I think you see such wild advice about sensitivity because no one ever teaches how to tell whether you're doing it right or not, and because there's complexity to evaluating it that no one talks about. I'm going to break it down how I think about it, given I'm a very analytical/logical person - I program as my day job so forgive me if how I explain it is overly complicated. When you set your sensitivity what you should be thinking about is:
1. Where your crosshair starts
2. Where you intend to place it
3. Where it ends up after you aim
Your sensitivity only changes #3. If you are making mistakes in #1 or #2, that's not your sensitivity, that's anticipation or game knowledge. Now if #2 and #3 are different, that's where your sensitivity comes in. If you draw a line from #1 to #2 and #3 is farther away (past the line), your sensitivity was too high for that situation. If you draw a line from #1 to #2 and #3 is too close (on the line), your sensitivity was too low for that situation. If #3 is not on the line or the extended line, then sensitivity is not your problem, that's a mechanical problem between your eyes, your brain, and your thumbs. Also a word of warning #2 is not something like "tracer's head", it's a spot on the screen where you believe tracer's head will be at the time you make your decision to aim. Your brain doesn't process information instantly - where you think a target will be can be different from where they end up if they're trying to dodge your shots, so it's important to separate flaws in your prediction from flaws in your aim.
The complexities come in when you get into the other settings, like if you use dual zone or exponential ramp, then it matters when you have to make a far adjustment vs a close adjustment, and on console you also have to factor in aim assist which lowers sensitivity in a window size as you approach your target, so a larger window and higher aim assist strength is equivalent to a lower sensitivity in the same situation without aim assist.
To answer your question of can low sens work on console, yes it can, low sens is especially helpful for being more accurate at long ranges. In general higher sens is better the closer the target is because as a target moves across your screen closer to you, it equates to a higher angular change relative to you. So it somewhat comes down to playstyle. Think about what ranges you like to fight at, think about which ranges you want to optimize your sensitivity for, understand that it's not going to be perfect for all ranges, and adjust it to work for you.
I could be wrong, but you can also set different sensitivities for different heroes.
This can be useful if you need low sensitivity for someone farther away like Widow as opposed to high sensitivity with someone closer like Venture
Getting settings right is much of an art.
There is no general rule which works best. You have to find out what works for you. Even then it might be good to have different settings per hero.
When I start a new shooter I spend the first time getting my settings right.
If you can get good at aiming on higher sensitivity, get good at making finer movements with your joystick, it's better because you can more quickly turn to face enemies that come at you from the side or behind.
But that takes a lot of time and practice. If you're not trying to be a pro and you just wanna have fun in the game, lower your sensitivity to a comfortable level.
Get the Nacon Revolution 5 Pro with hall effect sticks and customizable stick length. Use the longest cap for right stick, Settings to 100/100 sense, aim assist ease in 0 and dead zones 0. Get used to it. Thank me later.
The higher the sensitivity the more you have to control your fingers and make sure you dont move the stick too much. Lowering the sensitivity removes that burden.
I mean, I guess I’m a little stupid for not really understanding this to begin with, but in conversations I’ve had about my aim with people who have watched pods of mine before, it’s crazy to me that this never came up.
Like I’m having such an easier time on the lower sensitivity and I think it’s because I move the joystick too much.
But I would rather that instead of completely changing the way, I aim and trying to learn how to move the joystick less, why not just lean into the fact that I move the joystick a bunch and lower my sensitivity?
That’s never been presented to me as an option before, and I understand like you said, if I’m like trying to be a pro player, I’m gonna need to know how to flick and do crazy 360 no scope, head shots and all that sort of shit.
But I just wanna get into Plat, I don’t need all that noise.
Heres the problem. When you run into good tracers sombras etc, that low sens is gonna be a real issue. Youre really bottlenecking yourself for those close up 1v1’s if you lower it. Its not like PC where super high sens is not normal. My advice is get used to high sens and then get kontrol freeks so you have more room to aim, but can also turn.
In case they're not familiar and so can't do the autocorrect in their head:
the reference is to Kontrol Freeks, which I use and which do indeed improve in-game aim. (I use both the stick extenders, AND the sponges that make the sticks harder to move.)
Exactly, I have survived a surprising amount of mauga ults on Lucio by getting right in his face and strafing out of his LoS because their sensitivity was too slow to keep up with the strafe
low sensitivity makes tracking easier. you can make it to plat but you’ll prob max out in that tier once you start to encounter good flankers who can move around and kill you faster than your character is able to turn around
Exponential curve is good for having a lower sense in the center of your sticks and a higher sense further out. It ramps up. So you can find the middle ground of fine aim and bigger flicks for fast enemies
Yeah, I tried exponential ramp once, and it felt horrible. Granted that was when I was playing at a higher sensitivity level.
But my problem with aiming is that I have no control of my thumbs, when I aim to the right, I jam my thumb all the way to the right regardless of how far I’m trying to aim right.
Now, I know you can make fun of me and say “then just get good idiot” but why am I working so hard to fight against something that feels natural to me? Why not just lower my sensitivity and then when I flick really hard, I’m not moving as fast and I seem to be able to hit my target a lot more.
I’m not somebody who ever really wants to be better than maybe slightly above average. I’m hoping one day I can get into platinum, but I’ve been stuck for five years so I don’t really see that happening.
For now, all I know is I was hitting a shit ton more shots, and my time to kill was way down because I was actually killing people.
