Apex Legends feels like a much faster battle royale experience. In fact, it’s possible to argue that the game has more in common with your typical hero shooter than it does other battle royale games like Fortnite or PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. And with that in mind, it can be hard for some new players to adjust to its pace, especially while trying to aim in frantic shootouts.
Therefore, we decided to spend some time in the training mode in King’s Canyon in order to bring you some tips on how to improve your aim in game. The following will cover everything you need to know from mouse sensitivity (for those playing on PC), to learning how to compensate for recoil while aiming. Hopefully, by the end of this guide, you’ll be racking up wins like a pro and bringing in that glorious XP.
- Use training mode to practise snapping & strafing
First things first, before entering any match lobby, you’ll want to spend some time in the training mode, familiarising yourself with each weapon and practicing your aim. There are a few good drills that you can do in the training mode to accomplish this. The first of these is snapping.
Training mode has a bunch of moving targets, as well as those that reward players with better damage for perfectly positioned shots. You’ll want to spend some time snapping between these while aiming. This means entering your aiming stance, firing at a target, and exiting quickly, before shifting to the next target, and so on. Practising this will help you to swiftly switch between targets, which is vital for staying alive when you encounter multiple enemy squads in a match or in close quarters when aiming down your sights is discouraged.
Also, another exercise that you can get up to here is practising your aiming while strafing out of cover. Place yourself in front of an obstacle and move yourself side to side, while trying to hit a target that’s positioned in the distance. This will help you to hone your aim and eliminate those moments in game where you end up firing prematurely at a wall when you want to hit an enemy.
- Finding the perfect mouse sensitivity
This next tip is a little bit trickier to act on and will depend entirely on personal preference and your own set up. The game allows you to change both your mouse sensitivity and your sensitivity while aiming down sights. Though you may be inclined to copy your favourite streamer’s settings, it’s much more helpful to tailor this to your own playstyle. A good way to address this is, again, with training. Here you’ll be able to refine your settings over time. However, a good piece of advice is to keep your mouse sensitivity as low as comfortable, to reduce inconsistency and give you greater control over your movement.
- Compensating for recoil
Another key aspect that will affect how well you aim is how you compensate for weapon recoil while aiming. In training mode, you have access to all the weapons in the game, so it is worth testing them out against the sandstone walls behind the targets to learn their recoil pattern and where you’ll need to compensate.
For instance, the R-99 fires upwards in a relatively straight line, while the Re-45 rises upwards and slightly to the right. Once you’ve learned these patterns you will then be able to use either the analogue stick or your mouse to draw back slightly and keep the crosshairs in roughly the same place. A good way to know if you’re starting to master this is by reducing the size of the bullet impressions you leave on the wall. Another way is to stand in the distance and aim at a faraway target while trying to control your aim. While you’re doing this, try to hit as many of your shots as possible.
- Practise shooting while sliding down hills
The entrance to the training mode may just seem like a cool way to introduce you to the concept of sliding in Apex Legends, but it can also serve an additional purpose. Often in the game, you’ll be shot at while travelling down the side of a steep cliff. But stopping to aim will bring you to a total standstill, giving the opponent the edge.
In these circumstances, what you will have to do is fire without aiming down your sight. Luckily, though, you can practise this in the training mode by sliding down the side of the hill and picking out different rows of targets to fire towards. If a worst-case scenario does then happen in a match, at least you’ll have some experience with this.
- Training mode isn’t everything
It’s worth mentioning though that, in spite of all of its positives, training mode isn’t everything and will only teach you so much. For one, you can’t practise with any of the attachments at present, and the hitboxes you’ll aiming for are different to that of the legends in-game.
The only real solution for this is to balance training with real match experience. This way you’ll be able to learn the actual hitboxes of individual characters and practise with attachments like stocks, which reduce aim drift on certain weapons, and chokes that tighten the spread of heavy weapons like the Peacekeeper.
- Placing your crosshair efficiently
One extremely important aspect of aiming in Apex Legends is crosshair placement. When running around the map, you’ll want to try and keep your crosshair at roughly head or neck height. Doing this will mean that you’ll have to readjust your aim less, whenever you encounter an enemy, in order to land that devastating headshot. So it’s well worth keeping this in mind while sprinting from one location to the next.
- Drop into hot zones for experience
One way to quickly gain experience with aiming is by dropping into hot zones, such as high-tier loot areas. Should you find a weapon in time, you’ll then be able to get in plenty of shooting practice at the beginning of a match, allowing you to cut out all of the waiting around.
There is a bit of a problem with this approach, though, which is that you can often end up encountering players before you even find a weapon. A good way of avoiding this is communicating with your teammates. Keep pinging weapons as fast as you can to ensure you can find them before an enemy finds you.
That was it for this article. If you found it helpful, consider checking out our blog The Captures!
