There are a lot of techniques that pros use that you simply don’t, and it’s costing you so many games. You might be thinking that this involves crazy mechanics or amazing movement, but really, it’s the simple things that the pros do so well. These may be incredibly obvious but are so important, and everyone is overlooking them. We’re going to break it all down, starting with conditioning.
Now, you have to remember that when you use utility to win a round, the enemy will remember what you did, and the next time you use that utility, they will react to counter your previous strategy. But understanding that the enemy is not a bunch of AI, you can think a couple of steps ahead. Understanding that if you use utility well one time, they will change how they are responding to it, and using this to your advantage is the proper way to utilize conditioning.
Understanding Pro Techniques
Let’s say that you used a certain Raze grenade to win a site hit, and it landed perfectly, got you a lot of value. Next round, you can throw a fake by using the same Raze grenade, and the enemies are more likely to assume it’s a real rush because they just lost to that same piece of utility. You’re conditioning them to be afraid or react a certain way to a bit of utility, a setup, a site hit, and then using that to strengthen a fake play, a fake-out, or some other play that you’re going to make on the enemy.
conditioning is also used in a lot of ways, like how you’re peeking an angle, how you’re challenging an angle. One of the things that people ask is about a really super wide swing or something like a “popping” swing. Why does something like that work? Most of the time, it comes down to conditioning the enemy to hold their crosshair to a close edge, and then you’re swinging wide so they have to flick really far. This is something that you can utilize with utility, the way you’re playing your strats, and anything in between. Condition your enemy to one thing, use something you’ve done successfully, and use that to make an even deeper plan instead of just trying to repeat.
Strategic Conditioning
Understanding that the enemy will remember your utility usage from round to round is fundamental. When you use a strategy successfully, the enemy will anticipate you repeating that strategy. This anticipation allows for strategic conditioning. By deploying the same utility, like a Raze grenade, in subsequent rounds but varying your actual play, you introduce uncertainty into the enemy’s decision-making. This tactic of using previous successes to condition the enemy’s expectations allows you to craft more complex strategies and plays.
Conditioning isn’t just about the utility you use; it extends to your movement, how you peek angles, and your overall strategy. For example, a wide swing might surprise an opponent conditioned to expect a close peek, forcing them to adjust their aim significantly. This concept of conditioning underlines the importance of thoughtful play and adaptation, leveraging past actions to manipulate enemy responses to your advantage.
Utility and Conditioning
The correct use of utility plays a crucial role in conditioning your opponents. It’s not merely about the utility itself but how and when you choose to use it. Successful utility usage that leads to a won round leaves a psychological imprint on the enemy, making them wary of similar setups in the future. This wariness can be exploited. For instance, a well-placed Raze grenade that previously secured a site can be mimicked in a subsequent round to simulate a similar attack.
This imitation forces the enemy to react based on past experiences, potentially misallocating resources or misreading your true intentions. The art of conditioning through utility requires foresight and the ability to predict how your opponents might adapt their strategies in response to your actions. It’s about creating patterns that the enemy learns to expect, then breaking those patterns to gain a tactical advantage.
Peeking and Movement Conditioning
Peeking techniques and movement are integral parts of conditioning in competitive play. The way you peek an angle can set the expectations for your enemy’s defensive strategy. For instance, consistently peeking closely might condition opponents to aim closer to corners. Altering your approach with a wide swing in a subsequent encounter can catch them off-guard, requiring a much larger adjustment in their aim and reaction time.
This method of conditioning extends beyond just utility usage and into the very mechanics of engagement. It demonstrates the importance of variability in your playstyle, using prior engagements to inform future encounters. Successfully conditioning your opponent through peeking and movement can create openings and advantages that may not be apparent at first glance but are deeply rooted in psychological manipulation.
Advanced Tactical Conditioning
At the core of advanced tactical conditioning is the ability to anticipate and manipulate the enemy’s reactions to your playstyle. Through consistent application and variation of strategies, you create a psychological game that extends beyond the physical mechanics of play
Enhancing Teamwork and Strategy
A better plan that actually worked, just based on a small bit of communication, can go a really long way. It’s something that a lot of players don’t do because they just get into the mindset of, “I have to solo carry every single game,” when they don’t realize that if they just formed a little bit of teamwork, a little bit of synergy, the game would be so freaking easy to win.
Now, another thing that pros do that a lot of players mess up with is simply hiding from utility. What I mean by this is, Valorant has very readable cooldown timers that you can use to your advantage. The best example of this is attacking B site on Ascent. Sova will always use their dart off cooldown to reclear B main.
