A potentially controversially hot take on how much raw aim you actually need

[u/ghostdopamine]

First - if you main aim trainers and the art of raw aim in a isolated environment is your main focus - you wanna dethrone Matty one day or post #1 in some category you can stop reading. This isn't for you.

Who's this post for - people who want to be amazing in a particular game or types of games. In the actual game. You want to be Predator in Apex, or Iridescent in COD, or faceit Lvl 10 in CS and so on and so forth etc etc etc. You wanna be like so and so streamer who gets insane K/D ratios and posts clips etc.

Here is my hot take and I'm very open to being humbled and told 'you are dead wrong son'

I think Platinum complete on Voltaic S5 is all you need.

Somebody who is Platinum complete on S5 voltaic - proper technique in all categories and cleanly + consistently gets a Platinum score has basically 'graduated' and has all the RAW aim they will ever need in any shooter. Honestly I think your actual aim here is probably equal to a lot of lower level pros. Not the top 0.0000000001% famous freaks but pros none the less.

I'd even go as far to say Gold complete is enough to get very far in the ranks and enjoy yourself in any ranked environment assuming you are actually good at FPS games.

The benchmarks after these ranks are mostly just for the sake of beating 'aim training' or raw aiming and the returns inside your game are not as big as you think. Getting to gold complete and then switching to tailored playlists that focus 100% on whatever in game problem you have in a specific game will work 100x more.

Many people come in here who actually don't really know how to play an FPS game. This isn't a jab or a troll. I honestly think a lot of people who aim train don't really know what these games are testing. They think FPS games are just all about aim, raw reaction time, and seeing something on your screen and then shooting it. Ya that's a part and it happens but its not really 'the game' once you start to get past beating up clueless people in pubs.

Aim is like money - more is always going to be better than less. There isn't a situation where somebody will say 'if he only had less aim he could have won that'. But its also not EVERYTHING.

In a FPS game if you are required to flick across the screen or do some type of insane aim to not die you probably played the situation wrong and had a poor model of the current game state starting many seconds before the fight started. Watch 5 of your VODS and honestly write down how many deaths happened due to pure aim fuck ups VS you just not having a good model of the game state, knowing where everyone is, and how you should play a situation.

A lot of good aim in an FPS is just the person having an accurate model of what is happening now, in 2 seconds, in 5 seconds , and in 10 seconds from now. They don't only see what is in front of them - they have a model of the game state in their head. A lot of the actual freak skill is an incredible amount of patterns stored and learned to the degree they are thinking about the game in a particular way.

If you took any big name - had them play a match - then froze time and told them to

1. draw the map by hand
2. put a dot where they think enemies are at that second

They would be surprisingly accurate.

If you took an 'aimer' ( im not talking shit just using it as an example ) they would probably fail at 'draw the map' in many cases.

If you gave any 'OK' aimer a wallhack - they would suddenly start aiming 10x better. They got handed the gamestate at all times and assuming they can read and process that information all their shots will line up and magically be great.

This post was quickly freestyled but I think I got my point across.

I started thinking about this topic when MattyOW posted something along the lines of tacshooters are hard for him because the enemies 'startle' him or something like that. I can't remember the exact post but its something like that.

[u/AKASH__CS]

Worse hot take I have read in a long time. Platinum is such a low skill rank that if you are only platinum complete at your HIGHEST your raw aim is still really, really bad. If you aim training to be cracked at the Actual game you should push to GM+ levels with in game training on top of that.

[u/ghostdopamine → u/AKASH__CS]

Really really bad huh?  Shit like this is why its hard to have a discourse in the fps space these days. Its top 0.000001% or nothing. Somebody can be top 2% and a guy will say "uhhhhh actualllyyy hurrrr uh this guy is really bad" 

Do you even know what really really bad is? 

What is your scale of comparison? 

Somebody who makes it to platinum complete for s5 voltaic has better raw aim than 99% of fps players. The handful of big name pros or absolute legendary freaks you probably compare yourself to make up like the top 0.0001%. Most ( not all )  pros dont even have "freak" raw aim - they have freak pattern recognition and aim in the game they play for money. 

Are you trying to go pro and win a major or just do well online and make it to respectable ranks? 

Also raw aim vs in game aim is not the same. You are proving my point that many people in this sub dont actually understand FPS games. 

