How To Quickly Improve Your Aim On PC

In this article, we will cover something very general. How to quickly improve your aim on pc. So I am going to start by totally contradicting the point of this article. People overestimate the importance of aiming. Do not get me wrong, it is crucial, but other skills get overlooked by some people because they are so focused on aiming. Imagine schools were teaching e-sports. You would probably learn about the first-person shooter fundamentals or something like that. A set of skills transfer between games, which are fundamental to being a good player. Those skills are aim, movement, positioning, and game sense. So yes, aiming is right up there as an essential skill, but it’s pretty standard for people to focus so hard on clicking heads that they stand out in the open. They move predictably and play too aggressively or passively when they shouldn’t. In that situation, your aim could be well above average. However, you’ll still spectacularly lose because you were standing in a bad spot and making yourself an easy target. Have you ever watched pro players and seen the difference in their accuracy between pub stomping on Twitch and playing against other pros in real matches? Their aim stays the same. They don’t just worsen because they are playing against other good players but their accuracy drops. Why? Because pro players have great movement as well. A good player can dodge shots just as well as they can make them. So do not neglect the other fundamentals. However, it would be best to have at least some level of aiming competence. You could have an incredibly hard-to-predict movement and dodge a load of shots. You could be standing in a great spot and perfectly predict when and where someone might come around the corner. But if you can’t move your crosshair to that opponent’s head, it’s all for nothing. So let’s learn how to aim. I am going to split this into a few different parts.

Gear

First, let’s quickly start with gear and sensitivity. I want to skim this somewhat because it’s another area that people focus too much on. Having said that, if someone says having a good mouse doesn’t matter, they are talking crap. Of course, it matters, but likewise, if some Razer marketer tells you, it’s the difference between being thoroughly mediocre and pro, or something to that effect. That’s also a load of rubbish. A comfortable and predictable mouse is essential, but it depends on your techniques and requirements. Mouse recommendations are beyond the scope of this article.

Sensitivity

The other thing to talk about briefly is sensitivity. Sensitivity matters, but there is a considerable element of preference here. More often than not, people have set the sensitivity too high rather than too low. A suitable sensitivity depends on the game you are playing. We will use Apex Legends as an example, as it is the go-to fps for many people. If you have a mouse set to 800 dpi, you should aim to have your in-game mouse sensitivity between one and three. If you use 400 dpi – double your in-game mouse sensitivity values. In case you use 1600 dpi, then halve the in-game sensitivity. Some outliers have slightly higher or lower in-game sensitivities.

Still, the vast majority of decent players sit somewhere in that range. To cut a long story short, if your sensitivity is too high. Small movements such as shivering or even slight adrenaline shakes can throw your aim off. It is also easier to build muscle memory for a more significant move than a smaller one. Essentially, the lower your sensitivity, the more consistent your aim will be daily. But some people do not talk about it because it is a much rarer issue with overly low sensitivity. If your sensitivity is too low, it can lead to lazy aim. For example, it might take so much effort to check a 90° angle that you might stop doing it. The lazy aim is an infrequent problem to have. But if you are a CSGO player switching to pretty much any fps, you might want to raise your sensitivity slightly. But for pretty much everyone else, it is unlikely that your sensitivity will be too low.

Aim training

With gear and sensitivity out of the way, let’s get on with the actual aim training starting with building muscle memory. Muscle memory is a term you might hear getting thrown around a lot, but so many people get muscle memory through dumb luck. They grind games and think that builds muscle memory. It does, to an extent, but it’s also quite likely that you pick up many bad habits by doing it. Have you ever seen those people who make mouse movements like a pro? They might use flick shots and advanced techniques and that sort of thing. But when you watch them, it’s somewhat random whether or not they come close to hitting anything. Yet, those trying to build muscle memory through dumb luck are just watching the pros and what they do and trying to emulate it. Yeah, don’t do that.

