I have been trying every different sense there is and can't seem to find the right one

[jovial oracle]

I have just started playing valorant about 4 days ago and have been messing with my sense since then. I primarily aim and flick with my wrist because I find aiming with my forearm doesn't feel too right. Currently I am at 1600 DPI and playing at a 0.219 sens in game. Its an okay feeling sense but I still feel very off with it. I was playing at 800 DPI and 0.55 sense and that seemed okay but yet again, feels off. any advice?

[tall relic]

there is no right sens, the more experienced you are the less often you'll feel 'off'

[jaunty stump]

Shooting range. Try flicking a vandal to get one shots on the bots in the normal training mode (spawning a random bot in a random spot and it doesn’t despawn until you kill it.)

Pay attention to your aim. If you miss, move your crosshair somewhere random and try flicking again. If you tend to under aim, raise your sense a bit. If you tend to over aim, lower it. Once you get to the point with each adjustment where you keep switching between over aiming and under aiming, adjust the sense in micro amounts. Keep in mind calorants aim sens actually works up to something like 8 digits (example, 0.65743289) or something, but it will round out the number to three digits (but what you enter is still active, I believe you can see the value in the config)

Also, once you have done that, put tour crosshair on a corner, and strafe around randomly, and focus on trying to keep your crosshair on that corner as consistently as possible (or you could use a bots head)

Try that at multiple ranges. If your able to do it consistently, you have found your sense. If you tend to jitter or over compensate for the movement (meaning if you change your strafe direction and you move your aim a little too far to compensate for the change in direction) then your aim sense may be too high, and if you under compensate (meaning when you change directions, it feels like your crosshair is being dragged with you, going in the same direction as your strafe) your sense may be too low, but take that with a grain of salt, as whats mor important is your ability to snap onto the target when stationary (so as to hit shots during your counter strafe)

Try that strafing practice at multiple ranges

Once you feel all around comfortable (and it doesn’t have to be perfect, just get it as consistent as you can) then try practicing on those bots the same way but add in your own strafing, and once you feel like you can do it, up the difficulty, and try different modes

Do not use the practice mode, because the bunched up number of bots can give you a false sense of accomplishment with headshots you weren’t actually going for (this is not going to happen in real matches)

Whatever sense you calculated through all of that practicing up until the stepping up on the bot challenge, write it down, and do NOT change this setting for a week at the least.

Train for at least an hour a day if you are taking this serious and want to play competitively, otherwise train as you see fit.

Id start off every play session with at least two death matches, practicing your crosshair placement and timing. Also learning to identify the difference in footstep audio, for example on icebox, if you are in that room with the zip lines and the catwalk, when you hear the footsteps go from a crunch sound to a slappy hollow sound, you know they have just entered the room and should be appearing soon. Also practice off angles, as often people will be walking so you wont hear them, and they will be expecting you in corners and such.

This training takes a long time. It could take you one week, it could take you months, but changing your sens frequently will only hinder you.

[tall relic]

ignore most of that and just practice, obsessing over trying to find a perfect sens is a complete waste of time. underflicking and overflicking, tracking too fast and too slow don't happen because of your sens. it's entirely down to your skill and this is the entire point of aimtraining. just pick a sens that feels reasonable, change or don't depending on your mood. deathmatch idea is good but the rest is worse than useless

[austere kernel]

this ^^^

[copper oak]

Not to try to downplay Wolfentodd's effort to help you, but Ryan is correct:

Pick a sensitivity that just feels (semi-)comfortable and stick to it. There is no "right" or "perfect sensitivity".

Overshooting, undershooting and under-/over tracking are technique issues and not sensitivity issues.

You will never find a sensitivity that fully eliminates any issues that you likely run into. This will take practise. This is why Wolfentodd's approach is not the most ideal - it instills the idea that your technique issue is actually a sensitivity issue. Sure, you could find a value that somewhat deminishes the effect of both, but human performance is never linear. What feels awesome today can feel slightly off tomorrow. Hence why it is so important to not hyperfocus sensitivity in that regard. No matter how much you touch and tweak it, you never tackle the real issue.

I'd personally argue that your sensitivity is too fast for the game. Valorant benefits from slower senses given that it is a game based more on precision and crosshair placement rather than quick reactivity. Your current sens calculated to 30cm/360 which is on the faster side of things.

Go 40cm or slower (0.4 @ 800 DPI) and just stick to it. It will feel off now, but will get better over time. Tweak it around occasionally if you feel like it, but do not tweak it with the idea in mind that it will help you win gunfights more.

There isn't inherently anything wrong with changing sensitivities, given that it is done and encouraged as a training tool, but people tend to use it as a "quick fix"-finder, which is not its purpose. But for now, I would just pick something and force yourself to stay with it for at least a week before doing something else.

I also recommend you to not mess with your DPI too much. Pick 800 or 1600 and just use the in-game slider for changing it. The difference between both DPIs are very miniscule anyway and not worth obsessing over.

You also mention that "aiming with your forearm doesn't feel too right".

That is because you mostly play on a faster sens, as I said before, and rarely if ever used your arm for aiming, which in turn makes it feel weird.

1 important note: you should not segment your aim like that. There is no "wrist only" or "arm only" when talking about aim.

