apex-aiming

Over time, with approx. 1500 hours in Apex Legends and 150 hours aim training, I've been keeping a list of things that help maximize aim training benefits.

Shameless plug: My twitch channel

Tools required

Kovaak's Aim Trainer (preferred, for now) or
Aimbeast

Recommended aim guides

Sparky aim training routines - start here
Sparky aim training benchmarks - I use these to get a general sense of where I'm at in my aim progression
PureRoutines - this is my new go-to warm-up routine when I'm pushing PBs. This is primarily geared toward improving smoothness, and I do the 1by1 version. Centering in particular is phenomenal for overall aim improvement.
Laizirz Routine - Not for beginners, this can be quite frustrating with mostly small, fast-moving bots. But it seems to be a fast way to improve in-game
Aimer7's workout routines - used to be the de facto standard for routines, but pretty much everyone has transitioned to Sparky's instead. Still, I would suggest everyone read and understand the principles of aiming laid out in this guide.

Kovaak's Settings

Use this link and insert your relevant information to find your hipfire FOV and raw sensitivity. Plug those into Kovaak's for your settings to be 1:1 with Apex.
Recommend using pure color walls and a contrasting color bot. For example a lot of people play with grayish walls/ceiling and red bots.
Recommend disabling unnecessary artifacts like gun models, laser, bullet decals, etc. to focus purely on your aim

Choosing a good mouse

Rocketjumpninja covers this topic better than anyone else. Make sure to watch the video that walks you through how to properly measure your hand. There's plenty of info out there about determining your mouse grip type.

If you do choose a mouse that accepts double-A batteries, I suggest using spacers like these to sub in AAA batteries to reduce overall mouse weight.
These are the skates I used for my mouse (Logitech G305), they work fantastic and are fairly low cost.

General aim tips

Put your hand/mouse in uncomfortable positions on your mousepad. Try to minimize re-centering your mouse in places you're used to. This will help you with in-game scenarios when your mouse is in sub-optimal positions.
It should kind of 'hurt' sort of like working out. Not be totally sore where your hand is unusable but you are training small muscle fibers. Really helps with precision
Focus on a combination close/mid/long range scenarios. They use different aim types (arm/wrist/finger) and train different muscles. I found myself doing a ton of 'close fast strafes invincible' but doing really poorly midrange strafes until I started focusing that more
In general when doing clicking, focus on precision when doing smaller targets and speed when doing larger targets. If at any point you find yourself struggling with clicking scenarios, slow down and focus on precision. Aim for between 80-95% accuracy generically. Train 'reload' specific scenarios if you want to focus on speed since you aren't penalized for accuracy, but if you find yourself reloading a lot, slow down and focus on precision
Don't avoid the harder scenarios or the ones you dislike. It's natural to veer to scenarios you do well in and it will feel more fun. you'll progress better by putting yourself in uncomfortable positions. If you struggle, you can just turn down the time scale and slowly raise it over time
If you find yourself 'zoning out' or not really focusing on the goals/objectives of what you're trying to achieve, your gains will be severely hampered. You should actively be considering what you're weak at, where you need improvement, and focusing on getting the most out of your training. Sometimes you just need to take a break for awhile if your heart isn't in it. Playing music to help focus (sort of like with studying) can help. Whatever techniques you use to help focus apply here
When following routines, make sure to play the entire routine but just reduce the amount of time played if you can't play for an hour or more. Usually I'll train for ~30 minutes before hopping into Apex for the day. That said, if you're hitting plateaus, it's a good indicator you need to spend more time training and isolate specific areas you need to improve

Aiming FAQ

Q: Why am I improving with my aim training but not improving in-game?