Muscle memory

Muscle memory is the act of committing a specific motor task into memory through repetition. In the context of gaming, it is stuff like moving your mouse from where your crosshair currently is to where your opponent is. It also ties into hand-eye coordination. The ability to see something on-screen and for your arm and wrist to move in a way that gets you the desired result. If you are new to PC gaming or if you are changing your sensitivity. It is vital to building muscle memory. You should not neglect your movement, positioning, and game sense. If you build good muscle memory, your aim will mostly happen by itself. Having good muscle memory gives you much more time to think about everything. Getting good muscle memory is what you need to achieve.

There are many ways to train your muscle memory, like Anna bots in Overwatch or one of the many aim training maps and CSGO. But the problem with many of these methods is they mostly train your aim on a horizontal plane. In CSGO, that is okay mainly because the game does not have a vast amount of verticality. Still, for Overwatch, Fortnite, Apex Legends, and many more recent shooters, there are many fast-moving and vertical elements to the game. So for that reason, I would highly recommend checking out some aim training software like Aimhero or Aim Lab (shown in the video below). And I will focus on Aim Lab because it is free on Steam right now, and two, it has way more game-specific options than the alternatives. For example, you can perfectly match your sensitivity and field of view to what you use in Apex Legends, Rainbow Six Siege, Fortnite, and others.

Now how you use the software is the crucial part. Suppose you are going to take the dumb luck approach. You might as well forget about it. But if you want to improve, what you need to be doing is approaching it as a muscle memory exercise. To do that, you need to aim as slowly as possible, perhaps counterintuitively. Let us explain. Suppose you are aiming as fast as possible. You might get better scores, but all you are doing is reinforcing bad habits that you might have. We strive for better accuracy and confidence in your movements. As long as you have mouse acceleration off, you should, by the way. Whether you aim quickly or slowly, the distance you need to move the mouse from A to B remains the same.

So to start with, I want you to aim like a bot. As slowly as you need to drag the mouse from one target to another, the objective is not to over or undershoot the next target. You want to stop the mouse dead on the target and then shoot. For this exercise, I use the spider shot mode set to precision. Honestly, that is all you need to do as slowly as you need to go from one target to the next target to the next target. Do not worry about speed. Do not worry about the score you get at the end. Just try not to move the mouse past the mark or stop short.

You want to get to the point where you see a target, and you can confidently move your crosshair to the target and stop right on top of it. Once you understand the exercise, I want you to tune out completely. Try not to think at all about what you are doing. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is, that it helps you keep a bit calmer and allows you to train for longer without stress. In case you feel stressed when you are doing this. You are doing it wrong. Just chill out, and do not worry if you suck at first. The second reason is that you will have much more to think about in a real game than just aiming. So you do not want to train yourself to tunnel vision on aiming. Aiming should happen automatically, and by building solid muscle memory aiming at autopilot will become easier and more accessible. The great thing about this exercise is that you will naturally start to aim faster as your muscle memory improves. The funny thing is, you will not even feel like you are going more quickly. The great thing about that is that even if it takes a while to start aiming faster, you will not have any bad habits like over or under aiming.

There are quite a lot of other exercises in Aim Lab. Some of them are more for Overwatch players. You have a Genji mode, a Farrah mode, and a Tracer mode. And you can also change your weapons and stuff like that. Those features are all pretty cool, but I would stick to the more generic exercises. I find the spider shot and microshot to be the most useful. Microshot is a perfect one to try. The reason for this is that spidershot helps you learn more significant movements. More often than not, if your game sense is decent, you probably know roughly where an enemy might come out based on map knowledge, sound cues, and all that stuff. So chances are, your crosshair will already be pretty close to where they pop out, so training small flex is useful. So that is how you train muscle memory. But what are some other things you can work on?

