How do I improve aim?

General Discussion
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Hi. Let me tell you about myself. I have been playing video games ever since i was little. My first shooter was Black Ops 1 on PS3. I didn’t like shooters back then, becuz i was so little, and I didn’t want to see the blood and gore, and death, so I stayed away. Now that I have a PC and have been playing shooters like Fortnite and this for a while, I am starting to love this genre more and more. The only problem, I play characters that require no aim (eg, sym, junk, moira). The only character with slight aim I play is Reaper. I have played controller all my life before this summer and then moved to mouse and keyboard, and got ok at third person shooters like Fortnite, just can’t seem to get good aim on FPS like this. I play osu! but that doesn’t help, and I just can’t seem to get a lot of kills with aim-heavy characters such as McCree or Ashe or Widow or something. So does anyone have any tips on how to get better. I do get a lot of gold medals for kills, but those are mostly cuz Reaper ults and the fact that I spam shots like 2 inches away from them. I can’t do anything with aim-heavy characters. Should I just play more, or like are there steps I can take to play Widow and McCree good? Right now, I just want to play those 2. I am only level 43 I think and have about like 40 hours into the game.

Thank you, and this is my first post on these forums, so I don’t know what to expect.

2 Likes
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Practice.

6 Likes
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Well, that’s a relatively small amount of playtime. Make sure your hands aren’t cold (yes, I’m serious) and just practice. When you’re learning, slow and accurate is better than fast and inaccurate.

It’s all about building muscle memory.

Imagine doing maths sums. It’s better to answer only 10 questions but get them right, than answer 20 and get most of them wrong. And as you practice, you’ll just get better and better and faster and faster.

EDIT:

Don’t talk about:
Mercy, Genji, Tracer, Brig, Doomfist or Sombra and you should be OK.

1 Like
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Don’t have a 60hz monitor, and practice vs AI in your own custom game.

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  1. Just play the game more
  2. Aim is a lot more than raw mechanics.

I one trick MERCY and i hit GM with WIDOWMAKER WITHOUT being able to AIM.

Understanding the game, and knowing which shots to take is 90% of aim. the other 10 percent is your actual mechanics, which isnt even enough to keep me from carrying on widowmaker.

Im not going to go too far into this, but consider doing research on Aim techniques, and how to aim guides. Most of these will go over how to make shots easy.

2 Likes
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I agree with the cold hands part lol i cant aim when i have cold hands, especially now that it is (almost) winter. i could when i played controller tho. pc is so much different. and i am ok genji to be honest. like i just target the ones that r bad and like r lagging or still and i hit a lot of big targets. i also used to play sombra but was pretty bad with her.

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There is no hidden secret to it. Practice, practice, practice. Just make sure youre working with a sensitivity you feel comfortable with.

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Practice does nothing. you need 240hz monitor and good enough pc to have stable 240fps. PRACTICE <----------------- OMEGALUL

1 Like
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i have 30hz monitor XD

(nah jk)

but in all seriousness like i play on laptop and that has 60hz. if i buy new monitor, it will just slow the performance down (i already tried on an external monitor, reduces frame rates by half)

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A better monitor can make good aim better, it doesnt make bad aim good.

1 Like
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It’s pretty much been said: practice.

No real shortcuts, bud.

Ana bots I find to be a helpful shooting range.

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I am on 60hz, and tried 144hz last week. The 144hz is so much better that the 60hz must go into the trash. I’ll get a 240hz monitor next week.
For very casual gaming then 60hz is okay but if you want to take the game more serious then 144hz is quite a must.

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Btw, also find a good sens for you, watch the video from Blizzard Guides (How to Find the Best sens).

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Practice and think about what you are doing wrong like bad habbits etc.

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This will be a somewhat long response, but I want to be thorough with what I did for Widowmaker. I can’t really help with Ashe since she has such a different aim style, but with Widowmaker, here’s what I did:

  1. Find your Sensitivity
    I’m assuming you have a mouse with interchangable DPI, so I will recommend this video:

(I can recommend some mice if you like)

  1. Find Your Preferred Aim Style
    The two widely recognized aim styles is flicking and tracking, but you aren’t limited to one. For me personally, I really only flick, but some people like Surefour, only track, it’s personal preference, and each has their own advantage. You can mix them however you like. (I also recommend arm aiming)

  2. Hardware isn’t everything
    I just wanted to clear this up, but you don’t have to have incredible monitors to outplay serious Widowmaker’s, just a stable connection. Ping doesn’t really matter unless it keeps fluctuating, and FPS isn’t really a serious advantage unless ever millisecond counted to you, the difference is there (or so I’ve heard), but unless your GM you will be fine.

  3. Practice
    I recommend Widow HS, but dear gosh is it a nightmare when you get started. It’s painful, but it really helps solidify your aim and reaction time.

Hope this helps!

1 Like
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There is a cheap (5$ or less) program on steam called aim hero. It will let you use your overwatch settings and all you do in it is run through different types of courses shooting targets. :slight_smile:

1 Like
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These two do take aim though.

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Give fpsosu! a try if you’re looking for alternatives in addition to grinding it out in game. 2D muscle memory only translates so well into 3D.

As for general aim tips: just use the forum search function. There’s got to be dozens and dozens of these threads with hundreds of replies already :stuck_out_tongue:

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Alright Ive been through all of it and there are 2 main aspects for improving aim, improving your hardware (has a lot of impact in your aim) and train playing 20 hours of quickplay with a tracking hero like soldier and another 20 hours each with flick heroes like mcree,widow, hanzo later on.

Tips on improving hardware:

  • -Make sure to train in a light mouse, lighter than 100 grams is best for precision (research your mouse weight, heavy mice are a hindrance for accuracy)
  • Pair your mouse with a nice long black cloth pad
  • -Get a 144hz Monitor with 144 fps pc as soon as you can, reduces the input lag to aim to a half, significant quality of life
  • -use a low sensitivity number inside overwatch, I use something like 1600 dpi and 3.5 in game, for technical reasons is best to never use a number greater than 4 inside game, if you need faster increase dpi instead, try to see how slow you can get with out affecting your usual accuracy in the game statistics then keep doing small increases until you reach a sens similar to mine, use this low sens for all characters except maybe reinhardt, genji and doomfist who dont really benefit from a slow aim.
    *- Play with as many fps as your pc can dish out, that means low quality settings and vsync off, this reduces input lag and increases responsiveness as a result, much better gains when doing this with a 144hz monitor.

Tip on training aim:

  • -Tracking hero like soldier is a good start, master all of its kit
  • -Launch a 6v1 ana headshot only game in a control point map and try capturing it as Mcree by killing all Anas before the reinforcements come back from spawn (this can be very fun), Itll help you get started into flickshots
    • Widow headshot games are another form of flickshots but widow is another world on its own because she does that while scoping which changes everything, tuning her scoped sens just right is super important try scoped values between 37 and 45 and 50 for Ana