Mastering the Art of Dodging in Valorant: Tips and Techniques

Looking to improve your gameplay in Valorant? Dodging can be a crucial skill to master in this tactical shooter.

We will explore what dodging is, why it is important, and how you can effectively incorporate it into your gameplay.

From mastering movement mechanics to utilizing cover and abilities, we will cover various strategies to help you outplay your opponents and create opportunities for your team.

Discover the benefits, risks, and tips for practicing dodging in Valorant.

What Is Valorant?

Valorant is a team-based tactical shooting game released by Riot Games, the team behind League of Legends. The game blends first-person shooting with hero shooters and borrows significant portions of its formula from CS:GO. Two teams of five battle each other with the goal of attacking or defending predetermined sites.

Riot Games describes Valorant as follows: Project A is a character-based tactical shooter set in the near future. The game combines the precise aim mechanics of games like Counter-Strike global offensive, with the unique character abilities of games like Overwatch. Valorant is competitive personified and boasts a global server infrastructure with more than 128-tick servers in order to ensure high-quality competitive play.

What Is Dodging in Valorant?

Dodging in Valorant refers to using rapid movement, crouching, and strafe jumping to make oneself a more difficult target for an enemy to hit. Although darting left and right is the most common way of dodging, techniques including crouch dodging and jump dodging can be more effective for dodging in a particular situation.

Crouch-dodging is the act of rapidly changing from a standing position to a crouch and back. This is useful for dodging bullets that would hit higher body mass (e.g. head shots). Jumping and strafe jumping allow for faster crouches and standing to avoid being hit and are useful for dodging lower body shots. Using different methods concurrently can ensure there is a higher chance you will not hit.

Why Is Dodging Important in Valorant?

Dodging, otherwise known as movement or strafing, is important in Valorant because it makes it harder for enemies to hit you while still allowing you to return fire. Dodging’s general importance in FPS games derives from both history and game design.

In the past, when most games did not simulate recoil, good aim and walking in an unpredictable manner was the only way to survive against enemies with deadly accuracy. Today, there are added elements of map design, agents’ abilities, and different weapon types, such as the Vandal versus the Guardian, that make dodging a more finely-tuned strategy in games like Valorant. Dodging while aiming in Valorant properly is important because it helps reduce damage taken and helps avoid being seen in the Line of Sight (LoS) by an opponent.

How To Dodge in Valorant?

You dodge in Valorant by running perpendicular to the opponent’s line of sight, ensuring at least 1-2 seconds of continuous movement. Note that when scoped in the Operator or Marshal sniper rifles, movement speed is significantly reduced with corresponding effectiveness, so movement dodging is not possible. Additionally, you cannot jump while scoping with the stand-in place sniper rifles. Closing the distance between you and the opponent momentarily suppresses the need to dodge.

Mastering Movement

Learning to dodge in Valorant and other fps games begins with the basic controls provided for movement. Walk default speed goes up to 90, and the best way to use this with the QW-E Movement, will help you to practice ducking, leaning, and dodging.

A and D dodging at short ranges will incrementally reduce the impact of both accuracy and damage on the enemy. Jumping dodges are great for peek firing around corners, but if not done properly will make the player an easy target for sniper shots.

Using Abilities to Dodge

Abilities are extensively used throughout Valorant to deal with opponents and for movement. They can be used to avoid being shot, or even to make a target of yourself in place of a teammate. Some of the examples of using abilities to dodge in Valorant are:

1. Astra: Stars (E), suck and kill enemies. This ability can manipulate enemy movements.
2. Brimstone: Sky Smoke (X). When enemies shoot up a smoke, they would be able to see less, or without spotting any enemies, they must enter that area. The main purpose of the ability is not to dodge bullets, but can be used that way.
3. Reyna: Devour orb (C). Daggers (X). These abilities can be used after getting injured or enemies have spotted you, and get a little of your health back to fight for a longer time.
4. Viper: Toxic Screen (C). The wall blocks bullets and controls the movements of the enemies by making them find an alternative route.
5. Jett: Tailwind (X). Cloudburst (C). These abilities are highly mobile and can be utilized with chaotic and evasive movements to keep the enemy from successfully shooting at you.

Utilizing Cover and Elevation

Corners of walls are not the only type of cover that you can utilize in Valorant. When engaging in a gunfight, think about the next cover near you and how you can move towards it while shooting. Use cover like sandbags, wooden walls, rocks, and spike shell to peak out and fire then withdraw behind it.

