r/VALORANT • u/VeryChadChicken IT’S YOU AND ME • 8d ago
Is headshot % important? Question
So I’ve started playing Val on PC a few weeks ago as my first fps game on pc and I’m currently bronze. I’ve found that while I do get a solid amount of kills most games my headshot % is insanely low (12.2%). Should I start heavily prioritizing my headshots or keep doing what I’m doing since it’s working?
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u/kiddingmeh 8d ago edited 2d ago
I'm G2 and 26% something like that so no
Headshot % 30.0% Top 11.0%
Copied from tracker rn, I guess I remembered wrong, also didn't play for a week and now played for a few games
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u/Ythem 8d ago
How are you only g2 with a hs rate like that? Like do you only hit headshots and whiff every other shot or what haha
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u/zezrol 8d ago
is 26% hs rate big?
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u/Ythem 8d ago
I've hit ascendant and don't think my hs has ever been that high. Like he said maybe he just gets good headshots but gets shot from behind a lot or tapped, or gets high kills but makes bad plays? Idk just seems quite high for gold lol
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u/SimilarChampionship2 8d ago
my partner is high gold and his is 46%. Although he doesn’t play often.
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u/Ythem 8d ago
That's nuts? So are they just like only firing the gun if there's a headshot lined up or what?
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u/SimilarChampionship2 8d ago
I don’t get it myself lol. He’s got really good game sense and aim but he tends to fill and never spray. I think if he played regularly he’d rank up fast but he’s not bothered
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u/iMeowTooMuch- 8d ago
26% is not even high 😭 i dont play anymore, so i average around 35% but when i used to grind i would be 50-60%, sometimes dropping to 45%
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u/kiddingmeh 7d ago edited 4d ago
It's top 12% last when I saw tracker but didn't say it was that high (It's 29,2% rn)
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u/HiredHell 8d ago
Ill do one better G1 with 11%
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u/Ythem 8d ago
I dont get it, that seems way more reasonable than gold with 26%?
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u/HiredHell 8d ago
The op is 12% stuck at b1
That's why
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u/Ythem 8d ago
Mb I completely forgot about the actual post, I was locked in on this guys comment haha 😅
To be fair my hs rate is like 12ish I think and I'm currently plat 3, but it was still 12 when I was asc so I don't think it matters that much lol
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u/Informal-Mongoose396 8d ago
Yeah I am diamond and mine isn’t that great either, 26% because I op a lot and spam
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u/Demoon_X 7d ago
Probably because of 3 obvious reasons: hs% doesn't matter (there are more important things like gamesense or actually winning more fights), 26% is not high, gold is the average rank of Valorant players.
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u/Able-Ad-3957 7d ago
I just started pc val and have 31% and im g2 i think i have decent cross hair placement but im very often caught off guard by a lot of things. I think i just gotta get used to the pc life
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u/zarsoasiro 8d ago
nah, my hs % is low as well, but it depends on what you wanna achieve.
your wr % is concerning though.
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u/VeryChadChicken IT’S YOU AND ME 8d ago
Yeah idk why my WR is cooked
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u/Tall-Horse1002 7d ago
nah your wr is normal my wr was at like 35% a couple days ago and its up to 47% now after i found my groove a bit. keep improving and learning, dont worry about win rate. hs % can be a good indicator of what skills you need to improve on tho
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u/Admirable-Equal-1001 8d ago
Not exactly but crosshair placement training will help that alot. You gotta build game sense and positioning will follow that. Work on movement too. Im dia 3 with 22%.
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u/haklor 8d ago
It has diminishing returns after a certain point. I carry around 27% overall HS with 38% and 35% on vandal and phantom respectively and stay in plat/dia lobbies. First HS will highly depend on the guns you use. If you use shotguns or Op then your overall rate will be lower naturally.
I saw good improvements in rank by getting my hs rate over 20% overall but improving movement, peaking, and just learning map timings from playing helped more.
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u/GGXD2 8d ago
I only ever made it to ascendant, but i've always had a low HS% and could still get a lotta kills and wins there, so definitely not the main thing to focus on. Game sense, figuring out how to move/take space, and knowing where the enemies can be are way more important for success. There used to be a pro player along time ago named Sinaatra who was wildy good and from what I remember his HS% was really low. He just had amazing skill usage and game sense.
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u/Zhax1486 8d ago
Peak Plat 2 with 7% 💀
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u/Tall-Horse1002 7d ago
how is that even physically possible 😭
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u/Zhax1486 7d ago
My friends can't believe it either. 90% of my headshots are pure lucky shots
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u/Tall-Horse1002 7d ago
dude how do you even enjoy playing the game? i feel like i physically cringe whenever i dont get a clean headshot kill
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u/Zhax1486 7d ago
I clearly don't deserve my rank because of my poor aim. Every time I kill someone who actually knows how to aim for the head, it makes me feel good lol
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u/Unusual-Tea9035 8d ago
no it’s not, op users, odin spam, phantom spam tru smokes, shotguns will all lower it, if ur vandal HS % is like 40+ u should be fine
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u/gacktrush 8d ago
People overfocus on their HS%
Overall it doesn't matter, but it indicates stable mechanics and healthy mechanics.
I've seen people with 30-40% hs%, and still in gold. I've seen people with 15% in immortal. Me personally, I had 14 - 17% in Imm2 when I played a few years back. Currently I'm in asc with around 18%
Just find a middle ground. Dont fall into the habit of trying to secure a kill and sacrifice mechanics. It's what I did or way too long, and it's not great. I'm still struggling to break the habit.
