Animation canceling is something that players try to use at the highest level of every competitive game. And now, a little trick in VALORANT has been floating around that involves swapping weapons in the middle of an ability cast.
But despite the initial excitement over the “new tech,” it appears that the animation cancelation might only apply to Jett and her Cloudburst ability.
There’s already a mechanic in place that lets players pull out their weapon faster once an ability is thrown out. The speed at which the weapon is pulled out depends on the agent and what ability was used, with Phoenix’s Curveball being one of the fastest.
Originally, players thought that holding a knife and then using an ability would allow every agent to swap instantly to their primary weapon while also canceling out the animation for preparing the gun. This would theoretically let players be ready to fire immediately upon using their ability, putting them in a better position to respond to any enemy movement.
Upon further testing, you can see that the VALORANT fan was only able to effectively use this method with Jett’s Cloudburst and an Operator in their video.
One comment on the initial post confirmed this, saying the only reason it works is that Jett’s Cloudburst doesn’t actually have a start-up animation and is fired immediately. This, coupled with the decreased weapon pullout time, result in the ability to completely cancel the start-up animation for a main gun.
It won’t work with other characters because almost every ability has an animation that makes its start-up take just as long as most weapons. But Jett seems like she might have multiple ways around this when specifically using her Cloudburst in tandem with an Operator.