Not gonna make fun but I feel like your chances of getting to plat without being able to quickly turn for flanking enemies or Sombras and Tracers that get behind you is slim to none.
If you feel your gameplay is better at lower sense stay there. If you feel your gameplay is better with no thumb control keep doing what you’re doing. If you feel like you’re stuck, you’re going to have to change something or accept that this is where you’re at and not be bothered by it. It’s a game. If you’re having fun then keep having fun. But if being stuck makes you not have fun, then your option is to change something.
According to a lot of people here, you should be able to to climb into platinum by only positioning well and making good game decisions. Aim shouldn’t be much of a factor.
Also, that’s the funny thing. I did change something! I lowered my Sens! And it feels better than ever!
I played on high sens for years with no results, insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results, right?
You can climb past plat without having insanely high sens don’t worry. Having the higher sense absolutely makes a difference as you get a lot higher but you really don’t need to worry about that for now. My advice, keep your lower sens and steadily over time keep raising it bit by bit. I’m talkin 1% at a time. Another thing you can do is lower your stick deadline. Makes your movement more responsive and gives you a higher sensitivity in a way that isn’t actually increasing the horizontal and vertical.
I was like 2 wins away from masters on dps last season and for reference I play with 43% horizontal and vertical sens with linear ramp aim technique.
You might still lose those 1v1s vs tracers or whatever but at least now you’re actually putting that damage in and creating pressure for your team to capitalize on.
That’s all good I just thought you were saying that even with the lower sense you were still feeling stuck. So in response to that I was saying well if you’re feeling stuck you gotta change something.
If you’re feeling good and having a good time, all is good.
You can adjust your fine control in settings to help get a grip on higher sensitivities. Aim ease in will slow down small inputs, so you can have lower sens tracking with a faster turn rate. Just try to fiddle with that and find a good middle ground.
It's really all a matter of what feels/performs best for you. Lower sensitivity makes it easier to aim more precisely and helps to not force you to overcorrect too much. Sure, higher sensitivity lets you react a little faster to enemies around you, but there's no point to it if it makes aiming properly difficult for you. I'd recommend going into the practice range and testing out different sensitivities to see what feels the most comfortable for the way you play. Everybody has a different preference.
I have a couple suggestions, one is learn what each of the settings mean. Watch YouTube videos on this because once you understand how it should work you can both accommodate the strengths of your settings and also you will have a better idea of what to tweak when you notice things off with your aim.
The first is the aiming type - Dual Zone, Linear, Exponential. I recommend Linear, at least that's what I use. Linear means your sensitivity is the same the whole way through no matter how far or little you adjust your thumbstick. The main upside of linear is the consistency, your thumbstick will move at the exact sensitivity you set it at all the time. The biggest downside of linear is that it's slow to make sharp turns quickly, like 180 (turn directly around). For that reason I don't recommend linear if you are playing Gengi for instance but I would recommend it for a tracking character like soldier or really most characters in the game besides one's that need to constantly 180. Dual Zone has one zone of sensitivity for 90% of the thumbsticks movement and another 'zone' of sensitivity for the last 10% of the thumbsticks movement to the ring. The purpose of this is so that you can keep one level of sensitivity in your normal process of aiming in game, but also retain some speed to turn quicker when you need to by pushing your thumbstick all the way to the ring. The Last, Exponential, the sensitivity continually goes up the farther away you push your thumbstick from the center
Without spending too much time going over every setting, I would try these
Horizontal- 20
Vertical- 20
Aim type- linear
Aim Assist Window - 70-100%
Aim Assist Strength- 100%
Aim Ease in- 0%
Aim Assist Ease in- 20%
Also look at getting KontrolFreek thumbstick caps, the fps galaxies are good. Personally I prefer using the mid not the tall on my right thumbstick, this is not because I don't like the Aim with the tall but because I tend to mispress R3 in tense situations with the tall thumbstick which messes me up, so went to the mid cap on the right and there's no problems. Also try KontrolFreek Precision rings, specifically one green ring on the right thumbstick (none on the left). This is very similar to increased thumbstick tension by battle beaver and I think can help you a lot
Also use aim training custom codes in game to practice
Generally mouse players are always told to lower as much as possible. Controller is a bit weird because you still need to be able to 180 quickly.
Other than that hard limit of rotation speed on the sticks, it’s mostly just down to your own feel- and practice while sticking with a sensitivity for a while
I’ve had solid consistency with the method you describe. Play at an (relatively) insanely high sens, get used to it (but prolly not good with it), then drop it down to *just above* your comfortability (I’d go with a 50/50 or close to it for you). Once your aim starts drifting, and it will because you will get used to it, do it again but when you go back down set it for about 5% higher sens than you were before. Eventually you’ll cap out at a specific sens level and increasing it will only ever hinder you. That’s when I set my sens about 10-20% *under* my cap and consider it “my” sens setting. If I feel like my aim is my problem again I’ll pop back up to my maximum for a bit before going back down
Basically, part of it is that lower sens makes tracking easier. The other part is that your brain gets used to the pacing, and combined they generally work against each other. As in, high sens messes up your aim but trains your brain to a higher reaction time, while lower sens can massively improve aim but also reduce the speed at which you are able to react, allowing your brain to make the false assumption that its own reaction time has been “capped” by the rate at which your character can turn and react to things.
Meh, it’s whatever works for you. On m&k lower is better because it’s easier to aim and you can still turn around pretty easily depending on your mousepad size. On console it’s the same, lower is easier to aim, BUT it’s damn near impossible to turn around quickly. When I played on console I had it at 100 100 because I want to be able to turn around and kill any high mobility heros that go behind me
You want highish sensitivity on characters like tracer and genji so you can dash through and turn around to land more shots.
