r/AgentAcademy

At 35, I have come to the realization that I'm just too old to keep up with kids that are 10-17 years younger than me. I just don't have the reaction time, or the actual TIME anymore (Kid, wife, house, job etc) to grind out ranks and aim train and take the game seriously.

With that said - I've been playing Conter-Strike since 2000/2001 from 1.6-CS2. I have years of competitive team experience, was Global Elite in CSGO, Played for an ESEA team than won open and went to Premiere (or whatever the league below invite was in 2012ish). Got to the top 1500 in Valorant and played under contract for a no-name ESports org that went nowhere.

Credentials and sob out of the way - I would like to start coaching.

I will work through these things in a scheduled Discord call - Will not spend hours typing out a coaching session for you, sorry.

There's a lot to cover. At the moment there are 0 clients/students/partners. So for now.

It's free.

All ranks welcome. If you're looking to get out of ELO hell. This is where you can get help.

Please send me a DM. I am US East time zone. IDC where you live, but just be aware for scheduling purposes.

What's offered but is not limited to:

• Match (Demo) review
  • Utility usage
  • Positioning
  • Risk/reward decision making
    • When to take a fight vs. when to give ground
    • When you should be aggressive/passive
    • Understanding when a "bad" fight is actually necessary
  • Communication
    • Playing around information your teammates have given you
    • What information is actually worth communicating
    • When to communicate
    • How to communicate effectively
    • Strat calling
    • Avoiding comms overload
    • Communicating intentions before making a play
    • Calling around your team's strengths rather than forcing a predetermined plan
  • An overall breakdown of your match(es)
• Aim training
  • I have an actual laid out regiment. Not just a "yeah go play aimlabs its free"
  • Teach how to Aim Train and DM with a purpose
  • Crosshair placement
  • Pre-aiming common angles
  • Clearing angles efficiently
  • Counter-strafing / movement mechanics
  • Peeking fundamentals
  • Wide swing vs. jiggle vs. shoulder peek etc
  • Isolating angles
  • Playing off angles
  • Understanding first-shot accuracy
  • Burst vs. spray discipline
  • Movement while shooting
• Game theory
  • How you should approach playing with a "Win the round" mentality. Opposed to the "I got mine"
  • Playing the round, not the scoreboard
  • Trading
  • Winning/losing positions
  • Knowing when to and how to preserve your advantage
  • Understanding common timings
  • Understanding rotations
  • Tracking enemy positions
  • Predicting rotations
  • Recognizing gaps in your team's map control
  • Understanding how much space your team actually controls
  • Playing around choke points
  • Controlling areas rather than just holding individual angles
  • Site execution theory
  • Information gathering
  • Information denial
  • Buy decisions
    • Full buy / half buy / save
    • Understanding team economy
    • When to force
    • When to save
    • Ult economy
• Weapon/utility value
• Playing differently depending on the economic situation
• Playing pre/post plant

As the title suggests, got tired of the Valo grind and life got busy so I played sparingly and got placed to Ascendant then I quit. Came back to Valorant last Act, got placed to Gold 3 then I slowly climbed to Diamond.

My problem now is that whenever I play I seem to do well (top or 2nd frag) when I'm queued with teammates and opponents who are high plat/low diamond. But when I get queued with and against asc/dia players, my performance suddenly drops to the bottom half.

As for my mechanics, I can still consistently hit 25/30 hard bots with rifles and 18 with a Sheriff. However, when queued with higher elo players than me now I seem to forget how to play my game therefore resulting to my poor performance. Are there any practical tips I can use to adjust my game accordingly? Should I try to learn new agents to find the passion and fun for the game again?

I'd like to get back to Immo if I can, but yeah as of now that seems to be a long shot. Btw I'm mainly a controller player who can play duelist on the side. But my friends used to say that I'm meant to be a duelist since my aim, reaction time, and flicking is suitable for entrying a site. But I stuck with being a controller since I like being able to control the team's pace with my smokes.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Sometimes I'll jiggle and peek at someone then move away to try wide swing but I usually get one tapped.

