Best competitive settings for VALORANT in 2023

Do you want to make the most out of your VALORANT gaming session? Our complete guide for the best VALORANT competitive settings in 2023 will set you up for success!

VALORANT is one of the hottest competitive games on the market right now. Riot is a developer that’s no stranger to the world of esports and competitive gaming. It stands to reason that their first foray into the world of precision-based tactical FPS’s has a robust set of settings to help you optimize your game.

The setting menus can seem quite daunting at first so we’ve put together a guide on how to best optimize your VALORANT settings for your mouse, minimap, crosshair, and graphics.

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Best Competitive Mouse Settings for VALORANT in 2023

What you need to achieve with your VALORANT mouse settings is a balance between precision and flexibility. To reach that balance, you have to adjust three main settings.

Mouse Acceleration

This pesky little setting is actually not within VALORANT’s options set. It’s a Windows thing that you’ll need to first turn off if you want to set up your mouse properly.

To turn off this nuisance of a setting, follow these steps:

1. In Windows, select your Start button or press the Win key on your keyboard

2. Start typing “mouse settings” until you see Change your mouse settings appear on your start menu. Select it.

3. Select Additional mouse options on the right-hand side

4. In the window that pops up, select the Pointer Options tab

5. Here, you should see Enhanced Pointer Precision checked. Uncheck it.

6. Select Apply, then Okay to exit.

DPI & Mouse Sensitivity

What you’ll need to pay attention to here is that you’ve got two different settings to adjust. One is within VALORANT’s mouse settings options and the other is in your mouse’s software. You don’t want one canceling the other one out. What we recommend is that you first set your mouse settings within its own software and then adjust the sensitivity within the game. 

As for which are the best values, it should typically come down to personal preference. However, lots of pro players have seen great success with low DPI at 700-800 and sensitivity no higher than 0.30. It may feel unnaturally slow at first but with enough practice, you’ll find that it pays off.

Best Competitive Minimap Settings for VALORANT in 2023

The key to mastering the most competitive games is to develop your map and situational awareness. Both of these are facilitated through VALORANT’s minimap which serves two purposes: to show you the lay of the land and to give you an idea of where enemies may be. VALORANT has a particularly robust set of options to help you adjust its minimap.

Rotate

This should be set to Rotate as it orients the map to the direction you are facing. By doing this, you can better understand where enemies are when bullets start flying.

Keep Player Centered

Set this option to Off so that you can have a complete view of the entire map. Turning it on will effectively keep minimap’s focus on your character icon, effectively cutting off a portion of the map.

Minimap Size

This will mostly come down to personal preference and screen size. A good rule of thumb is to leave this set to 1 and increase or decrease it in a trial-and-error fashion if necessary.

Minimap Zoom

Similar to player centering, this option can cut out parts of the map if you set it too high. The best rule of thumb here is to set it no higher than 0.9 to avoid this happening.

Minimap Vision Cones

Definitely set this option to On as it will show you where your teammates are facing. This is invaluable information when it comes to teamwork as it shows you at a glance where your team’s blind spots are.

Other -> Show Map Region Names

Not specifically about the minimap but it’s absolutely essential to set this to Always. After doing so, when you bring up the map by hitting M, you’ll see the callout names for each region on the map.

Best Competitive Crosshair Settings for VALORANT in 2023

When you want to take your game to the next level, crosshairs are actually an important element to set up. VALORANT’s crosshair options are extremely robust which can be quite overwhelming when starting out. Let’s break it down.

Crosshair Color

The color of your VALORANT crosshair is what makes it stand out from what’s going on in front of you at any given time. The entire color set on offer is designed to stand out but there are a few colors the pros are using that edge the rest out:

• Green

• White

• Cyan

If we were to choose the absolute best, it would be green as it clashes the least with the colors found in VALORANT’s maps. An exception here is Viper because of her Ultimate so you might want to switch to White if you play her.

Inner Lines

This is arguably the most important set of settings as it determines the shape and prominence of your crosshair. Based on what most pros are using, here are the best inner lines settings for your VALORANT crosshair:

• Opacity: 1

• Length: 4

• Thickness: up to 2

• Offset: 2:

General -> Outline Settings

This comes down to personal preference and aiming style. One thing to note about having this On is that it effectively makes your crosshair bigger. This can potentially be counter to what you are achieving with your inner lines settings. The majority of pros have this Off but there are quite a few that turn it on. Those that do use it have opacity and thickness set to 1. Your choice will come down to how well these black outlines help you keep tabs on your crosshair.

Center Dot

Based on our Inner Lines Offset value, having a center dot is redundant so it’s best to set it to Off.

Outer Lines

The purpose of outer lines in VALORANT is to act as “training wheels” for newer players to better understand how their aim is affected by movement. No surprise here that all pros here turn this Off as they can be distracting.

Fade Crosshair With Firing Error

Another distraction that pretty much all VALORANT competitive players set to Off.

Movement Error and Firing Error

Simple stuff here. If you’re a beginner, go ahead and turn these training wheels on as they will make your crosshair expand and detract when you move and fire. This way you can get a feel for how accuracy works in VALORANT. Competitive players and pros keep both Off.

Best Competitive Graphics Settings for VALORANT in 2023

VALORANT is a fast-paced action game. As such, the way things move on the screen is vital for optimizing your game. Tweaking your graphics settings is all about getting the best possible performance out of your PC and monitor. That means having optimal frames per second (fps).

While VALORANT is designed to be playable even on a budget, you’ll likely want to opt for lower-quality visuals that ensure high fps.

• Display Mode: Fullscreen

• Resolution: Your screen's native resolution

• Frame Rate Limit: Unlimited

• Material Quality: Medium

• Texture Quality: Medium

• Detail Quality: High (or Medium if performance dips)

• UI Quality: Low

• Vignette: Off

• Vsync: Off

• Anti-Aliasing: MSAA 2x or 4x

• Anisotropic Filtering: 8x or 4x

• Improve Clarity: Off

• Bloom: Off

• Distortion: Off

• First Person Shadows: Off

Ready for your next VALORANT game?

We hope our guide for the best competitive VALORANT settings has inspired you to go ahead and play your next game right now! And before you begin your sess, don't forget to add our free Battle Pass to your next VALORANT game, to improve as a player and get rewarded by simply playing your favorite games!