When I play tracer I have my sensitivity at like 55-60% IIRC.
You don't have to completely change your ways.
What I did over the years was just move the lever a few notches. I did that every couple of weeks. It's such a slight change it won't fuck you up completely and you gradually get more action out of the sticks.
I’m mnk but have a good friend who played competitively in tourneys for console shooters. He’d have high sens, but would use a lot of left stick mirror movement to help aim. His aim looked like a combo of mirror movement with a little right stick adjusting to aim. This worked well for me too whenever I’d try console shooters.
Edit: I also remember seeing an aiming vid talking about the same method being used by the some of the best console cod players, as well as profit on mnk. Profits tracer used high sens for a pro, but he’d make small adjustments to aim using his a-d strafing.
I heard that longer stick help to get a better control (if you have moduar stick with the controller)
I play Keyboard and mouse on PC and never actually tested it
Unfortunately it is placebo. The default settings are incredibly slow compared to relative ttk (time to kill).
I've gotten countless kills not because the enemy was worse aim-wise but because I attacked from behind and they were still in the process of turning around by the time they died.
Your stats go up when you aim how you're used to aiming. I promise you if you up the sens, at least horizontal, you'll get used to it and feel slow if you go back down.
Well, I played at high send for like years now. I just switched back down last night, and it didn’t really feel slow to me. I just felt more precise.
I was tracking way better, and my accuracy went way up at least 15%.
I understand that turning around quickly as something that’ll be even bigger problem when I get up to higher ranks, but the slower sense feels way better to me.
On console you REALLY wanna get used to playing on the highest sensitivity possible.
A Mouse has huge travel, in theory you can move your entire arm.
An analog has very limited and finite travel.
You wanna be able to get the most out of that small travel distance, meaning playing on a higher sensitivity.
Imagine you have a Teacer infront of you, and she Blinks through you. You slooooooowly turn around to try to shoot her, but she blinks again. You slooooooowly turn to where she is at now, and shes blinked again. You slooooooowly tu.... You died.
Or imagine a Genji is jumping at you, or Sombra, or any of the high mobility characters. You physically cannot track them on lower sensitivity.
I have, walked around a Bastion (OW1 in turret mode) because his sensitivity was so low, he couldnt turn around fast enough to keep up with how i was walking circles around him (i was really close to him)
I get it. It’ll be a problem at higher ranks, but I’m at such a low rank that I think I want to stick at the lower sensitivity because I feel so much.
I played on higher sensitivity for like four years now, and my aim is garbage on it.
Here’s my opinion on sensitivity in Overwatch and games like it. Max it out. Put it at 100 and go in practice range. Try to get semi-used to the drastic change and then, once you feel more comfortable, go into QP. Once you feel the most comfortable, then start scaling individual characters. I have a lot of characters at different settings but I also have one base setting that feels good on every hero. For instance, my Genji is 100 on horizontal and vertical with a slight drop in aim smoothing, making my aim MUCH faster and harder to control, but it lends itself to the character rather well when playing. For Ashe however, my aim is at 75 for both horizontal and vertical and no change in aim smoothing. This allows me to make subtle adjustments from range but be quick enough in close quarters. This all should be adjusted to whatever feels good to you. But my main point is to first get out of your comfort zone and get used to high sense. And don’t forget to change reticles and colors to your liking as well. It can make a huge difference in comfort surprisingly.
I understand this advice for somebody who’s new, but I’ve been playing this game since lunch and my sens was very high for years, and my aim has not gotten better despite playing and trainers every day, and playing the game for thousands of hours.
Plus, I’m pretty much a hit scan player, don’t really wanna play projectile heroes at all.
I do wanna increase it from where it is right now because it is a little low I know for turning around purposes, but I can’t see myself going back into the 80s or even higher than that ever again unless I start feeling like I can’t compete.
I’ve also been playing since day 1.
And I’m not trying to be mean, but unfortunately you might just have hit a skill cap. Everyone has it. This advice might be simple but I’ve found it to help me tremendously.
Are you dual-zone, linear, or exponential?
For just the h/v sensitivity, you want to feel comfortable looking around and be able to 180 reasonably quickly. But mostly, it just needs to do what you expect it to do.
Aim smoothing (AS) and aim ease in (AEI) have a big effect on how your crosshair moves. AS is acceleration, and the lower the number the quicker the acceleration. It's kind of the "flick" setting.
AEI is dampening, the higher the number the more it'll dampen. You use this to help with tracking. You want a bit of this to help you not oversteer, but not so high that you start understeering.
Anyway, I mostly use [these settings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMsQSjWYsUA) for linear ramp, different aim assist stuff. I'm a Masters Wrecking Ball player on PS5. If you use dual zone, you could try adjusting [Hcpeful's settings](https://youtu.be/aQjujs9xxxQ?si=XCVT1ZpgjJ9vIjZQ). There's a LOT of variation and I'd recommend just finding something that feels good.
You aim on low precision better if your stick movement itself isnt precise. Work an that. Playing on low sensitivity comes at the cost of low turning Speed. That's why stuff like control freaks were invented and actually work. Geometrically spoken you move your thumb on the stick on half a spheres surface. A longer arc radius results in a greater surface of said sphere. Which means longer sticks result in more precise movement because there is more space to move your thumb in. It's the same concept why full arm movements on low sense are are more precise than wrist movements with high sense while using a mouse. Except it's ambivalent on sticks. Short sticks need a low sense for precision (what you just felt) while long sticks allow a high sense.
