How to Improve Aim on PC?

Wondering how to improve your aiming to get better at FPS games and shooters in general? Then read on, because we’ve put together the best tips for optimizing your aiming on the PC. With the right aim training you will have more fun in games like Overwatch, CS:GO, Valorant or Fortnite.

It’s tempting to just play another round of your favorite FPS game, but there are a few tricks you can use to take your aim to the next level. Even 15 minutes of practice a few times a week can make a noticeable difference. We’ll tell you what you can do to make that happen.

Your Equipment is the Basis for Everything

Without proper gear, you can practice as much as you want, but your aiming will never be perfect. Even if it doesn’t have to be perfect (not everyone wants to become a pro gamer), your equipment should be just right. When it comes to aiming accuracy, your mouse and a good mouse pad are the two most important components.

Of course you can also get something with an absolute cheap mouse, but you will never be able to use your full potential. Many cheap mice have faulty sensors with things like straightening, jitter, input lag and other technical problems, which are all poison for your Aim.

A good gaming mouse is essential

Fortunately, mouse sensor technology has evolved, so you can buy good gaming mice with accurate sensors for quite little money. When looking for the best gaming mouse for your Aiming, several factors are important, including, for example:

• Weight
• Mouse shape (for ergonomics and comfortable hand position)
• DPI characteristics and DPI switch
• Polling rate

Most professional FPS gamers generally recommend lighter mice and models without a lot of bells and whistles. Makes sense, because for shooters you don’t really need side buttons and more of them only increase the weight unnecessarily. And lightweight mice are better because you can move them over the mouse pad much easier and faster. Furthermore, the mouse should be technically flawless, an error-free sensor without input lag and a polling rate of 1000 Hz are mandatory. The latter is crucial, especially since your aiming will suffer if your mouse is slower than your own reflexes.

Get a good mouse pad

A high-quality and comfortable mouse pad should be at the top of your shopping list. There are a few differences in material, size and type of mouse pad.

In general, you should use the largest mouse pad that fits on your desk. For the simple reason that, depending on how you play, you need a lot of space for rough mouse movements and you don’t want your mouse to slip off the pad in the middle of a clan war. A large mouse pad is especially important for players who use very low DPI settings. Logical, since you’ll be making much larger hand movements to move your mouse cursor.

When it comes to the material, it’s up to you what you choose. Many prefer cloth mouse pads due to better control, but some swear by hybrid types or smooth surfaces to maximize speed. You’ll have to test and find out for yourself what’s right for you.

The fact is, an inferior mouse pad will not only harm your aiming, but your mouse as well.

Optimize DPI and Mouse Sensitivity

Next, you should take a look at your DPI settings and mouse sensitivity. These are crucial for good aiming in shooters. We would perhaps even say the biggest adjusting wheel.

You probably already know that you can adjust the sensitivity of your mouse to move the cursor faster or slower in relation to the movement of your hand. For shooter games, the first thing you should always do is disable mouse acceleration, which is paradoxically called Enhance pointer precision in Windows.

After that, it’s on to the subject of DPI, and let’s get it out of the way here that there’s no magic formula for this. There is no perfect setting that will automatically make you a better shooter on your PC overnight. Rather, it’s about finding a DPI value that feels the most natural to you while giving you full control over your mouse.

A higher DPI value is not always better. In fact, most gaming mice deliver poorer accuracy at their highest DPI settings, as the sensor is often just interpolating here. In addition, even tiny hand movements mean more noticeable cursor movements on the screen. This is often not ideal, especially when sniping.

In general, it’s best to select a low DPI and slowly feel your way up. Test a setting that you also use for browsing and see how it feels in-game. The best way to adjust your DPI is through the associated driver software, which is always available on good mice.

Why the eDPI is important for your aiming

Once you have a feel for your DPI and in-game mouse sensitivity, you can calculate your effective DPI. The latter is effectively the ratio of your DPI setting and the sensitivity used in the game. As an example, a DPI value of 500 combined with an in-game sensitivity of 2 would correspond to an effective DPI (eDPI) of 1000. So the eDPI is your DPI setting multiplied by the in-game sensitivity. The formula is:

eDPI = DPI * sensitivity

But why is this important? This value is especially important if you are playing multiple FPS games and want to maintain the same aiming feel across all of them. This is because each game has its own weighting for adjusting mouse sensitivity. So if you figure out what your ideal eDPI is, you can adjust the mouse sensitivity so that virtually every FPS game feels the same when aiming.

