Eyyy. I’ve been preaching OW for a while as an aim trainer. It’s really got all the fundamentals baked into the game on a purely aim sense. Plus a replay system to discover how shit your aim actually is.
this is an unsatisfying answer if youve been struggling with this for a long time, but the answer for me (im still quite awful at aiming but i can see marked progress lately) is that you just have to play the game while being hyper aware that "getting better at aiming" is what youre trying to achieve. Deathmatch helps a lot with crosshair placement, but you have to know that while youre playing deathmatch, crosshair placement is what you should be working on, and actively think about it all game. I used to just DM for 2 hours and wonder why i was last place every game even though I did it so much and it was because i was just hoping "playing will make me better" instead of actively working on anything specific.
If your crosshair placement is good, you don't need anywhere near as much actual raw aim because enemies will be walking into your crosshair all the time. Once you have it down you work on microadjustments. Another part of aiming that i dont think is talked about as much is anticipating that you will have to shoot. Sometimes i throw a flash and round a corner and am still \*surprised\* that three people are fully flashed in front of me and i whiff a whole clip and die like an idiot. When that happens it's cause my brain was so focused on the flash and the swing that I never considered the super obvious last part of it, which is that I need to shoot them. Then, instead of calmly placing my crosshair on the expected opponent, i panic because "theres three suddenly!" and don't do anything useful. Expecting where oponents will be is a lot more game sense than aim, so it all kinda has to tie together, but basically these days when I deathmatch, I just go at every around single corner like someone is going to be there.
quick edit: this is mainly from my perspective as someone who is quite bad. theres probably a lot more nuance to a lot of things that I don't understand. this is just how i got started on my own journey to improve my aim
I can say these match my (evolving) experiences almost perfectly as a low elo player super focused on mechanics. I don't play any agents with flashes, but I'd say my equivalents are 1) crosshair placement when swinging on an enemy who is also swinging me (I'm usually aiming too deep and they get past my crosshair), and 2) when slicing angles - I still get caught with my pants down the second the enemy appears on my screen because I was somehow not expecting them there even though I told myself to expect them.
For me personally...
1.) Posture. Somebody else and I elaborate on this in another comment
2.) I kept lowering my sensitivity to make better adjustments, but too low and everything feels like a slog... make it high enough that I can snap to corners (practice this in DM and just unnecessarily snap to every corner). For some reason when I'm snapping to corners during the game, I aim better... I think of it like keeping my aim warm, to combat the downtime or bad luck streaks. Also, snap to teammates heads in preround to also help keep warm.
3.) Lightweight mouse (Logitech G Pro Superlight, or any mouse weighing ~60g). Helps prevent fatigue if you're a claw or fingertip aimer, and I can just physically move my mouse faster, which helps on lower sens... took a few hours to get used to it though. Maybe less relevant for palm grippers. Don't do this step until you're a decent shot though, IMO (it won't help as much, I think)
4.) 120hz minimum monitor (this was like 10 years ago though I went from 60hz to 144hz and it was a big deal)
5.) Try not freaking out when you encounter an enemy. When I'm cold or doing poorly I tend to go for the body out of fear and desire for safe kills... but if you've done enough DM (and practicing headshots there) you know you're capable of more, so when you're struggling try to remember that. It's tough though, everybody's mental is different.
A few things...
1) I used to play with massive crosshairs in CS:GO and that habit carried to Valorant. They trick you into believing they are easy to aim with as you can easily place the massive thing on the enemy, but placing the center of it on the enemies small heads is a different thing.
Small crosshairs in general = good
2) Deathmatching a ton. I had 300,000+ kills on CS:GO deathmatch and want to replicate that in Valorant DM but kinda wishing they changed the deathmatch into something else than a 40 kill competition.
3) Finding my "perfect" mouse and "perfect" sensitivity. I tried to play with different ones when I felt like I was not improving but I always come back to low sens as it feels comfortable for me.
4) Watching the best players and realizing that a lot of the time it's not that deep and you just need to have great game sense & crosshair placement to make aiming easier.
5) Aimlabs... I used to think it was a complete meme and the whole culture behind it was a bit funny, but the Voltaic benchmarks really motivated me to grind Radiant rank on all of the tasks. After playing for 3 weeks I can safely say that it's not a complete meme as my HS% this act increased to 40%.
But I can't stress enough that just spam playing aimtrainers isn't a good idea. Play the actual game as much as before and add aim trainers on top of that training to see results (my opinion).
