The Hidden Potency Of Neck Aiming

In shooters, headshots are the holy grail. Often  sporting massive damage multipliers that reward the precision needed to land them. Despite  the incredible damage potential they provide, I would go as far as to say that  most headshots happening in all the lobbies around the world right now  could be summed up as happy accidents. It is so tempting and natural to simply aim  at the center of mass which tends to be in the upper chest. It’s the biggest target and therefore  the most forgiving and

sometimes this leads to an incidental headshot as it’s not far away. If you  don’t believe me, whenever you jump into your next FPS game, try a throwaway round of exclusively  aiming for headshots and see how different it feels. I actually did a 10 day headshots only  challenge in Apex a while back that had some very interesting results so if you want, you  could check that video out in the description. The reason we don’t always aim for the head is  because it’s very hard to do. It’s particular

ly unforgiving for tracking an AD strafing opponent.  Let’s say we’re aiming at the center of mass of a target that changes direction. We have to  wait for our reaction time to catch up and even though we haven’t adjusted anything yet  we can still land some free shots as the upper chest moves back through the crosshair.  And when we acknowledge their change in direction we can adjust back and have a  wide area for the crosshair to land in. Alternatively, let’s say we are aiming at the  center o

f the head. When they change direction, our crosshair almost immediately falls off  them so we’re no longer doing any damage, and when we adjust back to them, it’s a  small area to try and land that crosshair in. There absolutely is a time and  place to aim for headshots, especially if you’re a higher level  aimer, and honestly it’s something people should be trying to do far  more often than they currently are. This leads me to a simple middle-ground that i’ve  found to be extremely useful. And

that is aiming for the neck. We aren’t robots and we’re not  always going to hit exactly where we intend to, so, by aiming for the neck we still have the  security of easily accessible body shots and in particular a horizontal line that covers  the shoulders on most humanoids. The neck area often counts as a headshot and even if it doesn’t  against the particular hitbox you’re shooting at, any misses above your target become headshots,  any misses below are standard body shots, to the sides are

body shots, and only misses to  the far upper left and right are complete misses. Using Reaper in Overwatch 2 as an example, if  I place two different circles around intended targets we can use the number of pixels inside to  determine the average dps between them. The larger circle represents a lower skilled aimer with more  variance, and the smaller circle represents a higher skilled aimer with less variance. This  example isn’t perfect and the pixels toward the outside should probably be wei

ghted less,  which would further support the neck strategy. With our smaller circle aimed at the  upper chest there are 3376 pixels landing a body shot and 756 pixels landing a  headshot. If each pixel represents 1 damage, that’s 3376 damage to the body and 1512  damage from the 756 headshot pixels with a 2x multiplier. That’s a total of 4888  damage when aiming at the upper chest. If we move that circle to the neck instead  we get 2128 damage in body shots and 4104 in headshots for a total of 6

232 damage.  That’s an increase of 27.5% more damage, just from aiming at the neck instead. And to cover all our bases, moving the circle  to the head gives us 5010 damage in headshots and 377 damage in body shots for a total of 5387,  which has the neck shots doing 16% more damage. With the larger circle, which represents more  variance in aim, upper chest had 12,911 damage, the neck had 12,455 damage and  the head had only 9019 damage. This would indicate that  the lower level your aim is, the

more you benefit from having a larger  target like the upper chest or neck. And the better your aim is, the more you are  rewarded for aiming at the neck or head. This method isn’t perfect by any means  and the results would change drastically depending on hitboxes and many other factors  but regardless, it’s a decent proof of concept. Having a specific target in mind, like the  neck when aiming does some amazing things for us. It’s a great shortcut for learning to  focus on enemies rather than

simply looking at them. Video all about that linked below,  it’s a very important concept. It also helps us to aim deliberately and to have intention  behind our aiming movements. It’s very easy to accidentally be aiming on autopilot, so  using the cue of aiming for the neck, head, body, whatever it is, so long  as there’s an intended target, your aim becomes more deliberate,  calculated and ultimately more accurate. Aiming for the neck in particular is a  great cue for a variety of reasons. Fi

rstly, as we covered earlier, there is higher  damage potential. Secondly, it’s novel, which makes it stand out more which makes  it easy to remember and to actually do in-game. The next game you play, if it’s  not the headshot round I suggested earlier, make an effort to remind yourself to aim for  the neck of everyone you encounter. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with both your  overall accuracy and your faster time to kill. To summarize, aiming for the neck gets you the  best bang f

or your buck. In the majority of situations it’s better than aiming at the upper  chest or the head, so it’s a safe rule to play by. And it’s never really a bad choice, even if  it’s not necessarily the best in every situation. To get the most out of having an intended  target, you’ll need to assess the situation. If you are using a bolt action sniper that one  shots to the head, or two shots to the body, you are highly incentivised to aim for the  head. Or if you’re versing slow moving, big and

steady targets like tanks in Overwatch,  you can get away with aiming purely for headshots if your aim is good enough. And on the other end  of the spectrum if your target is highly mobile and difficult to follow, aiming for the center  of mass can become the most realistic target. The key here is to choose a spot and aim  at it, don’t leave it up to autopilot. I hope you found this helpful,  and if you do try this out, let me know how you go in the comments below. You can check out the ClawMat

e mouse mod  I designed over at StruthGamingGear.com. To see what happened after aiming  at headshots only for 10 days, check out this video here.  Thanks so much for watching, be sure to subscribe for more content like  this, and i’ll catch you in the next one.