Before you continue with this guide, if you haven't read my VALORANT Movement Fundamentals you should start there. To be able to peek effectively you need to have your movement down first.
3 types of peeks are commonly used in VALORANT.
Wide Peeking
Jiggle Peeking
Jump Peeking
All of these have pros and cons based on the situation. I'm going to talk about a perfect world and when you should use these different peeking techniques. I say perfect world because there are habits out there like crouching and shooting every time you see an enemy. I've spent over half my life playing Counter-Strike, and it's pretty common to crouch and shoot as soon as you see someone. It's a hard habit to break but I am working on it every day.
Wide Peeking
Wide peeking is essentially swinging out from an angle, fully exposing yourself, and committing to a gunfight. There's no turning back or taking cover after you've wide peeked (unless you're Jett and dash away, or Reyna Dismissing after a kill). This is probably the most common form of peeking when you're playing VALORANT. There's nothing wrong with wide peeking but generally, you want to be doing this in coordination with a teammate so you can set yourself and your team up for success.
Pros
Wide peeking with a teammate can almost guarantee a kill or trade.
In a lot of cases, it's necessary for you to wide peek an angle and advance your position on the map (taking space).
Cons
You are vulnerable after swinging out wide. You can't take cover again.
When you feel vulnerable instincts kick in and you will crouch and spray (I have this habit), but when you're out in the open it's almost best to crouch so you get the accuracy bonus.
Jiggle Peeking
Jiggle peeking is a fundamental skill that needs to be learned and practiced. You have to be able to control your agent in-game and decide how much of your body you want to expose. After you get good at jiggle peeking you will be able to add in the additional layer of timing your strafes with bursts from your weapon to get kills.
Pros
Jiggle peeking is great for gathering information quickly.
Great for baiting shots from an Operator.
Great for baiting shots and delaying as enemies are running towards you.
Great for isolating 1v1's in clutch situations.
Great for clearing corners as an attacker.
Cons
Hard to get kills or multi-kills when jiggle peeking. Especially if you are new to using this technique.
Not a great peeking technique when you have a teammate near you. Jiggle peeking when someone is behind you can put both of you in a bad situation.
If you want to practice jiggle peeking the best way to do it is in the range. Load up the range and shoot "Practice" on the skill test menu. Take cover behind the wall and practice strafing left and right. Then practice strafing left and right, stopping, shooting, then back to strafing.
The key points to jiggle peeking are to be somewhat close to a wall/angle. You want to practice pressing A, D (or whatever your left and right movement keys are) just enough to expose your body and line of sight to the angle you want to peek at. Don't strafe too far out that you can't take cover though again (this would be wide peeking). Here's an example of me jiggle peeking in a VALORANT Deathmatch. I added the keyboard and input history overlay so you can see which keys I am pressing and the timing.
It's not necessary to counter-strafe in VALORANT. The reason counter-strafing is so important in games like Counter-Strike is that if you're strafing left after you let go of "A" you are actually still moving for a short period of time. To be able to shoot accurately quickly you need to counter-strafe. In VALORANT as soon as you let go of your movement keys the first bullet will be accurate. It's not a bad thing if you do counter-strafe though.
Jump Peeking
I jump peek a lot to get information quickly and safely. It's extremely hard to hit someone who is jump peeking. It's also great in clutch situations when you're an attacker and the spike is planted. If someone tries to diffuse you can jump peek and get all the information with minimal risk.
Pros
This technique is possibly the best technique for getting information.
It's extremely hard for the enemy to hit you if you're jump peeking properly.
It's a more advanced technique that requires you to understand the acceleration and deceleration of the VALORANT player models.
Cons
You can't really shoot or get kills while jump peeking because you should have your knife out for maximum acceleration and deceleration.
Pull your melee out. Put your crosshair around 45 degrees from the angle that you want to jump peek at. Hold W and Jump out towards the angle you want to peek. Right as you can see past the angle you want to strafe into it and press back. It's kind of hard to explain typing but here's an example of me doing it on Haven with the keyboard and input history overlay.
Essentially I'm holding W, pressing jump, then letting go of W to press A, then S.
Here are 2 examples of me using jump peeking in an actual matchmaking game.
In the first clip, I jump peeked to get information down C long. I only saw Reyna so I decided to peek and try to get the kill. In the second clip, it was a 1v1, I had the spike down and the Reyna tapped the diffuse. I had low HP so instead of wide peeking, I jump peeked. I could see that she wasn't diffusing the spike so I continued to hide and waste time.
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