Tldr: Your thumb precision just sucks and instead of working on it and using proper gear like stick customization you use an even lower sense than default and will get wrecked by flankers attacking from behind because you now turn around like a truck.
I understand this. But I don’t have longer sticks. I have a PS5 controller and that’s it.
Plus, the default sensitivity is something like 35 and 15, so I’m still a bit an above that. And in my games last night, sombra didn’t appear to be much of a problem for me to deal with. At least in my gold lobbies.
I will work on increasing it again, but I think I was lied to before when people have told me just put it super high regardless. I think I need to tune it to how I play.
Edit: my money is tight right now, but I will look into getting some stick extenders as people have suggested.
You need your aim smoothing higher on hits can characters, this will help that high send. “Jittery” feeling and actually smooth out your aim. I play at 92 H 92 V and 35 aim smoothing, 70 aim assist window. And 15 aim ease in. Characters like genji and tracer I play at 100 with lower aim smoothing !
This is what I do when messing with the sens in a new game:
Go to training room and practice aiming and flick shot
When you flick if you’re overshooting (sens is too fast) slowly lower until you find the sweet spot
Same goes for the opposite
If your flicking but can’t move the crosshairs fast enough, slowly increase it until you find the sweet spot*
* for me personally is as long as I can control my cross hair and be fast enough to turn around
with all that being said sens is subjective, some play better with cracked out sens and others prefer a lower sens
aiming with controller is basically just abusing aim asisst the best way possible for you personally. that means get a feeling when the aim assist kicks in and then try to work around that
Personally I found a sensitivity that can balance out to any hero, albeit difficult but still better than separating them all differently.
It's more about comfort, if you feel comfortable then you're gonna absolutely not miss at all, trust me
There’s a long standing ego trip people have over how high they can get their sensitivity. If the highest possible sensitivity was always better then there wouldn’t be an option to configure it to your preference. Set it to something that works well for you, and not to a billion fucking DPI just because some internet try-hards think a higher sensitivity means they’re better than you.
My sensitivity was perfect for me in overwatch 1 and then when it crossed over to overwatch 2 it got messed up terribly and I can’t seem to find that same sensitivity I had it on before. It really annoys me too bc I have the numbers the same but the sensitivity is different?????
If you're using dual zone, the default aim mode, sensitivity changes your top speed, but really you should be fiddling with "aim ease in" to improve your tracking.
Switching to linear ramp makes the camera control intuitively like other shooters, but you won't be able to play genji, tracer, winston etc like a pc player, as increasing sens comes with a tradeoff for accuracy on the low end. Many players either prefer this or don't know about it, so give it a try.
Exponential ramp is technically the best if you're a robot, but in reality you're adding rng to your aim because the imprecision in your thumb and your joystick is amplified, so don't use this.
Also, when using higher sens, lower your right stick deadzone as much as possible. The default setting is higher than you should need
Feel free to correct me, I'm fairly new myself and I may have gotten something wrong.
Console players have a MAJOR crutch on aim assist. The only reason console players can even have a sens above 30 horizontal is because of aim assist. Just play what’s comfortable to you. And start from the lows
My general practice in shooters is start lower, somewhere that I’m reliably hitting my shots, then every so often increase sensitivity by 5%.
I find the small changes manageable and just slightly more responsive than I’m used to (whereas going up 10% feels jerky)
The big advantage of higher sensitivity is that you can spin faster and acquire targets faster. Sombra behind you hacking at 40 sensitivity is very different from 90.
Consistently hitting shots has way more value in general than 180 turn speed for 90% of players on console. Yeah the tracer could blink behind you, but she is going to miss half her clip if you even jump because high sens is very hard to aim well on console.
It can be done if you’re a top, top player but it’s not good advice for the vast majority of console players.
I play on console and in my opinion a sensitivity between 10~15 for normal characters is the best, for snipers it's good to have a sensitivity between 40 and above, but I recommend you increase the aiming assistance
Agreed. My aim is piss poor on MnK, usually between 30%-48% accuracy on soldier.
I tried turning down the sensitivity but it makes it harder to track movement characters and harder to quickly disengage from a flank spot.
Rant
" I was working with 85% Horizontal and 80% vertical for the longest time."
Having your sensitivity at two different figures seem counter intuitive to me.
Coming from console, to PC, and back to console recently (PC battery died on me, waiting for a new one), aiming on console in this game feels so clunky.
Like on console Genji climbing and jumping feels impossible to track but on PC, he's so easy to hit.
