I have 100 hours on scout and have pretty good aim but don't know how to move as scout I have searched on youtube for movement guides and only found ones which state the obvious
Does anyone have any tips for movement for scout
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TF2 General Discussion
I have 100 hours on scout and have pretty good aim but don't know how to move as scout I have searched on youtube for movement guides and only found ones which state the obvious
first person to post "use wasd" gets an amazon delivered assassination
first person to post "use wasd" gets an amazon delivered assassination
movement is intuition, gut feeling, experience, muscle memory
play more play better players dont overthink it
movement is intuition, gut feeling, experience, muscle memory
play more play better players dont overthink it
play more play better players dont overthink it
Very generally, you want to move with intent behind every strafe. You shouldn’t make a movement without a reason behind it, which means ideas of being as random as possible are incorrect. Obviously, you aren’t going to be super consciously thinking about the reason behind every single keypress while you play, but the more you play the more you’ll realize when moving in a certain way is good through trial and error, and you’ll learn to recognize certain situations and relationships between player positions and movement and subconsciously react optimally. Here are some things that can help inform your decisions behind your movements, mainly focused on scout movement against hitscan weapons:
1.Anti-mirroring:
Strafing to your left when your opponent moves to your right, and vice versa. This increases the angle between you and your opponent, which forces them to move their mouse more, making aiming more intense. This also increases the difficulty of aiming equally for you, but this allows you to leverage your superior aim (if your aim is better) while decreasing your chance of taking damage.
With good prediction and crosshair placement, you can decrease the difficulty of aiming while anti-mirroring, and sometimes even use these strafes to benefit your aim, in effect giving you the benefit of hard to hit movement while simultaneously helping your aim. This is done simply by, in between shots, placing your crosshair towards the side you predict your opponent will move in the future, slightly distant from their player model. When your opponent moves this direction and you move opposite this direction because you are anti-mirroring, you will be pulling your crosshair into your opponent while they will be pushing themself into your crosshair, which reduces aiming to simply clicking when your crosshair intersects their player model, with minimal mouse movement required.
2. Mirroring:
Generally, mirroring is unadvisable, as it makes you far too hittable. Mirroring makes fights approach being much more an even coin toss and decreases your ability to leverage your greater aim and movement skill to more consistently win fights, since dealing damage is made easy for both opponents. However, if you have a large health advantage in a tracking weapon fight, or if your opponent is not looking at you, mirroring can be a good decision. Note that “not looking at you” doesn’t only mean completely unaware of you but can also that your opponent is aiming significantly in the opposite direction of your position.
For example, if your opponent is strafing to your right but aiming distantly to your left, mirroring and strafing to your right would be much better than anti-mirroring here, since anti-mirroring and strafing to your left would only move you into their crosshair. Mirroring here would benefit you both in aim and movement, since it would make aiming easier for you while continuing to increase the angle between you and your opponent, forcing them to make a challenging wide flick. Anti-mirroring here would most likely be an objectively poor decision, and recognizing these scenarios in which mirroring is optimal is important. Simply put, you should generally try to move away from the direction of your opponent’s crosshair if they are aiming far enough away from you to make aiming for them significantly more challenging, in your best judgement.
3. Dodging:
You can’t truly dodge against hitscan, but by using visual cues you can greatly increase the chance of making your opponent miss. This is most relevant and easy against tracking weapons, but the same idea can be used against scattergun, shotgun, etc. If your opponent is shooting at you with pistol, you can very easily see tracers on your screen that give you continuous and extremely valuable information of where your opponent is aiming. You can use this information to determine the best way to move to make aiming difficult for them. If you can see that their aim is trailing behind your strafe, continue your strafe to maximize the amount of time that their crosshair is off you. If their shots are hitting you, change your strafe direction to force them to readjust their mouse movement, or do a short fake strafe in the opposite direction or short series of ADAD strafes to feign directional change, only to continue moving in the original direction again. Simply put, only change strafe directions when you are taking damage.
This same idea can somewhat be applied against non-tracking weapons, but rather than using tracers to inform you of their crosshair position, you will have to rely on their player and/or weapon models. If you determine from your opponent’s player/weapon model that they are aiming significantly to your left, then the best decision is often to strafe right, as strafing left will only move you into their crosshair. You can, however, use tracers of shots fired from these weapons to inform future predictions of where your opponent will aim, as most players will sometimes fall into predictable aiming patterns, especially evident when they are struggling or when they miss.
