Some quick things to note…

This guide is based on what I used to improve my aim. This might not work for everyone, but I hope that you look over everything I provide.

Also, a lot of the tips I give here can transfer over to other classes, especially ones that are shotgun-oriented (like battle engie, soldier, etc), so even if you’re not here to find tips for Scout specifically, I still suggest looking everything over.

Settings to Change

The first few tips will require very little effort on your end, just some settings that will immediately help a ton.

TIP #1: DISABLE MOUSE ACCEL

Mouse accel is a setting in Windows 10 (and most operating systems) that supposedly enhances pointer precision, but in TF2 it’s actually hurting you more than helping you.

Why? Basically, what it does is slide your cursor more whenever you jerk your aim. That’s all it does. And it’s bad because it makes it really hard to build up any kind of muscle memory.

If you’ve been playing for a little bit with it on, you’ll probably have to get used to aiming with it off, but trust me, it’s worth disabling in the long run.

TIP #2: CHANGE YOUR SENSITIVITY

This is something you can just adjust in the normal settings. Honestly, the thing I suggest you do with your sensitivity is use what’s comfortable for you. Just load into an empty server or something and play around with this setting until you hit something that works for you.

The general rule-of-thumb most give for this is to put your mouse in the middle of your mousepad, and then adjust your sensitivity until you can turn your character completely around just by sliding to the edge of the mousepad.

(The easiest way to get an empty server is to just open console and type “map itemtest” without the quotes)

TIP #3: INTERP

This has less to do with aim and more to do with hitreg, but I still suggest adjusting this if you’re trying to get better.

To grossly oversimplify, interp settings are basically how your game is coded to communicate with the server. The default settings are mainly meant for people with really slow and delayed connections. However, it isn’t 2007 anymore, and we can do a lot better.

Just one small issue: For some baffling reason, Valve decided to not allow you to change these settings from the actual settings menu.

So to change them, we have to use the console.
[Go to Options –> Keyboard –> Advanced –> Make sure “Enable Developer Console” is checked.]
[Hit Ok, close the menu and then hit the “~” key (or whatever you have set to open the console with.]

Once the console is open, copy and paste each of these lines in:

Your game is now using the more optimized settings.

TIP #4: QUALITY OF LIFE SETTINGS

These have basically nothing at all to do with aim, but we might as well change them while we have console open. They’ll make our lives a lot easier.

Skip ahead to the next chapter if you don’t care about these.

FOV & VIEWMODELS:

These settings shrink your viewmodels and increase your FOV. The difference isn’t that noticeable from the picture, but you’ll definitely feel it ingame.

The more you can see, the less you die from things you can’t see.

(If you’re wondering what HUD this is, it’s rayshud.)

FAST SWITCH:

This line turns on fast weapon switching (since the default is really annoying to use).
If you use this, I suggest pressing the 1 2 and 3 keys to switch weapons instead of the scroll wheel.

DAMAGE NUMBERS & HITSOUNDS:

These lines show the amount of damage you’re dealing, and it also plays a sound whenever you do deal damage. Both are kinda important, honestly.

NOTE: That last line makes the hit sounds slightly higher pitched, which is less jarring to my ears, personally speaking. Don’t use it if that sort of thing bothers you.

QUICK PLUG BEFORE WE MOVE ON

There’s a workshop entry that’s petitioning to have the default settings changed to these values.
(minus the high pitched hitsound)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2156169616
Please go support it, it will help make the game much more accessible to new players.

Changing up how to play

TIP #5: THE BACK SCATTER

The Back Scatter is a fairly disliked weapon among scout players, but I honestly think it’s a really great weapon for learning how to aim.

The main reason for this is it’s 20% wider bullet spread over stock. It makes it a tad bit more forgiving, and once you get used to how it works, you’ll be hitting every shot once you switch back to stock. If you want something to train with, use it.

Additionally, it grants you minicrits if you shoot someone when you’re close and behind them. You can use this to work on your gamesense, but more on that later.

Fun fact: If you’re F2P and can’t afford to trade for one, that’s not an issue!
You can go into the ingame store and borrow the gun for free! It only lasts for a week, but depending on your schedule, you can use that time to get a grip on the basics.

I hope they don’t rebalance this weapon and this entire section becomes irrelevant lol
If they have to buff it, they should remove the clip size penalty and it’ll be fine imo

TIP #6: STOP SPAMMING JUMP!

This was a personal habit of mine that really messed with my ability to aim properly. I suggest you break this habit as soon as possible if you experience it.

Basically, what I did was as soon as I saw any enemy, I would just mash the jump, crouch, and WASD keys to just make my movement as herky-jerk and unpredictable as possible.

… While trying to shoot the enemy gamer.

I got into this habit by watching scout tutorials on youtube which all said “you need to use your movement to not die! jump and make yourself unpredictable!”