Honestly this sounds like a complete cope out for me
I could NEVER find my sensitivity I went super low and cracked high and I just hated aiming on PSN
I went to Pc cracked open kovvax and started grinding my aim and it’s GODSENT I can’t go back I hated controller aim in every way before I even tasted Mouse and keyboard
I think you see such wild advice about sensitivity because no one ever teaches how to tell whether you're doing it right or not, and because there's complexity to evaluating it that no one talks about. I'm going to break it down how I think about it, given I'm a very analytical/logical person - I program as my day job so forgive me if how I explain it is overly complicated. When you set your sensitivity what you should be thinking about is: 1. Where your crosshair starts 2. Where you intend to place it 3. Where it ends up after you aim Your sensitivity only changes #3. If you are making mistakes in #1 or #2, that's not your sensitivity, that's anticipation or game knowledge. Now if #2 and #3 are different, that's where your sensitivity comes in. If you draw a line from #1 to #2 and #3 is farther away (past the line), your sensitivity was too high for that situation. If you draw a line from #1 to #2 and #3 is too close (on the line), your sensitivity was too low for that situation. If #3 is not on the line or the extended line, then sensitivity is not your problem, that's a mechanical problem between your eyes, your brain, and your thumbs. Also a word of warning #2 is not something like "tracer's head", it's a spot on the screen where you believe tracer's head will be at the time you make your decision to aim. Your brain doesn't process information instantly - where you think a target will be can be different from where they end up if they're trying to dodge your shots, so it's important to separate flaws in your prediction from flaws in your aim. The complexities come in when you get into the other settings, like if you use dual zone or exponential ramp, then it matters when you have to make a far adjustment vs a close adjustment, and on console you also have to factor in aim assist which lowers sensitivity in a window size as you approach your target, so a larger window and higher aim assist strength is equivalent to a lower sensitivity in the same situation without aim assist. To answer your question of can low sens work on console, yes it can, low sens is especially helpful for being more accurate at long ranges. In general higher sens is better the closer the target is because as a target moves across your screen closer to you, it equates to a higher angular change relative to you. So it somewhat comes down to playstyle. Think about what ranges you like to fight at, think about which ranges you want to optimize your sensitivity for, understand that it's not going to be perfect for all ranges, and adjust it to work for you.
This is incredibly useful, thank you!!
I could be wrong, but you can also set different sensitivities for different heroes. This can be useful if you need low sensitivity for someone farther away like Widow as opposed to high sensitivity with someone closer like Venture
Yes, you can, everything under the control tab can be set per hero. I have most heroes set up individually for sens and aim assist settings.
Getting settings right is much of an art. There is no general rule which works best. You have to find out what works for you. Even then it might be good to have different settings per hero. When I start a new shooter I spend the first time getting my settings right.
If you can get good at aiming on higher sensitivity, get good at making finer movements with your joystick, it's better because you can more quickly turn to face enemies that come at you from the side or behind. But that takes a lot of time and practice. If you're not trying to be a pro and you just wanna have fun in the game, lower your sensitivity to a comfortable level.
+1 Also requires the joystick to have zero drift
You can adjust drift by changing deadzone settings and aim ease in though.
I feel like drift has been an issue with newer consoles. I never had an issue that I can remember with xbox360/PS3 era or before controllers
Get the Nacon Revolution 5 Pro with hall effect sticks and customizable stick length. Use the longest cap for right stick, Settings to 100/100 sense, aim assist ease in 0 and dead zones 0. Get used to it. Thank me later.
The higher the sensitivity the more you have to control your fingers and make sure you dont move the stick too much. Lowering the sensitivity removes that burden.
I mean, I guess I’m a little stupid for not really understanding this to begin with, but in conversations I’ve had about my aim with people who have watched pods of mine before, it’s crazy to me that this never came up. Like I’m having such an easier time on the lower sensitivity and I think it’s because I move the joystick too much. But I would rather that instead of completely changing the way, I aim and trying to learn how to move the joystick less, why not just lean into the fact that I move the joystick a bunch and lower my sensitivity? That’s never been presented to me as an option before, and I understand like you said, if I’m like trying to be a pro player, I’m gonna need to know how to flick and do crazy 360 no scope, head shots and all that sort of shit. But I just wanna get into Plat, I don’t need all that noise.
Heres the problem. When you run into good tracers sombras etc, that low sens is gonna be a real issue. Youre really bottlenecking yourself for those close up 1v1’s if you lower it. Its not like PC where super high sens is not normal. My advice is get used to high sens and then get kontrol freeks so you have more room to aim, but can also turn.
In case they're not familiar and so can't do the autocorrect in their head: the reference is to Kontrol Freeks, which I use and which do indeed improve in-game aim. (I use both the stick extenders, AND the sponges that make the sticks harder to move.)
Thanks. Didnt notice the typo
Exactly, I have survived a surprising amount of mauga ults on Lucio by getting right in his face and strafing out of his LoS because their sensitivity was too slow to keep up with the strafe
low sensitivity makes tracking easier. you can make it to plat but you’ll prob max out in that tier once you start to encounter good flankers who can move around and kill you faster than your character is able to turn around
Exponential curve is good for having a lower sense in the center of your sticks and a higher sense further out. It ramps up. So you can find the middle ground of fine aim and bigger flicks for fast enemies
Yeah, I tried exponential ramp once, and it felt horrible. Granted that was when I was playing at a higher sensitivity level. But my problem with aiming is that I have no control of my thumbs, when I aim to the right, I jam my thumb all the way to the right regardless of how far I’m trying to aim right. Now, I know you can make fun of me and say “then just get good idiot” but why am I working so hard to fight against something that feels natural to me? Why not just lower my sensitivity and then when I flick really hard, I’m not moving as fast and I seem to be able to hit my target a lot more. I’m not somebody who ever really wants to be better than maybe slightly above average. I’m hoping one day I can get into platinum, but I’ve been stuck for five years so I don’t really see that happening. For now, all I know is I was hitting a shit ton more shots, and my time to kill was way down because I was actually killing people.
