Aim is not the Hardest Skill to Learn

General Discussion
1

There seems to be this hilarious misconception that Aiming is the hardest skill to learn and get good at, and thus should be the most rewarded.

It’s a crazy sense of entitlement we’re seeing in the playerbase, and the funny thing is it’s not even true.

Aiming is the EASIEST skill to learn.

That’s because it’s the most common thing you do in this game, and it’s easy to get direct feedback for it. You aim at something, you shoot, either you hit or miss. You even see where the shot goes. The next time, you can adjust your aim, and your muscle memory will remember.

It’s so easy to train Aiming. Just work at it and it will improve.

The same cannot be said for the more “intangible” skills like positioning, map sense and other decision making skills. How do I know if the way I’m moving is beneficial or not? Is now the right time to pop that Ult? Am I out of position and in danger of being ganked? Where are my teammates?

These are much harder skills to measure, because they are much more intangible, and it’s harder to establish causality from your actions. Thus, they are inherently harder to train and master, because the feedback you get isn’t always correlative.

How do you train positioning? How do you train game sense? If I want to train aiming, I can fire up the practice range and shoot at bots, or hit the AI Bots all day. My aim will improve. What training method do you use to train positioning and game sense?

Many players don’t even realize they are missing these skills. Anyone can tell they’re not hitting the target, so they know their aim sucks. With the recent spate of Brigitte hate, we’re seeing tons of flankers dying to Brigitte over and over. These guys don’t even realize they’re missing critical positioning and decision making skills, that’s why they keep dying.

So again, which skill is the hardest to learn again?

98 Likes
2

All skills are equal.

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3

Can literally go and read a guide or watch a video about positioning in Overwatch.

Go chain headshots like GM players do on Widow after “shooting bots all day in training range”

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You could be the best at positioning in the world and have horrid aim and all that would happen is that you wouldn’t die very offen

you could be horrid at positioning and get game winning kill streaks if your aim is good.

Aiming is the most important skill to some heroes and with out doing it correctly they do nothing and if they hit every time they do a lot. A lot more than positioning atleast

All skills are needed in overwatch however aim determines how far you can push it. Everyone can learn positioning not everyone can train their aiming to be as good as others

and if learning aim you’d see a lot more people with crazy aim

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You can be an Aimbot Calvin on Mccree but if you flank you’re not gona last long.
You can be mediocre on Mccree but if you stand behind Rein’s shield and protect the supports you’ll do work.
So Aim God =/= OW God.

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The issue is characters that don’t take aim OR positioning like Moira.

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To borrow an old phrase from Yahtzee Croshaw: It’s like a point and click adventure where every puzzle is USE GUN on GUY.

Can you quickly click on the icons on your desktop? That’s high skill computer usage. That programmer next to you who isn’t even using a mouse? No skill computer user.

Strawmanning it hard, I know, but it’s so tiresome seeing the argument of ‘this character doesn’t require the user to click on enemy targets therefore the people playing them have no skill’ every single look at these forums.

If you’re really good at clicking on moving things or have a quick reaction time, then good for you. That’s great in shooters! But that’s not all there is to it. If it was, then any of the people arguing it should be able to top out the scoreboard with ease by playing any of the no-skill characters themselves. After all, if a non-skilled player can heal and coordinate just fine, imagine what someone who clicks good can do?

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That doesn’t make sense. No aim heroes obviously don’t benefit from aim.

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how are you gonna protect supports if you can’t land a shot on people harassing them…

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Lol

I’d like to see you main widowmaker and reach top 500 if aim is the easiest to learn

In fact non aiming heroes are easier to climb with than heroes like mccree and widowmaker

You can transfer your position and gamesense to some other heroes if you main hitscan but someone who mains junkrat cannot suddenly swap main to mccree and maintain his rank

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OP’s most played heroes :

1- Torbjorn
2- Symmetra
3- Mercy

And they’re in bronze.

Seems like an obvious troll if you ask me.

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12

Moiras beam is pretty much the same as Zarya at full charge.
You still need to aim/track, its not like Sym’s.

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ah, might not understand how much value you get from good aim then

1 Like
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Are you implying that positioning is exclusive to heroes who don’t have to aim?

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You think that moira needs no aim OR positioning.
She must be broken she can heal and deal damage and takes no skill.
Should be easy to win games with her.
Why you don’t play moira then ?
And why do pros not allways play moira ?

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It’s forgiving enough that past a certain skill level the only time anyone will ever lose their beam connection with Moira is against teleporting/invuln skills. If every Moira player at my level can keep their beam locked 24/7, I gain nothing by having better aim on Moira.

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I’m a DPS main that’s normally crap at healing and my career winrate on Moira is 59%. I don’t play her more because she’s boring.

She isn’t broken. A character can be easy without being overpowered. She’s just extremely forgiving due to the lack of aim, AoE healing, and having the best mobility+escape skill in the game on a low cooldown. She takes the least skill to be effective with of any support by a large margin.

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Of course not. There are more skills in the game than aim. That is my point. It takes ignorance to claim the determining factor of ‘high skill’ and ‘low skill’ is whether or not the character needs accurate aim.

If that’s the only skill in the game, there wouldn’t be other factors that determine if you can do well with a character.

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with aim dependent heroes the value of good aim becomes much much much higher

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Every hero requieres game sense positioning cooldown management. But not all of them require aim. That is why the aim dependent ones are more demanding to play. It’s relative and very simple.

8 Likes