How to escape in the dreaded elo hell in Valorant 10 tips
What is elo hell?
It’s when you find yourselves stuck at a lower rank where matches are of poor quality and are often determined by factors that are perceived to be outside of your control such as bad teammates.
what you’ll learn is how through strategy, decision making, and with a couple simple tips and tricks you too can easily carry games on your own. You’ll also learn the most common mistakes.
players make in lower elo and how to easily take advantage of them.
It’s there you’ll finally learn how to improve your aim, different techniques to win gun fights, and so much more. We have professional courses on every single Agent, map, and mechanic in Valorant. And this is backed by the top pros, players, and coaches, to make sure you’re getting the most up-to-date, and accurate info possible.
Alright, so let’s get into it, where we’ll be facing Iron 3 to Silver 1 players on the map Ascent. Now a common complaint from lower ranked players is that strategies around maps can feel a bit overwhelming or at worst, useless, since you’re unable to coordinate with your teammates.
However, there are very simple map specific strategies and rules to follow that don’t require team coordination and can destroy opposing teams. For example, let’s take a look at the map Ascent. You may have heard this before, but Ascent is all about controlling the Middle area of the map. This is because if you don’t go through the middle area of the map, you’re forced into funneling into tight, predictable choke points onto the sites that are easy to defend.
So our goal is simple on Ascent, take control of the Middle Area of the map and force the enemy team to constantly take these predictable funnels into the sites. Now, I know what you’re thinking, how do I do that, that sounds complicated. Check out how simple this is, you just place 2 standard smokes every single round on defense, one at the top of mid, one at B link. This pretty much prevents the enemy team from pushing into mid since they’d have to go through the smoke and have their vision obscured and make for an easy kill.
Great, so you’ve prevented the enemy team from pushing mid, now what?
A really good spot to head to is this corner. You’ll catch a ton of players by surprise if they try to push out from B link into mid for free kills.At the same you’re hidden away from any players at the top of mid, something we’ll be getting into shortly. While we’re pushing into Mid we hear a bunch of gunshots and movement outside of B and even spot Reyna on the map. And this goes into our first rule you should follow when it comes to low elo: low elo players don’t lie to you. What do I mean by this? When you see an enemy team on one side of the map, looking like they’re going to attack that site, it almost always means they’re going to continue to try and attack the site for the remainder of the round. Low elo players on attack very rarely use more advanced concepts like rotating, faking attack, using lurkers, or playing default. The most common scenario is they group up as 4 or 5 and try to hit one area of the map together.
Alright, so I’ve taken control of mid and I know where the enemy team is. Now what?
I know a lot of you guys are wanting to push through that smoke and get a nice flank on the enemy team, but this would be far too risky. You see, all 5 of the enemy are still alive, and they’re all in the area I’m about to push, so it’s highly likely they have at least 1 person watching a push from mid. So I just patiently wait, watching the mini map, for the enemy to either push out of mid and for me to get a free kill on them or for them to start pushing into B main. Again, there’s no need for me to push and reveal my position, the enemy team is still outside of B, nothing has changed, I just have to be
patient. It’s not until 2 of my teammates start to push in from Mid do I change up my strategy. And here is exactly how you should play off bad teammates, it’s really simple, and super effective. Whenever one of your teammates pushes in or begins to take a gun fight, play the role of the 2nd man, and swing right after them, this allows you to trade kills if they die and get easy kills on enemies distracted by your teammate.
As I prepare to do this, I spot the enemy Sage in a corner and begin firing. You’re probably wondering why she isn’t reacting, no it’s not because she’s just that bad, it has to do with a concept called angle advantage.
‘’Angle advantage’’ is a term used to describe when one player is closer to a corner than another player. This causes the player closest to the corner to have their vision blocked and the player further away from the corner to see the other player first. Now with her dead, my Sova decides to push in, and again I use the exact same strategy of playing the 2nd man, I let him entry frag into the new angles and look to swing off his contact with the enemy, resulting in a free kill on the enemy Jett.
So, we head over to Mid at the start of the round, place our two standard smokes, and push in. And what do I do after?