Leveraging Utility Timings for Strategic Advantage
If Sova uses his dart, you know that they will most likely use another dart exactly 40 seconds later because that’s the cooldown of the dart. You can expect that to come at that time interval, and knowing this, all you have to do is hide out the second Sova dart and rush on the Sova, creating a highly unexpected site hit. You can disrupt the site hit, you could predict it coming, and this is a super strong strategy because the enemy team thinks that they’re actually gathering information with the dart.
Now, you can use the very same concept with this, with any rechargeable utility such as Fade’s Haunt and KAY/O’s FRAG/ment. So, the further you understand game timings, the better and better you’re going to be at disrupting enemy play. And if you combine this with a lot of the sound-based and utility-based information we talked about earlier, you can completely predict a lot of enemy strategies, especially when they become overly simplified in ranked play, and just completely shut down a lot of these by using utility before them, meeting their play with some form of aggression, and yeah, it’s just going to be a lot of freaking value.
Mastering Utility to Gain Advantage
Next up, we do gotta talk about using the minimap, and everyone’s like, “Okay, sure, everyone uses the minimap,” but really, do you use it well, like pros do? The minimap can be your best friend, and when you have teammates with bad comms, especially, which is going to be a lot of your games, you want to have one eye on that minimap at all times. You really need to be focusing on it because there’s so much valuable information just by paying attention. I swear, the minimap gives away crazy amounts of information that a lot of people don’t pick up because.
Utilizing the Minimap Effectively
They’re just not focused on the minimap; they’re only focused on what their eyes can see. But when you’re jump peeking a corner, when your character sees a character through utility and smoke, when you’re normally blind, or your flash, or whatever, the minimap is not, and it’s gathering some of that information when you normally couldn’t. And it could be the same way for your teammates.
I can’t tell you how many times you look up in the top left, and your teammate sees an enemy, but they don’t know that that character’s there, and you’re like, “It’s right next to you, you know?” And you’re giving them information. It seems like a really simple tip, but it is important, and it’s something that pro players have learned to master, where a lot of players don’t even really pay attention to it at all.
Mastering Minimap Awareness
Now, for the sixth thing, this is something that a lot of players just don’t do enough in most ranks of play, and it’s rotating correctly in ranks. So, how many times have you attempted to hit a site, just to get stuck in main, your team sits there and does nothing for 30 seconds, and then you get flanked and killed? Or, you attempt to rehit, and the enemy team hasn’t moved. One thing that you should incorporate more is to rotate early and often. I can’t express this enough because the vast majority of hits in most ranks come down to a successful rush or a fail rush, right? People hit a site, and they’ll either hard hit it, or they’ll fail, and they’ll die.
And if they rotate, they maybe can scrap by with like one person, or like two people maybe, but most of the time, if they rotate, you already lost the game, and most teams don’t rotate at all. So what you need to try to do is start a hit, force out a little bit of utility, and immediately rotate early, like literally a presence, utility use, utility trade, and then just to rotate right off the bat. The second the site hit fails, tell your team to rotate, and most of the time, you can actually beat the enemy to the other spike site, and you’re rotating at a rather healthy life. You’re not trying to trade out a ton of lives.
Optimizing Rotations in Gameplay
You’re not trying to really get stalled out there; you’re not trying to really give it a good try to push through. The initial goal is to force out cooldowns, force out trades, and rotate because I’m telling you, so many fights are just an all-in. It’s a rush or not, and teams are going to just hard overcommit utility into stopping you. Teams are going to overcommit rotations into stopping you, and if you could just have some successful rotations, you are going to win way more games. It’s an art to make sure that you’re not committing so much that it’s really difficult for you to pull out; your pull-out game is weak, so to speak.
Art of Successful Rotations
Now, last but certainly not least, this is a really important one, and it’s mentally expecting things to happen. So, a lot of the time, there will be some sort of clue before you get pushed with utility, whether it’s a footstep, smokes, or teammates’ call. You got to stay ready for things to happen. The second you see these clues, this will make you better at winning gunfights, turning flashes, and reacting to any unorthodox strategy the enemy attempts.
Basically, what this is, is combining your game sense and understanding of the game with what the enemy could do with their pieces of utility. Understanding that the enemy is not going to just run out in the open when they have two flashes on Phoenix, right? They are going to flash an angle and maybe flash another angle. Basically, you are respecting the plays that your opponents could make, and you’re not assuming that they’re going to make the worst possible play imaginable.
Because here’s the thing, if your opponents don’t use any common sense, just run it down, and they’re doing dumb stuff all game, you’re going to beat these players, at least you should, just with your fundamentals. So, you need to come up with a plan for when enemies are going to use their utility, going to fight, going to rush, and you’re combining all these other strategies we talked about to make better-educated guesses about how the fights are going to move, and what type of utility is going to come out so you can position better, be prepared more, and be caught off guard less.
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