearing angles. When holding
angles, think about how the enemy will
swing you. Will he simply wide swing or
will he jiggle peek you? Predicting how
the enemy will peak will help you
understand how far to move your crosser
from the angle to actually hold it. And
once we realize crosser placement is a
skill of prediction, we can get into the
actual mechanics. There are two types of
crosser placement. Tracing and pre-
aiming. Tracing involves placing your
crosshair on the wall or slightly out of
it if you expect an enemy to peak and
then tracking the wall as you run
across. This is used when you're running
and can't peak angles one by one or if
you don't have angle advantages and
would expose yourself to multiple angles
at once if you tried. The benefit of
doing this is that you always have your
crosser ready for every single spot they
could be on. The negatives though is you
probably won't be ready to shoot
instantly and may have to flake
backwards if you scale too far while
peeking. And another negative is that
you can't pre-fire or jill peak while
tracing. Pre- aiming, on the other hand,
is where you aim directly at the wall at
the position where the enemies lie
behind it and then swing out already
aiming directly on the target. When
scaling a sight or dealing with multiple
angles, you will be required to slice
the pie. This means pre- aiming one
angle, clearing it, then pre- aiming the
next angle, so on until you clear all
the angles. It's important to remember
that if you don't have angle advantages,
you can't simply clear all the angles
one by one as you will be exposed. So to
counter this, if you still want to slice
a pie, you can jiggle in and out as you
clear the angles. This means that even
if the enemies see you, it'll be a
jiggle peak and they can't get a clean
shot on you. Pre- aiming like this
allows you to also pre-fire certain
angles if you're confident that there's
an enemy there. We need to practice
these two aspects of crosshair placement
and understand when we need to switch
between them. It's also a matter of
personal preference. Some players prefer
tracing more while others prefer pre-
aiming. The best way to practice this is
by simply playing deathmatch. It's a
good goal to practice while doing your
aim routine. Remember, visualize the
enemies behind walls while running
around the map as you would if you had
all hacks. And pick between tracing or
pre- aiming to take the fight. Now, good
aim and mechanic training will improve
your aim. But to guarantee that you're
playing every game at your peak
mechanical ability, you're going to need
to warm up. Let's talk about actually
warming up before the game. Many people
confuse aim training and warming up. So,
I think it's important we discuss the
difference. Aim training is the actual
process of improving your aim.
Generally, you're working on your
weaknesses and taking on difficult tasks
that will challenge you. If you think
about working out at the gym, it's like
trying to reach a new personal record on
a bench press. It shouldn't feel super
easy, and you should feel like you're
putting effort in. You want to work out
your legs right before going for a run.
So, with warming up, it's way more about
feeling comfortable, building
confidence, and reducing the chance of
injury. So, to effectively warm up,
start with simple wrist and finger
stretches. This will reduce the risk of
injury, such as carpal tunnel, and also
loosen up your hands to start hitting
shots. not a doctor, so I won't advise
on the specifics, but a quick YouTube
search will yield numerous videos on
stretching to prevent gaming related
injuries. Now, for the in-game warm-up,
we want to try to hit every single
aspect of the game, but lightly.
Remember, we're just trying to get up to
speed, not improve our aim. We can start
in the range, but go as far back as
possible from the bots. Now, without
adsing, work on tapping the bots one by
one. This is going to warm up our micro
adjustments, a key skill for Valer.
Let's do about 50 kills. And after this,
we're going to warm up our tracking and
flicks. To do this, I like to get close
to the bots, standing just a few meters
away. Then, I track the bot's head as I
move and strafe around. In about after 2
to 3 seconds, I flick to another bot and
try to hit the shot. This scenario
replicates our in-game scaling where we
hold the angle while moving, but we're
ready to hit a shot if we're peaked from
another angle and do this for about
another 2 to 3 minutes. We're practicing
spray. We can actually leave the main
area of the range and shoot the flying
targets in the sky. I like doing this
because the bots are actually moving and
we have to practice spray transferring
between targets that are moving. Do one
side at a time, then wait for your
recoil to recover and do the other side.
We can do this for another two to three
minutes. Now that we've warmed up the
basics of in-game mechanics, we can
start queuing team deathmatch. I prefer
TDM for warm-ups specifically because
you get to use more guns as well as have
the opportunity to practice dealing with
multiple enemies, dodging utility, and
other scenarios that might come up in
game. We want to use the guns here that
actually require aiming. So, the Ghost,
Sheriff, Guardian, and Vandal, or
Phantom. However, if you really want to
warm up your stinger, I won't stop you.
I don't recommend focusing on chasing
kills, but instead really focus on your
movement and crosser placement. The same
way we were moving while shooting bots
during our aim training is how we want
to be moving in the team deathmatch.
