he goes waaaaaaaaaay back with it too. he was an aim beast as scout in tf2 as well. which honestly was a game which punished strafe aiming in a lot of ways as it made you more predictable for non-hitscan like soldier and demo to hit. I wonder if that is something to consider as well in overwatch. I'm nostalgic for those days.
keyboard movement is and has always been important in a game like ow. any game with tracking it's one of the most important things to learn and adapt into.
Been a fan of your coaching in work from NYXL > Justice then onto Seoul Glad to see your still working away in OW... please let me know if you ever want to coach a tracer placer in Diamond :p
Quake plays figured this our long time ago and coined the term 'strafe aim' theres some rly high quality documents you would probably like to read about :>
Other really good point with strafe aim is that it doesn't matter how far away you are from the enemy, it compensates perfectly. If someone walks in one direction when they're next to you or even 1000 metres away, strafe aim will track it perfectly. The bad part is that it makes you more predictable for longer strafes or getting shot from the side where you're basically not moving :-)
aiming on tracer in ow1 was so much easier than it is on ow2, well i wouldnt say easier but it felt more consistent and rewarding because the spread was tighter in ow1
Hi, I’m also a tracer main, while I might not be the best at OW I am nearly GM on the voltaic benchmarks on kovaaks with nearly 500hrs and top 75 itw scores on some of the hardest scenarios out there. Being a professional coach I’m sure you know that the “mirror aim” that you mentioned, more commonly named mirroring is a type of strafe aim. There are other types of strafe aim like antimirroring and many other more advanced ones. In most fps games where you need to track targets that’s change direction often, you usually have movement acceleration, and in that case it’s usually more beneficial to rely on antimirroring which weighs more on your mouse control, but makes it easier to maintain a track in the short durations when the target changes direction and also makes you harder to hit for your opponent. In Ow however because of the instant acceleration it’s impossible to track those short moments when direction changes because it doesn’t exist (the characters kind of teleport to the other direction) so it’s more beneficial to mirror aim so that you can get the max damage you can when the opponent is making a longer strafe. Coach the thing is, when mirroring, your mouse hand does not move, it stands still until there is a direction change and you need to flick to the target and stay still there. This means that every direction change your mouse needs to break friction of your mouse pad which means it’s much harder to make microcorrections if your initial flick is not accurate. On top of this a much more dangerous aspect is the fact that when mirroring you become extremely easy to hit for your opponent as well ( even for bad players ), which on tracer is not good at all since she is so squishy. So coach can explain why profit still aims this way? How does he survive? Does he change his aim and movement situationally?
Exqctly what i was thinking. Is used to aim like this years ago but i changed IT as overwatch came Out to the fact that u, Yourwelt become eqsier to get hit and now im getting told to go back to the roots. I dont know what to think about this. So i mirror strafe and crouch spam or what? And small mikro stravings ?
I come from Quake and started learning ow more recently. In fact this "strafe aim" in quake is a thing, that only newbies would do, cuz you're not trying to dodge enemy's crosshair being on your model. So as a sombra and tracer player i wonder if dodge of being hit is applicable in this game? Or should i throw my quake mechanics off and start compensating my aim?
hey, I helped worked on this video and developing our aim material, so I think I can give some insight on this. I am also long time quake player. I was never pro level but I am pretty good(in CA) and played with and against many top NA players. I very much disagree with your statement that only newbies use strafe aim in quake. Of course,, it is context dependent... being too simple with mirror strafes can make you an easy target. but when you want to maximize damage it is absolutely a key skill to use, and pro quake players make use of it all the time, even more than OW I would say. I have other examples somewhere but here one from k1llsen: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QGH5rlM38us.html he is pushing with an HP advantage, so he starts with a wide mirror strafe against clawz (another great aimer). he adds in a little dodging in the middle to throw off the opponent (and because he was losing the fight I think), but then he commits back to the mirror for the finish. this is just a short reply so I can't give a full argument but this is how I look at it: if you want/need to maximize dmg (for example, they arent even looking at you) strafe aim is a great skill to have. if you are a tracer and a cassidy is staring right at you, it is risky because he simply has higher DPS than you. really it is just a tool you learn and then it is up to you when/how you implement it. I try toget more in depth in coaching but its hard to do that in short videos like this