Why is a lower DPI better for aiming?

To improve your aiming, you should start with low values as mentioned above. A good starting point is between 400-800 DPI.

Playing with a low DPI in combination with higher sensitivity in the game is usually better, since you can’t set the mouse sensitivity below 1 in all games. This gives you more flexibility when switching between different shooters.

Generally speaking:

• If you find that you are frequently shooting over your targets in the crosshairs, try lowering your sensitivity in-game.
• If your shots frequently hit below the target or you have to make extreme movements to turn, then your mouse sensitivity may be set a bit too low.

Avoid making too much of an adjustment to your mouse sensitivity, as this will negatively affect your aiming. So if you have a bad game, don’t fiddle with your values right away. This will impair your so-called muscle memory. Instead, you should only readjust them if you have a bad game for a longer period of time.

How to Improve Your Tracking Aim

Tracking aiming is an important type of aiming in first-person shooters. It is used when you already have your target in your crosshairs and want to keep it there. This way you want to both anticipate your opponent’s future movements, as well as react to them.

This type of aiming is most useful in FPS games, where you often only take down your opponents with multiple shots. Accordingly, tracking aiming is especially important in games like PUBG, Overwatch, Fortnite or Apex Legends.

But how can you improve this skill? In the following, we’ll show you some tips for doing so.

Rethink your mouse grip

Many players claim that tracking can be improved with the help of the mouse grip. If you want to learn more about the three main types of grips (claw, fingertip, palm grip), read our post about them. All of these grips are equally good on their own, but deciding which one to use depends entirely on your preferences.

That said, for tracking a target, it is recommended to use either a claw or palm grip. The palm grip is better for flick shots, but the claw grip is generally better for tracking.

The main reason is that you have better finger control with claw grip, which gives you more precise movement. A palm grip gives you a more stable grip for flick shots that originate from your arm instead of your wrist.

So if you’re currently using a palm grip and having trouble tracking your aim, switching to a claw grip may help.

Use your arm and wrist to aim

To improve your aim when tracking, you should also adjust your arm and wrist movements. Many amateur players use very high mouse sensitivity and use only their hands and fingers to adjust their aiming. On the other hand, many professionals use low DPI and sensitivity values and also use their arm and wrist more often when aiming.

If you aim only with your hand and fingers, you limit your ability to control the mouse properly. However, if you use your arm and wrist, you will develop muscle memory more easily.

Play the game to practice

If you want to improve your aim, you should do it while tracking in the game, not in any aim games. Try the following exercise:

1. Aim your crosshairs at a single static point and then start moving.
2. Hold the crosshairs at that exact spot while walking sideways and moving around the target (try to move like you would in a real game).

If you can easily keep your cursor on the target during this exercise, then try the whole thing with a moving target. Because, of course, you need to be able to hit your targets while they are moving. AI enemies in custom games are great for this.

Your Tracking Aim also depends heavily on the movements of the characters in the game. The more you play a game and learn its maps, the more you’ll be able to anticipate where your opponents are going.

Many FPS games offer heat maps where you can see where players are most likely to be on the map. By analyzing these, you can better predict the movements of your opponents.

Optimize your frames per second

Another factor for improving your tracking aim is the frames per second that your current PC is capable of. Most modern games have an FPS counter that you can display in-game. Activate it directly so that you can always see your FPS.

If you have low FPS values, it is almost impossible to implement a good tracking aim. You need a minimum of 60 FPS in any modern shooter to be able to aim accurately. If you can’t achieve that, you should upgrade your PC.

A high FPS value plays a big role, as it’s the only way to know exactly where an enemy is on the map. Besides upgrading your PC, you can also reduce the graphics quality and the resolution in the game. As a result, you’ll see less details, but your frames per second will be increased. Adjust your monitor settings for the best gaming experience.

How to Improve Your Flick Shots Aim

Another specialty of good FPS players is the so-called flick shot – a special shooting method. This is where your crosshairs are at some distance from the enemy and you snap your wrist and arm so that the crosshairs are pointing at your enemy while you pull the trigger. Take a look at this video to see examples:

Without having to think, you’ve drawn your crosshairs on the enemy, taken a headshot, and are aiming back in your original direction – before your enemy has even had time to react. This technique is mainly used with sniper weapons or single-shot weapons.