A: I've had similar problems in the past. Most likely, you're developing bad habits in your form without realizing it, which is allowing you to get higher scores but actually hurting your overall aim and mousefeel. Some examples I commonly see:

Focusing on speed vs. accuracy, especially in clicking scenarios - this leads to spending more time microadjusting to targets after over or under 'flicking.' In-game, this is extra time spent trying to lock onto a target, and likely they are locking onto you faster than you are them
Not focusing on smoothness - this leads to trying to 'predict' bot movement vs. reacting to their movement changes, and jittery mouse movement particularly with fast strafes. In-game, especially in higher TTK games like FN, your enemies are likely able to keep consistent dmg on you while you're missing more frequently when trading

Do this - try RexStrafesCata and pay attention to how you adjust to target movement. If you're quickly flicking to adjust to movement changes, you've learned bad habits. You have to read through the narrative in the Aimer7 guide, he talks about these concepts but they are kind of hidden and scattered, and not much emphasis is put on them so they seem minor, but they are actually very critical to your aim improvement. For example he talks about when starting out on tracking, it's better to smoothly approach your target and undershoot than quickly flick to movement changes, overshooting and microadjusting back. That seemingly minor detail is actually incredibly important to your progress. Same with clicking scenarios and focusing on accuracy until ~85% before focusing on speed.

If we're comparing aim training to weight lifting, think of the analogy as though you are learning improper form when doing deadlifts. You're probably still going to see a lot of results but over time you'll hit a plateau that prevents you from improving, or severely minimizes your gains. Spend some time really analyzing your form, not just your aim scores, and see where you need to work on it.

Q: Should I train hipfire or aim down sights (ADS)?

A: I've done both at great length and saw no appreciable difference. Some people swear by one or the other. Personally I don't think it mattters. Just train hipfire and be done with it.

Q: How is my progress in ______ area? Why are my scores inconsistent?

A: Overall mousefeel improvement is your goal, not the scores. The map is not the territory. Scores are metrics we use to help guide our progress, but they are flawed, and it's not a 1:1 relationship with your aim training success. You will see peaks and valleys along the way and it's expected. If you see an overall upward trend on your scores over a long time period (weeks/months) of consistent training, you're on the right track.

Improving your ranked play

If you see two teams actively fighting, don't get in the middle of them. So many times especially in the lower ranks (goldish) what people think the move is to fight both while they're hurt so you can clean up. But in reality they probably are evenly trading unless you see downs in the kill feed, so when you insert yourself, they're more likely to both start turning on you. Wait for the right opportunity to engage for a cleanup
Should go without saying, but it's pretty much always better to stick with the group even if you're underprepared. I've seen so many times a squad will land in a contested area, clean up the other team, loot and head to the next point. But only two people who actively ping/comm their intent. The third decides to go loot a totally different, 'safer' zone alone. The two get in a fight and the third says "I'm coming" but by then it's a 1v3. As long as you have a bodyshield, guns, and enough ammo to take a fight you should be good to go. It's way more important to move and coordinate as a team vs. having better equipment. I've seen full teams of purps/golds get bodied by grays just because the gray team was more coordinated
Take some time to understand how points in ranked work. If you land skull town and wipe 3 teams you don't actually get that many points if you die afterwards. Once you get your 5 kills/assists you should be focusing more on poking, staying outside of engagements unless you absolutely know you can quickly win and get out, or just start playing to ring and finding a good defensive position...especially when you get to top 10 squads or less
As you start to get better, you'll recognize that 'smart aggro' play is king. Here are some characteristics of what I consider smart aggro play to consist of:
- Quick looting, and with purpose knowing where you will be rotating to based on the information you're getting (hearing shots, knowing where teams landed)
- Willingness to be pushing fights and moving as a team to the next rotation. In other words, not just "waiting for something to happen" to you in order to react
- Placing higher priority to protecting teammates and doing damage to enemies over retreating and valuing your individual health. By that I mean, if your team has committed to a push, and your team is actively engaged, unless you're facing certain death and need a reset you should be supporting the team
- Watching map and recognizing when you're falling behind, particularly if your IGL (informal or formal) is dictating an aggressive tempo. Unless you don't have the minimum supplies you need to take a fight, you should be pushing toward your next objective
- Taking solid, advantageous pushes and slowly chipping away at good teams in particular while incrementally moving toward them. Be looking at finishing the fight in a minute or less, since others will hear the shooting and 3rd party
- When the enemy team is wiped, already know what you need to loot, prioritize those items, loot quickly and either get out to rotate to next objective, or prepare defensively for the 3rd party
Know when to reset. Communicate your intent decisively and provide the team with an out if you have the ability to (wraith portal, path zip). This should be a team-based decision which requires advanced recognition of a variety of data to determine this is the right scenario. Often if your team is getting shot at by multiple different teams, if you did not anticipate a fight, or if your teammate gets downed without trading are common scenarios to reset a fight. In general you should be aware of the circumstances of your engagement and ideally have an advantage when initiating. If that criteria is not met, you should be thinking about potentially resetting
Learn to develop positive communications. This means not just communicating often, but communicating meaningful, curt information that the team benefits from. It also means deliberately listening to the data your team is feeding you and taking action on that information. Finally, any non-beneficial team information such as voicing frustration should be minimized