4. Map geometry:
Walls and props can influence player movement in predictable ways. You can take advantage of this to benefit your aim by predicting opponent movement, or to make yourself more unhittable by doing opposite what your opponent will likely predict based on map geometry. The most obvious example of this is walls or props inhibiting your movement. If a wall is to your side, the only direction you can move is opposite the wall, and many players will choose to move this direction rather than not moving at all. However, if you stay close to the wall, you will often find your opponent will incorrectly predict you to move away from the wall and miss. To increase effectiveness and decrease predictability, you can combine this with short/fake strafes, to make it seem like you are going to move away from the wall, before returning back to your original position near the wall.
5. Net directional change:
If possible, you will want to have ended up in a different spot than you started the fight, increasing the overall angle between you and your opponent to increase the amount of mouse movement required. In other words, don’t ADAD spam, and try to move horizontally towards a side of your opponent throughout the fight, as failing to do so confines your movement to a smaller range easier for your opponent to predict and aim at.
6. Counter movement:
It is common for newer scout players to attempt to run at your side, which provides them easy shots as your horizontal movement begins to become more forward and backward from their perspective, which is easy to hit. It is extremely predictable and easy for you to hit them when they are doing this and can be easily countered with simple backwards movement, preventing them from reaching your side. You can occasionally do this movement yourself if you are confident that your opponent won’t be able to react, usually when their crosshair is pointing far away from the side you intend to run at, they are reloading but you aren’t, or if they are against a wall or prop that has geometry that limits their backwards movement but not yours.
Against players who ADAD spam, that is, short strafes which change direction frequently and don’t travel much distance, you can’t anti-mirror or mirror since they are moving too quickly for you to react, but strafing widely and making sure to traverse a large distance is optimal and makes countering these players extremely easy. From their perspective, they have a very large range of area that they will have to predict and aim at, while from your perspective, you know exactly the small range that they will stay in.
Very generally, you want to move with intent behind every strafe. You shouldn’t make a movement without a reason behind it, which means ideas of being as random as possible are incorrect. Obviously, you aren’t going to be super consciously thinking about the reason behind every single keypress while you play, but the more you play the more you’ll realize when moving in a certain way is good through trial and error, and you’ll learn to recognize certain situations and relationships between player positions and movement and subconsciously react optimally. Here are some things that can help inform your decisions behind your movements, mainly focused on scout movement against hitscan weapons:
1.Anti-mirroring:
Strafing to your left when your opponent moves to your right, and vice versa. This increases the angle between you and your opponent, which forces them to move their mouse more, making aiming more intense. This also increases the difficulty of aiming equally for you, but this allows you to leverage your superior aim (if your aim is better) while decreasing your chance of taking damage.
With good prediction and crosshair placement, you can decrease the difficulty of aiming while anti-mirroring, and sometimes even use these strafes to benefit your aim, in effect giving you the benefit of hard to hit movement while simultaneously helping your aim. This is done simply by, in between shots, placing your crosshair towards the side you predict your opponent will move in the future, slightly distant from their player model. When your opponent moves this direction and you move opposite this direction because you are anti-mirroring, you will be pulling your crosshair into your opponent while they will be pushing themself into your crosshair, which reduces aiming to simply clicking when your crosshair intersects their player model, with minimal mouse movement required.
2. Mirroring:
Generally, mirroring is unadvisable, as it makes you far too hittable. Mirroring makes fights approach being much more an even coin toss and decreases your ability to leverage your greater aim and movement skill to more consistently win fights, since dealing damage is made easy for both opponents. However, if you have a large health advantage in a tracking weapon fight, or if your opponent is not looking at you, mirroring can be a good decision. Note that “not looking at you” doesn’t only mean completely unaware of you but can also that your opponent is aiming significantly in the opposite direction of your position.
