Learn How to Perfectly Juggle Guns in Valorant – Expert Tips and Tricks

Are you a fan of Valorant but looking to take your gameplay to the next level?

This article explores the basics and advanced techniques of Valorant, including the objective of the game, choosing characters, understanding weapons, movement techniques, crosshair placement, recoil control, and map knowledge.

We will also delve into the concept of juggling guns in Valorant, how to effectively juggle guns, and the benefits it can bring to your gameplay.

So, gear up and get ready to enhance your skills in Valorant!

What Is Valorant?

Valorant is a 5 v 5 first-person shooter game created by Riot Games that was announced with the codename Project A on October 15, 2019, and fully unveiled with the release of a gameplay trailer on March 2, 2020. Riot, which is most famous for creating the League of Legends franchise, designed Valorant for Microsoft Windows and made it free to play. Valorant is described as a tactical shooter similar to the Counter-Strike series but with elements of the hero shooter genre including unique abilities.

What Are the Basics of Valorant?

• Valorant is a 5v5 tactical first-person shooter where one team is on the attack and the other defense, similar to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). Agents have unique abilities that can provide utility support, looting, and tactical strategies when attacking or defending a bomb site.
• Teams must secure at least 13 round wins (keep their opponents from reaching 13) to be declared victorious on one of four maps – Bind, Haven, Split, or Ascent.
• Players in Valorant have 100 shield points and 100 health points, which is generally enough to survive only one headshot from a Vandal (assault rifle) on full buy rounds. They also have a starting amount of $800, which they add to, losing a round or earning it back depending on round performance. They can buy guns, shields, and abilities. Guns vary in price, and a player’s choice is usually based on how much money they’ve been able to earn on previous rounds and whether they are attacking or defending.

Objective of the Game

The objective of the game is the same regardless of the type of heroes and characters being played. In Valorant, the attacking team must push forward to plant the Spike and the defending team must hold back to prevent that from happening. During the juggle, even if not actively participating in a firefight, members of the juggle team should be in locations where they pose a threat to the opposition should they rotate to disrupt the juggle. This may mean peeking, holding an off-angle for a potential backstab, or faking that the player’s team is in one position when they’re actually in another. That way team members can quickly change locations and provide covering fire to ensure the juggle continues if they are attacked by opposition players.

Choosing a Character

Choosing a character refers to selecting which gun to buy into and the related utility of that gun. Jett is a good choice for eco rounds because of her ability to move fast with a double jump and calm the recoil of the judge shotgun. Pheonix is a good sharpshooter if Sage, Omen, or Reyna are already being used and you need a character that can control the player during the gun juggles of the round. So your choice of characters is also dependent on your primary role.

Understanding the Weapons

In Valorant, there are four pistol categories to choose from – Armor-penetrating pistols with a headshot and body shot multiplier, Near-armor-penetrating pistols with a headshot multiplier but no body shot multiplier, Classic and Shorty, and two regular pistols called the Ghost and Sheriff.

The Ghost is the one that has been most commonly used in tournaments as of late. This article advises having the ghost in the juggling rotation because it is a great long range pistol. However, you need to practice ecoing with the Sheriff because it is safer to throw away than the normal pistols, so juggle the Sheriff more often. All of this advice applies equally to both new and experienced gun jugglers.

What Are the Advanced Techniques in Valorant?

The advanced techniques in Valorant include gunplay techniques such as spray control, movement mechanics including counterstrafing and bunny hopping, and game tactics like crosshair placement and peeking strategy.

Spray control: Responsible for getting hitting multiple bullets on the first shot and/or maintaining bullet accuracy in subsequent shots.

Counterstrafe: Rapidly swapping strafing directions to eliminate movement inaccuracies and to aid in maintaining precise accuracy.

Bunny hopping: Jumping tactically off of stairs, down from ledges, through bombsites, and around corners as an advanced and elusive movement technique. Crosshair Placement: Aiming for head level at common locations where enemies may appear. Various Peeking Strategies: Selective peeking, wide swinging, jiggle peeking, and shoulder peeking. They help players analyze whether enemy agents are present at advantageous positions, allowing for assessment of possible movement directions to both provide tactical advantages and keep well clear of potential hard counters.

Movement Techniques

With handguns in Valorant, fully commit to a corner before trying to shoot to accurately hit the head or center of mass. In real-world shooting scenarios, people flick shot between targets in a search and engage concept in order to shoot targets from various directions rapidly. However, in a video game, even with the Ghost Handgun, the time to kill is quick and typically beneficial to fully commit to the target and let your opponent fully commit to you. Instead of flicking to other targets, concentrate on dodging key shots from the opponent’s one or two other visible windows and finish the kill before moving to peek the next target.

