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Valorantis a first-person 5v5 tactical shooter, with a lot of similarities to the Counter-Strike franchise. Especially in the ranked game mode, hopping in for the first time might bring about some confusion regarding the callouts and slang from your teammates. Valorant can get very chaotic, so learning these terms can turn panic into understanding.
One key thing to understand is that a lot of these callouts overlap with other tactical shooters, but the pace of the game in comparison to others is very different. Even if you play a lot of Counter-Strike or Overwatch, Valorant is its own monster. Communicating with your teammates what’s going on with the fewest syllables possible can be key to victory.
All Common Slang
To help keep some organization, these pieces of slang are explained in alphabetical order.
Description
Anchor/Anchoring
This slang references having a player sitting at a specific position on the map, usually on the defense side and on their own. The term ‘anchor’ isused because the player is keeping their team anchored down in that area, preventing enemies from flanking or getting free space.
Any agent can anchor, but it is usually reserved for the Sentinel agents as they can cover more space and slow down enemies with abilities such as tripwires and alarm bots.
Bait
Due to how fights happen in Valorant, the verb bait (to bait, baiting)refers to when a player uses either their gun or abilities to start a fight to get them to push you.This effectively baits the opponent into playing aggressively and can give the original shooter the advantage of a bait.
This isn’t the only explanation though, as teammates can bait each other by starting a fight as described above, making it look like they are engaging, but instead backing up and putting their teammates in danger. If you hear a teammate calling you or someone else a ‘baiter’ in a negative fashion,it’s likely due to some indecision in a fight that led to that moment.
Contact
The term ‘contact’ means to purposefullymove into an area and fight without using any utility.This can be very handy if combined with moving quietly as if enemies aren’t at the location, there is nothing to give away that you have moved in.
Cooldown (CD)
In Valorant, you have certain abilitiesyou can only use a limited amount in every round.Depending on the ability, there is a chance that in a round the ability can be on cooldown, meaning that it can be re-used,but after a specific time has passed.
If an ability can be used again, but you’re waiting for it to come back online, then it’s on cooldown or CD for short.
Cubby/Corner
This is relatively straightforward, as these are location callouts. When someone says an enemy or piece of utility is a cubby or corner, that meansthey are in a location nearby either tucked into a hidden spotora corner.
This can seem very broad, but alongside a direction like left or right and pings from allies, it can help your team clear out sites.
Default
This is another tactical shooter term, and if you’re playing ranked on the attack side, you’ll hear this often. Default is another verb (to default, defaulting) that meansplaying a specific kind of attack setup where nobody commits to any strategy.
Instead, this setup relies on finding out information about the enemy team and reacting accordingly. Defaulting can be very handy against teams that play an aggressive defense, or against teams that rotate very early on.
Dink/Dinked
A dink in Valorantmeans a headshot,due to the noise the game makes when someone has been headshot. Usually, letting someone know an enemy has been dinked means that they’ve been hit in the head, so they have low health and can be gunned down easily.
Since each gun has a different amount of damage output for a headshot, letting an ally know someone has been hurt is always useful, especially if they’re very low.
Double Up/Double Swing
One of the smartest ways to take duels or hold angles against enemies in tactical shooters is to have a teammate very close by to either help you kill someone shooting you or to just gun down anything that comes your way.
Whether on defense or attack, when someone calls to double up,it means to move close to your nearby teammate and hold an angle or location.
Then, on the aggressive side, double swinging means getting close to an ally and moving together around a corner or wall to secure a kill.
Eco/Economy
In Valorant, having the credits to buy guns every round is crucial. The amount of money you have changes based on a multitude of factors, but it whittles down to three things: how much you spent in the previous round, how many kills you got in the previous round, and if your team won the round.
When players talk about the economy,they are talking about what guns players can afford either currently or in the future.
As for when players call for eco or eco rounds, that means a team is specifically buying guns to buy less for now so they can afford better guns in the future.
Entry/Exit (Entry Fragger/Exit Fragger)
With how the game works, Valorant is defined by short moments of engagement. When a team fights another,specific roles should be not only using their abilities wellbutpositioning themselves accordingly to get the most valueandsecure a round win.
Fake
On the attack side, the term fake refers toattacking a site and selling it to the enemy that the first attack is where your whole team is, while instead using that as a distraction to get onto another site. This is especially prevalent on three-site maps like Haven or Lotus, as the defense has to cover a lot more ground.
Feed/Feeding
This term is common in lots of competitive video games. Feed is a verb (to feed, feeding), and in this case, it means toeither purposefullyorunintentionally die with no other purpose other than to give your opponents an advantage.