A crucial part during gunfights is to let certain limbs peek out behind cover when moving within corners or popping around walls. By using just the legs, the aiming part by the enemy becomes more difficult while the player can see opponents more easily with the help of his head and gun.

Elevation is a form of cover. Moving up ramps or platforms, like behind a car, is a way to look for height advantage. You can catch your opponents off guard when they are expecting you to be at a different elevation.

Strafing and Crouching

By strafing and mixing crouches, you can make yourself more unpredictable and thus more un-hittable. Mixing crouches after strafing can make your character headshot hitbox move erratically and sporadically, increasing your chances of survival. Crouches help in dodging if the enemy manages to shoot at your location and time correctly.

Crouching is usually effective when you are confident about the enemy’s prediction or starting to stand still or moving back and forth in the headshot direction by tapping was not effective. You can quickly crouch and move backwards slowly to avoid getting hit and placing yourself in a headshot position by the surprised enemy, in case they miss the first time. This means that after three to four peaks is recommended to change where you revert back to tapping AD rather than holding crouch. This will help you avoid following bullet trails. Crouching at the middle distance that combines both bullet trails from last peaks help avoid initially headed shots and making yourself sudden headshot only if the enemy has missed their first prediction shot.

Jumping and Bunny Hopping

While Jumping and Bunny Hopping provide useful movement options in Valorant for avoiding enemy fire, they do not function as a dodge mechanism. Jumping in anticipated danger zones while still moving forwards can provide makeshift dodging, but such tactics should be considered extremely situation-specific. It can also provide other benefits which are covered in How to Dodge in Valorant?

What Are the Benefits of Dodging in Valorant?

• The benefits of dodging in Valorant include an opponent’s wasted ammunition.
• Flick-shooting. Guarantees the worst scenario happens to you. This refers to the skill of quickly turning your weapon to point to an unexpected target.
• Thins the thickness of the spray making it easier to engage in controlled shooting.
• These are important advantages to teamwork and personal skill advancement in Valorant.

Avoiding Enemy Fire

Dodging in Valorant is used to avoid enemy fire and prevent certain abilities from damaging players. Modern First-Person-Shooter (FPS) games like Valorant no longer incorporate movement changes regarding damage reception but rather player choice and reaction speed. Rapid adjustments to dodge incoming enemy fire receive the key damage-shifting feature in combat.

Dismantling/smashing view beneficiary sight lines without suffering from backstabbing provides you the strategic advantage and allows you to support your attacking teammate.

Outplaying Opponents

By capitalizing on an opponent’s mistake via dodging, you can make a shot that would normally be difficult to hit significantly easier. When you are pre-aiming an angle, it is optimal not to move because you are prepared to shoot at any moment. However, if you know an opponent made a mistake and you need to dodge, moving provides a higher chance of connection to the shot than standing still. In the diagram below, Three different movement scenarios are simulated and the ease of which the target is shot is contrasted between Static Movement, Crouching-Standing Movement, and A-D Strafing Movement to show the utility of dodging in Valorant when exploiting an opponent’s previous mistake.

Creating Space for Teammates

Dodging econ rounds, e.g., in cases where the map dictates it is a bad call to play for the round, can be beneficial. During the warmup phase you can practice shifting to dodge to increase your effectiveness in combat. Note that when a player cancels ADS and quickly begins running in the opposite direction, they can move very quickly and catch their opponent off guard. Creating space for teammates like operators with long-range positions is another way dodging can be useful.

What Are the Risks of Dodging in Valorant?

The risks of dodging in Valorant include dodge penalties, lowering one’s accuracy, and that dodging can become an immediate habit. Concerning the potential dodge penalties in Ranked Mode and during games where trophies are on the line, developer Riot Games can see to it that individuals are penalized for dodging too much, whether that be through prolonged wait times, reductions in rankings, or even more strict microtransaction extractions through their Radiant Rank.

Except when using weapons with spray patterns such as the SMG section, it is wise for players to stand when shooting, as the player’s accuracy diminishes while moving in Valorant. If an opponent is at a distant area, it is far more risky for players to try and dodge rather than stand up. Jumping and moving without the use of cover to avoid losing one’s life can be more detrimental than advantageous. Some players might make the error of dodging out of instinct. They might attempt to time every time the opponent is about to shoot by pressing the movement options. This is not only incorrect but can be dangerous too. Try to stay still in the meantime.