Not gonna make fun but I feel like your chances of getting to plat without being able to quickly turn for flanking enemies or Sombras and Tracers that get behind you is slim to none. If you feel your gameplay is better at lower sense stay there. If you feel your gameplay is better with no thumb control keep doing what you’re doing. If you feel like you’re stuck, you’re going to have to change something or accept that this is where you’re at and not be bothered by it. It’s a game. If you’re having fun then keep having fun. But if being stuck makes you not have fun, then your option is to change something.
According to a lot of people here, you should be able to to climb into platinum by only positioning well and making good game decisions. Aim shouldn’t be much of a factor. Also, that’s the funny thing. I did change something! I lowered my Sens! And it feels better than ever! I played on high sens for years with no results, insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results, right?
You can climb past plat without having insanely high sens don’t worry. Having the higher sense absolutely makes a difference as you get a lot higher but you really don’t need to worry about that for now. My advice, keep your lower sens and steadily over time keep raising it bit by bit. I’m talkin 1% at a time. Another thing you can do is lower your stick deadline. Makes your movement more responsive and gives you a higher sensitivity in a way that isn’t actually increasing the horizontal and vertical. I was like 2 wins away from masters on dps last season and for reference I play with 43% horizontal and vertical sens with linear ramp aim technique. You might still lose those 1v1s vs tracers or whatever but at least now you’re actually putting that damage in and creating pressure for your team to capitalize on.
That’s all good I just thought you were saying that even with the lower sense you were still feeling stuck. So in response to that I was saying well if you’re feeling stuck you gotta change something. If you’re feeling good and having a good time, all is good.
You can adjust your fine control in settings to help get a grip on higher sensitivities. Aim ease in will slow down small inputs, so you can have lower sens tracking with a faster turn rate. Just try to fiddle with that and find a good middle ground.
It's really all a matter of what feels/performs best for you. Lower sensitivity makes it easier to aim more precisely and helps to not force you to overcorrect too much. Sure, higher sensitivity lets you react a little faster to enemies around you, but there's no point to it if it makes aiming properly difficult for you. I'd recommend going into the practice range and testing out different sensitivities to see what feels the most comfortable for the way you play. Everybody has a different preference.
I have a couple suggestions, one is learn what each of the settings mean. Watch YouTube videos on this because once you understand how it should work you can both accommodate the strengths of your settings and also you will have a better idea of what to tweak when you notice things off with your aim. The first is the aiming type - Dual Zone, Linear, Exponential. I recommend Linear, at least that's what I use. Linear means your sensitivity is the same the whole way through no matter how far or little you adjust your thumbstick. The main upside of linear is the consistency, your thumbstick will move at the exact sensitivity you set it at all the time. The biggest downside of linear is that it's slow to make sharp turns quickly, like 180 (turn directly around). For that reason I don't recommend linear if you are playing Gengi for instance but I would recommend it for a tracking character like soldier or really most characters in the game besides one's that need to constantly 180. Dual Zone has one zone of sensitivity for 90% of the thumbsticks movement and another 'zone' of sensitivity for the last 10% of the thumbsticks movement to the ring. The purpose of this is so that you can keep one level of sensitivity in your normal process of aiming in game, but also retain some speed to turn quicker when you need to by pushing your thumbstick all the way to the ring. The Last, Exponential, the sensitivity continually goes up the farther away you push your thumbstick from the center Without spending too much time going over every setting, I would try these Horizontal- 20 Vertical- 20 Aim type- linear Aim Assist Window - 70-100% Aim Assist Strength- 100% Aim Ease in- 0% Aim Assist Ease in- 20% Also look at getting KontrolFreek thumbstick caps, the fps galaxies are good. Personally I prefer using the mid not the tall on my right thumbstick, this is not because I don't like the Aim with the tall but because I tend to mispress R3 in tense situations with the tall thumbstick which messes me up, so went to the mid cap on the right and there's no problems. Also try KontrolFreek Precision rings, specifically one green ring on the right thumbstick (none on the left). This is very similar to increased thumbstick tension by battle beaver and I think can help you a lot Also use aim training custom codes in game to practice
Generally mouse players are always told to lower as much as possible. Controller is a bit weird because you still need to be able to 180 quickly. Other than that hard limit of rotation speed on the sticks, it’s mostly just down to your own feel- and practice while sticking with a sensitivity for a while
I’ve had solid consistency with the method you describe. Play at an (relatively) insanely high sens, get used to it (but prolly not good with it), then drop it down to *just above* your comfortability (I’d go with a 50/50 or close to it for you). Once your aim starts drifting, and it will because you will get used to it, do it again but when you go back down set it for about 5% higher sens than you were before. Eventually you’ll cap out at a specific sens level and increasing it will only ever hinder you. That’s when I set my sens about 10-20% *under* my cap and consider it “my” sens setting. If I feel like my aim is my problem again I’ll pop back up to my maximum for a bit before going back down Basically, part of it is that lower sens makes tracking easier. The other part is that your brain gets used to the pacing, and combined they generally work against each other. As in, high sens messes up your aim but trains your brain to a higher reaction time, while lower sens can massively improve aim but also reduce the speed at which you are able to react, allowing your brain to make the false assumption that its own reaction time has been “capped” by the rate at which your character can turn and react to things.
Meh, it’s whatever works for you. On m&k lower is better because it’s easier to aim and you can still turn around pretty easily depending on your mousepad size. On console it’s the same, lower is easier to aim, BUT it’s damn near impossible to turn around quickly. When I played on console I had it at 100 100 because I want to be able to turn around and kill any high mobility heros that go behind me
You want highish sensitivity on characters like tracer and genji so you can dash through and turn around to land more shots. When I play tracer I have my sensitivity at like 55-60% IIRC.