For example, if your opponent is strafing to your right but aiming distantly to your left, mirroring and strafing to your right would be much better than anti-mirroring here, since anti-mirroring and strafing to your left would only move you into their crosshair. Mirroring here would benefit you both in aim and movement, since it would make aiming easier for you while continuing to increase the angle between you and your opponent, forcing them to make a challenging wide flick. Anti-mirroring here would most likely be an objectively poor decision, and recognizing these scenarios in which mirroring is optimal is important. Simply put, you should generally try to move away from the direction of your opponent’s crosshair if they are aiming far enough away from you to make aiming for them significantly more challenging, in your best judgement.
3. Dodging:
You can’t truly dodge against hitscan, but by using visual cues you can greatly increase the chance of making your opponent miss. This is most relevant and easy against tracking weapons, but the same idea can be used against scattergun, shotgun, etc. If your opponent is shooting at you with pistol, you can very easily see tracers on your screen that give you continuous and extremely valuable information of where your opponent is aiming. You can use this information to determine the best way to move to make aiming difficult for them. If you can see that their aim is trailing behind your strafe, continue your strafe to maximize the amount of time that their crosshair is off you. If their shots are hitting you, change your strafe direction to force them to readjust their mouse movement, or do a short fake strafe in the opposite direction or short series of ADAD strafes to feign directional change, only to continue moving in the original direction again. Simply put, only change strafe directions when you are taking damage.
This same idea can somewhat be applied against non-tracking weapons, but rather than using tracers to inform you of their crosshair position, you will have to rely on their player and/or weapon models. If you determine from your opponent’s player/weapon model that they are aiming significantly to your left, then the best decision is often to strafe right, as strafing left will only move you into their crosshair. You can, however, use tracers of shots fired from these weapons to inform future predictions of where your opponent will aim, as most players will sometimes fall into predictable aiming patterns, especially evident when they are struggling or when they miss.
4. Map geometry:
Walls and props can influence player movement in predictable ways. You can take advantage of this to benefit your aim by predicting opponent movement, or to make yourself more unhittable by doing opposite what your opponent will likely predict based on map geometry. The most obvious example of this is walls or props inhibiting your movement. If a wall is to your side, the only direction you can move is opposite the wall, and many players will choose to move this direction rather than not moving at all. However, if you stay close to the wall, you will often find your opponent will incorrectly predict you to move away from the wall and miss. To increase effectiveness and decrease predictability, you can combine this with short/fake strafes, to make it seem like you are going to move away from the wall, before returning back to your original position near the wall.
5. Net directional change:
If possible, you will want to have ended up in a different spot than you started the fight, increasing the overall angle between you and your opponent to increase the amount of mouse movement required. In other words, don’t ADAD spam, and try to move horizontally towards a side of your opponent throughout the fight, as failing to do so confines your movement to a smaller range easier for your opponent to predict and aim at.
6. Counter movement:
It is common for newer scout players to attempt to run at your side, which provides them easy shots as your horizontal movement begins to become more forward and backward from their perspective, which is easy to hit. It is extremely predictable and easy for you to hit them when they are doing this and can be easily countered with simple backwards movement, preventing them from reaching your side. You can occasionally do this movement yourself if you are confident that your opponent won’t be able to react, usually when their crosshair is pointing far away from the side you intend to run at, they are reloading but you aren’t, or if they are against a wall or prop that has geometry that limits their backwards movement but not yours.
Against players who ADAD spam, that is, short strafes which change direction frequently and don’t travel much distance, you can’t anti-mirror or mirror since they are moving too quickly for you to react, but strafing widely and making sure to traverse a large distance is optimal and makes countering these players extremely easy. From their perspective, they have a very large range of area that they will have to predict and aim at, while from your perspective, you know exactly the small range that they will stay in.
1.Anti-mirroring:
Strafing to your left when your opponent moves to your right, and vice versa. This increases the angle between you and your opponent, which forces them to move their mouse more, making aiming more intense. This also increases the difficulty of aiming equally for you, but this allows you to leverage your superior aim (if your aim is better) while decreasing your chance of taking damage.
With good prediction and crosshair placement, you can decrease the difficulty of aiming while anti-mirroring, and sometimes even use these strafes to benefit your aim, in effect giving you the benefit of hard to hit movement while simultaneously helping your aim. This is done simply by, in between shots, placing your crosshair towards the side you predict your opponent will move in the future, slightly distant from their player model. When your opponent moves this direction and you move opposite this direction because you are anti-mirroring, you will be pulling your crosshair into your opponent while they will be pushing themself into your crosshair, which reduces aiming to simply clicking when your crosshair intersects their player model, with minimal mouse movement required.
