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Valorant is one of the hottest competitive games on the market right now. Riot is a developer that’s no stranger to the world of esports and competitive gaming. It stands to reason that their first foray into the world of precision-based tactical FPS’s has a robust set of settings to help you optimize your game.
The setting menus can seem quite daunting at first so we’ve put together a guide on how to best optimize your Valorant settings for your mouse, minimap, crosshair, and graphics. Our guide is based on what the majority of competitive players and pros use but there’s a good amount of flexibility for you to further personalize your setup.
What you’ll need to pay attention to here is that you’ve got two different settings to adjust. One is within Valorant’s mouse settings options and the other is in your mouse’s software. You don’t want one canceling the other one out. What we recommend is that you first set your mouse settings within its own software and then adjust the sensitivity within the game. As for which are the best values, it’s all down to personal preference. However, lots of pro players have seen great success with low DPI at 400-800 and sensitivity no higher than 1. It may feel unnaturally slow at first but with enough practice, you’ll find that it pays off.
Now that we have adjusted our three core mouse settings, we’re ready to move onto our Valorant minimap settings.
The key to mastering most competitive games is to develop your map and situational awareness. Both of these are facilitated through Valorant’s minimap that serves two purposes: to show you the lay of the land and to give you an idea of where enemies may be. Valorant has a particularly robust set of options to help you adjust its minimap. The settings you want to shoot for are those that give you the ability to check the minimap and at glance know what’s going on. Setting your Valorant minimap appropriately can also be vital when using Agents like Breach, Sova, and Viper due to their ability kit.
Now that we understand the importance of adjusting minimap settings, let’s look at each option individually.
Set this option to Off so that you can have a complete view of the entire map. Turning it on will effectively keep minimap’s focus on your character icon, effectively cutting off a portion of the map. This can be particularly dangerous if an enemy bleep comes up and their location is outside your minimap view.
Definitely set this option to On as it will show you where your teammates are facing. This is invaluable information when it comes to teamwork as it shows you at a glance where your team’s blind spots are. It’s also great at telling you what your teammate’s intentions are in terms of their choice of cover.
Not specifically about the minimap but it’s absolutely essential to set this to Always. After doing so, when you bring up the map by hitting M, you’ll see the callout names for each region on the map. On top of that, you’ll see the callout for your specific region directly below the map.
That does it for minimap settings in Valorant. Time to move onto crosshair settings.
The color of your Valorant crosshair is what makes it stand out from what’s going on in front of you at any given time. The entire color set on offer is designed to stand out but there are a few colors the pros are using that edge the rest out. These are green, white, and cyan. If we were to choose the absolute best, it would be green as it clashes the least with the colors found in Valorant’s maps. An exception here is Viper because of her Ultimate so if you play her a lot and you are fussy, then maybe white might work best.
This is arguably the most important set of settings as it determines the shape and prominence of your crosshair. Based on what most pros are using, here are the best inner lines settings for your Valorant crosshair:
● Opacity: 1 – Keeps crosshair as solid as possible so it’s always visible
● Length: 4 – The sweet spot of keeping the crosshair prominent without being distracting
● Thickness: up to 2 – This will come down to preference but anything more than 2 makes the crosshair incredibly thick and may be distracting
● Offset: 2: This will bring your crosshair lines closer while still giving you enough space to see what you are aiming at.
This comes down to personal preference and aiming style. One thing to note about having this On is that it effectively makes your crosshair bigger. This can potentially be counter to what you are achieving with your inner lines settings. The majority of pros have this Off but there are quite a few that turn it on. Those that do use it have opacity and thickness set to 1. Your choice will come down to how well these black outlines help you keep tabs on your crosshair.
Based on our Inner Lines Offset value, having a center dot is redundant so it’s best to set it to Off. However, if you’re using a wider offset value, you may want to experiment with turning it on.
The purpose of outer lines in Valorant is to act as “training wheels” for newer players to better understand how their aim is affected by movement. No surprise here that all pros here turn this off as they can be distracting.
Another distraction that pretty much all Valorant competitive players set to Off. What this does is that it fades away the top inner line of your crosshair the more you spray your gun. You likely already know your aim is quite bad when spraying so it’s best to just turn it off.
Simple stuff here. If you’re a beginner, go ahead and turn these training wheels on as they will make your crosshair expand and detract when you move and fire. This way you can get a feel for how accuracy works in Valorant. Competitive players and pros keep both Off.
With the crosshair settings out of the way, it’s time to dive into one of the most important set of settings in competitive Valorant: graphics.
Valorant is a fast-paced action game. As such, the way things move on the screen is vital for optimizing your game. Tweaking your graphics settings is all about getting the best possible performance out of your PC and monitor. That means having optimal frames per second (fps). While Valorant is designed to be playable even on a budget, you’ll likely want to opt for lower quality graphical fidelity that ensures high fps. Our settings below will ensure that you get the best possible performance. You can opt to set some of these higher if your rig is a beast.
The above settings don’t make the game look its prettiest, admittedly. However, competitive players always value their game’s performance over its beauty. One other tip is to invest in a high refresh rate monitor if you can afford one or can save up for one. Your monitor’s refresh rate is what actualizes the smooth animations you see. Going for something that can at least hit 144 Hz should be your go-to for getting the most optimal competitive edge in Valorant.
Click here for a list of Valorant Pro Gamer’s and their Settings