Because opponents in Valorant can rotate quickly, you’re better off assuming that engagement is imminent. In Reality check Handguns scenario, this advantageous stance is crouched, whereas the Pistol express Handguns scenario stresses remaining unpredictable to multiple advancing opponents in similar positions – either remaining behind partial cover and changing positions frequently or moving quickly while firing and challenging enemies in mid-range where they are likely to miss more shots.

Crosshair Placement

Crosshair placement refers to keeping your crosshair at head level at all times, as it is easier to control the weapon. The crosshair should always be placed to where you think an enemy’s head is going to be around the corner, even while you are looking away from it.

Alter your crosshair placement to where you think the enemy is most likely to be each time you move into a different part of the map, do not solely rely on your eyes to identify the location of the crosshair.

Recoil Control

When players fire any weapon except for the | Bucky and the shotgun in Valorant, they have to control the recoil of the weapon. Recoil is the random upward movement guns make after shots are fired, which makes it difficult to aim when multiple shots are rapidly fired. For most players, controlling the rate at which recoil pushes the cursor off of the target is the most significant element of “recoil management” they will need to control. Only a few weapons in Valorant have moderate recoil patterns, such as the Phantom and the Vandal, but these two rifles are the most commonly used in the game.

During the shooting practice phase of Valorant, players can experiment with multiple weapons to determine what will assist them with controlling the recoil on each weapon. Aim Lab, which recommends these key adjustments to help control recoil faster:

• Use as low of a sense as you can so that the screen does not move faster when pulling down. This usually works for eDPI under 200.
• Focus on control when actually playing, this is not just for Aim Labs.
• Try the recoil facing only target in Aim Lab to your warmup routine. Low score from a small distance means the guy got worse. Repeat to go faster and faster.
• Once you’ve reached a decent headshot rate, try the recoil grid or even the Tracking stimulus on the harder targets from moving targets to flicking. Low score? Try again.

Map Knowledge

Map knowledge is important to the juggle. If you know where you can and cannot hide, you know where to easily reappear and shoot. Map knowledge is crucial for those wishing to hold spots or lurk. With map knowledge, you know when the flank is only worth a single kill and when it is worth multiple kills. Those who are not very skilled at maps can focus on corridors and watch how pro players engage in map control.

What Is Juggling Guns in Valorant?

Juggling guns in Valorant is the act of dropping your weapon(s) near the enemy team on purpose after dying so that your teammates can wallbang for free kills. This is done in late round situations where your team’s economy is low, and your side is not favored to win the round. This tactic prevents the enemy from picking up better weapons and sometimes allows you to use skills without risk, as you do not have to save the weapon after losing it.

How to Juggle Guns in Valorant?

Juggling guns in Valorant refers to exchanging weapons (not abilities) with a teammate before a round starts. Whether to juggle guns is dependent upon a player’s or team’s strategy. If a player is frequently buying a gun for others who can’t afford one, that person may want to drop their weapon and switch for the purchased gun. Or someone holding a gun with a higher price tier wants to trade their weapon for a teammate’s more expensive gun so that their enemy receives a worse upgrade should the gun be dropped.

Mastering Weapon Switching

Switching is a more advanced aspect of gun juggling that involves swapping quickly between bills as you play. Throwback defines this technique and notes that switching is often coupled with bursts of movement to help the player feel very aggressive. Timing is crucial since if a player’s shots do not hit their target, switching weapons may leave the player without an option to fight back.

The video below showcases nitr0’s throwingback skills in the game Valorant.

Using Abilities to Your Advantage

Each player in Valorant has two regular abilities (equipable in the Q and E slots by default) and one unique ability (using the C key by default). Although some abilities such as bouncing grenades and Reyna’s Devour self-heal are possible, most abilities in the game cannot be used while juggling weapons. Fire the ability before picking up a weapon while juggling or use them while crouching behind obstacles for maximum effectiveness and safety.

Understanding the Map Layout

Map layout includes starting points, choke points, open sightlines into rooms, critical angles of entry to specific buildings from outside, and frequently used defender spots. In Valorant, knowing how to juggle from one place to another is important because of limited time-to-kill and the ability to move from one place to another within the game to juggle guns. Moving from one building/room to another to keep cover whilst you reload the gun and heal up is a smart tactical decision. You can learn different maps by heart or refer to Callouts for each map in Valorant to easily determine the best juggle route to escape, achieve, or fight.

What Are the Benefits of Juggling Guns in Valorant?