Look to push to the exact same spot. However, this time, something different happens,Because of this, I change my position to hug this corner, which keeps me better hidden from someone pushing from top of mid. Sova’s owl drone clears out B link so now I know I can focus on top of mid without the risk of being shot in the back. However, I then hear someone rotating to B inside of the enemy’s spawn, which means soon I’ll have someone who could be on my flank. I then hear someone pushing top of mid, and most importantly drop off onto the grass. The metallic sound of catwalk and top of mid sounds distinctly different from the grass, which is how I know they’ve dropped. I make sure to position my crosshair at head level, and it makes for an easy kill when Sage tries to rotate.
I then immediately smoke off B link,Now, the enemy team knows where I am after I’ve killed Sage so I look to push out and reposition to a safer spot that allows me to overlook the bomb. And it’s here we see a really valuable tip, my teammates are pushing into B link, currently all of them are focusing on what’s in front of them, so it would be pointless for me to also watch that angle, this is why I repeatedly check top of mid to make sure there aren’t any enemies that can shoot them in the back. As a general rule, you never want multiple players to be watching the same angle. Alright, the start of another round and what a surprise, we’re at mid placing our 2 standard smokes into then pushing into mid to take control of it. However, this time, we can both see and hear enemies pushing into A main. Remember, low elo players don’t lie, they’re telling us they’re pushing A, so we can assume that’s what they’re going to do. And here we see the other benefit of mid control: it sets up flanks on the enemy.
I push through mid to get behind the enemy team trying to attack A site. You’ll notice that before I peek this corner I jump up onto the ledge. This is a really valuable trick to know as it allows you to spot the heads of anyone hiding behind the box top of mid without them being able to see you.
I then continue to push the flank, making sure to walk as to not reveal my position, along with checking all angles along the way in case they have a player waiting for me.
A lot of you might be thinking you have to run in this position, I mean, by the time I get behind them they’ve already taken site, but you have to keep in mind that even once they’re on site they won’t be expecting someone to be behind them this fast. This allows me to get a free kill on Killjoy while she’s planting. After this, I fall back, and you’re probably wondering why the hell I’m staring at this wall. Well, I’m using the same strategy I’ve been using all game, let my teammates entry frag and swing off them. I’m watching the minimap and as soon as I see my Jett and Sova push in I swing to help them with the push. Again, this way I can get an easy kill on the enemy while they’re distracted by my teammates. Alright, next round and you should know exactly what the plan is, standard smokes mid, and push out for control.
This time, something different happens though, my teammates pushing out of B get killed. This means it will be really easy for the enemy team to take B site so I immediately throw a smoke down to help delay their push. I then hear them all running in B main so I drop my ult to further delay them as I run back to reinforce B site. Now, as I arrive at Market, we see we’ve been smoked off, a lot of players would either
try to reposition or wait for the smoke to expire.
Here’s the thing though, we know we’ve delayed the enemies push with our own smoke and our ultimate, so the enemy shouldn’t be in site yet. This is why I choose to push out to play an off angle. An ‘’off angle ‘’is just an unorthodox position that is often unpredictable, a spot that you wouldn’t expect a player to be at. This is considered an off angle since no one really stands on stairs like this as they’d be wide out in the open. However, I’m able to create an off angle by using the smoke for cover.
This allows me to get a free frag on killjoy and I fall back to market. Here’s the problem though, I’ve now revealed my position to the enemy team. As a general rule, once you’ve done this you want to reposition to a new angle to help catch the enemy offguard. By the way, yes, our Raze is afk in spawn. As I’m rotating to my new position, Omen ults. I always see players misplay around Omen ult when in reality there’s a really easy trick to get kills on him. Firstly, I immediately check behind me to see if Omen is teleporting anywhere on my flank. I then hear Omen teleporting to my right. Most players would then peek this to destroy him before he zones in. Instead, what you should do is begin walking to make no sound, and as soon as his ultimate completes, peek him for an easy kill. This works since Omen has an animation where he has to pull out his gun once he spawns in, leaving him vulnerable, on top of the fact that he doesn’t know when or where we’re peeking from. Next, let’s talk about a super simple strategy that can destroy the enemy team’s economy when you have a lead.