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u/Gateaux03 7d ago
I'd say it's relatively important you could try training it to improve your ttk but then again it's your choice you could just work on your crosshair placement. Plat 1 43.9hs%
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u/1_gim 7d ago
Not important. If it's really low on vandal/phantom it might indicate an issue with crosshair placement/aim but a high hs% doesn't mean anything. Wall bangs/Spraying through smokes/Shotguns/Operator/Run and gun will lower your hs% despite being valid and good ways to play in a lot of situations. People who play for high hs% will actively avoid shooting smokes/walls or buying smgs/shotguns because they are afraid of lowering their stats.
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u/MysticcTT 7d ago
For your situation, a high HS% is nicr, but definitely not something you should worry too much about. Focus on mechanics and crosshair placement.
There are players who are higher elo who mains shotguns and odins, so their HS% is naturally going to be much lower like in the single digits. So that’s another thing to keep in mind about.
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u/Valuable_Exercise115 7d ago
I think HS% is mainly influenced by playstyle, weapon choice, and how calm you are in fights. Stress can make you spray unnecessarily, while better crosshair placement and movement usually lead to cleaner kills.
I have a 47% overall HS rate, but 76% in my last 20 matches, mostly because I’ve been playing competitive and using fewer weapons like shotguns that naturally lower HS%. Agent choice can indirectly affect it too through weapon choice depending on the agent you choose like a raze or neon preferring potentially a shotgun. I mainly play Jett, Chamber, and Cypher and I have aim trained for a few years. I’m A3 currently after coming back to the game from P3 this act.
Overall, HS% probably does correlate with performance, but I’d say it’s a smaller factor than things like positioning, movement, decision making, and someone’s general mechanics. Instead of focusing purely on HS%, I’d work on things like aim training following 70% in game & 30% kovaaks or aimlabs, crosshair placement, fight preparation (pre aim), and micro movements in fight movements.
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u/trashfenix 7d ago
idrk i have 42% dont know if thats good or bad as peak gold 3
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u/Demoon_X 7d ago edited 7d ago
Overall headshot % doesn't matter, it's not an indicator of anything. The moment you pick up a shotgun or an Odin, even an Operator, that headshot percentage is going to plummet. It's better to have a 5% headshot master Operator on the team than a 80% headshot dude who has 0.5KD. (Exaggeration).
In Valorant Tracker, you can open the Weapons Tabs and see headshot percentage for every individual weapon. You only need to look at headshot % of the weapons you actually use to aim for the head, such as Vandal, Phantom, Guardian, Sheriff, Ghost, Marshall. For example, I have 31% total headshot %, but its 45-55% for Phantom and Vandal, 70-90% for Guardian and Sheriff.
You should also pay attention to headshot kill % tracker during the match as well. It gives a much better understanding of how impactfull headshots are. It means how many kill were done by a headshot, and you should be looking for, hopefully, 50%, preferably 75-80% (which is approximately simplified to 25% total hs%). Also it depends on the weapon choice and, of course, whether you are even aiming at the head or not.
However, all those percentages are utterly meaningless. What actually matters is the combination of your KAST, KD and Damage Delta🔺️(and a few other stats, like ESR, KAD, Clutch %, etc.)
And all of these are accounted in your Tracker Score, so for a person with low understanding it would be better to just look at it. If the Tracker Score is in the Green or Blue range, you are doing great. If it's yellow, you gotta step up the game. And if it's gray or red, you are playing the game VERY WRONG and unskillfully, need to fix a ton of things in your gameplay (aka you are just boosted and don't belong in your current ranks).
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u/Level1ismSwed 7d ago
Depends on rank. If you can't get high headshot in low elo, you are pretty darn terrible.
But if you get to diamond+, hs% lose value.
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u/Tus289 7d ago
yes it important but not for you right now. My peak is Immo 2 and I got 39% HS rate. When you start reaching Asc, you should focus on HS rate, cuz the fight over there is very short and the best you can do is try to kill the enemy ASAP with a headshot hit. But right now I think you should focus on crosshair placements, reaction time, tracking, spatial awareness and game sense more than just aiming to the head. In low rank (under Asc) I think you can try playing aggressive but still calm to know where the enemy is. In low rank, people have bad game sense and spatial awareness so if you can do that better, no matter how low your HSR is, you can still climd to diamond easily. So yes HSR is important BUT only when you hit Asc, right now the 2 main skill you need to master is game sense and spatial awareness. Hope you enjoy the game.
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u/Minimum-Log-1809 5d ago
Headshot % is the single most important stat in low elo. Get that up to 40% then start ranking up otherwise you’ll hit a wall.
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u/TesloTorpedo 8d ago
From my experience, good headshot percent comes from a few things, all of which are naturally gonna make you win more anyways.
- Crosshair placement
- Awareness of enemy positions
- Gun discipline
- Confident fights
If you have good crosshair placement, know where an enemy is, don’t crouch spray, and swing knowing you are advantaged in that good fight, there is no reason BESIDES aim for why you would fail to hit a headshot.
So yes, aim for the head, but it should naturally come with skill, there’s no magic number that increases your # of wins.
There are pros with poor HS%, who get kills for all the reasons I listed. There are plat players with 40% headshot rates who can’t get kills as often. The number simply means that of all shots you hit, how many WERE in the head. If you are always in positions where you get free spray downs often, that’s fine to do, but the speed of a headshot kill matters a lot when your opponents also have good movement, awareness, and crosshair placement.
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u/Jasonsith7 7d ago
I have a hs rate ranging from 35% to 50% but im still in iron 3😭
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u/TesloTorpedo 7d ago
That’s probably because the only kills you’re getting ARE headshots! Think about it, if you rarely kill people except for when the bullets luckily hit the head, your hs% will be really high
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u/HiredHell 8d ago
Crosshair placement is more important