One of the many issues that plague gamers in today’s day and age is lag and ping spikes in multiplayer titles. Whether you’re playing a fast-paced shooter like Call of Duty or Apex Legends or a slower, more tactical game such as VALORANT or CS:GO, lag can make or break your gaming experience.
Lag and high ping usually go hand in hand, as you tend to leg more when your ping is spiking more than in any other instance. If you’re struggling with both lag and high ping in VALORANT, then we have you covered with this guide.
Below, we’ll go over a few ways that you can attempt to stop lagging when playing VALORANT. However, we must caution that some of these fixes are outside of the game and might require you to do some upgrades in real life.
Fixing high ping and lag in VALORANT
For starters, the easiest way to stop your ping from spiking in VALORANT, or any other multiplayer title, is to make sure you are on a wired connection. This essentially means plugging in an ethernet cable to your system rather than using WiFi. This is more feasible for players who have their home’s router close to them, as they can just plug one end of the cable into the router and the other end into their PC without having to use a long cable or other accessories, such as Powerline Adapters (which is a great way to give yourself a wired connection if your router is far away).
However, if your internet is slow regardless of your connection type, then you may want to consider upgrading your internet plan. Of course, this is easier said than done, as internet plans can’t be willingly changed sometimes. Still, if you have the ability to get a faster connection, it will truly help out with your gaming experience in the long run.
Finally, the last out-of-game fix you can try is to limit the number of devices on your network when you’re gaming. The more bandwidth that’s being used on your network at one time will lower the connection speed and increase ping for all of those devices.
In terms of what you can do on your PC, there are two ways to try and optimize your connection in VALORANT. The first is to set VALORANT’s priority to “High” in Task Manager. You can do this by going to Task Manager in Windows, clicking the “Details” tab, right-clicking on the VALORANT application, and then setting its priority. You can also close any unnecessary third-party applications that are running on your PC. These use bandwidth as well and could slow your down speeds and increase lag.
Aside from all of that, your ping and subsequent lag might just have to be something that you deal with in VALORANT.
Related: Read about how to fix VALORANT not opening or launching on Dot Esports.
