What Is Bloom in Valorant?

What Is Bloom in Valorant? Meaning and How It Works

Bloom in Valorant is the way your bullet spread grows the longer you hold the trigger, so shots land in a widening circle around the crosshair instead of exactly on it. It is why the first bullet is accurate and the tenth is not. Valorant also has a separate video setting called Bloom, which only controls a visual glow effect.

How does bloom work in Valorant?

Every automatic weapon in Valorant has a spread value that starts near zero and increases with each shot fired in a row. The first bullet from a stationary Vandal goes exactly where the crosshair points, and by the eighth or ninth bullet the gun is placing rounds randomly inside a cone.

Bloom stacks with two other penalties. Movement adds spread immediately, which is why counter strafing to a full stop before firing matters more than aim itself, and jumping multiplies it to the point where hitting anything is luck. Bloom also resets on a timer, so short bursts of three to five bullets with a pause between them keep you inside the accurate window while a long spray does not. The practical effect is that fights are decided by the first two bullets, which is also why ACS tends to follow players who tap and burst rather than hold the trigger.

Should Bloom be on or off in Valorant settings?

Turn it off. The Bloom entry in the video settings menu is a post processing effect that adds a soft glow around bright surfaces and light sources, and it has no connection to bullet spread. Switching it off costs nothing visually, removes glare on maps like Breeze and Ascent, and gives back a few frames on weaker hardware.

Almost every professional player runs Bloom off along with the other post processing options, because a flat image makes enemy silhouettes easier to separate from the background. Cleaning up your video settings is the cheapest improvement available, and once the visual clarity stops being the limiting factor, a Valorant rank boost or a set of boosted placement matches is what moves the account to the tier your aim already belongs in.

Bloom vs recoil: what is the difference?

Recoil is predictable and identical every time, so a Vandal spray always climbs and pulls in the same pattern, and you can learn to counter it by pulling down. Bloom is random inside a cone, so no amount of practice controls it. That combination is why Valorant sprays are only reliable for the first few bullets: you can compensate for recoil, but you cannot compensate for bloom, and it is the reason the game rewards tapping over spraying at range.

FAQ

Can you turn bloom off in Valorant gunplay? No. Bullet spread is a core part of the weapon design and there is no setting, config file or command that removes it.

Does crouching reduce bloom? Yes. Crouching lowers the spread growth rate on most rifles, which is why holding an angle from a crouch is standard on long sightlines even though it slows your movement.

Is bloom the same in Valorant and CS2? No. CS2 also has spread, but Valorant's first bullet is 100 percent accurate when standing still, while CS2 applies a small inaccuracy even to the opening shot.