2. Mirroring:
Generally, mirroring is unadvisable, as it makes you far too hittable. Mirroring makes fights approach being much more an even coin toss and decreases your ability to leverage your greater aim and movement skill to more consistently win fights, since dealing damage is made easy for both opponents. However, if you have a large health advantage in a tracking weapon fight, or if your opponent is not looking at you, mirroring can be a good decision. Note that “not looking at you” doesn’t only mean completely unaware of you but can also that your opponent is aiming significantly in the opposite direction of your position.
For example, if your opponent is strafing to your right but aiming distantly to your left, mirroring and strafing to your right would be much better than anti-mirroring here, since anti-mirroring and strafing to your left would only move you into their crosshair. Mirroring here would benefit you both in aim and movement, since it would make aiming easier for you while continuing to increase the angle between you and your opponent, forcing them to make a challenging wide flick. Anti-mirroring here would most likely be an objectively poor decision, and recognizing these scenarios in which mirroring is optimal is important. Simply put, you should generally try to move away from the direction of your opponent’s crosshair if they are aiming far enough away from you to make aiming for them significantly more challenging, in your best judgement.
3. Dodging:
You can’t truly dodge against hitscan, but by using visual cues you can greatly increase the chance of making your opponent miss. This is most relevant and easy against tracking weapons, but the same idea can be used against scattergun, shotgun, etc. If your opponent is shooting at you with pistol, you can very easily see tracers on your screen that give you continuous and extremely valuable information of where your opponent is aiming. You can use this information to determine the best way to move to make aiming difficult for them. If you can see that their aim is trailing behind your strafe, continue your strafe to maximize the amount of time that their crosshair is off you. If their shots are hitting you, change your strafe direction to force them to readjust their mouse movement, or do a short fake strafe in the opposite direction or short series of ADAD strafes to feign directional change, only to continue moving in the original direction again. Simply put, only change strafe directions when you are taking damage.
This same idea can somewhat be applied against non-tracking weapons, but rather than using tracers to inform you of their crosshair position, you will have to rely on their player and/or weapon models. If you determine from your opponent’s player/weapon model that they are aiming significantly to your left, then the best decision is often to strafe right, as strafing left will only move you into their crosshair. You can, however, use tracers of shots fired from these weapons to inform future predictions of where your opponent will aim, as most players will sometimes fall into predictable aiming patterns, especially evident when they are struggling or when they miss.
4. Map geometry:
Walls and props can influence player movement in predictable ways. You can take advantage of this to benefit your aim by predicting opponent movement, or to make yourself more unhittable by doing opposite what your opponent will likely predict based on map geometry. The most obvious example of this is walls or props inhibiting your movement. If a wall is to your side, the only direction you can move is opposite the wall, and many players will choose to move this direction rather than not moving at all. However, if you stay close to the wall, you will often find your opponent will incorrectly predict you to move away from the wall and miss. To increase effectiveness and decrease predictability, you can combine this with short/fake strafes, to make it seem like you are going to move away from the wall, before returning back to your original position near the wall.
5. Net directional change:
If possible, you will want to have ended up in a different spot than you started the fight, increasing the overall angle between you and your opponent to increase the amount of mouse movement required. In other words, don’t ADAD spam, and try to move horizontally towards a side of your opponent throughout the fight, as failing to do so confines your movement to a smaller range easier for your opponent to predict and aim at.
6. Counter movement:
It is common for newer scout players to attempt to run at your side, which provides them easy shots as your horizontal movement begins to become more forward and backward from their perspective, which is easy to hit. It is extremely predictable and easy for you to hit them when they are doing this and can be easily countered with simple backwards movement, preventing them from reaching your side. You can occasionally do this movement yourself if you are confident that your opponent won’t be able to react, usually when their crosshair is pointing far away from the side you intend to run at, they are reloading but you aren’t, or if they are against a wall or prop that has geometry that limits their backwards movement but not yours.