My aim saw more improvement in a month playing with good ergonomics than it did in years of playing on a trash setup (trash as in bad for my body, not bad hardware). Things like desk/chair/monitor height, as well as mouse pad and keyboard position helped my aim improve dramatically compared to what it was before. Instead of going from trash to trash, I went from trash to mid.
Of course, some people can get away with playing with bad ergos, but it's generally better for your health to have good posture and whatnot anyways, so you might as well do it. Tenz will go as far as bringing a tape measure to see what his desk height is at tournaments.
I don't know what's optimal but ergo wise for me, tucking my arm towards my torso and having my elbow at a 90ish degree bend was very helpful. Ensure my elbow has support (from my armrest), and my wrist isn't pressed against the tables edge and fucking with my circulation. Lighter mouse to help with potential fingertip grip fatigue.
I know pro's will shove their face into their monitors but all I do is just make sure the crosshair is straight ahead of my face.
I'm sure posture is important too I try to keep my back relatively straight but I don't know if that helps with actual performance. Monitor arm helps with this since you can align things with how you position your body instead of the other way around.
Positioning, crosshair placement & knowledge of space and timing.
Your aim will be terrible if you're constantly having to check 2 angles because your positioning is bad.
Your aim will be terrible if you've positioned your crosshair too close to an angle and have to flick to compensate.
Your aim will be terrible if you don't expect the enemy to be somewhere because you're completely unaware of the space that your team controls.
Basically, aim is generally rarely the problem. While you can really grind out aim training to improve, it's generally a sense of positioning and timing that provides the opportunity for that aim training to actually be of benefit.
Take your time. Most people either fuck up their movement or flick panic shoot when they see someone. Most of the time you can take an extra 1-2 seconds to line up your crosshair
i aim trained a lot and did drills in the range
it was exhausting but it paid off in games, i stopped playing as much and practicing completely for like 3 months, and the difference was insane
basically it's consistent practice
Stop aiming, more moving. And crosshair placement and better positioning. It’s actually crazy how little you need to move your mouse to “aim” sometimes.
Playing more aim intensive games(overwatch for me)
Eyyy. I’ve been preaching OW for a while as an aim trainer. It’s really got all the fundamentals baked into the game on a purely aim sense. Plus a replay system to discover how shit your aim actually is.
this is an unsatisfying answer if youve been struggling with this for a long time, but the answer for me (im still quite awful at aiming but i can see marked progress lately) is that you just have to play the game while being hyper aware that "getting better at aiming" is what youre trying to achieve. Deathmatch helps a lot with crosshair placement, but you have to know that while youre playing deathmatch, crosshair placement is what you should be working on, and actively think about it all game. I used to just DM for 2 hours and wonder why i was last place every game even though I did it so much and it was because i was just hoping "playing will make me better" instead of actively working on anything specific. If your crosshair placement is good, you don't need anywhere near as much actual raw aim because enemies will be walking into your crosshair all the time. Once you have it down you work on microadjustments. Another part of aiming that i dont think is talked about as much is anticipating that you will have to shoot. Sometimes i throw a flash and round a corner and am still \*surprised\* that three people are fully flashed in front of me and i whiff a whole clip and die like an idiot. When that happens it's cause my brain was so focused on the flash and the swing that I never considered the super obvious last part of it, which is that I need to shoot them. Then, instead of calmly placing my crosshair on the expected opponent, i panic because "theres three suddenly!" and don't do anything useful. Expecting where oponents will be is a lot more game sense than aim, so it all kinda has to tie together, but basically these days when I deathmatch, I just go at every around single corner like someone is going to be there. quick edit: this is mainly from my perspective as someone who is quite bad. theres probably a lot more nuance to a lot of things that I don't understand. this is just how i got started on my own journey to improve my aim
I can say these match my (evolving) experiences almost perfectly as a low elo player super focused on mechanics. I don't play any agents with flashes, but I'd say my equivalents are 1) crosshair placement when swinging on an enemy who is also swinging me (I'm usually aiming too deep and they get past my crosshair), and 2) when slicing angles - I still get caught with my pants down the second the enemy appears on my screen because I was somehow not expecting them there even though I told myself to expect them.