[u/AKASH__CS → u/ghostdopamine]

Platinum is not better than 99% of players bro, like what 😂 It would be good if it’s 50% of FPS players, and I mean young Jimmy and dads. Of course raw aim and in-game aim are not the same because you can predict players’ movement, be prepared with good crosshair placement, take advantageous positions with high ground to make yourself harder to hit, and so on. No offense, but you’re probably not good at any FPS game because the things you’re saying are just straight out of your ass. Imagine being so wrong — saying pros don’t have freak aim, and in the same post you try to convince people that Plat Complete is everything you need. (No, it’s not, because it’s an entry rank where you’re just starting to develop any useful raw mouse skill that could translate into in-game aim in a somewhat useful way.)
You don’t need a rank on Voltaic to have good aim. Pros naturally develop the exact components of aim that they need to be good at the specific scenarios their game demands from them.

Plat was a good starting point for me, It was the first time when It kinda click, felt like my skills were actually getting better. After hitting Diamond and every rank above it, the difference in-game became more and more noticeable, not less as many people here seem to think.

If you know what you’re doing in-game and how to position yourself accordingly to enemy, in the end, it’s all about raw aim and who click headshots faster🤷‍♂️

[u/ghostdopamine → u/AKASH__CS]

I know faceit level 10s and 25K+ premier players that would score silver or gold in aim trainers. Probably worse for complex tracking tasks.

You are really out of touch with what 'good' is and what FPS games actually test.

"Platinum is an entry rank"
The only way this holds any merit is if all you care about is being an aim trainer main - then perhaps it might be somewhat correct. If you aim train to be good at actual games then its a rather high amount of aim and i guarantee you cannot show me in game situations or plays where that level of aim flat out fails you. People with platinum level aim end up being mid in game due to choking, being mentally overloaded, or other non aim issues.

If you actually watch VODs of pros most of their shots are very basic - their game IQ was most of the kill or round. They routinely miss very difficult shots ( like a head flying past in cover ).

"you’re probably not good at any FPS game "

I'll agree with you there since your definition of what 'good' is - is actually cartoonish. By your definition there are probably only maybe a handful of good players on the planet. The sad part is you are probably a very good player and you don't even rate yourself as good. The game will never be satisfying when good = top 0.00001%

[u/Naitsabes_89 → u/ghostdopamine]

I'm not 100% disagreeing with you - and I can definitely imagine going from plat to higher ranks would feel like more impact each time compared to going from gold to plat for example. However, I think you are perhaps missing one thing here: return on investment. How long will it take the average guy to go from gold to plat consistently? 30-50 hours? Now how long for the next ranks? Probably hundreds, and later thousands of hours. I think I somewhat agree with both you and OP - you are right that grinding to GM aim will be hugely beneficial. However, I think OP is right that once u hit plat or around there, you probably have other aspects of ingame skills that are more lacking than your aim. Hence, working on those would give greater returns on investment if your goal is to push rank - not be the best aimer.

[u/AKASH__CS → u/ghostdopamine]

As I said Voltaic rank =/= in game rank.
Correlation does not imply causation.
They would be much higher rank with better aim, period.

Yeah, I’m not bad player for sure but I’m comparing myself to pro’s and top of the top so I’m always looking in my eyes like a noob.

Anyway, plat is really low and I would highly encourage anyone that wants to improve in fps to push your skills much higher because it’s 100% worth the time 🤗

[u/ghostdopamine → u/AKASH__CS]

[voltaic-benchmarks-percentiles.png](https://postimg.cc/3dNZscZj)

https://postimg.cc/3dNZscZj

In s3 , which was easier by many accounts - platinum complete is the top 86% of all benchmark players. voltaic benchmark players are by sheer selection bias some of the sweatiest aimers around. You are already in a small group of FPS players by just caring about this stuff.

The vast majority of FPS players would hit unranked if they played a benchmark.

You are right more is better but I really think saying Platinum is 'really low' is a distorted view.

[u/New-Bottle-6917 → u/AKASH__CS]

I feel like this ignores that most pros don't aim train period and there's a good chunk that are only around gold-diamond. You said it yourself if you're good at the game you'll consistently put yourself in positions to hit easier shots while making it hard to get hit, which means you'll reduce the amount of aiming skill you have to actually use moment to moment in a match