When to crouch in Valorant

Crouching in Valorant has become a meme topic with how much attention veteran FPS players have given it.  But they are not wrong for doing it, given how much impact it has on the movement and crosshair placement. As you already might know, those are two of the most important aspects of the FPS genre.

Despite the bad reputation it has garnered, crouching is still a very useful and necessary mechanic in Valorant and these are some of the situations when you need to be utilizing it.

Silent movement

If Valorant is your first FPS game, you might not know how impactful verticality is on the gameplay. But if you’ve played CS2 (CSGO) at any point, you would know how important crouch jumps are without a Jett Updraft. Crouched jumps fit in multiple categories that we will discuss today, but they are essential for silent movement techniques. By that we mean silent jump spotting and falling down silently. 

Silent jump spotting

You might have heard about jump spotting before and how important it is for gathering information. Silent jump spotting comes into play when you want to gather information, but also not give any away. The last thing you want to do when trying to clutch is having enemies hear you jump spotting. 

This applies to both offense and defense. The way you do it is, you crouch before you jump and you release it as you are jumping. It might take some practice to get the timing down, and it will get affected by other factors like your keyboard response time and the rest of your setup. But if you do it properly it will work on any device. 

Silent Bunny Hopping

Apart from silent jump spotting, if you manage to master this technique you can also do silent B- Hopping. Apart from flexing how cracked your movement is, silent B-hopping is also very useful for getting into some places quickly and silently. 

You can do silent B-hopping without crouching if you are going up an elevated surface but you need to have the timing down. With silent B-hopping you can do the same with less potential to make noise.

Silent drops

Silent drops are the ultimate display of superior game knowledge, clutch factor and understanding the fundamentals. Making sure you don’t make a sound in a clutch situation should be easy enough with walking, until you have to lose elevation. The easiest and most famous example of this is the B Hookah drop on Bind.

There are boxes on the right side that you can use to get down, but if you walk, you will still make noise as you jump off the last one and onto the sand. Crouching on the last drop makes for a clean and silent entry that gives you a better chance of winning the clutch and securing the round.

Skill Jumps

Skill jumps are something every Valorant player should learn at some point even if they have no intention of becoming a professional player. While crouching in combat might help you better control your recoil or hear enemy footsteps, crouching for skill jumps is a lot more valuable. Getting into an off angle as an agent with no mobility is a clear sign of skill, and crouching is a key part of it.

Silent skill jumps are even more deadly because even if a defender is holding the angle, he won’t know what’s happening until it’s too late. But they’re also harder to do because they require extra crouch commands in the combo. The most famous examples of skill jumps are the bike, green boxes and the generator jumps on Ascent and the A Screens and A Pipes jumps on Icebox. Bonus style points if you can do the box jump in mid on Split.

Control your recoil

Controlling your recoil is an essential skill in any FPS game. While your main goal should be getting headshots, in some close range duels you must spray. The optimal way shooting in Valorant should be done is by tap firing with a rifle as you are counter strafing. This is done so you can keep your crosshair on the same height level as their head, while moving left and right to become harder to hit.

Tap firing instead of spraying means that you only need to do micro adjustments to score a headshot. Unlike CS2 (CSGO), Valorant rifles don’t have a set spray pattern. Global Offensive veterans have spent hours and hours practicing spray patterns and recoil control that’s different on each weapon but the same every time. But it doesn’t work like that in Valorant, because there is a lot more randomness.

So contrary to popular belief, crouching while spraying doesn’t make you control your recoil better. But what it does do is lower your crosshair placement by a fixed amount, instead of using your mouse to do it manually. And that’s a lot easier for newer players because they probably don't know how Valorant spray patterns work or what following tracers means.

Most Valorant rifles spray upwards and then to a side even if you are aiming at the same spot. When crouching, your crosshair gets lowered by a fixed amount and you have a bigger chance of scoring multiple body shots. It’s a lot easier to do than manually dragging your crosshair down to adjust the recoil but it also develops a really really bad habit.

Altered crosshair placement

Crouch peeking is by far the worst thing you can do in Valorant. Crouching makes you move slower, makes you agent look smaller, and your head is a lot easier to hit. But all that goes out the window if you are playing with an Operator. Professional players have spent hours and hours practicing their crosshair placement so it’s always on head level. The main difference between the Operator in Valorant and the AWP in Cs:GO is the scoped sensitivity. Other aspects of the snipers are also different and this is done by Riot Games on purpose, to make the game more versatile.

It all works as it should, but this also means that using an Operator on offense is really hard. Clearing angles with it is especially hard because of these adjustments, so one mechanic that skilled sniper players use is crouch peeking. Playing out close range duels with an Operator is basically a death sentence, but if he misses his first shot and you hit yours, you win. And all that is done by jump peeking and crouch peeking. Both these methods mess with  the crosshair placement of the opponent holding the angle.