PC Mouse Sensitivity

So I enjoy playing the occasional mouse and keyboard game on the old PC from time to time. The issue I have though is that when playing any kind of FPS or game that requires precision aiming I don't have the steadiest of hands. I'm really comfortable playing with my mouse at a fairly high DPI and have gotten used to the speed and precision but I find a shake and can't seem to be precise when playing shooters.

Any thoughts or tips on how to overcome this? Typically I'd just switch over to a controller and deal with the handicap but I've recently gotten in to MechWarrior Online again and enjoy the extra keys that come on gaming mouse.

This is very common and the reason why the majority of players that play FPS competitively with mouse and keyboard play at 400 or 800 dpi. Lower DPI allows for much more precise micro movement.This is further amplified as most of them don't move the mouse primarily with wrist movement but have the entire lower arm on the table and move that one foremost from the elbow.

The drawback, which is turning requiring much more mouse movement is usually offset by the use of relatively big mouse pads and distinct swipe movements.

You should get an idea of the technique if you look at some clips like that one

This one here should help you a lot to settle on a proper sensitivity that works for you. Just follow the example. Aim for a bot in a given game, move the character left and right and try to keep the head in your cross hair - if you end up ahead of the target your sensitivity is too high (you overshoot), if you end up behind the target, you should try to increase the sensitivity.

Go from there, play a couple of rounds and adjust based on feel - if you are under the impression you are ever so slightly too unstable in your aim, lower it a bit further, if you are trailing behind increase it a bit - but always give yourself a couple of rounds before making these adjustments and a couple of days if you make bigger changes.

Also generally speaking you look for a low weight mouse (100 g or less). Heavier mice require more force to initiate movement which people tend to dislike as it brings the tendency to push it initially too hard (which will make you overshoot your target trying to follow opponents movement).

My sensitivity rule used to be "Achieve precisely a 180 degree turn with one easy wrist motion", but i learned that pro players tend to have fairly low sensitivity, which reduces how a shake or accidental mouse movement affects where you're aiming, since then i tried to take sensitivity in FPS's down as far as i could stand which isn't much lower than it was to be honest but it's definitely helped. I also got a new mouse because the Razer Diamondback 3g i was using felt like it was skipping pixels, it was a really minor issue which i assumed was normal for years before changing mouse and immediately feeling the difference.
I haven't found DPI setting to make any difference, my first optical mouse wasn't able to keep up with fast motion so i say that anything above and including 800 should be totally fine, my current mouse has multiple settings up to 3200, the only reason i use 1600 is because it fits with the default mouse speed of windows for me.

At one point I just got a big mouse mat, set my DPI to 800 and my sensitivity in every game to the equivalent of a Quake/Source-engine 2.0. It sucked at first but in time it really helped my aim in competitive FPS.

@cikame: @ir0n:

I always felt that the lower sensitivity or DPI felt too slow for me but I may not have given it enough time to get used to. I think for most games I run around 1600 or 2400 DPI for most games I play. I'll definitely lower the settings some for the games I'm having issues with. I appreciate the pro-tips.

That sounds really high - I can get why you would initially go for something like that. Generally it's always a trade off in between twitch character movement and steady aim, however as mentioned in the second vid at the end of the day precise aim is the higher priority, so follow the suggestion, bring down the sensitivity gradually - maybe try 1200 and once you are settled on that one and still feel that you have a hard time to aim precisely decrease it further from there. No matter how you do it, initially you will perform worse than what you became used to, but in the long run it's still beneficial.

I played at 1600 myself most of the time and brought it down to 800 only in the last year but after some time (a bigger desk and mouse pad as well as a lighter mouse helped in addition) I got much more consisted than before.

@ir0n: I typically don't play a lot of shooters on my PC where as I play a lot of MMO's, ARPG's, and RTS on my computer. I do most of my shooting on consoles but I'm definitely going to be giving it a good college try as soon as I can get some adequate game time. The nice thing with my setup is I can adjust my DPI settings per game if i want which may be an incredibly shitty move but we'll see. I also don't use weights in my mouse and have a pretty large area for my mouse movements. I also have a steel series gaming Mouse pad so surface area shouldn't be an issue.

