Valorant crosshair placement: aim before you see the enemy

The short answer

Crosshair placement comes down to one idea: your crosshair is already in the right place when the enemy appears. The shortest flick is the one you never have to make.

Keep your crosshair at head level by default, even with no enemy in sight. At a corner, aim at the sliver of wall the head clears first, not the middle of the doorway. Clear angles one at a time, without sweeping.

Dodge.gg calls this the highest-impact skill at any rank. That is a site's opinion, not a Riot number, but every guide we read gives the same base. An aim trainer does not measure it, and neither does the Road2Radiant benchmark.

Head height: the base setting

A standing enemy has their head on a line that barely moves. Your crosshair should stay on that line while you walk, turn an angle or cross the map. Terrain changes the line. On stairs, ledges or ramps, adjust before contact, not after. Correcting mid-duel is a flick you gave yourself.

To calibrate, look for fixed landmarks on the map. Dodge.gg cites lines on Haven walls and door frame edges on Split. Check them yourself in a custom game: a guide's landmark only works if your head-level aim lands there. Find your maps in the map guides.

At a corner: pre-aim the edge, not the door

Aim at the exact spot where the head appears first. Metabot puts it this way: the sliver of wall the head clears. An enemy exposes the head before the body, so the edge is the first point where you can hit them.

Avoid the middle of the doorway: the head shows up at the edge first, and that is where your crosshair should wait. Pre-aiming means placing your crosshair where you expect the enemy before they show up.

Do not hug the wall. A holder sees a wall-hugger before the hugger can react. Take the angle a little wider and slower: you reveal one threat at a time, with room to stop. That stop is the counter-strafe, covered in the strafe page.

Clear angles one by one

A site has several possible positions. Pick the most likely one, clear it, then move to the next. Sweeping your crosshair between two spots leaves it wrong for at least one of them.

An example in play: you attack a site with two open corners. You advance keeping the head line, park your crosshair on the first edge, stop for a split second, then slide to the second edge. Each step answers one question.

On defense, the same principle wins you the first duel: you pre-aim the spot where the attacker appears. Do not hold the same angle too long, or a lurker takes you from behind.

Common mistakes

Metabot sums up the usual errors. Our sources tie only two of them to a rank (crosshair on the floor or chest, crouching); the others apply at every rank.

• Iron and Bronze: crosshair on the floor or chest. Dodge.gg says most players below Immortal aim at the ground, chest level or walls. ProSettings tells Bronze players to keep the crosshair at head level every time.
• Iron to Platinum: crouching in duels. Dodge.gg calls it the biggest movement mistake below Diamond. ProSettings suggests unbinding crouch for a few games.
• Aiming at the whole doorway. The right reference is the edge where the head appears.
• Sweeping two angles. You are wrong for one of them.
• Big mouse corrections. Metabot prefers small counter-strafes and good placement over a large correction. A wider rank-by-rank guide is in the ranks guide.
• Shooting while running. Pre-aim, stop, shoot, then reposition.

How to train it

A ten-minute drill before you queue. Start a deathmatch, do not shoot, and walk the map keeping your crosshair at head level on every angle. This is the Miyagi method, which Dodge.gg describes for 10 minutes before your first game. Dodge.gg says the method was popularized by coach Woohoojin, without a source, and we did not read it from him: take it as a method, not as proof.

Success criterion, set by you: at each corner, your crosshair is on the head line before you stop. Aim for eight corners out of ten, then raise the bar.

A deathmatch with one rule. Play one or two games ignoring kills, and watch one thing only: crosshair at head height. It feels unnatural for a game or two, then becomes automatic. The deathmatch page covers this mode in detail.

A route in a custom game. Pick a map that gives you trouble, put your crosshair on each contact point, then repeat the route faster until you can walk at full speed without dipping.

For the flick that remains when placement is not perfect, Road2Radiant measures your aim: the benchmark covers 3 levels and 8 aim subcategories, but not crosshair placement. It is free, with a Google account. Train clicking with the clicking page and measure yourself in the benchmark.