PooyaVal

Hello! My name is Pooya! As IGL and in the pro scene with 5000+ hours of experience in the game and over 600 students, I can help you with advanced decision-making and everything you need, to become one of the best. Ex IGL, and player for Ingenuity. Now, coach for team MountEsports. Previously on Ingenuity (EU) & NewMoon (US). Content creator and coach for ValorEsports.

When I was a player, it allowed me to get connections to players like FNC Boaster by playing against them multiple times which helped me to gain information that I never could before. It definitely leveled up my coaching as it opened my mind to different ways of strategies, agent theories and just looking at the game differently.

My coaching sessions most of the time go into two different categories:

1- Casual friendly: This is when my student likes to become the best version of themself while still having fun with no need to reach pro-play

2- Pro Friendly: This is for when my student is willing to do anything they can to reach the pro level and high rank in order to achieve their dream of becoming a pro player! These types of sessions will be harsher with the mindset of coaching a pro player! I always ask questions related to my students to ensure that I understand their experience and what type of session they would like to have.

Once I get a good grasp of what they want out of their session, we begin reviewing their gameplay that is fully focused on the student’s mistakes and good moves! After every round, I always ask my student to see if they have any questions, and if they don’t, we go into the next!

I always recommend my students to go for VOD Review, which is basically, a gameplay review of their footage. As VOD Review allows me to use tools to help the student understand the concepts better. Such as: Drawing tools – pausing and taking our time to talk – Watching a play frame by frame and etc… Where Live games, the student is more focused on the game than the coach, and usually after the session ends, the student already forgets what the coach says due to the intense gameplay. There also is barely any room to speak together in a live game.

I always give my students tips on how to improve their aim and crosshair placement with also tips for movement and positioning in the middle of a review, so they can take notes for future games! If the student also requests, I also give them personalized practice routine which is based on the review we had and the mistakes that the student made. It’ll be more focused on helping the student warm up while also working on the things that need fixing!

In the game of VALORANT, communication is key to coordination and winning a game! As a player, your job is to communicate everything you see and hear, while also being aware of what is happening around you! You have to set different tones for the communications that you have.

If the enemy team is hard attacking A site, for example, your voice and communication need to overshadow everyone else as it’s the most important one. Now you should not be yelling, but you should be talking with more energy and a sense of emergency. While you’re also communicating, say everything you hear, for example, enemy smokes, utility, who is on-site now and etc…

First, the student needs to understand what map control is for. In your competitive games, you will mostly see people just rush each site randomly. Now if you play for map control, it gives you and your team two big advantages that can be crucial in winning a round:

1- Information, such as knowing where each agent is.

2- Baiting the enemy’s utility, so now they won’t have enough utility to stop you from a push! With these advantages, You can then decide which site is a better one to go to! If you don’t play for map control, you might be stepping into a big 5-man trap! Now how to get map control? Imagine you are playing on the map Ascent as an attacker, where mid-control is very important, what you want to do is to play as 1-3-1, which means one agent playing holding A push, 3 agents mid, and 1 Agent holding B push. This way, not only you’re pressuring the enemy team on mid, but also you are holding off the chokes where the enemy team can push to punish you. With this tactic, you can gain the mid control, and based on what you have seen and what utility you have baited, you can decide to either go for a B site split or an A site split! With the other agents joining you on this strategy!

Game sense and decision-making are skills that get developed only by playing the game and gaining experience! When playing the game, there will always be multiple options that you can take, now which one is better, is a question for reviewing or experimenting! When I’m coaching my students, I always give them multiple options in a scenario where they died or failed a move, so they can think wider and see the options that they had on hand. This way, if they go into a similar scenario in the future, they know which option is the best to take to win the round!

Awareness in the game and minimap awareness play a big role in decision-making. You have to constantly have a glimpse at your minimap so this way, you will know what is happening around you and how to react to them. Now a lot of people always ask me, when they look at their minimap, they get timing and die so what should they do? The answer is very simple, the minimap is like looking at your mirrors while driving! You don’t stare at it, you glimpse at it and immediately look at the front again! There are times that you have to look at your minimap:

1- When you are not doing anything positive for yourself or the team. Ex: Rotating, having a knife in your hand, etc…
2- When an ally dies.
3- When you die. So you can give information.
4- When an ally or you get a kill.
5- When there’s any utility that provides information. Ex: Sova arrow, Fade Eye, etc…
The more you practice the skill, the more your minimap awareness gets better and so will your game sense and decision-making!

