Have you ever heard of Valorant Strategy? Any competitive player must have a vague concept on how to strategize some tactics, however most of them usually don’t have a deep understanding on how to make good tactics and game plans for your team.
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The strategy in every FPS genre involves 3 different aspects of the game. The Game Plan, the Tactics and the Execution.
For any strategy to succeed you will have to invest hours into making and refining them so you can bring your best weapons into a tournament. So let’s get into it and first understand what Game Plan, Tactics and Executions are.
The Game Plan
Imagine you are playing Icebox and you are playing against a composition of Viper, Sage, Sova, Jett and Reyna.
Usually, you will have this basic disposition of the opponent teams with Viper anchoring B, Sage setting up a wall in tubes, Sova getting information on mid and Jett and Reyna crossfiring on A.
Now, your team is playing over B Long Control and you are successful in taking over viper, getting Yellow control and planting the Spike. So your opponents will have to answer your B long advances and they will change their setups to bring over Jett/Reyna to help viper maintain control over B Long.
This is where your game plan comes into action. A game plan basically means a guideline of which areas you are gonna strike, where you are gonna push and when you are gonna push against your opponents. The game plan will provide your team what needs to be accomplished through the game so you can have a reading on what the opponents’ options are and how you can act accordingly.
In this case above, when your opponent starts playing with 2 players on B site, you can make an A push fast, or you can work on mid and split on A, etc. In general, you will have plenty of options on what to make your next step, and how you are gonna keep changing the pace of the game so your team can have a head start over the opponents. That’s the basic game plan
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A game plan involves scouting your opponents, understanding their compositions and map priorities, and determining how your team is going to approach the game against that specific adversary so you can have a clear goal on what you want to achieve throughout the game.
The game plan will lead to a set of plays or tactics that you are bringing into the game. Let’s look at them now.
Tactics and Execution
What is a Tactic?
A tactic in Valorant consists of a play you are trying to achieve. You can have tactics both as attackers and defenders. As attackers, you have two different aspects to your tactic: the Default and the Execution part (or “exec” for short). As a defender, you can divide the tactics into a lot more options, such as area control, baits, pushes, retakes, etc.
Attackers’ Side
A default usually consists of the first part of the tactic on the attacker’s side. When you are playing default, you can have a lot of different goals that you want to achieve. You can hold and get information. You can push to gain control over some area. You can make a play to get a pick or get some duels. And you can try to infiltrate the opponent’s side, etc.
When your team achieves those goals, you will want to exec on the side you want to finish your play. The exec part of the tactic consists of the resources usage, the timing you will want to exec, the path you are gonna make into the bomb, where the spike is going to get planted, each area you will want to have control in the afterplant, etc.
Let’s take this play from FNATIC, for example:
They start by getting control over A Nest with Sage’s orb and Sova’s Spot to prevent a Defender’s push and Killjoy putting her Turret to get information on Pipes.
Then they start working over B side with Sova’s Drone and Jett Strafing to get info with the support of the Viper’s Wall.
Right after they push B long, they get into position and start the A Split Exec through the middle. This is an example of what a clean tactic is composed of.
It is important to note as well that most of the time, you won’t have a clean execution like that since you will have a lot of kills traded throughout the round. Because of this, setting up the possible outcomes of the tactics and improvising are some skills necessary for any tactics to be successful. You should be ready to work things out when your tactic fails.
Defenders’ Side
As mentioned before, the defenders’ side has different tactics. A basic setup consists of the distribution of the agents throughout the map, the areas in which you are trying to hold control, skills your team is gonna use, the goals on a side of the map.
When playing as defender, it is important to discuss with your team previously the kinds of play you want to make and setting the objective of the play. For example, if you want to make a bait, you need to set every skill you are gonna use in that specific setup and the triggers for when to use those resources.
It’s important to mention as well that, as a defender, most of the time you will need to adapt to the kind of play that the attackers’ side is gonna make, so having the proper reactions is as important as determining the plays in your setup.
When playing as defenders, having the right info at the right time is key to the success of the tactic, and this is usually your goal when you are making your team setups. You can achieve this in different ways: you can deny the opposing attacker’s map control. You can use resources to push them out. You can use info resources like Sova’s Drone. You can make midround pushes with set plays, etc.
Let’s take a look at this play from Sentinels here:
In this setup, they have Sage on B long with a clear goal: they want to push B long so that Sage can wall up on Green and Jett can rotate to fortify A Side.
On top of that, they Drone down on mid and get clear info that they are not pushing through middle as well. This makes them have a clear understanding on what Fnatic plan for that round is going to be. And they do achieve four players ready in Bomb Site A when Fnatic starts their execution getting the first kill of the round.
The round goes in Fnatic’s favour due to a really well-executed Killjoy’s Ultimate, but we can clearly see how Sentinels had the right info at the right time to get a head start in the initial part of the round.
This sums everything up for this First article in Valorant’s Strategy. I hope you guys found this helpful and be sure to check out the other Valorant articles here on GamersRdy!
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