So I did that, and I still died anyway. Yes, movement is important when playing Scout, but what these videos should emphasize is that, when you’re learning, you should try to find a balance between your movement and your ability to aim, and then try to improve upon both at the same time. As you get better at scout, your aim will naturally get better and better at keeping up with all the jukes you’ll eventually start learning to throw out.

Throwing out crazy, spammy, unpredictable movement can still be useful in a defensive sense (like if you’re trying to move through an area that a sniper is watching), but when you actually start shooting people, try to tone it down if your mouse can’t keep up.

How much should you actually move when you’re actually fighting people? Well, I’ll go over that in my next point:

TIP #7: AIM WITH YOUR MOVEMENT

When you’re first learning how to play the class, you should start by only strafing. Use your speed to circle around behind the person you’re trying to kill by pressing A or D. Don’t even jump.

At the same time, track the person with your crosshair, and shoot them.

It’s extremely rudimentary and basic, but that was about all I could do when I was first learning.

As I got better, I learned basic dodging. You can jump over stuff aimed at your feet, and you can avoid stuff aimed at your face by reversing direction (going from A to D, or from D to A)

I learned you can take on Heavies by using walls to your advantage. When they’re trying to shoot you, hide behind the edge of a wall, then quickly peek, shoot them, and then run back. And just repeat this pattern as much as you can still hide behind there. It works because your gun deals damage in bursts, while Heavy has to keep firing continuously at you.

Pyros, just keep your distance from them, try to see if you can get them from behind or around a wall, or if not then just chip away at them while trying to make yourself hard to track with the flamethrower.

There’s a lot more tricks you’ll pick up, such as jumping over people, faking a retreat, and some that even I don’t know yet, but you don’t have to worry about any of that. Just focus on the strafing and the aiming, and then work your way up from there.

Finding the right way to Practice

There’s… A lot of ways you can find practice with aim.

What worked for me was just practicing in the game itself (Casual can work, but because of it’s state as of when I’m writing this, I recommend using community servers instead)

TIP #8: FINDING THE RIGHT MAP

In my opinion, the best map to learn how to play Scout effectively is KOTH Harvest.

The map is small enough so that’s easy to learn and navigate, but it also has a decent amount of flanking routes and it’s also a popular map for Snipers (your natural prey).

Here are some other good maps to try and work out your aim on:
– CP_Gorge
– CP_Freight
– KOTH_Lakeside
– KOTH_Lazarus
– KOTH_Sawmill
– KOTH_Viaduct
(most koth maps are good honestly)

TIP #9: THE RIGHT STRAT TO USE

Honestly… The best way to practice your aim, in my opinion, is to just go around on these servers and harass the good players.

Avoid the objective if you can. Literally all you’re here for is to try and mess around, fragging people.

Now… You’re gonna die a lot doing this (especially if you’re using Back Scatter). That’s the whole idea. You want to have as many interactions, 1v1s, whatevers against these players as possible. You might actually be helping if the entire enemy team is distracted trying to kill this one scout who is camping their spawn.

Ideally, the players you want to go after are Snipers, Demos, and Medics, since Scouts are kind of hard to kill for them.

Over time, you’ll pick up who you want to fight, who to avoid, what fights to run away from, and all this time, you’ll be improving your movement and aim.

That’s all there is to it!

TIP #10: IGNORING THE SALT

Now, when you do this, you might get ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ (by both the enemy and your own team), you might get verbally abused, have slurs thrown at you for “NOT HELPING YOUR TEAM” and just… receive a lot of toxicity.

Trust me, it’s just part of TF2, and what they say doesn’t matter. It’s a pub server, after all.

But regardless, that kind of stuff can still hurt sometimes. So, my advice is to just disable text and voicechat altogether by using these commands:

Since you’re mostly working as someone who’s only there to frag, your own team’s chat won’t be of much use anyway.

There’s no shame in not wanting to deal with toxicity, trust me.

If you want to re-enable it, then just put

Final Notes

The last thing you should know about learning how to aim as Scout is something called bullet spread.
(And to be honest, IMO it’s the biggest issue with Scout in Casual Mode as I’m writing this)

There’s a setting with TF2 servers that only affects shotguns and scatterguns.
You can either have the gun shoot in a fixed pattern (like on the left), or have the bullets go completely randomly (like on the right).

This means that you can occasionally miss several bullets from your shot even though your aim is fine. This is why I suggest playing on Community servers to practice your aim (apart from the whole bot issue), since most of the big ones have this setting where the bullets fire in a fixed pattern.

Scout can be playable in casual mode, where this setting is enabled, but I seriously hope Valve changes this at some point because it can feel really unfair at times and serves no actual purpose.

Aside from all that, I hope you succeed in your learning journey. I am in the firm belief that this game needs more good Scout mains. The ones that kill those annoying snipers and uses their milk to help the team, or atleast can aim for something.

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