Is wide swinging far from a wall bad? I think the further you are the slower you move right.

I basically lose every sunset game I play but idk how to fix it. I've seen like guides about it but idk how to apply them. Does anyone have any tips for it? Here's my tracker if its of any use: Val tracker

I recently got to asc 3 after blowing through asc very quickly and have been really wanting to take valorant more seriously and reach the next level. The only issue I face is I have no one that is around my skill to queue with. I’ve solo queued for the time I’ve played Val ( about 800 hours with long breaks) but have no one to queue with to build a team dynamic. I try my best during my games to I’ll but inevitably fall short most of the time and just have to play independently. My dream is to go pro but ik that to be able to do that the ABSOLUTE one thing I least need to gather peoples attention is to be radiant. I k ow I have the individual skill and mechs to do so and will continue to improve on them but for know I want to know if anyone is in my same boat and would like to play. I’m looking for people asc or above that wants to take the game seriously dm me or reply if you are interested!!

Hello all,

I'm relatively new to the game, but I've sunk a ton of time into the game trying to improve and I basically immediately hit a wall as soon as I started playing ranked.

I'm roughly 150 games deep into ranked this act, probably 250 hours put into actually playing the game between ranked, deathmatches, swiftplay, and the range. I was placed Iron 3 and am still iron 3 (with a sub 40% winrate).

I've gone as far as paying for coaching and it's been discouraging to say the least. From everyone that's watched my recent gameplay, I'm more or less told my aim is nowhere near a bottleneck (usually hover around a 30% headshot rate in recent games) at this point but that my game sense is like I've never played a video game before. Even after me spending a ton of time trying to find information that teaches about positioning and general game sense, as well as watching about 50 hours of pro players playing ranked, none of it is clicking with me whatsoever and the way I've been talked to about it by my coach and friends that also play the game just makes me feel like I'm broken mentally.

I've never been as lost or frustrated with anything in my life as I have been with this game. I've really enjoyed the game so far but I just loathe that I haven't been able to improve results wise because I just can't understand game sense at even a base level.

Please send help.

Edit: forgot to link my tracker: https://tracker.gg/valorant/profile/riot/RollTideStivers%23NA1/overview?platform=pc&playlist=competitive&season=4f0864e2-40af-28a4-de2c-0e9e64e75f23

Semi-new player here(about 150 hrs, just recently started ranked) and im wondering whether it makes sense to use aim trainers since Ive heard a lot about it watching guides whereas other guides insist that DM/range as well as just playing the game iss more important. I come from Overwatch where aim training is genrally viewed as cope and a waste of time(compared to in game practice) so im wondering if its similar in Val or more important due to the larger focus on mechanics.

Currently a gold 1 astra player and while my mechanics are terrible for my rank I think my game sense is severely holding me back for the agent I'm playing.

I've been writing notes while reviewing other pros and my own games but I'm having a hard time implementing the corrections I point out.

How do I get better at fixing these mistakes? Do I just bring up the Google doc every time I get the map I did badly in again?

Can someone give me a good agent to rankup to silver cause i just ranked up to bronze 2 amd need help finding a main my username is "Waguri Kaoruko#meow" pls help

so I've just started playing a couple days ago and I've watched a few tutorials here and there but still struggle to get used to the game in general

mainly because the only other PC game I play is League and I'm just generally not so great at games

(+ not used to WASD movement)

I mainly play for fun but would like to be decent at least but I have no idea on where to start (not very interested in playing ranked yet or at all)

should I start by looking into agent abilities? should I prioritise aim/movement? should I pick a role/agent first?

