If you’re one of the few brave souls still playing first person shooter games on mouse and keyboard against soft aim bot (cough cough) I mean controller players, i’m to go over some settings and tips that have helped me when it comes to gameplay and aiming mechanics on Mouse & Keyboard in Xdefiant.
First we have to go over some basic settings to make sure we’re all on the same page.
Cap your FPS. If you have an NVidia graphics card I recommend you cap it from the nvidia control panel instead of the game. The reason for this is that sometimes you can get screen tearing when you cap the frame rate in game. So it’s better to just do it at the source.
While we’re here go ahead and make sure v sync is enabled here in the nvidia control panel and make sure that it’s disabled in your game settings of xdefiant.
Make sure you have nvidia reflex low latency set to on plus boost to reduce any input lag.
Next we need to go over some graphics settings. These may vary from person to person but the purpose here is to make sure you’re locked in at the highest fps possible for your setup. On screen right now are my current settings and I run an evga 3080 and play at 144 fps at 1440p resolution. I’m not one of those people that cranks their settings so low the game looks like it’s a playstation 2 game but I definetly make sure I’m getting the right balance between performance and quality.
The last setting I recommend is to disable any in game overlays like discord, nvidia or the ubisoft connect overlay. Unfortunately these can cause stuttering in game and might one of the most annoying things to deal with on mouse and keyboard. But if you find the game works fine with them obviously go ahead and leave it. Just wanted to go over this because there might be a few of you out there that see an improvement by disabling them.
Next we need to go over sensitivity. At the moment we don’t really have a per optic sensitivity or relative scaling like other games. and there are a few things that are a little off in Xdefiant. Real quick warning before we do that, I just wanted to mention, whatever dpi you’re running on your mouse right now, do not change it. ClueFPS did some digging and found that there’s some weird math happening in the game. In theory if you cut your dpi in half but double your in game sense, you should have the exact same sensitivity. But for some reason in Xdefiant it’s different.
First thing we need to fix is our ads sense. Now In most games I play on a 1:1 ratio meaning my aim down sight sensitivity and hip fire sensitivity are identical. But for whatever reason the default 1.00 setting is way slower than the hipfire sense. So to get that 1:1 feel I had to bump the low zoom ads sense all the way up to 1.2. So if you’re a person who typically likes to play with a slower ads sense then something around the 1.0 setting should be fine. But for me this was the best feeling. Now the high zoom sense is the complete opposite. It felt extremely fast. So to get that in line with how it feels in other games like apex legends and call of duty I had to crank it down to 0.85.
Next we need to talk about the optics and this is weird it gets a little bit weird. The low zoom ads applies to everything from iron sights up to the 4x zoom level. And the high zoom for everything above that. Now the problem is that the 4x optic is considered low zoom. So if you’re like me and dialed that up to 1.2 to get that 1:1 sensitivity, then this is going to feel horrendous. It's comically fast. Now you can always change your low zoom ads sense every time you use the 4x optic but let’s be real, who's got time for that. Unfortunately that makes the 4 times off limits.
Now this is my opinion but there are some weapons that are a little better or more “usable” on mouse and keyboard and some to avoid, at least if you’re trying to be as competitive as possible. Feel free to disagree or grill me in the comments. Or if you figured out something I haven’t, drop the knowledge for us. First I’m going to run through the list of weapons to avoid on MnK.
The MDR. This gun isn’t great in general but it feels even worse on MnK. It’s got a decent amount of recoil so it’s hard to compete with AR’s at those mid to long range fights and it’s mobility and time to kill up close aren’t great either You can get away with using it on controller a lot of times because the aim assist kind of helps smooth over the deficiencies but because. But I just find that unless i’m at the top of my game the MDR just doesn’t feel great on Mouse and keyboard.
The next weapon I avoid is the MK 20. I know at times it can be really strong but it’s a high risk high reward type of weapon. The fire rate is slow and so is its mobility. If you miss one shot almost any other weapon in the game is going to kill you before you get the next bullet out unless the enemy is an absolute bot. The fire rate is slow and in most situations you’d be better off just running a sniper at those longer ranges because the MK 20 doesn’t have one shot kill potential with one exception. If you use the heavy barrel and play as the cleaners, when you hit a headshot it doesn’t kill them right away but the burn damage does end up finishing them off. Now you can definitely get away with using this weapon in mouse and keyboard only lobbies but if you’re in a mixed lobby with controller players you’re probably going to have a bad time.
This next one might be a bit controversial but hear me out. The vector is a great gun overall, however it has terrible range, as it should and a very short magazine. Now this weapon is very good if you have input based matchmaking on and you’re in a game with only mouse and keyboard players. BUT If you’re playing cross input where there are other controller players in the game, what’s going to end up happening is you’ll be forced into very close range fights where aim assist has a massive advantage. If you’re a top mouse and keyboard player you can definitely still make this work but if not you’re more than likely going to have a hard time against controller players who don’t miss a bullet up close.
So what guns are the best on Mouse and Keyboard?
The best weapon in the entire game, AK 47 is very good on Mouse and Keyboard in my opinion. Extremely competitive time to kill at all ranges, good mobility and recoil that’s relatively easy to control. The AK also has very good iron sights which lets you add another attachment to actually improve the weapon. So you get a little extra flexibility in building it to fit your play style.
