5 Easy Tips to Improve Your Aim

How many times have you found yourself at the bottom of the leaderboard, getting your first shots off and still dying, or getting outgunned by your friends? There are many skills that contribute to performance gameplay, such as movement, game sense, team coordination, and most importantly aim. Aim is a rudimentary skill but is by far the most important of all FPS skills. Without the ability to effectively aim, being in the correct position or coming to the support of your teammate could still result in many lost engagements. If you find yourself in this situation often, don’t worry we have five easy tips to help you climb the leaderboard:

Mindset

Often you might find yourself looting, rotating to a new position, or set up for an ambush and suddenly you’re outnumbered or flanked. Often many will panic in this situation, throwing all your skills out the window. It’s important to remain calm and keep your aim smooth in these situations. Focus on a relaxed mouse grip and keeping your arm loose as you practice, rather than tensing up when aiming. As you develop this habit of remaining relaxed as you practice, you’ll be more relaxed during small engagements. The more you develop this mindset, the less likely you’ll tense up or panic when surprised or caught out of position.

Sensitivity

Sensitivity is one of the more controversial topics that you will find within any game’s community. If you search YouTube for “best sensitivity for X”, hundreds of videos claiming to have the “best sensitivity” will pop up. This is a road to find a hundred options that don’t work for you. While there are many factors that contribute and we could do an entire newsletter on sensitivity, the simplest fix is look up the average pro sensitivity for that game/similar game and gradually adjust your sensitivity up or down based off your experience. Once you find your optimal sensitivity, write it down where you won’t lose it. There’s nothing worse than finding settings that feel perfect and then having your settings reset or redownloading a game to experiment all over again.

Recoil Patterns

Have you ever watched your favorite streamer and wondered how their guns seem to have zero recoil? With a little practice you can do this too. Each game and each gun general have unique recoil patterns. A simple way to identify this is to load into a private match and shoot a wall without moving your mouse. The bullet holes left in the wall are the recoil pattern for that gun. To counteract this, simply pull your mouse down and in the opposite direction of pattern. While this is a simple fix, consistently remembering to counter the recoil and perfecting the pattern takes practice. The more you learn recoil control for your favorite loadout, the more you’ll find your crosshair feeling more like a lazer beam!

Crosshair Placement

If you find yourself holding an angle, getting first shots off, and dying, this might be the tip for you. Headshots result in a damage bonus for each shot and even are one-shot eliminations in many games. Poor crosshair placement results in less damage-per-second and requires you to reposition your crosshair to get a headshot. This may be the difference between getting a quick elimination and losing an engagement. To improve this, you can make two easy fixes. Identify the approximate height of the headshot boxes and intentionally target opponents’ heads. Once you know the approximate height of the headshot boxes, you can move around the map keeping your crosshair around that height on doorways and walls, ensuring that you require minimum movement for headshots. Once engaged, be intentional at aiming for the upper body and head. Depending on your recoil control, this will increase the chances of landing consistent headshots. As you improve and face better opponents, you will need to land more headshots to win engagements.If you find yourself holding an angle, getting first shots off, and dying, this might be the tip for you. Headshots result in a damage bonus for each shot and even are one-shot eliminations in many games. Poor crosshair placement results in less damage-per-second and requires you to reposition your crosshair to get a headshot. This may be the difference between getting a quick elimination and losing an engagement. To improve this, you can make two easy fixes. Identify the approximate height of the headshot boxes and intentionally target opponents’ heads. Once you know the approximate height of the headshot boxes, you can move around the map keeping your crosshair around that height on doorways and walls, ensuring that you require minimum movement for headshots. Once engaged, be intentional at aiming for the upper body and head. Depending on your recoil control, this will increase the chances of landing consistent headshots. As you improve and face better opponents, you will need to land more headshots to win engagements.

Practice

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE! Remembering crosshair placement, recoil patterns, and remaining relaxed will require you to actively think about these skills at first but will become a habit over time. While it might be challenging to focus on the game and practice these skills, there are many tools to help with this process. Aim trainers, such as Aimlabs or Kovaak’s, provide many different scenarios that help you address isolated areas of your aim.

Most Importantly

HAVE FUN! Whether you are trying to improve by challenging yourself in an aim trainer or practicing in game, the whole point of gaming is to enjoy yourself. In your journey to improve your aim, you’ll go a lot further if you enjoy the process. If you want more detailed information on improving your aim, we recommend you go check out Voltaic’s Aim Journey Guide.

Tune in tomorrow for a bonus non skill-based tip! We’ll be covering your gaming gear and how it can contribute to improving your aim.

NOTE: This is the first issue of what will be our monthly newsletter series. If you have feedback or topics you’d love to see us cover, let us know in the comments or on our socials! If you enjoyed our content, subscribe to our newsletters below.  We’ll be sending out industry updates, tips for beginners, news, promotions, and product updates.