Overwatch Aim Assist: A Console Player's Perspective

As a console player, I was skeptical about the effectiveness of Overwatch's aim assist feature on controller. However, after recently booting up the game on my console, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it performed. In fact, I couldn't really tell that aim assist wasn't there, and I did about as well as I usually do with a controller.

I became the controller player in a sea of PC tryhards, and it was surprisingly fine. Without a desktop for the first time in years, I was desperate to play games with friends, and console Overwatch was my savior. How rotational aim assist works is still a mystery to me, but I can attest that it makes a significant difference in gameplay.

As a controller player, I've noticed that sniper roles like Widowmaker and Ashe have it much better on mouse. However, aim assist eases the significant burden of tracking enemies through the air, making it easier to stay accurate with heroes like Lucio. On an aim-assisted controller, it's a different experience altogether.

Tracking sporadic enemy movements while accounting for your own acrobatics is the basis of Lúcio's skill ceiling. PC players practice for hundreds of hours to get really good at it, but with aim assist, I found it much easier to stick to my targets. The stickiness of aim assist is hard to miss when jumping and wallriding around as Lúcio while trying to shoot his dubstep gun accurately.

Overwatch's controller settings have six sliders and buttons dedicated to fine-tuning aim assist, including options to increase the size of the invisible 'bubble' around a character in which your crosshair will stick to them. The benefits of aim assist depend on what hero you're playing, with some heroes benefiting more than others.

For example, as a dedicated Overwatch console player, I would prioritize aim assist settings for heroes like Reaper and McCree. Overwatch 2 also has a roster of over 30 heroes who play completely differently from each other – some don't need to aim at all! Most gunfights happen from 20-30 meters away, and maps generally aren't big enough for long-range sniper battles.

In my experience, Overwatch 2's aim tracking is less dramatic than Apex or CoD, but still consequential. Overall, I'm impressed with the performance of aim assist on console, and I think it's a great feature for new players to get started with.

Overwatch aim assist