What you are doing right now, is basically bottlenecking yourself to an extent. Obviously the sensitivity dictates which part you use more often, but you never ditch 1 in favor of the other.

Not using your arm will bottleneck you in vertical movement and wider horizontal flicks and tracking movements, while neglecting your wrist will cause issues with precision where you need it, given that your arm cannot properly replicate the more fine-tuned control of the wrist (and fingers).

You want to learn how to use both to improve your aim, and using the sensitivity I have given you in the previous comment is a good start for that.

[jaunty stump]

Its not to find the perfect sense, as I had stated not to be perfect, but to be consistent. As in find something thats comfortable for them and that they feel like they could actually get a hang of controlling

Just simply practicing wont do it. You’ll hear that from any contender. You actually have to gauge what your motor skills are capable of and define your range of comfort.

If you just throw a random sensitivity in and work with it it will take you a lot longer to get better then it will if you actually take the time to figure out what sensitivity is as consistent as possible for you, and work from there. You can change the sensitivity after that, but you wont progress as fast if you work randomly.

Countless guides, coaches, and pros have mentioned this.

I wasnt trying to guide them to the perfect sens. I was trying to guide them to getting as close to the most comfortable and consistent EDPI they might find. I really recommend an EDPI between 200 and 300 as thats what anyone immortal and higher are using, tried and true.

[copper oak]

You suggested them to keep swapping their sensitivity based on under-aiming and over-aiming, and eventually adjusting it with macro amounts/multiple decimals.

That alone slightly contradicts your statement of "not needing to be perfect" because at that point you are spending unnecessary extra time on trying to dial in your sensitivity to the extreme, based on factors that are technically flaws in technique. This will just cause people to hyper obsess over sensitivity and continue to tweak their settings until 1 or both of the issues aren't present anymore.

There is barely any difference between, lets say, 40cm/360 and 42cm/360 and going out of your way to micro-adjust in between those values doesn't end up making an impactful difference.

Just simply practising won't do it. You'll hear that from any contender

That depends what your definition/context of "practise" is, because if we talk about aim training - it absolutely takes practise. That last part about "gauging what your motor skills are capable of" fall exactly into that same category - you figure that out with experimentation and practise. That is what aim training and aim improvement is all about. It requires the user to push their boundaries and work on the weaknesses that this challenge brings you. This is how people increase their mouse control.

If you just throw a random sensitivity in and work with it it will take you a lot longer to get better then it will if you actually take the time to figure out what sensitivity as consistent as possible for you and work from there.

You need to take note here that OPs doesn't have a baseline sensitivity, and his current used senses at the moment are too fast for games likes Val, and the fact they are continuously switching doesn't make it better. Every sensitivity at this point is "random" to them.

My suggestion of "start with 40cm, stick to it for a week and then change it around if necessary" is basically me saying the same as you do in the above-quoted point: they have to start at a specific sens, gauge how it feels for them (for a prolonged period of time cause 1 or few days is often not enoug) and then change accordingly.

I don't disagree with the idea that they likely benefit finding their comfortable range first, but I was just mainly disagreeing with your approach due to how deeply detailed you went into the sensitivity-fine tuning.

At the same time they do not seem to apply any form of arm aiming which alone already slightly bottlenecks his aim, so a slower sens will allow them to learn that.

Mind you that I am not trying to argue or anything. It was just that what you initially tried to say didn't really matched up with what you wrote.

[jaunty stump]

Well yeah thats why I suggest an EDPI of 200 to 300 as its slow and precise

But the thing is, if you tune the aim in to something that you can control easily (which will most likely be within 200 and 300 edpi for the 103 FOV and character movement speed in valorant) it will vastly improve your aim. That is why it is something players like Tenz and other championship players recommend doing, especially the part about tracking the corner while moving, which I also forgot to mention to do it regularly even after you have a comfortable sense so as to practice holding a crosshair placement while repositioning.

The way you mentioned does work, but it is a LOT slower. Ive spent quite a lot of time learning how to coach aiming in games including valorant because its something Im passionate about. Ive seen friend go from using your method and being low elo for years, then doing what I said, getting a lower EDPI from the process, and they started jumping up in ranks because it will vastly improve your training results.

Its also the same process aim trainers go through. They will tell you it might be better to lower or raise your aim sens based off of your performance.

I can try to find the links to the guides I started out with on my aim training journey all the way through the coaching I have reviewed in the past. Im sorry if it comes off as a possible waste of time, but it is a highly proven method across various tactical and competitive games.

Also, I dont know if im coming off as rude or mean, I dont mean to. Im just sharing what I have learned from pros and coaches.

[copper oak]

I see. I get your point now a bit more. Thanks for elaborating more on it.

You do not sound rude at all! And I hope I did neither. That is not my intention.

I would love to see those links if you could share them, but if not, that is totally fine.

I think the in-game application of it all that you are addressing is maybe something then I do not understand properly, cause of course - your rank is based on more things than just aim and as we all know, making it an obsession can work against you rather than with you. Although aim can absolutely be a problem for some and holding them back, eventually they might or might not tunnel vision around that specific part and forget the bigger scheme of things. That was basically the point that me and others tried to push, if that makes sense.

[jaunty stump]

Yeah. Ill try to get the links tomorrow. Im grinding some guild wars and overwatch tonight. And no you did not sound rude.

[copper oak]

Goodluck with the grind 👍