Aiming FAQ Vid Progress Update!
Hi! Hope u all have been well and sorry for being a lil bit absent, I went on holdiays to Melbourne for a week! I'm back now though and I'm hoping to get my next vid out early next month. The script is pretty much done and if you're interested here it is! Feel free to ask questions about anything I wrote about and pls let me know if certain parts don't make sense so I can fix them LOL
Intro
I've been playing aimtrainers for a very long time now and over that 4 years I've noticed a bit of a pattern. Heaps of people have so many questions about aiming, but most of these questions can be put into a few different boxes, distinct categories that are pretty easy to answer in a more general way. I started making videos to answer a lot of common questions I see asked in the aiming community so, why not cover a bunch of them in a single video? I've added chapters for each segment so you can skip to the questions your most interested in but lets start with the most commonly asked one, what sensitivity should I use?
What sens is best
The simplest answer is that it depends on what you're playing. I think the most useful way to think of your sensitivity is as a tool, one that can be changed based on what's required. This can be seen really clearly when looking at valorant gameplay compared to overwatch, specifically tracer. It's very easy to tell that the overwatch player has to make mouse movements covering a wider distance more often, not just for getting around the map but in gunfights as well. For motions like these a higher sensitivity is preferable but if you were to try and take that sensitivity into valorant it would feel almost uncontrollable. That game focuses on much smaller movements and it's easier to be accurate on a slower sensitivity for those. This is also why it's preferable to change sensitivity when you change games, each game promotes a different set of skills meaning a sens that's optimal in one game won't work as well for another.
And don't worry, changing your sensitivity won't hurt your aim. I have a video explaining why the idea of muscle memory in aiming is a bit of a misnomer if this is a topic you'd like to learn more about.
What fov is best?
Something that sort of links into this is which field of view is the best and while there still isn't a best the answer is a little different here. The obvious tradeoff is that higher fov lets you see more at the edges of your screen while lower fov makes targets in the centre appear more zoomed in. I think the more interesting thing to consider though is relative speed. A target moving identically on 80 and 120fov will look like it's going much faster at 80, since it's covering more of the screen in the same timeframe. So that's the three things to consider, if you struggle with aiming at or reading the movements of faster targets then higher fov might help. At the same time, higher fov will make those targets appear smaller which could make them harder to hit but could also let you see enemies you otherwise wouldn't.
For me, it again comes down to the game. If I'm given the option to choose I tend to gravitate towards higher rather than lower but my rule of thumb is that the more precision a game needs the lower my fov and the more movement options a game has the higher my fov.
Where to focus
Another question I see a lot is where you should be focusing when aiming, specifically if you should be focusing on the crosshair or target. For me this has always been entirely subconscious, it's not something I thought about before someone asked me. After giving it some thought though I realised that what I do personally is basically always focus on the target, I think for two main reasons. The first is the simplest, your crosshair will never move if you don't move it. You know every movement your crosshair will make before it happens, whereas your enemies move unpredictably, so you have to watch their movements and make adjustments based on them. This is compounded by reading someone's movements getting easier when you strictly focus on their playermodel. There are a lot of subtleties to movement animations in games, like someones legs tensing to indicate they are about to jump or changing directions before their body has actually started to accelerate. By focusing on your target picking up on these tells becomes easier allowing you to track move accurately.
The only exception to this that I can think of is on slow moving, very small targets. This might require visually checking if your crosshair is actually on the target, and since movement reading doesn't matter much here it makes sense to shift our focus.
Arm or wrist aim
Should I aim with my arm or my wrist is a bit of a weird question, I think it's foundation is a little flawed because the answer is both* with as asterisk. Both your wrist and arm have different benefits and downsides when it comes to aiming and limiting yourself to only one is preventing yourself from utilising the strengths of the other. Your arm is better at wider movements, it has a higher maximum speed and can cover wider distances. Your wrist on the other hand is more precise within a smaller range, and might not be as fast over wide movements but can accelerate quicker. Being able to effectively use both of these will make you a far more flexible player, able to excel in more areas. Which one you use more depends mostly on your sensitivity, with slower sensitivities leaning into more arm movements and faster ones wrist movements but I think for the vast majority of people it is worth using both.
As for that asterisk, the arm and the wrist aren't the two only muscle groups we can use to aim, we can also move the mouse with our fingertips. But, do we have to have to use all three muscle groups? I'd say most of the time it's beneficial to at least try to, personally I've started to implement my fingertips more when aiming and it's helped a lot especially with very small movements but you probably don't need to if you play on a lower sensitivity. On slower than maybe 50cm/360, the amount of on screen distance you can actually cover with your fingertips is almost negligible and you'd be fine just using wrist and arm. On faster sensitivities though, for example quicker than 30cm, not using your fingertips would have you losing out on the best tool you have for extremely small movements.
Warmup vs practice?