Against players who ADAD spam, that is, short strafes which change direction frequently and don’t travel much distance, you can’t anti-mirror or mirror since they are moving too quickly for you to react, but strafing widely and making sure to traverse a large distance is optimal and makes countering these players extremely easy. From their perspective, they have a very large range of area that they will have to predict and aim at, while from your perspective, you know exactly the small range that they will stay in.
7. Movement against slower classes:
Against slower hitscan classes, like shotgun soldier, engineer, etc., your faster movement speed can be used to your advantage. Since they move slower, these classes are unable to counter your movement as effectively, even if they react perfectly in time. Strafing very widely up close to an opponent towards their sides or even behind them is often optimal against these classes, and leaves them to rely extremely heavily on their aim.
That being said, I never actually thought about any of these things while improving my scout movement. These are all things learned subconsciously and thought of after the fact and I think the best way to improve your scout movement is simply through trial and error and experimentation. Try to move in different ways and pay attention to what works and when it works. If you are losing and taking damage way too frequently, you must change something with your movement. It doesn’t matter what change you make, just do something different since whatever you are currently doing obviously doesn’t work. If that still doesn’t work, try something else and so on. Through trial and error, you will find what works in what situation and you’ll gradually make improvements to your movement and learn how to move based on what is currently happening on your screen. As you play better players, you’ll find that your movement no longer works against them, and you’ll have to be fine with completely changing the way you move again, which is key to improving
7. Movement against slower classes:
Against slower hitscan classes, like shotgun soldier, engineer, etc., your faster movement speed can be used to your advantage. Since they move slower, these classes are unable to counter your movement as effectively, even if they react perfectly in time. Strafing very widely up close to an opponent towards their sides or even behind them is often optimal against these classes, and leaves them to rely extremely heavily on their aim.
That being said, I never actually thought about any of these things while improving my scout movement. These are all things learned subconsciously and thought of after the fact and I think the best way to improve your scout movement is simply through trial and error and experimentation. Try to move in different ways and pay attention to what works and when it works. If you are losing and taking damage way too frequently, you must change something with your movement. It doesn’t matter what change you make, just do something different since whatever you are currently doing obviously doesn’t work. If that still doesn’t work, try something else and so on. Through trial and error, you will find what works in what situation and you’ll gradually make improvements to your movement and learn how to move based on what is currently happening on your screen. As you play better players, you’ll find that your movement no longer works against them, and you’ll have to be fine with completely changing the way you move again, which is key to improving
Against slower hitscan classes, like shotgun soldier, engineer, etc., your faster movement speed can be used to your advantage. Since they move slower, these classes are unable to counter your movement as effectively, even if they react perfectly in time. Strafing very widely up close to an opponent towards their sides or even behind them is often optimal against these classes, and leaves them to rely extremely heavily on their aim.
That being said, I never actually thought about any of these things while improving my scout movement. These are all things learned subconsciously and thought of after the fact and I think the best way to improve your scout movement is simply through trial and error and experimentation. Try to move in different ways and pay attention to what works and when it works. If you are losing and taking damage way too frequently, you must change something with your movement. It doesn’t matter what change you make, just do something different since whatever you are currently doing obviously doesn’t work. If that still doesn’t work, try something else and so on. Through trial and error, you will find what works in what situation and you’ll gradually make improvements to your movement and learn how to move based on what is currently happening on your screen. As you play better players, you’ll find that your movement no longer works against them, and you’ll have to be fine with completely changing the way you move again, which is key to improving
moving like a woodcock drives ppl crazy bro.
[img]https://64.media.tumblr.com/351a94e10eaf72444b0deba0bd7535d0/4e93d2421fb71218-b0/s400x600/91acec11bc32e43dfa74cf443c9a57e3d4837e95.gif[/img]
moving like a woodcock drives ppl crazy bro.
moving like a woodcock drives ppl crazy bro.
for most new scouts the answer is to jump way less than they do
for most new scouts the answer is to jump way less than they do
imo one of the differences between fighting decent scouts vs. really good scouts is how much they use w and s to dodge splash as opposed to staying more stagnant on the z axis
imo one of the differences between fighting decent scouts vs. really good scouts is how much they use w and s to dodge splash as opposed to staying more stagnant on the z axis
most new scout players play way too aggressive and end up rushing themselves into making mistakes and bad judgement calls, particularly when they play against a competent soldier or demo. If you play slower and with more intent it will be much easier to identify areas of improvement. At the same time if you play too passive you lose any advantage you could possibly have on a better player as they could usually just out dm you
most new scout players play way too aggressive and end up rushing themselves into making mistakes and bad judgement calls, particularly when they play against a competent soldier or demo. If you play slower and with more intent it will be much easier to identify areas of improvement. At the same time if you play too passive you lose any advantage you could possibly have on a better player as they could usually just out dm you
Don't overcommit to fights. Your speed means you can secure kills when you actually have an advantage, so hold back until you have it. Learn to airstrafe on your jumps.
