How to Review Your VALORANT VODs Like A Pro
Every VALORANT player dreams of reaching Immortal. They pour countless hours of practice into the game, ceaselessly grinding to rank up. Practice makes perfect, but it has to be the right kind of practice – the quality of your training time is more important than the quantity. Of all methods, VOD review reigns supreme. Correctly VOD reviewing will help you improve twice as fast with half the effort. Let’s walk through the VOD review cycle and how to complete it effectively.
Watch the Whole Game
The first step of reviewing any VOD is simple: watching it. However, there is a specific way that players should watch their VODs. First and foremost, it is critical to be aware of the entire game environment and how it interacts with your play. Try to understand what’s happening as an outside observer who can see everything occurring. Keep an eye on the minimap, teammate and enemy positioning and utility. You might not notice these factors while playing, but they are critical to assessing the impact of decisions and understanding how to make optimal plays.
Identify and Correct Mistakes
Valoplant
After coming to a total understanding of the events taking place in a match, you can begin to identify where you went wrong. If you see a teammate holding CT on the minimap in a 2-v-1 and you were holding the same angle instead of long, you can assume from the round’s context that it was a poor decision.
The next step is to figure out what you need to do to correct the mistake – in this case, you would shift your focus from CT to long while your teammate watches your back. Players can use valoplant.gg to map out these scenarios and experiment with utility and positioning when identifying a solution. A general rule of thumb is that if rewatching something makes you cringe, it is probably a mistake that needs fixing.
Keep an Eye on Mechanics
If you notice that your positioning and decision-making are correct, but you’re still losing duels, it might be time to brush up on your aim and movement mechanics. Try to identify what’s wrong by considering common problems: is your crosshair too low or too high? Are you peeking correctly? Are you stopping movement completely before shooting? Are you tap firing or allowing recoil to take over? These issues are tedious to practice and fix but completely necessary to improve your overall performance. Even fifteen minutes spent in the Range or Deathmatch are worth it, especially if it prevents you from going on a three-hour loss streak.
Assess and Increase Your Impact
Assessing impact is not simply about understanding how your decisions affect the game’s outcome. It’s also about seeking opportunities and identifying moments where you could have made more impact and where you could have carried harder. Could you have swung out with a teammate while they fought or followed a Phoenix ult to make space? Maybe you could have combined utility – when your Fade sends a Sieze you can provide a grenade as Raze. The goal is to find ways to win successful rounds even more efficiently. In the context of a loss, you can ask yourself: could I have done anything differently to turn this game around?
Valorant
Apply What You’ve Learned
VOD review is useless if you don’t implement changes into your gameplay. Instead of playing on autopilot, be conscious and make different decisions from the ones that lost previous rounds. It might be helpful to list the three to five most frequent mistakes you noticed in your VOD and focus directly on those factors. Once you complete this step, you can rinse and repeat the VOD review process.
If you have difficulty objectively reviewing your gameplay, you can ask higher-ranked friends or a coach to watch your VOD. It is also a great idea to watch pro VODs on YouTube and Twitch to take note of their gameplay and calculated decisions. While different ranks have different common problems and patterns of player behavior, the VOD review formula applies to all and never fails. Analyzing your gameplay is just as effective in Iron One as in Radiant – and if you’re aiming for Radiant, VOD review and practice is the only way you can get there.
