As the VALORANT closed beta begins on Tuesday, April 7th, thousands of players from other games will dip their toes in Riot’s new FPS. Steamers and players who got early access noted how the game appears to have a sky-high ceiling. With an intricate game on the horizon, it can be a little worrying if the time and energy spent in a previous game doesn’t give any advantage. Luckily for players across the board, those skills from games like Overwatch, Counter Strike, and Rainbow 6: Siege do come in handy.

Overwatch

DPS Players: Mechanical Skill

For any Overwatch hit-scan players swapping over to VALORANT, now is the time to show off those aiming skills. The gun-play in VALORANT is based on precision and accuracy. Any former McCree player will find success using the “Sheriff” – the VALORANT version of the Desert Eagle. For Widowmaker and Ashe specilists, there are a couple of heavy-hitting sniper rifles ready to pick off unsuspecting targets.

Supports: Positioning and Game Sense

The strength of a great Overwatch support is truly knowing what is going to happen before it actually does. Zenyattas that hide from EMP to counter it with Transcendence know this from experience. In a game like VALORANT, that game-sense is vital to success in later rounds, when enemies have stockpiled ultimates for an important moment. Being able to dodge highly-dangerous ultimates like Sova’s Hunter’s Fury and Brimstone’s Orbital Strike is the key to clutching a round.

Along with game-sense, supports in Overwatch need to know where to be when things get hectic. When smokes come down onto point and poison starts to creep into a corridor, Overwatch supports will find themselves in a familiar place. Their positioning skills will be on of the greatest skills to carry over into this new game.

Tanks: Shot-calling and In game leadership

Just like Overwatch, communication is one of the greatest tools teams have in VALORANT. Making the calls to point out enemy locations, enemy health, and enemy abilities is extremely important. Main-tank players will be right at home shouting information to the rest of the team. This goes hand-in-hand with creating a gameplan at the start of the round. Having one “in-game leader” during a match reduces confusion and increases overall cohesion on a team. What better in-game leader can a team have than a former Reinhardt one-trick?

Call of Duty

Reaction Time and ADS

Sometimes in FPS games the overall feel of the gun-play can boil down to who sees who first. While VALORANT isn’t quite that black and white, players who can react a little quicker than the enemy will find success in stressful moments. As players turn into a corner or a bomb site, Call of Duty veterans will see that their quick-twitch reaction time is perfect for this game. Avid players of Search and Destroy can feel good about their time grinding the game mode, since that is the only game type VALORANT offers.

The main difference between VALORANT and Counter Strike is the ability to aim down sights on a weapon. This may not be significant to the Counter Strike players joining the queue, but for Call of Duty players this is a huge boon. Having the familiarity to aim the gun with sights rather than a simple reticle will help those COD players adjust very quickly.

Rainbow Six: Siege

Playing Around Walls and Vision

Rainbow Six serves as a pretty good training ground of sorts for when players hop into VALORANT. There are several characters that can deal damage through walls and grant vision around corners. Siege as a game puts a heavy focus on scouting and gaining vision on the enemy team, and VALORANT is very similar in that regard. While the base terrain in VALORANT is not destructible like in R6, the abilites that grant vision are. For example, players can destroy the Owl Drone from Sova, and the cameras created by Cypher. R6 players will be sure to avoid playing too close to walls when Breach and Raze are in the match, as they surely have fallen prey to a surprise Sledge entry one too many times.

Counter Strike

All of Them

Counter Strike players will find themselves in a “plug-and-play” situation when they take a stab at VALORANT. All of the necessary knowledge in Counter Strike translates seamlessly into Riot’s new shooter. Rushing B, smoking sniper sight-lines, and fake bomb plants – all are certainly applicable to VALORANT. The biggest hurdle is certainly the addition of ultimate abilities, and needing to play around them. After a few games however, CS players will certainly get a hang of the new challenges ahead of them. They even get to call the strongest sniper-rifle in the game a familiar name.

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Featured image courtesy of Riot Games

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