Overextending and Getting Caught Out

Although overextending and getting caught out sound somewhat inevitable, they are an essential but preventable danger that leads to you having to dodge in valorant. A lot of this danger can be mitigated by asking for a crossfire position. In a crossfire position, the risk of only one person being seen at a time is established. A teammate is by your side or behind you while you attempt to get into a conflict. This helps a lot during the time a retreat is in order.

Using Abilities Ineffectively

• Pros: If the ability can still be used with similar impact immediately after the dodge, then the player can dodge meaningfully even while using abilities.
• Cons: If players waste abilities and dodge right after it, then they do not have those abilities for a more critical time after they dodge the opponent’s real attack. Difficulty: 1
• Meaningful dodge rating if underutilized in favor of better techniques: 5 Phase dodges should complement the use of abilities instead of disrupting them. If one’s normal movement is luxuriously long or spiky enough for dodging to provide minimal additional utility, then dodging while using abilities may be the best option.

When is it particularly safe to dodge by strafing when using another ability?
You don’t even need to wait for dodging by strafing unnecessary – it can even make sense to jump when using abilities like Sova’s ability drone or Cypher’s Spycam. If you know of an opponent’s hiding spot that they are likely to strike out at, using such abilities can make you vulnerable for a brief moment as the opponent seeks to take advantage of your suspicion. By dodging this anticipation one can lessen the danger of becoming a much easier target for one’s opponents.

Do you recommend dodging by strafing in conjunction with abilities?
Yes, especially while using abilities which opponents could strike out at. Choose the combination of movements according to the utility of abilities that they might have at that moment. Combine dodging by strafing with using abilities as possible in order to increase the opportunities for better dodging while reducing real-time danger levels from anticipated enemy strikes.

Becoming Predictable

When opponents get a sense of when players will peek and which direction players prefer to peek from, they can pre-aim and pre-fire that location. To minimize predictability, make sure to vary when and where you peek. This can be achieved by peeking different angles simultaneously, waiting in a corner before peeking, or trying to bait out fire before a teammate peeks. Successful coordination with teammates significantly improves dodge ability in Valorant.

How To Practice Dodging in Valorant?

You can practice dodging in Valorant by creating Custom Game sessions that allow you to do quick movements between cover and practice getting shots in between movements. If done correctly, every corner cleared, every attack, and every retreat takes place after you have gone through preparation in your mind. You know what the movements will be, you know when to break cover, and you know when to wait or round corners. Twitch aim maps are a common training method used to build dodging speed and survivability. They allow the player to focus on movement without distraction. In Valorant Patch 3.04, changes were made to +forward movement to create more consistent dodging. With these dodging skills, players can win 1v1 gunfights with 100% efficiency almost all the time.

Playing Deathmatch and Custom Games

Like many first-person shooter games, players can get in and out of tight spots by learning how to be fast and mobile. The best way to dodge and move quickly in Valorant is by holding down the Shift key to walk, none depleted ADAD jiggles, crouching (default C) or jumping (default Spacebar).

Walking with the Shift key allows you to move quietly while under fire and reduces weapon inaccuracy, while none depleted ADAD jiggles makes you a harder target to shoot with each jiggle direction switch. Masters of this play are termed Peekers Advantage.

Learning to climb and crouch will help you avoid bullets. Precision crouching and will hide your head and expose your legs making you a smaller target. Running while jumping will make you a harder moving target to hit as you are less predictable with height and location increases. See the additional sources video from Saucy’s Youtube channel on how to be more unpredictable in Valorant.

Limited cross direction movement inputs, which players refer to as ADAD jiggle movements, can help the player moving left or right be harder for opponents to track and shoot. Beyond learning simply how to move more dynamically in Valorant, users should consider walking. Walking improves hidden and makes positioning less predictable, and can range from nearly stopping right before peeking, to rapidly switching ADAD directions to avoid getting targeted while still strafing (AKA none-depleted ADAD).

Additional dodging skills and techniques include knowing how to backup while firing, dodging left while crouching, learning to B-hop (continuously jumping as B-hopping), playing Deathmatches and Custom matches, practice backing out of engagements, improving mouse sensitivity to facilitate dodging, and practice peeking around corners.

