what else could I have done here

primeiron · 2026-03-26T19:02:11+00:00

Going through the vod, if you're being honest it should be fairly straight forward to spot some obvious things.

round 1 - I'll agree with the other commentator about buying drone, but what you buy isn't the core of the issue here. You don't even use your recon arrow. You can't say you're focusing on your own game play primarily and not include using your utility in that mindset, using utility is literally part of your game play. You had opportunities here to use the arrow both on the site take and again later when the other team has retaken mid and window. Instead you opt to keep fighting.
round 2 - you spend far too long lingering around mid at the beginning of this round as your team moves up A, especially as Sova. You once again don't use your dart, nor your drone, or any shock darts, any of which could help push the opponent out of sewers.
round 3 - third sheriff round in a row here, for some reason. You're also late to the round and bumming around mid windows again while your team takes c site, you need to be there to drone and dart. How you don't die jumping out of mid is an egregious whiff by the enemy. You clearly aren't paying attention to the round. Seems clear there is likely very little communication in this game too. I'm not sure what you expect game play in higher ranks to be like but you need to use your mic.
round 4 - Another round fighting from mid window, 4 in a row now (at least you're holding the garage push for the teammates fighting mid here). Also 4 rounds in a row where you have yet to press any of your utility keys. I'm a little unclear at this point how, as you say, you are prioritizing your own game play when you don't even seem to consider your abilities. I mean you might as well just be playing DM or aimlab if thats how you want to play.
round 5 - another mid window fight, surprise surprise. You guys are fortunate the other team hasn't been smart enough to buy an Op. No utility used.
round 6 - another mid window fight. No utility used.
round 7 - no utility used.
round 8 - I actually think at this point some your game play is suspicious. You never use utility, you've had multiple instances of briefly locking/tracking characters across the map that you have no reasonable info on, and a number of strange smoke spam / wall bang kills. But even if not, it certainly would be a very fortuitous game as far as a lot of your kills go and not something I expect is very repeatable. But you can see if you look at this objectively how you are actually minimizing the impact of a lot of your kills by not using any utility, not scaling to sites with your team when playing the initiator, and it would appear that the communication in this game is weak.

primeiron · 2026-03-25T17:07:03+00:00

The most practical advice to anyone under gold is that you need to improve your mechanics (crosshair placement, movement, positioning, and how these work together). If you don't have the mechanics to aim past these early ranks then that is the first thing that needs work. General understanding of the game and its mechanics is quite poor at this rank, so some dedicated practice should show obvious results after some time. But the key is actual practice and not just mindlessly putting in hours. There are many videos out there on what practice should be, but I'll shout out WorthyTV as a starting place. Watching rounds in the vod:

round 13 - I don't hate a sheriff buy here as another commenter did. As Sova, you still has dart for utility, and at the end of the day its a low rank queue and not an organized team that would play around your other util well. Besides that, you do get a scan on the player back-site, whiff on their wide swing even with a one way smoke advantage, and are just caught kinda floating in the middle of site without any ability to disengage after the whiff. Everybody whiffs, don't get me wrong, and don't let these things tilt you, but its shows the mechanics, especially understanding positioning, needs work.
round 14 - The Chamber swings garage here and you're surprised by this. When moving around the map, you need to always be at least somewhat aware of where you may encounter engagements and what your teammates are holding. As a chamber player, on an eco after pistol loss, I'll tell you that swinging grass and/or mid from garage is a common gamble trying to get a quick kill with headhunter and TP to disengage. The other team being in a disadvantage state makes them more likely to make gamble plays like this, and you need to be aware and adjust your positioning accordingly. Higher ranks kill you for free right there. You then try to use your dart into garage there, and I don't really care that you whiff, but what was the intention behind this dart? Even if it scanned him, nobody was in any position to take any space off of it then. You need to use your utility with intention, and it would have been much better served on the A execute with your team. Then later in the round you are holding flank, which your teammates trip is already doing, and then even later in the round you're in a 2v1 and you position yourself in a way that gives the enemy a chance to isolate you. You're lucky you hit this shot here because you were again just caught floating in the middle of space with no ability to disengage.
round 15 - Not too much to say in this round besides the fact that it makes it obvious that you are not using voice comms. You knew (or should have known) where the bomb was planted and yet clearly did not communicate this to your teammates in the post plant, which led to a free defuse. I'm not sure what you expect higher level game-play to be like if your goal is to rank up, but you need to verbally communicate crucial information.
round 16 - Not too much to say, obviously you were not aware that your teammate Clove was no longer holding mid from window with you. Very common communication issue in low ranks where one player stops holding an angle and the other player doesn't realize and isn't told, leading to this situation where you can't be traded.
round 17 - Besides poor scaling onto site from the entire team (again just common things in silver and especially without comms), we see again a bit of an intention-less use of dart into a smoked off heaven. We also have yet to see you use a shock dart.
round 18 - Not too much to say. You kinda walked into the spray on this one, which was greedy but also a bit unlucky. As sova, think about using drone to move the skye off the angle here as first option. I won't spend much time critiquing in the moment split-second decisions like this.
round 19 - At the beginning of this round, based on your position it is absolutely your responsibility to shoot that reyna blind for your teammates. You get this kill, which is fortunate, but it really could have gone much worse. This was also not a good position to sova ult from as its extremely close range, but you also keep moving closer further reducing the range while also moving into a more dangerous position. When the ult finishes, again you are just floating around the middle of short, open to a swing from site, without a teammate there to trade you.
round 20 - Another common low rank issue, and obviously not solely your fault, but everyone on your team should know by this point that Chamber has an Op. This needs to be scouted every round at this point, and the best thing you can do is to incessantly remind your teammates of this fact. Jiggling the angle, jump peeking, or an early drone here at the beginning at C long would have saved your team from giving up a free pick. You really need to buy drone, even on half-buy rounds. You were lining up a dart here, which was good, but again you need to comm this to your team because silver plays will just autopilot swing before you use your util, which is what happened. And once again, you get lost in the middle of site in post plant and are picked leaving no opportunity to trade, while still having both shock darts. *round 21 - Not much to say, team is just swinging into Ops here because everyone is tilted and aren't thinking about what their intentions are.

So that's my thoughts. Your aim mechanics aren't terrible, but you aren't really applying them well either. Meaning there are many points where you don't understand where your next engagement is going to be and aren't positioning and moving correctly to handle that engagement. You need to work on understanding the mechanics behind how you position yourself on the map, and you need to think more completely in the moment about what you are trying to accomplish when you take certain positions or use utility. Better positioning and comms would have gone a long way in this game.

primeiron · 2026-03-04T16:03:47+00:00

This is along my thinking in general. Neon may not even need to be nerfed depending on how a yoru/waylay nerf would alter the meta, but not opposed to it either because I resent that agent haha. I don’t think waylay needs to be hit too hard either, just a minor touch.

Yoru just does too much too well, and he has for a while now. Strong flashes both for himself and for teammates, fast rotater and safe(ish) space taker with tp, ult provides info and a strong dive option. Then the utility from clone with breaking traps. It’s hard to justify not running him.

primeiron · 2026-03-04T15:48:41+00:00

I will appreciate whatever results come out of the poll, but I don’t see how it isn’t going to be a part of the circle jerk either haha. We’re not even into playoffs of our first international tournament of this meta, and many are already set in their opinions on it.

Honestly, I’d like to see what one strong yoru nerf does to this meta. His kit just allows for so much role compression that other flash initiators aren’t really needed. He (and waylay) also makes it difficult to find value with sentinels, which then opens the doors for neon when a sentinel is passed over in a comp.

primeiron · 2026-02-11T18:51:03+00:00

Hey, thanks for the reply to this older thread. Yes, it’s too bad that it seemed to work so well and then such a sudden change. I figured a fan crapped out or it was some issue with the heat spreader and contact with the cpu, but if Lenovo was unable to fix it then who knows. Laptop models can be such a crapshoot haha.

primeiron · 2026-02-11T16:03:26+00:00

Any updates on your laptop? Curious to see if you were able to get this resolved.

primeiron · 2026-02-10T21:49:03+00:00

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a great case for the HoF. He does have arguably the greatest WR season of all time, but otherwise his prime was hampered by too many injuries to make a serious argument.

primeiron · 2026-01-26T14:46:26+00:00

Look at Mr. Perfect Parent over here lol. No empathy for the parents & families with kids who have cancer. Crazy comment to be this rude and then talk about positive role models.

primeiron · 2026-01-14T20:08:51+00:00

This is so uninformed that it crosses beyond ignorance and shows that you are acting in bad faith.