Sounds like you are good to go! In all honesty the theory sounds super easy to get, but in intense situations I tend to be all over the place with my aim as well :)

@ir0n: Don't need to stress to me on that. It's the stressful situations that I notice it the most. This basically describes me with anything that requires any kind of precision.

DPI and mouse sensitivity are not the same, you can get the same pointer speed with whatever DPI you are using by adjusting the sensitivity to match. Personally, I use 5500 DPI with sensitivity set to second to lowest setting because it feels much smoother compared to low DPI with high sensitivity and is not as affected by imperfections or small bumps in the desk surface.

Most people will try to avoid any sort of artificial alteration like smoothing as much as possible - I am not saying you are wrong as it might work fine for you but changing the windows sensitivity is kind of a no go for most and going for such high DPI is something few people will do.

I set my in game sens in most games to close to low as it can go, but even then I think I'm still playing CSGO at ~1.8x the theoretical dpi of the pros, who from what I can tell a lot of them use 400 dpi and like 2.2 in game sens and I have like 2000 dpi and 0.7 in game sens.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I used to be a ridiculously high-sensitivity player. I could turn a 180 by barely moving the mouse, and thought this was the way to go. I come from a background of playing very fast-paced shooters, mostly Unreal Tournament, where maybe this kind of thing is more forgiving. Also, in UT my preferred weapons are the impact hammer and flak cannon. Yep, good aim not required. :)

Fast forward to Overwatch, where this kind of movement makes it hard to aim with many of the characters. To match what I was used to, I had to set the slider to about 50-60, if that gives you some idea. In UT I was using 11-12, I think. The topic of sensitivity came up in the Overwatch community quite a bit, probably due to so many players being new to the FPS genre. After reading some more and watching some videos like the above, I was able to change to playing at a more reasonable value of 12 with my mouse set to 800 DPI. It took me almost no time to get used to this, surprisingly, and the increase in precision for aiming is amazing. Before I switched, I mostly played Junkrat, because you don't need very precise aiming for him. After switching, I can now comfortably play the hitscan characters like McCree, Soldier 76, and even the snipers. I always felt I was a shitty sniper but it's much easier now.

I know that the pros prefer as low as 400 DPI and maybe 5-8 sensitivity (Overwatch). This to me feels too slow, but what do I know, right? :)

Yeah I try 400 dpi but prefer 800 myself - it seems to be the sweet spot personally in the balance of mobility and aim. Then again back when I started gaming I know companies also began marketing their mice max DPI as core selling point. Clueless as I have been I was like - yeah for sure if the mouse is able to track 2.000 DPI than that must be twice as accurate as 1.000 - and tried to offset the increasing high DPI numbers the mice came with by adding all extra weight they cam with.

And now I am sitting with my 90 gramm mouse and an oversized mouse pad :)

Well after some experimenting I do find that the lower DPI isn't as significantly slow as I remember. Can't remember the exact DPI I was at (I think it was 800) but accuracy was much much better and I felt a lot steadier. Taking some getting used to do the large sweeps as I've always been a wrist flicker but definitely felt better overall. Thanks for all the feedback on this as I knew there was a solution but couldn't wrap my head around what it would be.

You need a good mouse and a good mouse mat that has low friction. I don't know anything about the new stuff though I still use an old Logitech G5 and a Qpad XT-R and they are about a decade old. I've not played competetive FPS in about a decade but with a good mouse and mouse mat you really just need to train your skills. Gaming mice usually alows you to change DPI on the fly so you can lower when sniping but use higher otherwise. That's how I used to play. The G5 was one of the first mice with that function but now it is common.

Yeah I'm using a Logitech G700 with a Steel Series Diablo 3 mouse pad.. I don't know if you configure DPI on the fly but I do know that you can configure it on a game by game basis depending on what .exe is ran. I love it and have used it consistently for the last 4 or 5 years. I also used to use a Logitech g15 keyboard but since moving to a laptop for gaming I don't really use it much these days.