How to REALLY practice / improve aim?

General Discussion
1

i used to be a league of legends player and i never played an FPS in my life (except for halo 1 in a laptop 10 years ago). and i’m basically platinum because i have a good gamesense, i have a GREAT cooldown managment and my movement with tracer is good (i used to play a lot of high movility low range AD carrys with high dependency on cooldowns in LOL and most of what i learnt from that translates to tracer’s blinks) but… i can’t aim 4 sh*t. i’m basically unkilleable but i can’t kill a thing… i’m a mosquito god.

tracer is basically the only aim heavy hero i play. i used to practice in practice range killing bots because i someone told me that i can improve like that… but they are predictable, i just have to move the mouse where i know they are going to move.

so, someone knows how to really practice my aim? i really want to improve. i know aim takes time to learn, i’m not in a hurry.

2

You need to build muscle memory and also dont get discouraged.

Positioning its also a big part of aiming, bad positioning makes it harder to aim

There’s also crosshair placement which is important on tracer.

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3

Turn off your crosshair and play.
Not even kidding.

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4

It’s hard to explain how to improve aim to someone else, other than try things and see where you see the most improvement.

  1. a lot of aim is crosshair placement.
    If you get into the habit of idling your crosshair in high traffic zones at head height you will make more shots.

  2. Practice there is no substitute for it. Your muscle memory will only build based on this.

  3. before you do this make sure your sensitivity is right for you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRFWLJazYYo&t=55s

do the exercise he tells you in that vid.

He has a lot of other great aim related vids too, they are all helpful.

I had good aim before I found his channel and it improved my accuracy in this game.

5

Try playing the original halflife. No joke, the aim requirements in old fps is crazy compared to todays. No falloff or spread, but if you can master playing an old fps then you will come to overwatch and have a much easier time.

I suggest halflife because it was pretty fun, but people still play the original cs if you want to play vs crazy good people.

edit:
I just remembered black mesa is out now, which is the updated fanmod of halflife 1 for a more streamlined, improved graphics version of the game.

Either way, nobody will blame you if you get to xen and just stop.

6

i don’t play mccree, i don’t really like static DPS.

7

just play the game

it maybe sounds stupid but its actually much more helpful than all these “aim training” maps in games like CS

8

I’ve heard this works too, have not done it myself.

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9

the thing is that with tracer you can see where is the crosshair because of the blinks gauge.

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10

Depends on how you approach it. Aim training maps in CS are great for teaching you rapid target acquisition and well, general aiming. Once you learn HOW to aim, learning crosshair placement on other maps is a lot easier, since you’re focusing on less.

There are various ways to improve your aim using third part programs, or within Overwatch itself. For aim, here’s a basic breakdown of how I’d do it.

Flicking

Basics: Practice range shoot bots with Hanzo, Widow or McCree. Pretty straight forward.

Intermediate 1: Custom game vs AI, 1 Lucio on each team with healing set to 500%, Everyone else whoever you want.

Intermediate 2: Custom game vs AI, Ana enemies, HS only.

Advanced: Custom game. Finding a friend or two willing to be targets. They can run, jump, crouch, blink and move, headshot only.

Master: QP and Comp.

Tracking

Basics: Same as above. Just strafe the bots and keep crosshair on their eye.

Intermediate: 1 Lucio per team, 500% healing. Choose Zarya with damage at 10%, track the enemy Lucio best you can with 0 charge.

Advanced +: QP and Comp.

Beyond that, OW doesn’t really give you tools to further practice aiming skills.

When it comes to third party, Aim Hero off Steam is actually nice. Set FoV to 103, load up the OW profile for settings and match your sens in AH with OW. It’ll feel exactly the same as OW, just run the drills. They’re all decent for various skills.

Of course, I would say OW is 40% aim, 60% gamesense so practicing aim will only get you so far.

11

these aim training stuff just helps you with not ruining your statistics while practicing. I think as long as you can use self criticism, youre better off just playing comp if you really want to get better. Just because youre learning everything there naturally.

12

Lower your mouse sens, then just play competitive and be prepared to lose and de rank until you get used to low sens. You can practice in quick play, but it’s going to teach you bad habits.

13

Heartily disagree. In comp you have to be thinking about: Team Composition, Positioning, Call outs, Aim, watching flanks, guarding healers, communication, etc. That’s a LOT of stuff to focus on at once when you’re just ‘trying to learn’.

It’s better to break things down into smaller parts. Focus on AIM and get that to a respectable point. Then go into QP and start focusing on your position and awareness (this part doesn’t require teamwork, afterall). Then in another QP, learn to keep an eye on the healer a bit better. Keep adding new skills until you have at least SOME level of competency, then go into comp and put it all together, perfecting and mastering as you go from there.

Of course, everyone has their own preferred style. Some people say the best way to learn is to jump in at try to absorb it all at once. Others say to focus on individual things each game. I am merely stating the way that I have learned best in previous games. My methods may not work for you, but yours certainly don’t work for me.

Edit: Of course, moving beyond aiming and mechanical skills, the absolute best way to learn the game is to record your games and actually pay attention to what you could have done better.

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14

A thing I have been reading a lot lately for improving as Tracer is to look at who you’re shooting, not your crosshair.

Some people even recommend “turn your crosshair off entirely, play quickplay. Get better at aiming, turn it on, play competitive.”

I’ve only just started trying this myself.
I have to admit though, not having a crosshair on Tracer is kind of nice.

15

Staring at your crosshair on ANY hero is a huge mistake. It’s the absolute worst thing you can do for your aim. Look at target, then bring crosshair to where you’re looking. THEN you can look at crosshair once you’re on/close to target to adjust aim. Well, with track aiming. Flicking you really don’t have time to look at the crosshair to perfect aim since flicking relies on muscle memory (but the not looking at crosshair still applies)

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The best supporting argument I could find, was that staring at your crosshair promotes prediction of the enemy.
Planning to track them based off of what you think they’ll do.

Whereas if you learn to watch the player models, you can be informed about their intentions by subtle, sharp shifts in the characters animations.

Again, I’m just recycling stuff I’ve read.
Am plat.
Don’t trust me.
Do your own research xD

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17

You cant learn anything in QP other than aim imo. Just because you dont get good team comps and most people dont try their best there. I mean i only play QP aside from my placement matches and you can make so many mistakes without getting punished in any way.

18

Sure, but you could say the same thing about low rank Comp, too. Heck, Bronze, Silver, and Low gold are basically glorified QP anyway.

And you can certainly learn things from QP. Positioning being the most important. In fact, I could argue that QP is better for positioning than comp /because/ of how hectic and random it is. If you learn good positioning as say, Mercy, without any backup whatsoever, think how much easier it would be once you actually have a team.

And of course, there’s playing QP with one or two friends. You two/three can focus on yourselves, building teamwork, playing around eachother, call outs, etc.

Is QP the perfect environment? Nah. But I would still argue its better than comp for a beginner. Of course, once you reach the point where you at least have an /idea/ of what you’re supposed to do in each category (of game sense, not hero type), then you won’t really learn much more until you put it to the real test in comp.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying QP will make you a master in anything, but if you actually focus on what you’re doing instead of just mindlessly playing like most do in QP, you CAN make improvements in various areas before hitting comp.

19

300 hours of Free For All.

20

Focus on where you want to shoot not where your crosshairs are. Lead with the eyes and draw a line to the target