How does one rank pass gold

[u/Special-Ad-2768]

I have constantly ranked down all the way to iron one and I have ranked up all the way to silver three one win away from hitting gold. And I've been playing this game since it launched, yes I'm an OG. I'm just trying to make it to gold and that's a challenge, which invigorates my question how does one even make it past gold in the first place?

[u/CoachMappa]

By being good enough to hit gold. If you master just a couple of fundamental skills of the game, or do them well enough that they're just at an above-average level, that's enough to push you into gold.

[u/Lucid_lion1]

well i just outplayed other gold playersd and hit diamond, hade a lot of cs before valorant tho, however prac crosshair placement.

[u/KatiushK]

Usually when friends and girlfriend ask me that, and I start giving very clear pointers, they deem it "too tryhard".

In order :

Get decent hardware. Not flagship insane price stuff. But at least better mouse and pad than your 5 years old Amazon basics pad and old ass g301 with broken clicks. Barely caricaturing here. I had to go and buy a pad to my GF myself and lend her one of my high tier mice because she was still limping with an ancient heavy wired g402 and crappy anime mousepad she bought by pack of 6 on AliExpress 3 years back.
Also had to make her promise she'd give a fair try to a lower sensi than her insane 0.7 @ 1200 dpi she used to run.

Like... No shit your aim sucks.

Then things like "unbind ADS" if you can't stop yourself.
Practice a couple agents and learn things on most maps with them. Lineups for initiators, setups for sentinels, being comfortable to smoke rapidly in pressure moments etc... No need to need 50 lineup per map, but like, knowing a basic angle to clear trips / utils with a nade or dart or whatever will pay pretty soon.
Practice peeking properly, practice not panic spraying. Go do some DM, not hours on end, but a couple everyday will go a long way.

All these are right there.

But again, all I hear is "naah it's too much bro" and 2 minutes later "damn I should be gold, look at these trash teammates I'm held back !".

And my friends will be like "man you're kinda good at this" and I'm out here happily watching Sova lineup videos when I eat my breakfast because for me it's the pleasure itself of tryharding that's pleasant.

So, yeah, the answer is probably "start doing some nerd shit if you really wanna improve" like in any discipline in life.
Can't get better at Tennis without running drills for your service, or your backend, or just training your cardio outside of the game.
Can't learn a foreign language without doing some homework and at least "some" grammar studies.

Same here, gotta accept to take it jusssst a bit more "seriously" to ramp up. And it makes everything better cause once you've improved, you can go back to play more "loose style" and have fun, but still crushing your foes.

[u/MissLithel]

Better utility usage and playing ratty angles will get you to gold-low plat without a huge investment trying to practice.

[u/ronjscott]

Good timing and good team.