The rest *is* muscle memory and feel, aka "dm skill", but watching better players and recording and reviewing your own gameplay can also help with that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEEZ2P6HPNg
Don't overcommit to fights. Your speed means you can secure kills when you actually have an advantage, so hold back until you have it. Learn to airstrafe on your jumps.
The rest *is* muscle memory and feel, aka "dm skill", but watching better players and recording and reviewing your own gameplay can also help with that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEEZ2P6HPNg
The rest *is* muscle memory and feel, aka "dm skill", but watching better players and recording and reviewing your own gameplay can also help with that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEEZ2P6HPNg
I hard agree with #3, #8 and #9. I would also suggest:
Avoid running into your opponent, unless you know you can kill them in 1-2 shots. Try to "dance" around your opponent.
Don't double jump in straight lines, always try to airstrafe and curve your jumps (if you are in combat). I will say at a high level of scout, double jumping lots with good airstrafing and lagless double jumps is very powerful and hard to deal with (playing gazy on 4 and he is just able to float around the crates with jumps and constantly hit big damage)
Try to move and get to the side of a scout, since side-to-side movements will become back and forth the more you widen your angle. It is kinda like LG duelling in which you want to "cross" your opponent.
Use the winger it is stupidly OP. Abuse it to take good highgrounds.
I hard agree with #3, #8 and #9. I would also suggest:
Avoid running into your opponent, unless you know you can kill them in 1-2 shots. Try to "dance" around your opponent.
Don't double jump in straight lines, always try to airstrafe and curve your jumps (if you are in combat). I will say at a high level of scout, double jumping lots with good airstrafing and lagless double jumps is very powerful and hard to deal with (playing gazy on 4 and he is just able to float around the crates with jumps and constantly hit big damage)
Try to move and get to the side of a scout, since side-to-side movements will become back and forth the more you widen your angle. It is kinda like LG duelling in which you want to "cross" your opponent.
Use the winger it is stupidly OP. Abuse it to take good highgrounds.
Avoid running into your opponent, unless you know you can kill them in 1-2 shots. Try to "dance" around your opponent.
Don't double jump in straight lines, always try to airstrafe and curve your jumps (if you are in combat). I will say at a high level of scout, double jumping lots with good airstrafing and lagless double jumps is very powerful and hard to deal with (playing gazy on 4 and he is just able to float around the crates with jumps and constantly hit big damage)
Try to move and get to the side of a scout, since side-to-side movements will become back and forth the more you widen your angle. It is kinda like LG duelling in which you want to "cross" your opponent.
Use the winger it is stupidly OP. Abuse it to take good highgrounds.
All great advice. It took me a long time to wrap my head around movement since it's kind of an abstract concept. Two things really helped me "get it" the first is that movement is positioning in action (ultimately movement is just about putting yourself in the best position you can relative to the enemy.) The second was understanding my movement from an outsiders perspective, watch how other people are moving against you and see what they're doing that's getting them killed. A lot of movements on scout feel like they're harder to hit than they actually are. Once you understand that it just becomes pattern recognition (knowing what to do and when) and practicing your strafes/surfs/mouse control until they're burned into your mind.
All great advice. It took me a long time to wrap my head around movement since it's kind of an abstract concept. Two things really helped me "get it" the first is that movement is positioning in action (ultimately movement is just about putting yourself in the best position you can relative to the enemy.) The second was understanding my movement from an outsiders perspective, watch how other people are moving against you and see what they're doing that's getting them killed. A lot of movements on scout feel like they're harder to hit than they actually are. Once you understand that it just becomes pattern recognition (knowing what to do and when) and practicing your strafes/surfs/mouse control until they're burned into your mind.
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