Those sparks are drawn by your PC. But the server is the one that ultimately decides whether you hit or not.
Your PC can't wait for the server to tell you whether to render the sparks or not (delayed sparks would look weird), so it has to guess based on most recent info it has. Sometimes it guesses wrong.
That's just a technical limitation of online games with ping.
See this dev post: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/dev/the-state-of-hit-registration/
Thanks for pointing out the bit about the sparks, that's great info. That yellow spark effect plays as soon as you fire if your client determines the bullet should hit the player. The larger red/orange effect that you see normally happens when the server confirms the shot.
But as /u/Kalix_ pointed out, the server has to determine that, and then tell your PC that it agrees that the shot landed. And that takes back-and-forth network communication.
There's a very, very, very high chance that it was an issue with the connection between OP's PC and the server. But without the network stat indicators that others have mentioned, it's hard to glean more information.
Damn thats neat, would that also explain why so many of kills that come from preaiming an angle feel almost microscopicly "delayed" since the server needs to confirm what my client thinks happened?
Yeah, there's a delay between when the shot fires on your screen and when you see an enemy die on your screen. And the video in the OP is exactly why a delay like this exists.
Your gun firing is 'predicted' by your PC -- it shows it happening to you before the server confirms it. There are lots of reasons for this, but generally because it feels more responsive, and the downsides to a disagreement are less severe.
But deaths aren't 'predicted'. Imagine in the OP's video if their PC showed them that the Sage died to that first headshot, before the server confirmed it. OP's PC would show Sage dying, but then the server would send it a message a few frames later saying "hold on there, Sage didn't actually die". Now OP's PC would need to pop Sage back up as if she didn't die, and was actually firing the whole time. That would be...bad, to say the least.
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