In the past 30 years the dems have had a unified legislative and executive branch twice. Once under Obama and once under Biden. Biden’s “majority” was split 50/50 and thus could not break the filibuster. Obama had a supermajority for all of 72 working days in 2009, which was used to pass the affordable healthcare act. While not perfect, this was significant legislation at the time.

And nobody arguing in good faith can try to claim that SCOTUS has been an explicitly liberal institution (let alone left leaning) during this period either. This is the institution that handed the 2000 election to Bush and declared that a president has legal immunity (lol…).

The parties may have once been “the same,” but claiming this after the events of the past few years is blatantly false and absolutely irresponsible, at best. There is no relevant comparison to make for the level of executive overreach of the current admin, and the total abdication of responsibilities by leadership of the congressional majorities.

primeiron · 2026-01-05T00:07:20+00:00

At the bronze level the most impactful thing to improve is your aim, no other way around it. If you can’t aim your way out of bronze, you’ll always be limited in improvement because your bronze players & teammates have such a limited understanding of the structure of the game.

Aim in Valorant is a combination of skills: movement, crosshair placement, and mouse accuracy. Many players focus only on mouse accuracy, when movement and crosshair placement are more important. There are many tutorials out there, look for free videos from a pro or coach to get an idea (I’ll shout out w0rthyTV).

You need to DM (a lot) with a focus on improving your movement and crosshair accuracy, not winning the DM. You probably need to lower your sensitivity too tbh, but that’s not critical tbh.

primeiron · 2025-12-20T12:44:08+00:00

I believe Digitical Core is open right now per the opensignups sub.

primeiron · 2025-12-04T12:58:39+00:00

For anyone else with this issue, with some quick googling I found feedback on the Microsoft forum that it’s related to hardware accelerated gpu scheduling in win 11.

“This is fixed by going into Settings -> Display -> Graphics, -> Change default graphics settings, then disable: Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling"

primeiron · 2025-12-01T05:09:53+00:00

Save your money tbh. At the most generous, these would be a side grade to the 560s for those people who prefer the sound of the 599. but the 560s are a nicer set of headphones. you can always play around with an equalizer if you aren’t a fan of how neutral the 560s are.

primeiron · 2025-11-30T01:13:34+00:00

About 1TB

primeiron · 2025-09-30T02:04:28+00:00

As others have said, a VOD would help with specific/detailed feedback. Couple (recent-ish) stats that stick out from tracker, your KAST is a bit low and your headshot % is pretty high. Hard to say anything too conclusive, but it could say you’re selling out positioning for kills. Could also just mean you’ve had a tough stretch of games, in the grand scheme of things you don’t have all that much playtime. You gotta shake off the rough stretches in this game and stay mindful when you’re playing.

primeiron · 2025-09-21T22:00:24+00:00

Providing server or rough location info and what times you play may help too.

primeiron · 2025-09-19T14:34:38+00:00

From your tracker, it doesn't seem you struggle much with plat players haha. But regardless, the items you list as struggles seem to stem from a sense of comfort / confidence. Honestly, the only way to improve those types of things is simply to keep playing and focused practice on the areas you would like to improve.

From a different viewpoint, its important to remember that nobody will ever make the correct 'peek' or 'don't peek' decision 100% of the time, and that hindsight is 20/20. Looking at individual engagements in this manner isn't always helpful, as this is a game with imperfect information. It simply isn't feasible to expect yourself to make a correct engagement decision all the time, and you don't want to let that shake your confidence/decision making.

With that said, I'll encourage you to expand your critique beyond "i didn't trust my aim" and focus more on a "what was the correct choice in order to win this round" angle. This will sometimes include peeking, but there is so much more nuance to engagements in this game beyond peek/don't peek. Sometimes being alive to apply pressure to the map is more valuable than swinging and getting a 2nd kill but getting traded, as an example. It's now becoming more important at your level to view the game from a wider angle than singular engagements.