So you can see we’re ahead 9 to 0. This doesn’t really matter for this strategy though. All that matters is that we have a lot of credits banked for future rounds while the enemy team is broke and had to spend all their money to afford rifles and armor this round. At the start of the round one of my teammates dies outside A, again, we know low elo players don’t lie, so we instantly rotate expecting an A hit. The remainder of our teammates die and we didn’t get there in time to defend the site so we find ourselves in a retake scenario with 5 enemies still alive. We don’t want to just rush into site, we need to look for picks to start to whittle down their numbers. Killjoy then ults, which forces us to run away. At this point, we have very little time to work with while being in a 2 vs 4 scenario. Essentially, it’s very unlikely that we’ll be able to win this round. When in this scenario you want to immediately think about gaining an economic advantage. If you have a weaker economy than the enemy, meaning you have less credits banked, then you should be looking to run away, play safe, and save your guns. However if you have the strongest economy, then you want to the opposite, try to trap the enemy so they either die to the bomb.
you kill them as they try to run out of site only at elo hell.
I throwing a molly on one of their escape paths through A main. After this I immediately rotate to their only remaining escape path and am then able to get a kill on the enemy Sage who was trying to save an operator. Additionally, the enemy killjoy was stuck in site due to my molly and died to the bomb. Yes, in the end I died too, but it doesn’t matter, as we have a ton of credits saved to purchase guns for the next round. Meanwhile, the enemy team is now broke and will have to save with pistols. This tactic is great to use when you’re in the lead so that you can continue to snowball and prevent the enemy from coming back as they rarely have guns good enough to fight back.
Alright, so now we’re switching sides and on Attack. Don’t worry though, as we’ll be applying the same things we learned on defense. Firstly, that we want to control mid so to avoid the pitfall of being funneled into sites. Now, on attack, when you take control of Mid it’s all about pushing through Catwalk. This is because the most common setup you’ll run into by the defense is 1 person on A, 1 person on Catwalk, 2 people Mid, and 1 person on B. By attacking Catwalk we get an isolated 1v1 on elo hell the catwalk player, which then leaves only 1 remaining player having to defend A site.
It also opens up the path through tree room that lets you get sneaky flanks on the enemy. This is easier than trying to push through mid into Market area as there will often be 2 defenders there that can hold a variety of different angles. And don’t worry if the enemy starts to stack multiple opponents to defend catwalk as we’ll be going through exactly how to counter that shortly. So we start the round placing the 2 standard attack smokes on archs and catwalk to prevent the defenders from seeing into mid or getting control of it.
We then use this timing to push up catwalk into our smoke. Normally, I like to wait in this corner for the smoke to expire as you can catch players off guard that are catwalk, but my teammates are pushing with me and making a ton of noise. Again, we use that simply strategy of playing the 2nd man and swinging off our teammates entry fragging. As Raze swings the corner, we too swing the corner. And we clear tree room making sure to time our swings with our teammates. Strangely enough, no one is watching catwalk, which gives us a great opportunity to highlight how the flank we just talked about. While my teammates push into A site, I walk while pushing the flank. I then wait, as this will allow me to catch the defenders that are rotating from mid and b to help defend A. And now I’m on the flank of the enemy, a constant thorn in their side, making it difficult for them to push into site since I’m threatening to kill them from behind. Alright, so this strategy looks great, but what happens if the enemy team starts stacking players to counter the catwalk push?
Well, this is exactly why controlling mid is so valuable on Ascent. In this round, we place our standard smokes, and then push into catwalk. Again, we let our teammates push first, playing second man, giving us free kills without the threat of dying. As you can see, we ran into killjoy in cubby, then spotted Reyna holding tree room, along with Jett upclose. So it’s clear the enemy team stacked A, when this happens all you have to do is run back mid and push from Mid to B. This is because if we take a look at the map,
you can get from catwalk to B site faster than the defenders can rotate from A site.
One thing to note though is that it’s so important to smoke this spot before you cross over into Market, this is because there are a ton of super strong angles defenders can hold to shoot you while you try to cross. Sure enough, B site is completely empty, we get the plant down, and take an easy round. In short, smoking mid, getting control of it, and pushing catwalk is by far the most powerful strategy on attack for Ascent. However, if the enemy rotates fast or stacks the site, you can then simply fall back and push mid to B to either take a free site or an isolated 1v1 against a player the defense has anchored there. Now, I just want to highlight how throughout this entire game every single one of my kills were essentially free, and not a single straight up gun fight was taken. Despite this, we won the game 13 to 2 and I finished the game with 27 kills and 5 deaths. The enemy was either always caught by surprise or distracted by one of my teammates when I killed them.
if you have any questions that weren’t answered in the guide, leave a comment below. We here at skill-capped want to thank you for watching and we’ll catch you.
Source Video Youtube.