In Valorant, this usually means that the player is performing poorly or intentionally trying to lose by running into enemies and giving them more resources.
Flank
This term is one of the simplest in the game. Flank just means that anenemy is getting behind your team,trying toget killsto secure the round. The callout ‘flanking’ can also be used to draw that attention, but can also mean that someone on your teamis getting behind the enemies.
Flash/Flashbang
A flash, or flashbang, is an ability in Valorant thatblinds opponents for a short time.When a teammate calls this term out, they’re usually about to use their flash to blind their opponents. If someone calls out “I’m flashed”, that means they’re blinded.
Frag/Fragging
In Valorant, the term frag can eitherrefer to a kill or the process of killing enemies.Fragging can also be used as a compliment, referring to someone hitting their shots often.
Heaven/Hell
Heaven simply refers to an area of the mapthat is higher than the main elevation.Hell refers to an area underneath another area, so players can distinguish whether someone is in a location above or below on a minimap.
IGL
An IGL is an acronym forin-game leader,which refers to which player on your team ismaking the key decisionsof where to go and what to do across the game. Not every team has one, but the ones who do know who is in charge.
Long/Short
This refers to distances in chaotic situations to assist allies. If someone calls that an enemy or piece of utility is long,it means that it is at the end of a long hallway.
Instead, if they call short, it means they were last seen close by, either arounda nearby cornerorjust somewhere nearby ahead.
Lurk
Lurk is a similar term to flank, but it is different as the goal isn’t always to get behind opponents to kill them. Lurking players usually are there togain information on their opponents, clear sites after enemies have rotated away, and try and get kills on unexpecting enemies.
Molly
Molly is short formolotov, a damage-over-time grenade from other tactical shooters. In Valorant, every grenade-like ability does damage-over-time, so they are all referred to as mollys instead. Players distinguish the different kinds of mollys by saying their agent head of it: KJ molly, Phoenix molly, KAY/O molly, and so on.
One-Way
This refers to whena smoke is dropped in a specific location so it gives a significant advantageto one side and not the other. These smokes can be dropped to assist attack or defense, but they are differently placed than the smokes players use just toblock off sightlines from enemies.
Usually, a one-way smoke is placed on an object near an opening so that it covers part of the entryway, but not the whole thing. This means that players close to the smoke can’t see anything, but players who are further away can see the feet or lower body of opponents and use that to shoot around where their heads are.
Peek/Jump Peek
A peek refers to when someonelooks around a corner with the expectation to duel an opponent or gain information, whether one is there or not. This is different from a swing, as a swing means the player fully moves out towards the open area to contact and shoot opponents.
A peek is a lot slower, usually just meant to gain information and not move too far.
A jump peek is a variation of the peek where the player jumps to peek a corner with their knife out, but turns around before they land back to a safe spot. For enemies, they only spot the peek for a split second, while the jump makes the peeker harder to hit.
Plant/Post-Plant
The term plant is whena spike is planted in the ground, starting the bombfor the attacking side. Post-plant refers to the time when the spike is planted, so the defense has a limited time left to defuse the spike.
Retake
The term retake refers to trying toreclaim an area of the map, either using utility or just duels to retake the space. This is often used for post-plant scenarios, as a planned retake can make what seem like difficult fights easy.
Shift-Walk
This term refers to a way that players can walk around the map slower than normal,but without making any noise. Normally, the key on the keyboard that does this is the Shift key, which gives it its name.
Split
This is also the name of a map, so just make sure you know that this is different. The term ‘split’ in-game is tosplit the team up, usually to cover a lot of space and make enemies have to fight duelsonmultiple fronts. This term is often used on attack, but splitting on defense can work too.
Stack
The term ‘stack’ refers tohow your team positions on the defensive side.The term usually coincides with a number: one stack, two stack, five stack, and so on. Stacking a site means your team is focusing on defending that site stronger than others, usually planning to retake other sites.
Thrifty
A thrifty round refers to whenone team defeats another team with a significant weaponandeconomic disadvantage.
Wall
A wall can refer to an actual wall in the map, but more often, it refersto specific smokes that split sections of the map in twoinstead of the traditional circular smokes that other agents offer. The two key agents that have wall smokes are Viper and Harbor.
Wallbang
A wallbang refers towhen a shot goes through a penetrable surface,usually ending with a kill if enough bullets hit an opponent. Specific guns have more bullet penetration than others, which you can see when purchasing them in the store, but wallbangs are most common with the Odin and Vandal.
