esports
Many things go into winning a game of VALORANT and one of the most important is communication. How can you improve yours?
A great VALORANT player needs many skills and abilities. Sure, while it’s important to be able to click heads better than everyone else, the game is still played in teams and how you work and communicate with your teammates will be just as important. Unfortunately, communication remains a skill that some players struggle with, so let’s go over some tips to keep in mind to help take your in-game comms to the next level!
Precise and Concise
One of the key aspects of communication that players can improve on is how they convey information. Instead of giving a jumbled rant about what just happened to you, it’s important to keep the information short and quick. This helps your teammates know exactly what they’re about to deal with and go back to focusing on the round instead of having to hear you complain about how you died or whether you think a weapon or agent is busted.
Something that can help with this is to learn the callouts of the maps, which are the names of specific spots around the map. This will greatly help provide quick and specific information to your team so that they can immediately understand the specific area the enemy is instead of having to spend time deciphering what “over there” means.
To help you learn some of these callouts, as well as some other common terms you’ll hear during a match, check out our VALORANT dictionary! While there’s a lot of terms to pick up and learn, don’t panic as it’s not super important for new players to learn it all immediately. Just play the game and you’ll naturally familiarize yourself with these terms and quickly become fluent in VALORANT lingo!
Overall, if you start to improve on this and begin to just provide the most critical information, you’ll be surprised at how many more rounds you’ll start winning with your team.
Use the tools the game gives you
Even if you’re not familiar with all the callouts of the various maps in VALORANT, the game puts other tools at your disposal to provide the information your team needs to know. One of the greatest tools that players should use more is the ping system which allows you to visually show off the locations you’re referring, instead of trying to describe them to the best of your abilities. In fact, in some situations, such as 1vs1s, using a ping to give your teammate information will be significantly better than verbally providing info when they’re trying to focus.
The ping system can be used in two ways, first you can look at something in front of you and then use the ping button to communicate a variety of things such as you’re on the way or that you’re just watching the area. While alive you can also ping guns or the spike for teammates to pick up. The other option, which will be a bit more useful for the strategic minded players or for anyone trying to show off something specific is the ability to open up and click on the map to ping any specific area. Whether you’re trying to help show where you want players to be on defense or where you last saw an enemy while dead, the ping system allows you to do it in a super simple way.
Another tool in the game for anyone who may be shy, or simply doesn’t have a microphone, is the chat itself. While it’s harder for some players to keep an eye on the chat for their information, it’s a great way to provide info that may not be immediately important but should still be conveyed nonetheless. From how much damage you did to an enemy or where they were last seen, players shouldn’t forget to utilize the chat as much as they need as well throughout the game.
Positivity wins games
Once upon a time, Riot Games released a video titled “Teamwork OP.” Although the video was about League of Legends, the message can be brought into VALORANT as well.
While it’s easy to pile on a teammate that’s struggling, negativity won’t help them or the rest of the team play better. So instead, focus on keeping team morale high and focused on doing what they can to win the game. Because at the end of the day, as long as your team still believes they can win the game, then anything is possible.
Of course, tilting in a game like VALORANT is inevitable at some point no matter how much you try to avoid it. Everyone will have some bad games where the shots aren’t hitting and it just feels like everything that can go wrong does go wrong.
When that does happen, it’s important to be mindful of it and avoid pushing yourself into further tilt because that’ll only risk sending your teammates into a state of tilt as well. Instead just keep everything simple, including your communication and if you know you’ll only complain if you talk in voice chat then take advantage of everything at your disposal from pings to the chat itself to pass along information and let your team lead you to the win.
It should go without saying that communication is one of, if not the most important skill sets a player could have in any shooter outside of their ability to aim. Despite this it’s truly a mystery as to why so many players struggle with providing effective comms. Hopefully, with these tips at your disposal, you’ll be able to go into your next game and effectively lead your team to victory with your amazing callouts!
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