The question of what counts as a warmup versus practice is something I've thought about for a while. Most people draw the distinction with how much time you spend which does make sense, a one hour warmup isn't a warmup anymore, but I don't think it's as simple as just how long you play for, it comes down to what your goals are for that play session. A warmup, in my mind, is strictly something to get you ready for the game you're going to play right after. It's goals are immediate, get your arm moving and get yourself feeling sharp. Practice on the other hand is much more long term, if you sit down and play an hour of aimtraining while trying to work on a weakness, you probably won't see the benefits tomorrow. But do the same for a week, or a month or in my case four years you'll get a lot better over that timeframe. Practice is a long term improvement of your skill ceiling whereas warmup just gets you to that ceiling for your playsession.
Focus on aim?
When playing a match, is it a good idea to be thinking about your aim? Being aware of your mistakes mechanically and what you can do to correct them is the fastest way to get better, but in actual takes placing that focus on your aim takes focus away from other areas that probably need it more. Things like positioning, map knowledge, teamplay, utility usage and timing will suffer more than your aim would if you take focus away from them. So, if you're playing to perform well it's probably best to let aim be subconscious. These downsides don't apply in an aimtrainer though, which is why I personally try to focus on my mistakes when practicing in those instead of during matches and if there are issues that pop up in game that I can't see in an aimtrainer, I'll notice them when vod reviewing anyway so there isn't much reason to be conscious of my mechanics.
Does hardware matter?
Does hardware matter, in the sense of things like having a high hz monitor or good frame rates and I want to say yes, but I don't want that to discourage anyone who doesn't have access to those things. I wouldn't say that having either of those things will make you better, it just more accurately lets your in game performance represent your skill level and because of that you will play better, but it won't improve your skill level. And that is the most important thing here, your own abilities as a player. To prove this point, I set my monitor from 280hz to 85 and tried playing some kovaaks and I did do worse than usual but, these scores are still good. If I was still on 85hz I still would be able to aim and perform well, just not as well as I can on 280. That being said getting at the very least a 144hz monitor and trying to get at least 144fps is absolutely worth it if you're planning on taking fps games seriously.
Do peripherals matter?
Linking nicely with the previous question, do peripherals like mice, mousepads and keyboards significantly impact performance in game? The answer to this really depends on what our baseline is. If you were to compare this mouse with a g pro superlight then there absolutely would be a pretty massive difference. But how about the op1 8k, my main mouse, versus that same gpx? For me it honestly would also be a big difference, not as significant obviously but I still do play noticeably better however this won't be true for everyone. These two mice are close enough in performance that the difference in latency and tracking is not perceivable to most people, even though the OP1 is better that latency difference won't make or break your performance. The reason I play better on the op1 is because of my handsize, I have smaller hands and the gpx just isn't comfortable to hold because of that. And that's the main factors with mice, if its comfortable and somewhat modern it's probably not holding you back.
How about mousepads then? To be honest, I almost find these more important than mice. The amount of friction a mousepad has and the interactions between the pad and the skates can change a lot about how you aim, but that is mostly in terms of style. On a pad with lower friction I have a more fluid style, it's easier to chain motions together but on a slower mousepad the increased resistance to starting movements means my aim looks a lot more snappy but loses out on some of that fluidity. This doesn't mean it's impossible to be smooth on a slower pad or vice versa, but some pads do lend themselves more to certain styles. All of that being said, I do think you can perform well on pretty much any mousepad, and even if I wouldn't use some that others do that doesn't mean you can't. The only way I can see one limiting you is if you try to adopt a very smooth style with an extremely slow mousepad, and it will be harder to be snappy on mousepads with lower friction but that's all that I can think of.
A more interesting peripheral is keyboards, since while I do think most mechanical keyboards are good enough magnetic keyboards are significantly better. I've found upgrading to a wooting helped heaps with things like counterstrafe consistency but especially movement in more tech heavy games like apex. This is something I want to make a whole video on in the future, for now ill just leave you with this apex comparison and say that if you are taking fps games very seriously, a magnetic keyboard is absolutely worth considering. It's absolutely not needed to have good movement but definitely does help.
I think that's all the specific questions I want to answer in this video but I'd like to reflect on the overall theme that's visible here. There is a lot of thought that can go into aiming, debating things like which sensitivity or dpi or grip style is the best or if your setup or peripherals will keep you from reaching a certain rank and while I don't think there's anything wrong with giving these things thought, the most important thing by far is the time you put in.
There is a concept in psychology called analysis paralysis, which describes a situation where a person has to make a decision and by pondering and overthinking the options they have they are unable to decide on a best course of action. Like I'm sure we've all spent far too long staring at our steam libraries instead of just picking a game to play. And at the end of all that deliberating, we still haven't made a choice and have played nothing. This is what I think is manifesting in aimtraining for some people, by debating what is the best mouse or sensitivity or grip or anything they can't commit themselves to practicing fully because their mind is always elsewhere. It's better to just play and let the answers come to you as you improve, which will also shift your focus from outside factors to internal mistakes, which are the things you can actually correct for.