Call of Duty: Warzone — How to improve your aim and mechanical skill

If you have ever watched a top-tier streamer playing Warzone, one thing tends to stand out. Every single one of them has remarkable aim. But they didn’t develop those mechanics overnight. Honing your aim in Warzone can be a challenging task. Many players believe by just playing enough you will eventually become a great player. And whilst experience is important, your mechanics will eventually hit a ceiling without some dedicated effort on your end.

Thankfully, by doing certain things and practicing regularly, it’s possible for anyone to improve their mechanical skill significantly. This guide will primarily focus on keyboard and mouse as it has a higher skill ceiling and is the more common input type for PC players. However, some of the advice in this guide applies to controller players too.

Picking a suitable sensitivity

One of the most common problems casual first-person shooter players have on PC is their sensitivity. Many newer FPS players assume that the best players must use high sensitivities in order to lock onto targets faster. However, in practice, having a high eDPI will do far more harm than good for your aim.

eDPI, or effective dots per inch, is a value calculated by multiplying your mouse DPI by your in-game sensitivity. Every gaming mouse comes with the ability to customize its DPI. What DPI you use on your mouse is widely personal preference but somewhere between 400 and 3000 works well. Personally, I opt for 1000 DPI but 800 is the most commonly used amongst more dedicated FPS players.

Every major gaming mouse manufacturer will have a platform where you can tweak your DPI. This is Logitech’s G HUB but there are equivalents for other popular brands such as Razer, Corsair, and Glorious.

As for eDPI, it can take some tweaking to figure out what works for you. Call of Duty: Warzone is a game that features a lot of long-range tracking which is easier to do at a lower eDPI. But if you are caught up close by a flanker or rusher, a higher eDPI can make it easier to react to those situations.

I play at an in-game sensitivity of 4.2, making my eDPI 4200. According to prosettings.net, the average eDPI for a Warzone professional player is 3701. As a general rule, I’d aim for an eDPI between 2000 and 6000. Just try out different Warzone sensitivities to see what’s comfortable and what delivers the biggest improvement to your aim. As a side note, all Battle.net FPS share an identical in-game sensitivity scale so this rule also works for Overwatch and Destiny 2.

Daily drills

If you wanted to become a better three-point shooter, you’d work on developing your muscle memory of an effective jump shot form. If you wanted to become a better goalkeeper, you’d work on developing your muscle memory of how to catch a ball consistently. Developing muscle memory is one of the most powerful tools for improvement as it helps turn a fundamental skill into second nature.

Similarly, if you want to improve your aim then you need your sensitivity and DPI drilled into your muscle memory. Outside of just playing FPS a lot, the best way to do this is with daily drills. Drills are exercises you can do to further enhance your muscle memory of how far your mouse needs to move in order to turn in-game. If you manage to perfect your muscle memory, you’ll be snapping onto your enemy’s head in no time.

There isn’t one ultimate drill that will help improve your aim in Warzone. Different methods work for different people. But I can at least walk you through how I keep my aim sharp. First, you’re going to want to download Aim Lab on Steam. It’s free-to-play and my personal favorite aim training game. Alternatively, you can pick up Aim Hero for $4.99 which is a simpler but easier to understand substitute.

Once it’s loaded, you’ll need to complete the setup tutorial. You can select what FPS you want to train for and input your sensitivity. Aim Lab will run you through a variety of tests in order to figure out your skill rating. Once you’ve acquired an SR, you’ll be able to see how you perform in each of the six aiming categories: flicking, tracking, speed, precision, perception, and cognition. You’ll want to return to Aim Lab every day and complete at least two run-throughs of a drill for each category. The default drills work well but there is Steam Workshop support if you want to try out any custom community drills instead. If you stick to this routine consistently whilst also playing Warzone often, your aim will improve over time.

Learning your gun

Needless to say, not every gun handles the exact same in Warzone. The majority of slow firing weapons accommodate a similar flick-centric aim style. That means snipers, DMRs, shotguns, and the heavier pistols simply rely on you landing flick shots onto either your enemy’s upper chest or head.

However, the same cannot be said of automatic weapons. Each and every automatic gun in Warzone has a unique recoil spray pattern. Learning this pattern is essential to become as accurate as possible. Learning the muscle memory from daily drills is step one, but if you don’t know how to apply that muscle memory it’s not that useful.

A comparison of the spray pattern of the AS Val (left) and Oden (right). You can see how they differ and therefore require different mouse movements to stay on target.

To figure out your favorite gun’s spray pattern, you’ll want to go into a private match or Plunder. Once you’re in, find a suitable wall for spraying a full magazine into. There are thousands of spots you can do this at but I like using the shipping crates outside of Vacant. Alternatively, for Modern Warfare guns you can load up a Shipment lobby and try them out there. This doesn’t work for Black Ops Cold War weapons as they aren’t usable in Modern Warfare multiplayer. Using them in Cold War itself is no good either as the gunplay is completely different in Treyarch’s game.

Once you’ve found a spot, fire a whole magazine without attempting to manage the recoil at all. After finishing your magazine, you’ll see a pattern emerge showing what direction your gun recoils. If the pattern goes up and right, you’ll need to practice pulling your mouse down and left to counteract that. Keep in mind that in an actual game you may be required to track horizontally whilst also pulling down on your mouse to manage recoil. This can be one of the hardest aim techniques to master in Warzone and will require you to keep practicing over and over.