The basics of dodging while playing Valorant are basically learning how to navigate and get between locations without being hit by opponents. This has the combined effect of making oneself a harder target to hit an making oneself a less predictable target, which itself adds a layer of difficulty to target recognition and tracking.

To integrate dodging into your overall mouse or controller mechanics, users should consider creating a new control group that makes it easier to move quickly and to dodge. Users may even wish to edit their current controls to fine-tune the jumping and strafing as per their convenience.

Here is a typical setup:

• Left-Shift for walking slowly.
• Default (Toggle Walk), Control, V for crouching, hiding, and making yourself a smaller target.
• Space as the Primary Jump.
• Video from Shaiiko’s YouTube channel on what better mouse sensitivity in R6 Siege.

For customizing dodge controls, Open Settings => Go to Controls => Custom Content Controls => Show Custom Controls.
For backward movement during engagements while strafing, apply the following pressing order which will help you escape the fights more quickly if you are nearly hit in Valorant.

• AWP for Binding D(Right strafe key on the keyboard).
• Now press W key, followed by D and S key respectively.
• Now repeatedly press WDSA keys after each round of keys. You should be able to complete these steps to avoid attackers’ crosshair.

Watching Pro Players and Tutorials

Pro players have developed a full game philosophy and application on how to dodge in Valorant. To dodge effectively, you need to learn the value of your actions and movements versus opposing players and adjust accordingly.

Asuna is one of the most mechanically gifted pros in NA Valorant. His journey began in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) at the age of 8 and he managed to become a top player within North America after years of practice. Transferring this experience to Valorant, Asuna’s Valorant gameplay and commentary show the usage of dodging tactics in combination with aggressiveness.

Randolph Klaasen (randyyfps) is a Radiant Mechanically Gifted Jett Player from South Africa. While the conditions he plays in are sometimes unfavorable, randyy has shown his ability to dodge and clutch even against the best players in Valorant. He is the Master of Peek and crouch shots. He is also the ace of dodging shots with moving and jumping options. Watch his stats and tutorials on dodging and peeking to learn his basics and then practice your own style of leg shots and dodging.

Analyzing Your Own Gameplay

Following most matches in Valorant, you have the ability to watch back over your gameplay to see where you succeed and where you fail. Paying attention to this can help you find out if dodging will be a good tactic for you to employ in future games.

If you find that you peak around corners very aggressively a lot of the time (as some players with an Acute Playstyle tend to), chances are you are leaving yourself exposed and would benefit from incorporating dodge movement into your gameplay. If you get peeked a lot, perhaps you are giving your opponents an easy shot of not having to create space and would benefit from assessing the situation before simply dodging left or right.

Observing your movements after the game is a great way to see if dodging might work for you. Pay attention to the areas you can improve on, these might be situations where you should have made more use of dodging movement. Pay attention to how other players dodge you. Recognize the timing when you should start moving, and how much you should move, depending on your enemies’ play regardless of them using the dodging technique or not.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to Dodge in Valorant?

What is the best way to dodge enemy attacks in Valorant?
The best way to dodge in Valorant is by using a combination of crouching, strafing, and jumping to make yourself a difficult target to hit.

How to Dodge in Valorant?

Can you dodge while using your agent’s abilities in Valorant?
Yes, you can still dodge while using abilities in Valorant. However, some abilities may restrict your movement, so be aware of that when trying to dodge.

How to Dodge in Valorant?

Is there a specific button or key to dodge in Valorant?
There is no specific button or key for dodging in Valorant. It is a combination of movement and positioning to avoid enemy attacks.

How to Dodge in Valorant?

Are there any agent-specific tips for dodging in Valorant?
Some agents, like Jett, have abilities that allow for more agile movements and dodging. Other agents, like Sage, have a slower movement speed, so be mindful of your agent’s abilities when trying to dodge.

How to Dodge in Valorant?

Can you dodge while reloading in Valorant?
Yes, you can still dodge while reloading in Valorant. However, keep in mind that reloading will slow down your movement, making you an easier target to hit.

How to Dodge in Valorant?

Is crouching an effective way to dodge in Valorant?
Crouching can be an effective way to dodge in Valorant, especially when combined with strafing and jumping. It can make your hitbox smaller and more difficult for enemies to hit.