Keep our crosser at the head height,
working on tracing angles, and pre-
aiming where we think the enemies are.
After one to two TDMs, you should be
ready to hop into ranked. However, if
you're still missing shots in the game
after all of this, it also could be your
setup that's holding you back. Having a
proper PC setup is an underestimated
issue for many in the Valorant
community. Some of the most cursed
setups I've seen have come from coaching
calls with players who have PCs from the
Stone Age or playing on strange surfaces
like their bed. So, to avoid any
confusion on what a good setup versus a
bad setup looks like, I'm going to give
you the bare minimums on what you need
to play well for Valerant. Valerant is
not a demanding game, but it is a game
where consistent performance matters.
So, if your PC setup is not meeting your
monitor's refresh rate, then you might
need to upgrade something in your PC to
increase your FPS. For example, if you
bought a fancy new 240 Hz monitor, but
you're struggling to get 100 FPS in
game, you'll need to get a new PC or
upgrade it that matches 240 FPS to
compensate. You'll also need a
consistent area to play in so that you
aren't struggling against your
environment. That means a flat surface
that's stable, that fits your mouse pad,
keyboard, and monitor or laptop all in
one space. Otherwise, something like
moving your mouse side to side could
become detrimental to your aim just by
being on an uneven surface. And speaking
of peripherals, you will need some bare
minimum equipment to play. If your mouse
doesn't have DPI settings or reach 1,000
MHz pulling rate, you will need to
upgrade. Every top pro or radiant player
uses a mouse with these kinds of
adjustable settings for a reason. It's
more consistent to aim this way. No
office mouse from the 2000s will be
consistent enough to aim correctly. Once
you get the basics out of the way,
you're really wanting to take your aim
to the next level with a few peripheral
upgrades. Starting off with a mouse that
fits your grip type and hand size. A few
simple searches can help you out here.
Or use a website like elosshapes.com to
compare mouse sizes. Simply measure your
hand. Figure out what grip type you use,
whether it's claw, palm, or fingertip,
and try to find modern mouses that
people recommend for those specifics.
You also, at some point, want to get a
control pad for Valerant. Theoretically,
you can use any mouse pad to play, but
you're going to want a mouse pad with a
bit more friction to elevate your
smoothness and micro corrections that
are essential for Valerant. Almost all
pros are using slow control pads like
the Artisan Zero or the Zoe GSRS.
However, those are quite expensive, but
many other brands are making control
pads, so you just need to look out for
them. However, this is not to say you
need to upgrade your setup if you
already have these bare minimums. No new
mouse, monitor, or PC will help you aim
better if you already have a good enough
setup. that mindset will only hurt your
aiming progress. Which leads me directly
to the final part of the video. Now that
your setup is optimized, let's look at
how mindset affects our performance.
Often an overlooked part of aim, but
perhaps the most important. All good
aimers are known for the one taps, quick
flicks, but most importantly, ruthless
confidence. The most crucial part of
being a good aimer is to start
committing to your fights. I've seen
players who spend hundreds of hours on
aim training, but then they just jiggle
peak and juggle utility in their hands,
never committing to their fights. You
never see top aamers like Demon One or
Oxy doing this. Instead, they'll just
wide swing as much as possible, relying
on their movement and aim mechanics to
win the fight for them. Another factor
besides committing is confidence. This
might be the hardest one to work on. If
you constantly tell yourself you're
inconsistent or you can't aim, you'll
probably live up to your own legacy.
Confidence comes from knowing you put in
the time and effort into your aim
training and eliminating all excuses.
This means getting proper sleep, being
fully warmed up, and not queuing for too
long. Another factor to consider is
avoiding over reliance on your aim.
Winning more fights rarely comes down to
aim alone. A combination of good
positioning movement teamwork and
util usage can put you in many
advantageous fights. Aim is just the
icing on top. And finally, let's discuss
health as this is a significant aspect
in terms of our aim. I've seen many
players complain about inconsistency,
yet they often lack a consistent sleep
schedule, eat an unbalanced diet, and
lead a sedentary lifestyle. These
factors impact you a lot. Proper sleep,
diet, and exercise straight up lower
your reaction time. It also boosts
decision-making skills, built
management, energy levels, and focus.
Now, we've gone through every aspect of
aim today, enough for everyone to come
away with at least one thing to work on.
I recommend coming back to this video
periodically as you reach different
steps of your aim journey to reconsider
all the talking points of this video.
However, this is just a video on aim,
and there are so many more factors to
Valerant. So, if you're looking to
figure out what's keeping you from
ranking up, check out our video here
where we cover one reason why you're
stuck in each rank of our Thanks for
watching.