The ‘IGL’ role in Valorant is a difficult role to hold. I truly applaud all the professional and f/a IGL’s because their role is arguably one of the most crucial roles in any tactical shooter. For any new up-and-coming players looking to fulfill this IGL role for their team and don’t know where to start, this article is the right place to go. I explain the things I believe that a true IGL needs to benefit his team.
You got to start off with the basics. These elements are fundamental and need to be a quality in every IGL.
Confidence Speak with confidence, if you are not confident in your own calls or do not sound confident in your own calls you will not gain the crucial trust and respect from your teammates. Don’t be afraid to make the wrong call, you have to be able to learn and adapt, so making a bad call actually benefits you in the long run. Just make sure to not get frustrated about making a bad call, as an IGL you need to keep your composure - we will get into this later.
’We Language’ - The difference between Micro Managing and IGLing When IGLing it is important that you do not single out a specific player. Calling someone out in front of everyone will simply lower the morale of your teammates. Being a IGL does not mean you Micro Manage/Backseat your teammates. Being an IGL simply means you help set up your team and help your team adapt through the round. You should be inclusive when pointing out a mistake, so theoretically, say your teammate places a bad smoke, you as the IGL, would simply say - “We should have this smoke on A rather than B because of C.” - Doing this actually benefits your team a lot, even though everyone knows who you’re talking about, the player you’re talking about won’t feel as bad. You don’t even have to use the word “we”, just use a word that does not single out one player.
Control Over Your Team What I mean by having control over your team does not mean you should micro-manage or backseat your teammates. I mean that you should control your teams mental. If your team starts tilting, you as an IGL needs to shut that down. Negative players have no place on a team, all this does is bring everyone else down. It is also your job as an IGL to establish that you’re almost like the ‘parent’ of the team. You should make it known that you will hold your teammates accountable.
Server work and practice is where it all starts. Practice is a crucial element in succeeding in Valorant, everyone has a different structure but this is what I believe to be fundamental among all IGLs.
Theory Crafting Being able to build off of professional team’s protocols/strategies and making your own is an important quality every Coach and IGL must have. This process involves a full team but most of the time the IGL and Coach should have a good idea as to what protocols/executes the team will follow. This session includes the IGL, Coach, and possibly your teammates. You and whoever else is with you will look at your weaknesses and try to find a Professional team that is really good at whatever you’re weak at. For instance, say your team is bad at X, you will find a pro team that is good at X and will study their protocols. After this, you will build on these protocols. There is another way to this which I think is most efficient is making your own strategies. If your team has really good ideas it may be easier to build on everyone’s ideas rather than you building on a pro team’s ideas.
Server Work Server work is meant to identify the goals and objectives for the day. The IGLs job is to assign the team a goal. For instance, say your team is bad at your default for info. The IGL makes it the goal for the day to become better at this default. The difference between an objective and a goal is a goal is what you want to achieve, the objectives are what will help you achieve your goal. In the server work the IGL should also go over things like post plants/retakes and general setups. Everyone servers differently, so I won’t go in depth, but as long as you’re practicing with a goal in mind and a plan to reach that goal in X amount of time, you’re doing fine.
Scrimming for Practice You’ve theory crafted and server worked, now what do you do? You put all your ideas to the test and go in a few scrims. When you scrim for practice you should try new things. You should also be willing to alter a few of your strategies because you realized that they do not work, and that is ok! Scrims are meant to be a learning experience. So as an IGL be sure to adapt throughout the scrim, staying stagnant is the worst thing any IGL can do.
Scrimming to Win I believe at some point in time you should scrim to win. I know this may sound crazy, but you must be tournament ready. You do not truly put yourself in high stress situations in scrims for practice. In tournaments, you need to have the endurance and stamina to compete. These traits are something that scrims for practice won’t provide. When you have an hour break in between matches and/or are not worried to make a mistake because they know this won’t cost them the game. What I recommend is dedicating a day to playing scrims to win, make the day longer and treat it like a tournament. This will help build endurance and promote high pressure situations.
This next section is what every IGL should do when competing in an official or practicing in a scrim.
Pre-Round As an IGL you need to recognize what pre-round system works for you. I will get into the Pre-round Ideology another day. But an IGL should have the first 10-15 seconds of the round to setup their team. No one else should be talking, however, I believe you should have someone communicating the other teams ultimate's and economies so the IGL can better set up his/her team.
Setups A good IGL knows how to setup his/her teams. You need to be able to play your teams strengths. Evaluate the other teams comps and think - What is their comps strength and what benefits do they have on us? What are our comps strengths and how does this benefit us? - All of these are important questions to ask yourself when setting up your team. You need to make sure you give your team freedom, keep the plan simple, still go into detail but don’t overdo it. You can and should tell your team where to go but you are in no way qualified to tell your teammates how to play their agent. If you want the best results let your teammates use their utility as they wish, you and your team are free to make suggestions but let your teammates have freedom over their agents/actions, this will help you adjust in the mid/late round.
Mid Round As an IGL you need to be able to adapt frequently. Valorant is a very fast-paced game which calls for a lot of adaptation. If you’re not able to adapt mid-round your team loses. Make sure to observe the other teams utility patterns, agent usages, and gun usage. Think about how their ultimate's and economy can change the course of the round. This information is crucial in deciding how to adapt. Every situation is different, the protocols/executes you’ve practiced don’t always work. So make sure to be flexible, and always be one step ahead of the other team.
Retake/Post Plant Retakes/Post plants are to be practiced during the server work. However, every retake/post plant is different and you will need to adapt. When post planting, look at the timings, crossfire, and utility you have to keep them off site. When retaking look at the timings, utility, and guns to kill them off or buy time.
These are the extra notes that didn’t necessarily fit in any category.
Mental As an IGL you must mentally stay in check, it’s your job to make sure your team doesn’t get too emotional but this won’t work if you’re malding yourself. A big problem with the lower tier teams is the IGL doesn’t keep their composure. Check out a comms video from any team, the IGL stays calm when calling, what I mean by this is the IGL has a calmness to their voice, they comm things once and add a lot of detail. If you as an IGL are not calm in the game, your team will not win in the long run. So if you encounter problems with your mental, try to find strategies that help you calm down.
Being Specific It is good to be specific but do not tell your teammates what to do to the T, give them a basic job but don’t be over specific. This will benefit everyone. You will not look at the map as much and you’ll be able to see what’s in front of you. Your teammates will also not be worried as much because they won’t worry about messing up. This will also allow you guys to adapt easier and come up with strategies off the go.
Discipline Being disciplined is important. Know that the IGLs call is final and cannot be reversed. Don’t force anything in scrims and don’t rely on your aim 24/7.