@@shrugger12 really appreciate the answer. i will breakdown a bit. so for a good tracking you basically have two goals: to react as little amount as possible and to be unpredictable with your movement and dodge enemie's crosshair. With this in mind i think in high level ca as you said its more about maximazing your damage, because most of the roundstart positions are very intimate, and the format forces you to finish the first fight as quick as possible. thats why it more depends on hitting alot then dodging better. Here you're trying to combine your dodging techinique with mirror and anti mirror aim. in some cases anti mirror aim is even easier than strafe aim. The second case is lg training vampiric servers. They are less useful here, cuz you arent pressured by time and space so the goal is usually be in your comfort range of tracking or try to get at enemies uncomfortable range and dodge the shots. Ofcourse these 2 techniques are useful in this scenario as well but its much more specefic and rare than in ca and ow. The third is duels. There its much more situation dependency. for example, if you're trying to go through the nade spam or chasing an opponent which is shooting you with rocket, then the primary goal it to avoid damage with your dodge. The second is fighting shaft vs shaft usually its 100 100 or 150 100 fights, here the same principal from lg vampiric servers applies. Others are fighting against another weapon like rocket or plasma which you should definetly dodge, and full stack against 100 50 where player with a full stack wants to kill faster so hes helping to aim with strafes. My point is even though the usage of these techniques is very specific, the game in its core is very punishable for not trying to dodge. There are a lot of diversity with shooting and moving in ow. Thats why I thought this the most dodge heavy modern fps game. And after i watched the video i was very confused and thought something like: "Do you just strafe aim and occasionaly a-d a-d with no technique in this game?". Although im starting to realize its more situational in overwatch than in quake. you need to understand in which situtation you need to hardly dodge or just strafe aim to get job done. Correct if im wrong with this statement.
@@onnorj1569 hey, so I agree it is a very nuanced topic and not black/white. to what you said in duel, yes trading as efficient as possible is very important because of how sparse resources are on the map. OW is a team game with healers, and plenty of resources on the map so trades are more micro here- you need good movement to win your small trades and force resources but if you need to use 90% of your HP to get a kill and get back to your team that is very worth. the examples we find to make the concepts clear do leave out the more complex situations though. think about how you aim against somebody using rail in quake. you need to focus your movement entirely on the timing of his shots and maximize your dmg in between them. this is a very common situation in OW and you need to understand the weapon type of the enemies to pick your optimal movement. vs projectiles you can't AD in place, you need to widen your strafes. vs widow you just need to dodge the shot timing and you are free. etc etc. you always need to understand what your advantage is just like your stack in quake. if you are fighting over red armor spawning in 3 seconds, and you have a fat stack- you better maximize your dmg. in reality, the reason strafe aim is so important for tracer is because she can force these situations a lot. she can blink behind you and get half her clip off while you try to react to her. in short, yes it is going to be more or less important dependant on what game you play and the context/class. oh and the other big difference is team games vs 1v1. in team games you get a lot of flank opportunities where you don't get shot at all, not so in duels. hope that is clear, thanks for the good questions!
@@shrugger12 thanks for a great conversation! i was glad to talk about movement in competitive shooters. unfortunately, this topic is rarely being discussed nowadays
As a console player would I still be using this? I know there is no pro leagues or any real competitive for console but if I want to maximise rank would learning this type of aiming improve?
@@wizardhyeong thanks ❤️ I tried it today, literally saw my accuracy go up every match by ~5% also just seems to work better once I got used to it. I am only playing tracer for the next 2 weeks to learn her, so far I’m struggling against Cassidy, is there anything I should do?
@@SavingLivesOrHardlySaving im making a tracer course so you can learn more in-depth stuff there but 2 play style you can try 1. Shoot their tank and other things like their genji, avoiding cassidy LOS 2. Flank and go in when you cassidy is not looking at you or make a sandwich angle when your team engages + when you are fighting him, dont finish the whole clip, use blinks in between the clip so you have faster blink tempo for dodging
@@wizardhyeong thank you, I’ll try it today. I like that tip about blinking in between clips, that’s pretty smart. Thank you, Im excited to maybe see your tracer course when it is released!
I've been playing overwatch for around 3000hours and I have been in grandmaster on tank and I have NEVER thought of walking aim HAHAHAHAHA. Thankyou, I will play dps now and get insta gm B)
Apparently, even pro level overwatch is barely at mid level mechanically based on the average skill of regular fps players overwall in 2024. (and that was BEFORE they made the hitboxes even bigger due to everyone having bad accuracy in ow2 because all the actually good people left years ago) 😎
@@Deadmeatsz Well can you link me some? The best players I’ve personally seen were all titanfall players, I’m legitimately curious about players above their level. They could probably snipe a gnat out of the sky while flying like a jet plane.