Agents in VALORANT, go into three different categories based on their utility and playstyle:

1- Aggression ( Agents who are aggressive and mostly used to take space ): Phoenix – Reyna – Jett – Raze
2- Control ( Agents who help to get control of a map ): Cypher – Deadlock – KillJoy
3- Mid Range ( Agents who like to support teammates and trade allies ): Skye – Breach

With other agents being in between them, for example, Kay/O Can be in all three categories based on his play style and utility usage. Sage is both control and mid-range, as she can support allies with heal and wall while also getting control of a place with slow and wall.

If a student loves to push forward and go for the kills, aggression agents are the best for them! Or if they like to go for big-brain plays and mind games, they can go for control agents or agents in between mid-range and control, such as Astra, etc…

As for mechanic factors, it really depends on what the student likes mainly. You can’t replace passion with anything and if a student loves to play Jett for example, mechanics can be taught and learned in the process. But if you force a student to play a role/agent they don’t like, they won’t have much will to learn those mechanics and agents!

For the past year or so, VALORANT has been in a good stage meta-wise. Where every agent has room to be played in and every team comp, with the right plays can also be very good! Now this might change in the future with new maps and new agents coming in. I always say, make sure to read every patch note, as you have no idea what can the developers come up with.

Now if you think a change that is in the patch note is big enough, go into a custom game and try it out! Adapt to the changes as soon as possible to be one step ahead of everyone else! If the change is not really big and is a minor change, just keep playing the game while having that change in your mind, so you don’t get caught off guard by it!

Attention to detail, playing robotic and autopiloting! For example, while looking at minimap, you can see your ally vision cones, now you suddenly see that vision cone is being cut by a circle shape shadow. You can immediately tell that there is a smoke blocking your ally’s vision! Now these can be avoided with communication from your ally, but let’s be honest, not everyone gives callouts in competitive games.

The other thing is mentality and composure. One of the many reasons that the 9-3 curse exists, is because people lose their composure and mental after losing a few rounds in a row! Every round in VALORANT is like a new game, so play it that way, don’t let previous rounds affect you and make you become low energy. Only take previous rounds in a positive way, see why you lost a round, and how you can do better to ensure a win!

There are websites out there that help us coaches to see the stats of our students! Such as their progress, KD, scores, etc… I personally use them to see how is my student doing, and then I’ll contact them to congrats them on their progress or give them more tips to improve based on those stats!When I give my students a practice routine, I also set goals for them to achieve, now if they achieve it, they immediately know that they are progressing!

My practice routines mostly have three categories in them:

1- Warm up for the practices ahead.
2- Practicing flaws and strength points with a warmed-up brain and hand for the best results!
3- Warm up and practice in-game to get ready for competitive games ahead.

Now I always say, Kovaaks/Aimlabs are only good to help you warm up and get more comfortable with your mouse usage, as the game’s physics are so different from one another, that playing and practicing in VALORANT itself has a much higher rate of helping you improve! If you want to keep on playing Kovaak’s or Aimlabs, that’s totally fine, as long as you don’t let it be more than 30-minutes and always do it before you get into the game, and play the game itself either in deathmatch or the practice range before going into competitive games so you get used to the game physics and mechanics before getting into a serious match!

I had a student, who was Gold 3 and after having five sessions together, he improved super fast, I just couldn’t believe it when he sent me a message after a month that he has now reached Immortal 3! His progress just made me super happy and I can’t be more proud of him!

Another one that I’d like to share, is the team that I’m currently coaching for a year, MountEsports. When I got in contact with them and we began our sessions, they were all but one Diamond/Ascendant with one being Immortal. After 3 months of sessions and teamwork, they all ranked up to Immortal and managed to go from 20th team in the league to 4th place!

Focus on fundamentals! Keep playing the game and enjoy your time. Having fun is very important in keeping the passion up in order for you to improve! Work on your crosshair placement and take your time to aim!

Any level that you are, either you just started to play the game or you see yourself to be an expert, getting a coach can be super helpful to open your mind and help you have a smoother run in the future! We humans don’t see our mistakes very well and having a third-party point them to you, helps you understand your mistakes better and improve quicker!

Before getting a coach, focus on improving your mechanics such as crosshair placement and movement!

I personally use G-ink which is a drawing tool that helps me communicate with my students better! I also use ValoPlant from time to time in a session if needed so I can help my student understand a concept better.

Yes! All my coaching sessions are live in a discord session where we join in a call, and I share my screen of the provided footage from my student and go over it together! If the student requested a live game, they will be the ones sharing their screen with me watching their game and giving them tips in between the rounds and in the game!