But how do you train this skill and how can you improve your aiming for it? Check out the following tricks.

Use your whole arm

This might be the best tip to improve your flick-shot aim. Try the following exercise:

1. Move your hand from left to right using only your wrist and see how much distance you can cover.
2. Now try it again, but this time let the movement come from your shoulder. Let it move through your elbow into your wrist and watch how much distance you cover now.

Your arm, of course, can travel much more radius than just your wrist. Not only that, but using your arm for aiming is more efficient and comfortable in the long run. It saves you from wrist cramps and inefficient movements.

In the game, you can rotate a full 180 degrees without lifting the mouse or interrupting your movement. Especially important for flick shots. This doesn’t mean that this change will immediately make you a pro gamer, because your aiming will probably be worse at first. Give yourself some time and you’ll have a big advantage over hand or wrist aiming.

Use small movements in the wrist

If you use your whole arm for aiming, you will be able to perform large movements on the mouse pad better, as mentioned above. Using your wrist, on the other hand, allows you to make smaller movements more precisely.

If your opponents are far away, small precise movements of the wrist are enough to adjust your crosshairs and aim cleanly. However, if you are close to your target, you will have to move longer distances for aiming and turning. For this, you should use your entire arm to adjust the field of view without interruption.

Combining large arm movements with tiny wrist movements is the most versatile, efficient and effective way to perfect your Aim.

Practice through repetition

Ultimately, a Flick Shot should be faster than your opponents can even register it. To do this, you need to be faster than your brain can even process the process.

Your arm, wrist, and trigger finger must work in harmony to make a flick shot virtually instinctively without detailed instructions from your brain. It must become a thoughtless reflex. And you can only achieve this through the “muscle memory” I mentioned earlier. Perfection through repetition, so that the flick shot becomes second nature to you.

Anticipate your opponents

Flick shots give you additional opportunities to react to unexpected maneuvers of your opponents. But what’s even better is avoiding the unexpected.

The most effective strategy for aiming flick shots is to anticipate where your opponent will be. So when you go around a corner, try to position your crosshairs where you would expect an opponent to be.

Or wait with the crosshairs at the edge of a passageway – the place where your enemies have to pass through. If an enemy unexpectedly appears on the other side of the passage, you can simply shoot at his new location using Flick-Shot.

Even if you’re not always right, just trying to anticipate your enemies’ location will get you closer to the right spot when you need to perform a flick shot. This will make your flicks easier to execute and more accurate.

Train slow flicks first

To master a fast flick shot, you must practice it slowly first. After all, what’s the point of shooting fast if you always miss with your flick? Nothing. That’s why you need to take slower shots and analyze whether you’re shooting over or under, or too far left or right.

Based on that, think about what adjustments need to be made to hit better next time. Speed without precision is worthless, good aim without speed can be improved.

Allow yourself this time. Practice the technique slowly and then gradually try to shoot a little faster. Again, muscle memory will make you faster. You will need to repeat the movements to make them instinctive. And over time, your arm and hand muscles will learn fast flicks as well.

Having the Right Attitude

You should also realize that improving your aiming takes time. Therefore, it is important not to lose enthusiasm for this goal, especially if you are just getting started. Keep a positive and focused mindset, even if your aim deteriorates when you change to a new grip or learn new techniques.

Keep a positive attitude, even if results don’t seem to be occurring as quickly as you want them to.

— James Thompson

You should also invest enough time and take it seriously. Setting up a training schedule will help, whether it’s your game of choice or one of the aiming trainers. If you plan on putting in a few hours every day, stick to this routine. Practicing a little every now won’t do you much good.

Sharpen Your Reflexes with Aim Trainers

With many Aim Training games, you’re training your reflexes rather than actually improving your Aim. This doesn’t mean that having good reflexes is negligible for good aiming. On the contrary, with the help of these Aim games you can spice up your accuracy with speed.

The problem with these games is that your mouse sensitivity can’t be transferred one-to-one to others in the game. As a result, you will have a different Aim feeling, like in an Aim trainer. In browser-based aim-training games, this problem is even greater. Therefore, your muscle memory for moving a certain distance will not be exactly the same, making these games only partially suitable for improving Aim.

Conclusion

There are numerous ways to improve your Aim. The bottom line is that it will take a lot of patience and discipline for you to get really good at it.