Key Takeaways
- Gold rank favors coordinated team play instead of solo individual plays. Make sure you get along with your team, and don’t be toxic.
- The importance of correct movement from Gold and onward can’t be understated. Strafing is going to be your best friend in this Elo.
- Peeking angles correctly is the difference between life and death now. Master various peeks in the game and incorporate them into your gameplay.
- Learn to position yourself correctly across the map. Pick a consistent early-round position with the most value and adopt your positioning mid-round according to the team’s needs.
- Maximize your agent utility by learning the best possible usage and lineups for your abilities.
Table of Contents
Making it to the Gold rank is a huge achievement, especially with minimal prior experience in competitive FPS. Therefore, you deserve a pat on the back. However, getting out of Gold is an entirely different story. Due to a large skill-ceiling and stagnant improvement, some players may be stuck in Gold for months. If you’re one of those players, follow our tips described below to learn how to rank up in Gold.
Looking to test your skills by competing in tournaments and finding teammates for Valorant? Download the Z league app and use our LFG feature to build your community.
Check out our Valorant Rank Distribution list and general ranking guide.
Now, let’s get started with our tips! Let’s look at the best rank-up tips for Golds without further ado.
Movement Is Your Best Friend
Gold players are expected to have mastered the raw aim with good crosshair placement and micro-adjustments. However, movement is the key to improving your mechanical aim. You can use aim trainers for hours, but with bad movement, you’re likely to lose most of your gun fights.
You must practice a few things for good movement in Valorant: your peeks, strafing and counter-strafing, and dead zoning. With these skills, you will always get a headshot on the enemy while avoiding their bullets.
Work On Different Kinds of Peeks
Now, you may want to incorporate different kinds of peeks in your game. Learning the various peek angles and their situational use will be helpful in you not getting 1-tapped as soon as you expose yourself to the angle. You should be practicing the following peeks:
- Jiggle Peek: This mechanic works when clearing an angle with the slicing-the-pie method.
- Wide Peek: If you’re aware of an enemy holding an angle close, you can wide peek to throw off their crosshair. Don’t wide peek into multiple enemies.
- Shoulder Peek: Works the best in baiting out the shot. Especially if you’re aware of an enemy holding the angle with an Operator, you can shoulder peek to bait out their shot and take the angle.
- Jump Peek: Perhaps the best “info-grabbing” peek in the game, jump peeking has two advantages. It helps you get information on the enemy holding the angle. Furthermore, if the enemy is holding close for a jiggle peek, it helps you avoid getting headshot.
Did You Unbind Your Crouch Key? Bind It Again
So far, if you have developed the habit of not crouching during fights, all props to you. However, now, you may want to integrate crouching into your duels. Since most people in Gold rank have good crosshair placement, crouching can throw their crosshair off so you avoid bullets to your head.
Furthermore, crouch spraying can be effective in this Elo when done right. While crouch spraying, the general rule of thumb is that you only want to do it during a 1v1 fight at a short to medium range. Moreover, make sure your 1st bullet connects to the opponent before committing to a crouch spray, as tagging an enemy slows them down. Otherwise, you’d be much better off just strafing during the fight.
Know Your Positioning Across The Map
Even if you can win most of your duels and have good reads on the enemy team, it’s useless if you’re positioned incorrectly on the map. Understanding where your agent should be playing helps you get the maximum value for your team. Some examples of the most favored positions based on your role are as follows.
On Defense, your Sentinel should anchor one site, whereas the Controller should anchor the other. As a Duelist, you want to take initial fights or rotate as soon as possible, so it’s best to either play in the mid or on the site extremities for early info.
On attack, generally, you want the whole team to stick together. However, depending on your plan, you can. Sentinels and Controllers make the best lurkers, so having one in the lurk role can be beneficial. Furthermore, you can pair up a Duelist and an Initiator to fake a site and pull rotates while the other teammates slowly default and take the other site for free.
Learn Lineups And Effectively Use Your Utility
You may be called a nerd for it, but knowing the lineups for your agent can be extremely helpful in winning the rounds. If you main Brimstone, Killjoy, Viper, or any agent with mollies, having lineups for all the maps provides your team with post-plant utility that is extremely difficult to counter. Even in professional play, post-plant lineups are considered pretty effective.
Even if you don’t use an agent that requires precise utility lineups, you should use your ability to help and support your teammates. For example, if one of your teammates is getting rushed at a site, make sure you smoke for them to play around. Furthermore, using your flashes, recon, and space-taking abilities for coordinated team plays is important while executing or re-taking a site.
That’s it for our general tips section for how to rank up in Valorant. Be sure to check out our Valorant character tier list.