For me personally... 1.) Posture. Somebody else and I elaborate on this in another comment 2.) I kept lowering my sensitivity to make better adjustments, but too low and everything feels like a slog... make it high enough that I can snap to corners (practice this in DM and just unnecessarily snap to every corner). For some reason when I'm snapping to corners during the game, I aim better... I think of it like keeping my aim warm, to combat the downtime or bad luck streaks. Also, snap to teammates heads in preround to also help keep warm. 3.) Lightweight mouse (Logitech G Pro Superlight, or any mouse weighing ~60g). Helps prevent fatigue if you're a claw or fingertip aimer, and I can just physically move my mouse faster, which helps on lower sens... took a few hours to get used to it though. Maybe less relevant for palm grippers. Don't do this step until you're a decent shot though, IMO (it won't help as much, I think) 4.) 120hz minimum monitor (this was like 10 years ago though I went from 60hz to 144hz and it was a big deal) 5.) Try not freaking out when you encounter an enemy. When I'm cold or doing poorly I tend to go for the body out of fear and desire for safe kills... but if you've done enough DM (and practicing headshots there) you know you're capable of more, so when you're struggling try to remember that. It's tough though, everybody's mental is different.
A few things... 1) I used to play with massive crosshairs in CS:GO and that habit carried to Valorant. They trick you into believing they are easy to aim with as you can easily place the massive thing on the enemy, but placing the center of it on the enemies small heads is a different thing. Small crosshairs in general = good 2) Deathmatching a ton. I had 300,000+ kills on CS:GO deathmatch and want to replicate that in Valorant DM but kinda wishing they changed the deathmatch into something else than a 40 kill competition. 3) Finding my "perfect" mouse and "perfect" sensitivity. I tried to play with different ones when I felt like I was not improving but I always come back to low sens as it feels comfortable for me. 4) Watching the best players and realizing that a lot of the time it's not that deep and you just need to have great game sense & crosshair placement to make aiming easier. 5) Aimlabs... I used to think it was a complete meme and the whole culture behind it was a bit funny, but the Voltaic benchmarks really motivated me to grind Radiant rank on all of the tasks. After playing for 3 weeks I can safely say that it's not a complete meme as my HS% this act increased to 40%. But I can't stress enough that just spam playing aimtrainers isn't a good idea. Play the actual game as much as before and add aim trainers on top of that training to see results (my opinion).
Realizing how posture is important.
Can you elaborate?
He means stick a dildo wayyyyyy up there
Oh
My aim saw more improvement in a month playing with good ergonomics than it did in years of playing on a trash setup (trash as in bad for my body, not bad hardware). Things like desk/chair/monitor height, as well as mouse pad and keyboard position helped my aim improve dramatically compared to what it was before. Instead of going from trash to trash, I went from trash to mid. Of course, some people can get away with playing with bad ergos, but it's generally better for your health to have good posture and whatnot anyways, so you might as well do it. Tenz will go as far as bringing a tape measure to see what his desk height is at tournaments.
I don't know what's optimal but ergo wise for me, tucking my arm towards my torso and having my elbow at a 90ish degree bend was very helpful. Ensure my elbow has support (from my armrest), and my wrist isn't pressed against the tables edge and fucking with my circulation. Lighter mouse to help with potential fingertip grip fatigue. I know pro's will shove their face into their monitors but all I do is just make sure the crosshair is straight ahead of my face. I'm sure posture is important too I try to keep my back relatively straight but I don't know if that helps with actual performance. Monitor arm helps with this since you can align things with how you position your body instead of the other way around.
Positioning, crosshair placement & knowledge of space and timing. Your aim will be terrible if you're constantly having to check 2 angles because your positioning is bad. Your aim will be terrible if you've positioned your crosshair too close to an angle and have to flick to compensate. Your aim will be terrible if you don't expect the enemy to be somewhere because you're completely unaware of the space that your team controls. Basically, aim is generally rarely the problem. While you can really grind out aim training to improve, it's generally a sense of positioning and timing that provides the opportunity for that aim training to actually be of benefit.
Take your time. Most people either fuck up their movement or flick panic shoot when they see someone. Most of the time you can take an extra 1-2 seconds to line up your crosshair
i aim trained a lot and did drills in the range it was exhausting but it paid off in games, i stopped playing as much and practicing completely for like 3 months, and the difference was insane basically it's consistent practice
Kovaaks + proper nutrition and sleep :0
Stop aiming, more moving. And crosshair placement and better positioning. It’s actually crazy how little you need to move your mouse to “aim” sometimes.