The benefits of juggling guns in Valorant are that it allows a player to switch to either the knife or an option that suits the situation faster than running with a weapon or stowing it by pressing a key. Juggling guns to reload can provide an advantage against an enemy that comes into view unexpectedly. Juggling guns is especially helpful if a player’s gun has a long reload time, then it is beneficial to switch to another gun when out of ammo before reloading, so the player is not left defenseless during the reload. Another benefit of juggling guns is that it allows players to optimize and prioritize the weapons they purchase based on their role in the team and the situation. This includes purchasing multiple cheaper weapons for teammates to purchase full shields, switching to a better weapon after the pistol round closes, or purchasing cheaper weapons to save money for future rounds.

Faster Weapon Switching

Applied value: These are the main weapons that can be switched between and require a fast weapon switch to juggle more easily.

It is recommended to seek out the attachment or weapon which increases your agent’s ADD speed, giving you the quickest ability to switch weapons. This will permit you to juggle with those weapons that are slower to switch between. SIDEXIS and JOR find that the sidearms which are the quickest to weapon switch between are dualies such as the Frenzy and TS-21 Ballistic, and upgraded sidearms such as the Shorty. According to SIDEXIS’s data, the Shariff Classic dualies are less strong but easier to shoot using more ammunition. The higher-cost Frenzy has more manageable bullet control which is important when you are under pressure. High armor penetration is an advantage of the dualies since it requires one to two bullets to defeat armored enemy agents rather than sidearms that frequently require two or more shots.

The TS-21 Ballistic is the best performing by a narrow margin (its damage falls between that of the Shariff Classic dualies and the Frenzy), but the Frenzy is recommended for its price throughout your game; this ends the discussion making JOR’s choice snapping the Frenzy on the short list of his favorite weapons. On the pistol side, Shorty sidearm, Ghost sidearm, and CZ-75 0.1 Dual Berretas were the strongest in test results in terms of damage per time spent switching to them versus their damage at greater distances against armored opponents. The Shorty became the top of the JOR list of favorite weapons to switch to.

Increased Damage Output

Damage output is the amount of damage you can do in a specified period of time. Damage output is a very important statistic in Valorant because it helps you get your opponents killed quickly and efficiently before they kill you. Juggling two or more guns means you can switch to another gun with high DPS if your main weapon runs out of magazine ammo. Having a second gun ready to go if you run out of ammo in your current one is much faster than needing to reload, and it is especially useful in combating multiple opponents in combination equations that can flip unfavourably for you if they act quickly while you are reloading.

Guns with lower magazine capacity which characteristically do high DPS like the Vandal, Phantom, and SMGs and future new agents’ SMGs are some of the better choices for juggling. These SMG type weapons should be in your other hand so that you can alternate for rapid fire. When employing different weapons for juggling, it might be useful to have multiple guns that each fill a different range requirement so you can use them according to the proximity and distance between you and your opponent to keep the damage output high.

Sage juggling in competitive Valorant Champions Tour Europe Challengers Two : Day 1 play circa Jun 18, 2021. MATCH: Acend vs Fnatic, MAP: Ascent.

Outplaying Your Opponents

Outplaying guns in Valorant refers to achieving better performance than opponents using multiple guns, leading to advantages or kills in some scenarios. Outplaying opponents can be made by baiting the use of their abilities, changing the firing position, using different angles and corners, picking better gun-positioning routes, and by memorizing map direction. In simple terms, the gun juggle tactic tries to outplay the opponent by manipulating his mental state and decision-making process, ideally leading to an error in judgement that can be capitalized on with the weapon switch.

Mixwell recommends using the frenzy-Marshal combo to outplay opponents. He says [The Frenzy] needs to get value so I can’t use a Ghost (…) you smoke yourself, dash away, and use the Marshal from far away.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I juggle guns in Valorant?

To juggle guns in Valorant, you will need to use the /drop command and the /pickup command. This allows you to drop your current gun and pick up another, essentially “juggling” the guns between your hands.

What is the purpose of juggling guns in Valorant?

Juggling guns in Valorant can be useful when you run out of ammo or need to switch to a different type of gun quickly. It can also be a flashy move to show off to your teammates or opponents.

How do I bind juggling guns to a specific key?

You can bind the /drop and /pickup commands to a specific key by going into your game settings and selecting the “Controls” tab. From there, you can customize your key bindings to your liking.

Can I juggle multiple guns at once in Valorant?

No, you can only juggle one gun at a time in Valorant. If you try to juggle multiple guns, you will drop the first gun you were juggling and pick up the second one.

Are there any risks to juggling guns in Valorant?

There is a slight risk of accidentally dropping your gun in a critical moment if you are not careful with your key bindings. It is important to practice juggling guns in a safe environment before attempting it in a real game.

Is juggling guns allowed in competitive play in Valorant?

Yes, juggling guns is allowed in competitive play in Valorant. However, it is important to note that it may not always be the most practical or efficient move in a high-pressure game situation.