Creating a narrative

A common theme I see with less skilled players is a focus on a narrative that doesn't promote successful outcomes. By that I mean, their internal dialogue is focused more on near term, internal objectives rather than longer term, team-focused objectives. This becomes apparent based on their communications stating what they're looking for, such as specific guns and attachments. Over time, repeating the same goals and objectives internally becomes habitual and can lead to either good or bad habits, similar to positive or negative self-talk when constructing one's self-image.

Example of a bad narrative

A bad narrative is myopically self-focused, usually around one's inventory. A bad narrative is to constantly be thinking about specific guns or attachments, or having enough ammo for multiple fights. This causes you to be thinking in terms of loot, getting to other loot locations, and avoiding other datapoints like enemy team locations and fights that can be taken advantage of. Because you're laser focused on specific items you feel you need to be successful, you construct your idea of success around those items. Then you start to build ideas that if you don't have those specific items, you're less likely to be successful. Worse, when focusing largely on your loadout/inventory, you tend to get very surprised if an enemy team shows up. When your loadout and inventory are the focus, you're less likely to pay attention to other valuable data the game is feeding you like the kill feed, enemy footsteps, drop trails, drop locations, gunfire, etc. to improve your chance of success. Players with this narrative tend to drop safer zones, loot everything they possible can looking for specific items, and only after picking the place clean do they lift their heads up to think about "what's next?" Some of the worst examples are players who simply go from loot zone to loot zone, picking each one clean, only following something like the ring as their basis of where to go. They would happily play the entire game without fighting until they're absolutely forced to.

Example of a good narrative

A good narrative is team and objective-focused. There are lower-priority minimum criteria that you internally establish as quick checks such as:

Do I have guns? yes/no
Do I have ammo to take a fight? yes/no
Do I have a bodyshield? yes/no

Basically, your priority with inventory/loadout become the minimum things you need to take fights, and even those items are flexible in hot situations. Your minimum viable product (MVP) here is essentially: "can I fight?" If the answer is yes, your loadout/inventory falls to the bottom of your priority list in your narrative. Now your focus should be establishing where enemy teams are through data you're receiving, and determining where your team can execute an advantagous push. When your narrative shifts away from your internal needs and instead toward a team and enemy data focus, your approach to the game will change quite a bit. Instead of finding a 'safe' drop zone and looting the entire place top to bottom before even thinking about what's next, you start to consider where enemies team landed outside of your chosen drop zone, pay attention to gunfire, and look for opportunities to push fights as soon as your team is able to take a fight. You use information like the killfeed, gunfire, and known rotations as your primary datapoints to establish your battleplan.

Practicing a good narrative

The best way I know to practice a good narrative is to place yourself into an in-game leader (IGL) role, particularly if you play with a team using voicechat such as Discord. This is most likely to force you to think from a team perspective and pull you out of a reactive style of gameplay. You'll make a lot of bad decisions along the way, especially at first, but that's actually a sign of progress. Learning how to self-organize is a vital part of the process so the micro-lessons you learn along the way become embedded as habits over time.

riddbtw/apex-aiming