Valorant spike exploit allows animation cancels for faster firing

A new Valorant bug allows players to fire their weapons more quickly by hold the button used to plant the spike in order to cancel the weapon animation, testing shows.

A video that originally appeared on the game’s subreddit showed that by initiating a spike plant and then picking up and switching to a weapon will cancel the weapon’s draw animation, allowing players to fire much sooner than they would normally be able to. WIN.gg’s testing concluded that users can almost entirely eliminate the draw animation by utilizing the exploit, effectively reducing the amount of time from weapon pickup to firing a shot close to 75% when using weapons with long draw times.

Weapons that gain the largest benefit, like the Odin or the Operator, suddenly become that much more powerful when affected by the exploit.

Valorant spike quick switch cancel is game’s latest bug

Valorant’s new spike exploit is vaguely reminiscent to Counter-Strike’s quick switch, which in earlier versions of the game allowed a player to juggle specific combinations of weapons, like an HE grenade or a desert eagle with an AWP, in order to fire faster. While switching to another weapon or knife and back again no longer offers that advantage in CSGO, Valorant’s new exploit does. 

Thankfully, a player needs to be both inside a site, have the spike, and have another weapon within arm’s reach in order to take advantage of the exploit. Players would both need to know about the bug and set it up ahead of time in order to make proper use of it. These requirements lower the usefulness of the exploit, but that doesn’t mean players won’t accidentally trigger it without knowing any better. 

A commenter on the thread posted this clip of former CSGO professional player Shahzeeb “ShahZaM” Khan accidentally enabling the spike exploit on stream, to tremendous effect.

With the exploit having such a potentially powerful effect, Riot will likely soon have the bug patched out. But the fact that it exists is a reminder just how young of a game Valorant is. With FLASHPOINT’s Pop Flash tournament series starting this week, Riot may want to fix it fast.