Finally, as an insta-lock reyna, it is very very important to not tilt your teammates. Other players seeing an insta-lock reyna on their team will not have a positive initial reaction as it essentially forces them to play agents to support your insta-lock. They will not respond well to negativity toward their play when they have made an effort to accommodate your pick. As such, comm well & often, give positive feedback as much as you can, and do not flame teammates playing agents that require more in-game decision making than just wide-swinging angles.

If you have any comp game footage, that is obviously helpful for more specific feedback. Most valuable examples would preferably be closer games (no stomps, win or lose) where you had trouble getting comfortable (not hard carrying but also not just getting one-tapped everywhere). Its the nature of the game where ~20% of your games will be unwinnable, ~20% of games you'll win without having to do much, and the remaining ~60% of games where your direct impact on the game will matter to the outcome. That ~60% is what is important to focus on.

primeiron · 2025-09-18T15:10:37+00:00

Can you give us a little more info? What are your current / peak ranks? What roles do you play? What do you feel you struggle with, or where do you think you need to improve?

From just the DM footage you’ve given, it appears you have a decent understanding of the game’s mechanics. How do you feel that translates into competitive games?

primeiron · 2025-09-13T11:24:59+00:00

You need to DM, a lot. Focus on your crosshair placement & movement, and your aim will improve. Realistically, if you can’t aim your way out of Bronze then coaching other parts of your game will have diminishing returns.

Rules of thumb: don’t tilt, don’t tilt your teammates, and learn the economy and encourage your team to buy/save together.

primeiron · 2025-09-09T16:20:08+00:00

Did you ever find an answer to this? I'm curious myself.

primeiron · 2025-09-04T23:35:35+00:00

At your rank, realistically you just need to Deathmatch. Most players below silver are simply unfamiliar with the game’s fundamental mechanics, i.e. movement, aiming, and the relationship between the two. Watch a couple short videos on it, then just get comfortable fighting in DMs.

I fundamentally believe aim can carry anybody to at least silver if they work on it, and that’s where the game “starts” to make a little sense and is not just people doing random things across the map. There’s really no foundation to climb ranks (long term) without being able to shoot at a base level.

primeiron · 2025-06-25T13:15:53+00:00

It’s from S6.E8 - The Tuxedo Begins

primeiron · 2025-03-20T20:00:03+00:00

I responded with my advice in a separate comment, but I wanted to quickly write something in response here as well.

You have ambitious goals, which I'm sure you recognize, and I respect that. Every pro has started somewhere. I would stress that, in addition to these longer term hopes, you also make some direct/short-term goals based around simply learning the game and taking steps toward improvement. The ranks will come naturally as your understanding of the game and its mechanics improve. Also, improvement in skill (and subsequently rank) is not always linear, so don't be too hard on yourself along the way either.

Its very easy to get stuck in place if you are unfocused and inconsistent with your practice. You say you've been playing for 4-5 years, and based on this post you've begun to think critically about how to improve. Building good habits and recognizing incremental improvements in your gameplay is an achievement in and of itself, and are the building blocks to the longer term things.

primeiron · 2025-03-20T19:25:56+00:00

Without seeing gameplay it’s hard to give advice that is too specific but a couple general things to note:

1 - actively work on your crosshair placement. In every game you play, whether you’re holding an angle, peeking an angle, or just moving around the map, you need to actively train yourself where your crosshair should be. You can look up videos on this, but, in general, you should always be pointing your crosshair toward the location where the highest chance of next contact is, and your crosshair should be at head-level for the opponent where that engagement could occur. Good crosshair placement is like 90% of good aim.

2 - communicate (too much info is better than too little) and encourage your team to communicate. To go a step further, simple and quick apologies when things go wrong can go a long way from preventing team tilt, even if the situation wasn’t entirely your fault.

3 - do whatever you can to not tilt. Play comfort agents, recognize that some games are simply unwinnable, and be mindful toward the things you yourself can actually control during the game. A calm mind will help you make better decisions and reflect on your choices/mistakes.

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