Improve Your Reaction Time For Gaming
For those who want to become better players or eSports players themselves, the gamer reaction time should be a number one priority among every top-level required skill.
Last updated
For those who want to become better players or eSports players themselves, the gamer reaction time should be a number one priority among every top-level required skill.
Last updated
How good are you at reacting to any in-game events?
Nowadays, we see a standard convention in several top players called the gamer reaction time.
This metric evaluates the ability of professional gamers to react as fast as they do to any in-game events.
This ability is crucial because it directly affects your chances of winning games, improving all important eSports KPs like the win rate or K/D ratio.
In today's article, we share some helpful strategies to improve your reaction time for gaming so you can train it to earn precious milliseconds in matches.
Here are tips you can apply daily to enhance your game reaction speed:
One of the player's biggest mistakes when improving their reaction time is comparing themselves to other high-level players.
Do not compare yourself to other players because they may have practiced longer than you did.
It will give you only negative vibes, whereas you could improve some other aspects of your game to achieve an equivalent result.
The game experience, map control knowledge, and early and late game strategies can easily outperform a potential response time weakness.
Instead, focus on improving your performance, and you'll reach your goal.
The first step you need to take when improving your reaction time is to acquire better gaming accessories.
Gamer gears are made for intense and long game sessions by enhancing your overall gaming performance.
Ensure that you have installed some good game optimization tools for those with an old setup and don't feel like upgrading to something new.
These tools will help you optimize your system for the best possible performance.
For those expecting to reach the top divisions and have a chance to compete in championships, be sure to get a top-notch gamer setup.
Other top-level gamers already have a high-performance gaming setup running with top graphics cards, motherboards, RAM, processors, hard drives, power supply, cooling systems, and more.
You'll also need the basics to start with a high-end gaming monitor, a top-notch gaming mouse, a mechanical keyboard with your favorite switches, and a comfortable gamer headset.
All these devices enhance your overall game performance and reduce fatigue, resulting in improving your gamer speed time.
So don't neglect them to have a chance to contest in competitive games.
For those already using a gamer keyboard and mouse, you already know the advantage of dedicated gamer accessories and their abilities to configure macros and settings.
But for the others, macros are your best bet to earn much efficiency in your gameplay.
For instance, you can create a macro that automatically buys your starting equipment when you start a new game or respawn after being defeated with just one pressed key.
This way the macro will handle all your clicks to avoid all this manual labor and give you more time early in-game to focus on the strategy.
Playing action-based games is a great way to improve your reaction time, so be sure to choose video games that train your game's reaction speed.
Some game genres are well-known to require quick thinking and velocity skills like:
FPS (CS: GO, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Overwatch, Apex Legends, Valorant)
MOBA (DOTA 2, Leagues of Legends, Arena of Valor)
Racing (Forza Motorsport, DiRT Rally 2.0, Gran Tourismo 7,F1 2022)
Fighting (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Guilty Gear -Strive, Tekken 7, Dead or Alive 6, Soul Calibur VI)
MMORPG (New World, World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout 76, Black Desert Online, Tera, Lineage l)
So to train your response time, you should play video games that urge your reactivity and force you to make fast choices.
You know what I mean if you have played competitive video games for years. You may not realize it, but you probably play games more than you think.
During these extended hours of practice, you learn how to control your character, equipment, and skills and get used to different situations. These experiences are essential if you want to increase your reaction time.
You need to make sure that you spend enough time practicing before each ranking game. In other words, don't just jump into competitive game matches without practicing beforehand.
Instead, take the time to analyze different maps, characters, equipment, and skills, then practice on all of them as much as you can.
Try different controllers, keyboard, and mouse controls, then item combinations and switches in-game to see what fits the best for you.
By doing so, you'll be able to prevent some opponent's actions as you already predicted all possible incoming situations. And even if your gamer reaction time is not so good, you'll have a neat advantage over your opponent even with an average gamer reaction time. It is where the practice gets interesting!
The gamer reaction time is the time between the moment an event in-game happens and when the player responds to this event.
This metric is always estimated in milliseconds (ms). The lowest the score, the better your response time!
It significantly impacts results in several top-level game genres requiring velocity. So for those aspiring to become an eSports player wannabe or just trying to rank in a top division, you should consider exercising hard to improve your speed reactivity.
The average gamer has a reaction time of around 300-500ms, whereas most professional gamers react faster than 200ms.
The difference between these 2 gamer types can be attributed to their intensive training and strict schedule.
To estimate your response time, you can do these 2 ways:
The first one is to measure it by using a stopwatch and recording the time between when the game starts and when the player presses a control key. However, this one is difficult to test alone, as you need to trigger the starting timer and press a key to stop it.
The second way is probably easier to do. All you need is a specific reaction time calculator game like an aiming game in which you have to aim at targets and then click on them as fast as possible. However other games can easily be used as a calculator, like racing simulations.
This metric will vary from person to person, depending on their training, reflexes, and overall gaming experience.
