With the Valorant console beta just having released on Friday, June 14th, there’s never been a better time to get into Valorant. Valorant is a daunting game, with a high skill floor and an even higher skill ceiling, so your first foray into the world of Valorant might be a little intimidating at first. Don’t worry, SCUF has got you covered with the ultimate beginner guide that will give you the tips and tricks you need to go from bottom fragging to carrying your lobbies.
Valorant is a tactical shooter, with an objective that revolves around planting and defusing the spike. If you have ever played Call of Duty, think Search and Destroy. Most of Valorant’s game modes revolve around the spike, but there are some other specific game modes which do not involve the spike - Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Escalation.
The standard Valorant rules for unrated and ranked are first to 13 rounds, with one life per round. After the first 12 rounds, attackers and defenders switch sides. Each round, your goal as an attacker is to push on to a site, plant the spike, and defend it for 40 seconds until it explodes. While you can win the round by killing all of the enemy defenders, you should often be playing for the objective, and not worry as much about the kills.
For defenders, your job is the opposite. Ensure that the attacking team cannot make it onto site and plant the spike. If the enemy is able to get on to the site and plant the spike, you have 40 seconds to defuse it fully and win the round.
While the rules from each Valorant match to the next stay constant, one variable which will wildly differ in your games is the agents. To become an effective Valorant player, you will need to learn which characters have which abilities, and the situations in which each agent shines.
Agents in Valorant are split up into four distinct classes - Duelists, Initiators, Controllers, and Sentinels. Each class of agent has their own strengths and weaknesses, and each plays a key role in building a good team composition. Although the players in Bronze lobbies will try to convince you otherwise, 5 duelists is not an effective team composition. Each role is important in their own way, and will have abilities that you need to be prepared for any situation. Helpfully, the console version of Valorant has a filter for each class, so it is easy to tell which agents belong to which role.
Duelists
Duelists are experts in starting fights, and they excel in breaking through the enemy’s defenses and creating opportunities for their team to move in. Duelists are a very feast or famine class, and your team will expect you to top frag every game. On the flip side, they can have very high impact on the outcome of a match, and these are often the characters people choose if they want to solo carry their team.
Initiators
Initiators are the support role of valorant, and they use their abilities to give their teammates the advantages they need to win their fights. Whether they are able to scout out a site to gain valuable information, or use flashes and stuns to make sure the enemy can’t fight back, initiators are the unsung heroes of aggressive play. Good ability usage from initiators will ensure your team is always taking advantageous fights.
Controllers
Controllers are experts at information denial, and they use their smokes to block off vision from the enemy team. An unsmoked site is an unsafe site, where enemies can peek you from any angle. Good smoke usage will block off enemy players from the fight, potentially turning a 5v5 into a 5v2. Controllers are also typically the least picked agents. If you like making sure no one else picks your characters, controllers are your best bet.
Sentinels
Sentinels are skilled at locking down areas, and are the cornerstone to a good defense. A good sentinel player can completely hold down a site on their own, turning a 1v5 into an advantageous fight for them. Sentinels are no joke on the attacking half either, and can shut down pushes from enemy players who like to creep up on your flank.
Knowing all the agents is great, but getting to play them is even better. Unlocking Valorant agents is done through the Kingdom credits system. Each agent costs 8000 Kingdom credits. Compared to other games, this is a fairly reasonable unlock system, as it is fairly easy to earn Kingdom credits. But how do you earn Kingdom credits in Valorant?
Kingdom credits can be earned through daily challenges. Each day, you will have 4 Kingdom credit checkpoints, and these can be earned by winning rounds. Each round win gives 1 out of the 4 points required to progress a checkpoint. Given that there are only 16 daily points overall to max out your checkpoints for the day, these can be done fairly quickly.
Guns in Valorant are classified into 7 categories:
Your melee weapon stays with you every round, and cannot be dropped. You also spawn with a sidearm every round, and can equip a sidearm alongside one of the other categories. Typically, using a sidearm as your main weapon is for pistol rounds or rounds where you need to save money.
You are usually working towards being able to buy a Vandal, Phantom, or Operator during rounds where you can afford them. Each class has their own strengths and weaknesses, but other weapons outside of the aforementioned three are usually reserved for rounds where you need to save money, or can be used in specific situations.
On the surface, Valorant seems like a slower paced shooter than Call of Duty or Overwatch, but in a heated firefight it is imperative to play fast and have quick reactions. Having instant access to a Jett dash or an Astra star can make or break your gunfights. With SCUF controllers, you can take your control over your agent to the next level. With the four paddles on the back of each of our controllers, you can easily access all of your agent’s abilities without ever having to take your thumbs off of your thumbsticks. The instant triggers on SCUF Instinct and Reflex FPS controllers also emulate mouse clicks, lowering the reaction time needed for those instant one-taps. The cutting edge features that SCUF offer will give you more precision over your aim and movement than ever before, and helps you get that mouse and keyboard experience on a console controller.