Aiming techniques

Let us take a look at aiming techniques. So what we have been working on so far is drag and flick shooting. Honestly, while the execution is slightly different, they are the same. Just at different speeds and a massive amount of aiming will be done using these techniques, particularly with semiautomatic weapons. However, you will also want to learn a bit about tracking with fully automatic and beam weapons. The weird thing with tracking is that the basic technique is the same as drag aiming, but the execution is almost entirely predictable. When you track an enemy smoothly, you predict that movement, not react to it. Otherwise, you would constantly be behind where they are. So if your flick aim is good, but your tracking is terrible, it is not an aim issue. It is a prediction issue that you, and the only way you can improve is to think less about your aim and more about what movement your opponent might make next. There is a workaround, however.

Microflicking

So let us quickly look at a relatively new technique called microflicking. Microflicking is a technique that a few Korean Overwatch players popularized. It is a technique that takes all the prediction work out tracking someone, and it is pretty simple. Instead of smoothly tracking someone, you make minor corrections as your opponent moves. Depending on the game and the weapon you use, you will be tap shooting a lot. So instead of just holding left, click and empty your clip as fast as possible. You will shoot in bursts every time you make those tiny corrections. Microflicking is a beneficial technique for Apex Legends. The time to kill is long, and damage per clip is relatively tiny. Even though it might take longer to empty your clip, your accuracy will most likely be higher by using this technique. So your chances of one clipping someone can improve a lot by microflicking. Smooth tracking in a perfect world looks much nicer and can be more effective. But the more skilled your opponents, the harder they will be to track. So microflicking can be an advantageous technique to learn.

Projectile aim

One other thing to quickly mention is the projectile aim. The projectile aim applies to many Overwatch characters. Many games only have projectile weapons, including Apex Legends and Fortnite. Your basic mechanical aim techniques remain the same whether you use projectiles or hitscan weapons. But with projectiles, there is a focus on movement prediction. You must predict where your enemy will be by the time your projectile reaches them. Again the more you can aim subconsciously. The more time you have to make predictions. So forget about the mechanical aspects of aiming and focus on predicting movement.

Movement, positioning, and game sense

So we focused a lot on theory and exercises. But as soon as you jump into a real game with opponents who actively try to dodge your shots. All this stuff seemingly goes out of the window, and in truth, it does. You build muscle memory, so you do not have to think about it when you get into a game. If all you do to improve your aim is exercise, you will become a lousy player. So another essential part of your training is deathmatch—lots and lots of deathmatches. Honestly, there is just no substitute for it. You are fighting against real players. You have little to no downtime when you die, and because of that, you can maximize your time working on your aim, movement, and everything else. The truth is that doing nothing but aiming for exercises will make you into a very shallow player. As I said at the start of the article if you can aim. However, if your movement is trash, you will still lose many jewels because your opponent with a subpar aim has an easier time hitting you. Improving your movement is the reason why you need to play deathmatches. Not only does it cut out a lot of the downtime you have in a real game, but deathmatches also score your shooting and movement performance. When you play deathmatches, everything you worked on in your exercises should go to the back of your mind.

Conclusion
Keep doing your exercises. But as soon as you step into a real game. Whether that is deathmatch or not, you should forget about aiming. Do not fall back into bad habits and aim randomly, of course. But you want to rely on all that training that you just branded into your subconscious. That way, aiming happens by itself. You have more time to focus on predicting your opponents and dodging shots through good movement. If you are playing a battle royale game like Apex Legends or Fortnite, unfortunately, there is no deathmatch mode, at least not yet. So the next best thing you can do is drop into a hot zone and play it like a deathmatch. Forget your stupid stats. They honestly do not mean anything. Just get in there and fight like deathmatch in other games; do not have tunnel vision on shooting. Use cover, and disengage to heal when you have to. But do not just try to survive. Try to kill. It is the only way you are going to get better.

The amount of time you spend doing exercises and deathmatch depends on how much time you have to do it and your ambitions. But if you spend around 15 minutes doing exercises and 45 minutes doing deathmatch each day. I guarantee your aim on pc will improve dramatically and surprisingly quickly too.