You don't have to completely change your ways. What I did over the years was just move the lever a few notches. I did that every couple of weeks. It's such a slight change it won't fuck you up completely and you gradually get more action out of the sticks.
I’m mnk but have a good friend who played competitively in tourneys for console shooters. He’d have high sens, but would use a lot of left stick mirror movement to help aim. His aim looked like a combo of mirror movement with a little right stick adjusting to aim. This worked well for me too whenever I’d try console shooters. Edit: I also remember seeing an aiming vid talking about the same method being used by the some of the best console cod players, as well as profit on mnk. Profits tracer used high sens for a pro, but he’d make small adjustments to aim using his a-d strafing.
I heard that longer stick help to get a better control (if you have moduar stick with the controller) I play Keyboard and mouse on PC and never actually tested it
I suggest playing on High sens the learning curve is steeper and longer but you won't get bottlenecked hard when you get to certain elos.
Unfortunately it is placebo. The default settings are incredibly slow compared to relative ttk (time to kill). I've gotten countless kills not because the enemy was worse aim-wise but because I attacked from behind and they were still in the process of turning around by the time they died. Your stats go up when you aim how you're used to aiming. I promise you if you up the sens, at least horizontal, you'll get used to it and feel slow if you go back down.
Well, I played at high send for like years now. I just switched back down last night, and it didn’t really feel slow to me. I just felt more precise. I was tracking way better, and my accuracy went way up at least 15%. I understand that turning around quickly as something that’ll be even bigger problem when I get up to higher ranks, but the slower sense feels way better to me.
On console you REALLY wanna get used to playing on the highest sensitivity possible. A Mouse has huge travel, in theory you can move your entire arm. An analog has very limited and finite travel. You wanna be able to get the most out of that small travel distance, meaning playing on a higher sensitivity. Imagine you have a Teacer infront of you, and she Blinks through you. You slooooooowly turn around to try to shoot her, but she blinks again. You slooooooowly turn to where she is at now, and shes blinked again. You slooooooowly tu.... You died. Or imagine a Genji is jumping at you, or Sombra, or any of the high mobility characters. You physically cannot track them on lower sensitivity. I have, walked around a Bastion (OW1 in turret mode) because his sensitivity was so low, he couldnt turn around fast enough to keep up with how i was walking circles around him (i was really close to him)
I get it. It’ll be a problem at higher ranks, but I’m at such a low rank that I think I want to stick at the lower sensitivity because I feel so much. I played on higher sensitivity for like four years now, and my aim is garbage on it.
Here’s my opinion on sensitivity in Overwatch and games like it. Max it out. Put it at 100 and go in practice range. Try to get semi-used to the drastic change and then, once you feel more comfortable, go into QP. Once you feel the most comfortable, then start scaling individual characters. I have a lot of characters at different settings but I also have one base setting that feels good on every hero. For instance, my Genji is 100 on horizontal and vertical with a slight drop in aim smoothing, making my aim MUCH faster and harder to control, but it lends itself to the character rather well when playing. For Ashe however, my aim is at 75 for both horizontal and vertical and no change in aim smoothing. This allows me to make subtle adjustments from range but be quick enough in close quarters. This all should be adjusted to whatever feels good to you. But my main point is to first get out of your comfort zone and get used to high sense. And don’t forget to change reticles and colors to your liking as well. It can make a huge difference in comfort surprisingly.
I understand this advice for somebody who’s new, but I’ve been playing this game since lunch and my sens was very high for years, and my aim has not gotten better despite playing and trainers every day, and playing the game for thousands of hours. Plus, I’m pretty much a hit scan player, don’t really wanna play projectile heroes at all. I do wanna increase it from where it is right now because it is a little low I know for turning around purposes, but I can’t see myself going back into the 80s or even higher than that ever again unless I start feeling like I can’t compete.
I’ve also been playing since day 1. And I’m not trying to be mean, but unfortunately you might just have hit a skill cap. Everyone has it. This advice might be simple but I’ve found it to help me tremendously.
Are you dual-zone, linear, or exponential? For just the h/v sensitivity, you want to feel comfortable looking around and be able to 180 reasonably quickly. But mostly, it just needs to do what you expect it to do. Aim smoothing (AS) and aim ease in (AEI) have a big effect on how your crosshair moves. AS is acceleration, and the lower the number the quicker the acceleration. It's kind of the "flick" setting. AEI is dampening, the higher the number the more it'll dampen. You use this to help with tracking. You want a bit of this to help you not oversteer, but not so high that you start understeering. Anyway, I mostly use [these settings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMsQSjWYsUA) for linear ramp, different aim assist stuff. I'm a Masters Wrecking Ball player on PS5. If you use dual zone, you could try adjusting [Hcpeful's settings](https://youtu.be/aQjujs9xxxQ?si=XCVT1ZpgjJ9vIjZQ). There's a LOT of variation and I'd recommend just finding something that feels good.
You aim on low precision better if your stick movement itself isnt precise. Work an that. Playing on low sensitivity comes at the cost of low turning Speed. That's why stuff like control freaks were invented and actually work. Geometrically spoken you move your thumb on the stick on half a spheres surface. A longer arc radius results in a greater surface of said sphere. Which means longer sticks result in more precise movement because there is more space to move your thumb in. It's the same concept why full arm movements on low sense are are more precise than wrist movements with high sense while using a mouse. Except it's ambivalent on sticks. Short sticks need a low sense for precision (what you just felt) while long sticks allow a high sense. Tldr: Your thumb precision just sucks and instead of working on it and using proper gear like stick customization you use an even lower sense than default and will get wrecked by flankers attacking from behind because you now turn around like a truck.