I've only tried Sova and Pheonix thus far, and my most comfortable gun might be the Marshall

unfortunately I have no luck getting kills on anything that isn't a Sniper rifle (not used to accounting for the recoil)

also additional side note because I'm already on a tangent anyway: I can't tell the direction of sounds (in game and irl) I've sort of just been going based off of vibes

I posted my position heatmaps here a few months back and the top request was to make them aggregate across matches — so that's what this turned into, plus about a year of solo-building around it.

https://preview.redd.it/griybfq4v2jh1.png?width=1290&format=png&auto=webp&s=6e3e0cdfbe74d16dc01777015cc77675e7fff78b

 1. The heatmap. Every kill and death from your matches stacked onto one map, broken into zones. 31% of everything on this map happens mid. It also breaks down hit distribution — turns out I'm at 13% headshots against a 35% lobby average, which explains a lot.  

https://preview.redd.it/zp7j45yav2jh1.png?width=1290&format=png&auto=webp&s=1126704e977d123783402777066a05ba3299e5a2

2. Career, act by act. 9,823 matches, 5,141 hours, and a K/D that has hovered around 0.98 for four straight acts. Genuinely humbling to see it laid out like that.

https://preview.redd.it/hz53rwnjv2jh1.png?width=1290&format=png&auto=webp&s=ceb8c8e25514307cdc233c089c161cd5c0163d47

3. Agent select shows what your comp is missing and ranks picks by your stats on that map — not by what's meta globally, by what actually works for you.

https://preview.redd.it/x9w0rammv2jh1.png?width=1290&format=png&auto=webp&s=52acfa89b84ad8dee896e30a73d384730f6a1646

 4. A daily view — everything thats important at a glance.

https://preview.redd.it/vf8965aov2jh1.png?width=1290&format=png&auto=webp&s=3ab9de4fa0a2fc9e80cb859c20358dc72b40d58e

 5. And if you pair the desktop companion, your live match mirrors to your phone while you play.

Built solo over about a year, native iOS/iPad/Mac, and there's an Apple Watch app too. It's out now and free.

Same question as last time though, because the answers shaped half of this: 

what's the one thing your current tracker doesn't do that you'd actually use on a phone?

EDIT: You are right. The post was AI written and thats on me I should have wrote the post in my own words and phrasing. The work to say the least behind this passion project is real and has taken substantial amount of time and effort from me I could say I spent the most time of this Project this year over 50% of my time even neglected sleep. I won't argue with the people I hope you give it a try and that my work will speak for itself. I appreciate the honest criticism even if it can up really harsh at first and will keep working on revamped.gg .

i've been playing for about a year now.
i am currently silver. i am sure there are things i don't know yet but should know. i'd like somebody's guidance and insights.

I keep hearing to not shift walk when clearing an angle but how do I approach that angle without giving away my position due to footsteps? Is this the following the way? Approach with shift, 2 step peek without shift and then approach the next angle again with shift.
And does it make sense to approach the angles with counter strafing (to stop my momentum) ?

im mainly looking for movement advice. im b3 but have s2-3 mmr, and once i get silver i wanna climb out fast. ive heard movement can help a lot, any advice? in the clip i sometimes randomly shoot to bait people into fighting me so i can get more reps. movement isnt muscle memory for me yet so i have to actively think about strafing, and sometimes i just forget. Heres the dm

Wondering if counterstrafing (hold both keys to stop, letting go of a key briefly to strafe) or deadzoning (pressing opposite key to change momentum and shooting in the exact time momentum drops to 0) is better for regular face up duels.

Deadzoning feels harder to time consistently in a variety of situatioks but you can shoot faster and you move more between shots and stuff

So assuming both first shots have been missed and its a proper movement duel which is the better option? Plus you can burst with counterstrafing and you can only tap with deadzoning

, counterstrafing works fine for me but i was wondering if deadzone is just a better alternative or if its like situational, also had to define it cuz i ve seeing it called diff things so yeah

Edit: lot of people been calling out the “hold both keys” thingy, its essentially the same as letting go both keys, i dont use SOCD so holding A and D cancels out my monentum the same way letting go of either does

Any tips and things i should improve on? I started playing PC about 4 days ago from console and im enjoying it but in terms of aiming, movement and so on sometimes i still struggle so what should I do to improve those things? I play on an old amazon keyboard 😭 the reload key barely works and
sometimes my a key doesn't want to work either. everything im using is pretty low end and im not in any position to upgrade so what can I do to improve because I know people have hit high ranks with low end peripherals