Crosshair placement is one of the first techniques you should learn in CsGO or any First Person Shooter if you’re keen on climbing the ladder. Beginners tend to aim anywhere while not in a fight, then when the shooting starts they move the mouse to aim for the enemy and they die before pressing the trigger. This is where a good Crosshair placement technique becomes an obvious must. I'll guide you on how to get this right.
In this guide we will explain to you what is Crosshair placement, why is it important, how to do it correctly, how to apply it to various games and some advanced tips on how to improve in the use of this technique.
¿What is Crosshair placement?
Crosshair placement is simply pre-aiming at the head of the enemy before he appears on the screen. It’s applicable to all First Person Shooter games, although we will extend a bit more in Counter Strike Global Offensive, we will touch PUBG and Fortnite briefly.
Why is Crosshair placement so important
Because if you do it correctly you will be the first to shoot and kill, that simple.
By doing the Crosshair placement technique you will be pre-aiming at the spot your enemy will appear and doing so you will cut precious aiming time, you won’t have to move the mouse all across the mousepad, you will have to make small adjustments at most.
This makes for a huge difference, in a First Person Shooter game milliseconds matter, if you dominate this technique you will have an easier time winning gunfights and climbing the ladder.
How to do Crosshair placement correctly
It is made of essentially two parts, the x-axis and the y-axis on your monitor.
In the y-axis department you must worry about always aiming at head level or where the enemy’s head would be, this is what most people with some first person shooter experience do, but there is more to it.
In the x-axis department you’ll be using an effective aim technique called angle-snapping. This is basically keeping your crosshair as close as possible to holding positions such as corners or cover object where enemies hide or appear from.
So simply put, just constantly aim for where the enemy might appear rather than moving the camera too much unnecessarily. If you combine both the x-axis and y-axis technique you should be good to go.
Counter Strike tips
Adaptate for AWP and SMG. Crosshair placement works in a different manner here. Aiming for the head is not as effective, you must hit the center of mass. So lowering the aim to stomach level is a good adaptation. Also the scope-in time requires you to briefly wait for maximum accuracy, since firing too soon will end in a random bullet.
Use the workshop maps such as Prefire Mirage by Yesber. There are many maps created by the community with bot setup in spots where real player would normally appear. This allows practicing you muscle memory and learning the positions where you need to place your aim.
Practice in Deathmatch. Here people tend to do more unpredictable things like rotations, fakes and splits that force you into playing out of the norm. But remember not to go in playing mindlessly to get a highscore, play to improve. Force yourself into active aiming.
Watch professional players like s1mple, his particular Crosshair placement technique is quite unique and you should analyze his gameplay to improve yourself.
PUBG Mobile Crosshair placement adaptation (And other mobile FPS games)
Basically you do the same thing, but this time around you’re not using a mouse, making more of a challenge the small aim adjustments you do when you use Crosshair placement. The solution for this is that you need to learn how to use the gyroscope. This is because your thumb is not precise enough to control small movements on your phone. Using the gyro you will be able to correct the aim enough to aim for small targets like the head of you enemies.
Fortnite Crosshair placement
In a game where you almost met your enemies inside buildings or around corners Crosshair placement is essential. The adaptation you must make here is that your aim with shotguns must be at head or high torso height, this will allow you to make more damage to your opponent, do not keep your crosshair at ground level, the time it takes to aim higher is enough to lose a battle.
Rainbow Six Siege Crosshair placement tips
If you’re not a high ranking player we recommend pre firing at head level when someone is pushing you and you are aiming at a doorway, don’t wait until you see them. Otherwise if you’re getting into the high elos, people will start crouching while peeking the doorways, in this case try aiming for crouching head level.
If your are already using the Crosshair placement technique and your intention is getting better at it, we recommend playing classic terrorist hunt and setting your gun setting to semi-auto. Go for one shots on every single terrorist, as you get better at this, tune up the difficulty to hard or realistic depending on how good you are. Some good intense 10 hour training of running Terrorist hunt as fast as possible should get you to a pretty good level. After this you should move on to practice in different maps and situations to get used to very corner or hiding spot.
Apex legends Crosshair placement tips
When you play Apex Legends you will often find yourself pointing at the ground, this is because you are always busy with looting. You must make a conscious effort to get your Crosshair placement right. Remember to align your sight after looting, this will keep your hands busy and ready to react.
Overwatch Crosshair placement tips
First you need to choose a crosshair that fits your playstyle and aim. In the settings you can customize it for every hero or use the same for all of them if you prefer it this way. For most character either choose the dot or the small rectangle, also pick a bright color that stands out from the rest of the game.
Keep your Crosshair placement at head level at all times. This is useful for any type of hero, not just DPS ones. Even when wandering around the map, make sure you have the aim at head level all the time.
General tips to improve your Crosshair placement
You can do some things that apply to most games and situations to improve your Crosshair placement. They are simple and will help you improve.
How to counter players doing Crosshair placement
As we explained in the Rainbow Six Siege tips, the higher the elo, enemies will start crouching. To the same, also make your movements erratic if you’re the one entering a place. Don’t be obvious.
If you are playing with teammates, we recommend using different strategies. One of you should crouch and the other not. One should close-peek while the other should wide-peek if you both are running out from the same position. This will make your enemy choose between two targets, naturally forcing him into making a decision and hindering his time to fire.
Conclusion on Crosshair placement
Practice makes perfect, don’t go into matches mindlessly, play to improve, not to win. This way you will be constantly winning eventually without even noticing.
Force yourself into active aiming, think your moves ahead, eventually you will do it automatically. When starting a match adjust your y-axis using your teammates first and you x-axis later.
I hope that this guide was helpful, it doesn't matter if you're really serious about climbing the ladder or just playing for fun, I wish for you to improve and succeed.