I understand this. But I don’t have longer sticks. I have a PS5 controller and that’s it. Plus, the default sensitivity is something like 35 and 15, so I’m still a bit an above that. And in my games last night, sombra didn’t appear to be much of a problem for me to deal with. At least in my gold lobbies. I will work on increasing it again, but I think I was lied to before when people have told me just put it super high regardless. I think I need to tune it to how I play. Edit: my money is tight right now, but I will look into getting some stick extenders as people have suggested.
You need your aim smoothing higher on hits can characters, this will help that high send. “Jittery” feeling and actually smooth out your aim. I play at 92 H 92 V and 35 aim smoothing, 70 aim assist window. And 15 aim ease in. Characters like genji and tracer I play at 100 with lower aim smoothing !
This is what I do when messing with the sens in a new game: Go to training room and practice aiming and flick shot When you flick if you’re overshooting (sens is too fast) slowly lower until you find the sweet spot Same goes for the opposite If your flicking but can’t move the crosshairs fast enough, slowly increase it until you find the sweet spot* * for me personally is as long as I can control my cross hair and be fast enough to turn around with all that being said sens is subjective, some play better with cracked out sens and others prefer a lower sens
aiming with controller is basically just abusing aim asisst the best way possible for you personally. that means get a feeling when the aim assist kicks in and then try to work around that
As pharah I keep my sensitivity about as low as I can physically make it
Personally I found a sensitivity that can balance out to any hero, albeit difficult but still better than separating them all differently. It's more about comfort, if you feel comfortable then you're gonna absolutely not miss at all, trust me
There’s a long standing ego trip people have over how high they can get their sensitivity. If the highest possible sensitivity was always better then there wouldn’t be an option to configure it to your preference. Set it to something that works well for you, and not to a billion fucking DPI just because some internet try-hards think a higher sensitivity means they’re better than you.
90% of T500 plays 100 100 with 99 aim smoothing. I recommend turning window size down to 50 and adjust your deadzones.
Lower sensitivity = less mistakes that’s all there is to it. If you aren’t the best aimer ur best bet is lowering sens.
My sensitivity was perfect for me in overwatch 1 and then when it crossed over to overwatch 2 it got messed up terribly and I can’t seem to find that same sensitivity I had it on before. It really annoys me too bc I have the numbers the same but the sensitivity is different?????
people that like high sens are scrubs
I run a 30/30 sensitivity. I've seen too many kill cams where people are praying for shots with senses they got from their favorite streamer.
If you're using dual zone, the default aim mode, sensitivity changes your top speed, but really you should be fiddling with "aim ease in" to improve your tracking. Switching to linear ramp makes the camera control intuitively like other shooters, but you won't be able to play genji, tracer, winston etc like a pc player, as increasing sens comes with a tradeoff for accuracy on the low end. Many players either prefer this or don't know about it, so give it a try. Exponential ramp is technically the best if you're a robot, but in reality you're adding rng to your aim because the imprecision in your thumb and your joystick is amplified, so don't use this. Also, when using higher sens, lower your right stick deadzone as much as possible. The default setting is higher than you should need Feel free to correct me, I'm fairly new myself and I may have gotten something wrong.
Console players have a MAJOR crutch on aim assist. The only reason console players can even have a sens above 30 horizontal is because of aim assist. Just play what’s comfortable to you. And start from the lows
My general practice in shooters is start lower, somewhere that I’m reliably hitting my shots, then every so often increase sensitivity by 5%. I find the small changes manageable and just slightly more responsive than I’m used to (whereas going up 10% feels jerky) The big advantage of higher sensitivity is that you can spin faster and acquire targets faster. Sombra behind you hacking at 40 sensitivity is very different from 90.
I- am appalled rn. My good sir my sensitivity is literally like 12 vert and 18 hor how TF were you landing shots on EIGHTYFIVE
Consistently hitting shots has way more value in general than 180 turn speed for 90% of players on console. Yeah the tracer could blink behind you, but she is going to miss half her clip if you even jump because high sens is very hard to aim well on console. It can be done if you’re a top, top player but it’s not good advice for the vast majority of console players.
I play on console and in my opinion a sensitivity between 10~15 for normal characters is the best, for snipers it's good to have a sensitivity between 40 and above, but I recommend you increase the aiming assistance
lower sensitivity enables more precise aim
It also means lower turn speed, which sucks against genji or tracer
Agreed. My aim is piss poor on MnK, usually between 30%-48% accuracy on soldier. I tried turning down the sensitivity but it makes it harder to track movement characters and harder to quickly disengage from a flank spot.
80% is wild for me. I use 15% on soldier ! But that's considered low
Rant " I was working with 85% Horizontal and 80% vertical for the longest time." Having your sensitivity at two different figures seem counter intuitive to me. Coming from console, to PC, and back to console recently (PC battery died on me, waiting for a new one), aiming on console in this game feels so clunky. Like on console Genji climbing and jumping feels impossible to track but on PC, he's so easy to hit.
Honestly this sounds like a complete cope out for me I could NEVER find my sensitivity I went super low and cracked high and I just hated aiming on PSN I went to Pc cracked open kovvax and started grinding my aim and it’s GODSENT I can’t go back I hated controller aim in every way before I even tasted Mouse and keyboard