While knowing and mastering each agent's abilities in Valorant is key to winning, you must first and foremost know how to aim and shoot a gun. While each weapon in Riot's five-on-five FPS has varying firepower, fire rate, and recoil, understanding the basics of first-person shooting m𓃲echanics can make or break the team.
An important, yet highly overlooked, factor that can impact performanc🍎e is the crosshair. Having good crosshair settings might seem over-the-top, but these tiny details go a long way in making anyone's shooting better. Fortunately, Valorant allows you to see the crosshair adjustments you make or test out how effective it might be in the Shooting Range. These are the recommended settings for ensuring an optimal gaming experience.
Setting The Crosshair Color
Of the many different crosshair settings, trying to 🔯decide on the color might be the most challenging. Should it be bright so it pops out on screen? Or a bit more subtle, so as not to hold too much attention if an enemy run💯s across the screen? There are eight color options:
- white
- green
- yellow-green
- green-yellow
- yellow
- red
- pink
- cyan
It seems redundant to have four options so closely similar. However, these can help distinguish the crosshair more easily, depending on the environment and your vision. If your favorite color isn't one of the eight options, then making the crosshair as bright as possible is the way to go.
Aiming and crosshair placement is vital in Valorant with some guns having enough power to one-hit kill with headshots. Having a brightly colored crosshair can help maintain leveled aim looking for enemies, increasing the possibility of execuౠting high-damage headshots. White or green are ideal choices, while red shoulꦚd be avoided.
Inner Line Length Adjustments
Increasing or decreasing the inner line length will simply cause the crosshair to grow or shrink. Having a crosshair on the larger side can help with knowing where to aim the gun, but may prove costly. Being able to shoot accurately and not rely on gun spray is the key to making a larger crosshair work favorably.
On a scale of 0-20, a seven is a good standard inner line length for the crosshair. Dropping the setting to a zero will leave you with just a center dot, which isn't necessarily💞 bad if headshots are easy to come by. On the other end of the spectrum, jacking the inner line length to a 20 will expand the crosshair and take up a significant portion of the screen.
Changing The Thickness
Adjusting the thickness of the crosshair will either greatly increase or decrease the center opening. Some players may feel comfortable with a thick crosshair that can fully envelop an enemy if they cross your path. However, thicker crosshairs can prove troublesome.
There's considerable recoil and inaccuracy when spraying in Valorant. Having a thicker crosshair might trick you into thinking the enemy is directly in ♎firing sight, but because of the frequent shooting inaccuracies, there's still a good chance of missing. Keeping it on the thinner side will also ensure enemies don't get lost behind an oversized crosshair, so a suggested thickness of one is recommended.
Consider Turning On The Center Dot
Depending on the thickness of the crosshair, there might be a small amount of space directly in the center. You have the option of adding a center dot that could help with aiming for headshots. O♛n the other hand, some might find not having a center dot more helpful because when aiming, you can try to fit the enemy's head in the empty center space.
The downside of having the center dot visible is similar to leaning heavily on the thickness setting. While it might seem like a good idea to create a crosshair that completely covers the enemy agent, the unpredictability of Valorant's firing may cause unwanted headaches. Not having the center dot will ensure the enemy does n♍otꦐ hide out of sight and the empty area will help develop better aiming and shooting techniques.
You Can Disable The Crosshair Completely
Yes, there is a setting that can completely do away with the crosshair. Removing the crosshair would be ludicrous in the long run, but in the short term, could help you improve your aim. Not having the ability to rely on the crosshair will force yo🌠u to keep your weapons steady in lin🎃e with the enemy.
In some multiplayer shooters, you can afford to run wildly around a map, sometimes with your gun pointed at the ground. Even if an enemy gets the first shot on you, there's enough time to adjust and react. Valorant does not allow such comfort.
Effectively getting headshots will drastically increase the ability to gun down the opponent, thus, ensuring a successful plant or defuse. Disabling the crosshair in Unrated or Competitive play isn't advised, but trying it ꦚout in Team Deathꦐmatch would be more opportunistic.
Make Use Of Enemy Highlight Color
While not directly connected with the crosshair, choosing the correct enemy highlight color is crucial. Located under Accessibility in the General settings, the default color is red but what we want to use is yellow. There are two di🐎fferent yellow options, so be sure to select yellow (protanopia) unless you require color bli๊nd settings.
It seems odd that red would be the default choice because of how hard it is to pick up on the battlefield. Enemies highlighted in red don't pop out on screen compared to the yellow, especiall😼y from long dis꧙tances.
Luckily, there isn't friendly fire in Valorant (other than ability damage), but incorrectly shooting will📖 certainly give away vital positioning. If you haven't made the change, we implore you to test it out in Team Deathmatch and see how much easier it is to spot those eneꦍmy agents.