Number 2 of course we have to mention the MP7. This is another weapon that’s just all around great for similar reasons to the AK. Good iron sights, great mobility, controllable recoil and the fast fire rate makes it very forgiving. What I really like about the iron sights on this gun is that they’re relatively tall and thin so you get better visibility which is really important on MnK since obviously you can’t track what you can’t see. Compared to controller with aim assist you can get away with a little less visibility because rotational aim assist is keeping you on target. (show overlay of other SMGs for comparison)
Number three is going to be a two part answer and I think you’ll see why. And that’s going to be both of the snipers. In their current state, even post nerf with the flinch, snipers are still incredibly strong. Now the reason I say these are strong on mouse and keyboard is because we obviously have much better precision or fine aim control as well as the ability to flick to targets much faster. So in a game where the time to kill is on the longer side, having a once shot kill weapon is incredibly powerful. Whether you want to sit back with the Tac 50 or run around trying to quickly scope people with the M44 is up to you. You have an extra advantage here if you’re in a mixed input lobby with controller players because a lot of times you’ll be using snipers at ranges where it’s really hard for them to challenge you and even if they do you’ll easily be able to back into cover and reset the fight.
The last one on this list is an honorable mention and honestly one of my personal favorites. Now on paper it’s not the best gun, it’s decent but not the obvious choice, but the M249 is absolutely a solid gun and I like it for a few reasons. Number 1 the slower mobility normally would be a bad thing, but it’s slow enough that it actually forces you to be more thoughtful about your positioning. Number 2 you get a metric Ton of ammo even with the 60 round fast mag and like we mentioned before in a game with a longer time to kill, killing multiple enemies can be really difficult because of how much health there is. But with the larger mag sizes, if you position yourself well you can literally take out 4 people holding hands on the objective. And the last reason I like it is because the gun basically has zero recoil. Which makes it really friendly for most MnK players and I find that I can compete with aim assist because of how easy it is to control.
One thing I've noticed about the way recoil works in xdefiant is that while the game may not have a lot of recoil compared to games like Pubg or CS:GO, the initial recoil is pretty aggressive. Especially compared to games like call of duty or apex legends where the recoil starts out pretty manageable and gets more aggressive overtime. So I've started doing two things a little differently here in Xdefiant that have definitely helped me land more shots. When you start firing the gun kicks pretty hard and the distance between the first few bullets is actually pretty big. So I've started to anticipate this and I recommend pulling down pretty hard the second you start firing your weapon. Try it out in the firing range to really get a good feel and take a mental note of just how much the gun jumps and also pay close attention to the horizontal recoil because some of these weapons the first bullet kicks the weapon sideways quite a bit. The second thing I've found helpful to combat this is to actually aim or “center” your crosshair slightly lower. Now it’s a bad habit to aim at the floor but conventional crosshair centering advice is to place your crosshair at the upper chest high. But for Xdefiant I’ve found it much more helpful to aim more for the belly button or even belt buckle depending on how far away the enemy is. This will definitely give you a bit more forgiveness when the recoil starts kicking in. Now if you’ve seen my other video where I said aim for the head and you’re thinking I'm contradicting myself, let me clarify. What I meant in that video is that you need to be landing headshots to reduce the time to kill. So aiming directly for the head at first can make it very difficult to land your shots. So sorry if I misspoke but hopefully that helps clear things up .
Positioning yourself well in gunfights can literally make or break your entire play session. I notice a lot of times I'm having a bad day and I want to jump on the Xdefiant, bad servers bandwagon. I'm just inserting myself into fights in the worst way possible. And it gets worse and worse because the more I die, the more frustrated and less patient I become . Oftentimes the only thing that fixes it for me is slowing it down and going back to the basics and one pretty funny “movement” technique i’ll talk about in a minute. Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes you absolutely have to throw your body on the objective to win. But the basics are still important. Make sure you play cover, don’t get caught out in the open, unless you’re playing the B flag on Nudleplex, have an exit strategy if things go south, keep your teammates close to back you up. And these are the fundamentals you really have to build habits for unless your top tier player who never misses shots, aim trains for a living and huffs gfuel before you get on. This is extra true on Mouse and Keyboard because we’re limited by our human reaction time. So if we get caught off guard there’s a lower chance you’re coming out on top of that fight. The average human reaction time is around 250 ms so by the time you notice an enemy coming out of nowhere they’ve basically been able to put two or three shots into you. And you might say well yes wouldn’t that also affect controller players. And the answer is kind of. If an enemy unexpectedly rounds the corner in front of a controller player, aim assist will kick in and has basically a zero millisecond reaction time. So in some situations aim assist can smooth out some of the more “human” gaps in your gameplay. As a mouse and keyboard player you need to get a feel for exactly where the sweet spot is when it comes to what ranges you take fights. Up close and point blank often feels really bad especially with the way player collision works in the game and it feels like those fights kind of come down to luck of the draw with whoever manages to bounce off the other player facing the right direction. But part of this is also just being mindful of the weapon type and style you’re playing. If you’re using an smg don’t stand there and try to challenge people at range and if you’re running an, LMG stay away from the narrow parts of the map. Since we’ve already
Now idk if this is a helpful tip but I find that it works more than it should and is hilarious. When you’re in a gunfight and you feel like you and the other player are jumping and sliding all over the place, just mix in a simple crouch and stand still for a brief moment. This usually works because it’s so unexpected and most people don’t do it. It’s especially effective against other mouse and keyboard players because a lot of time when you’re tracking a target you’re sort of predicting where they’re going to move. And so when you throw in a stop and crouch it’s almost like breaking a controller player's camera and I find it hilarious. So try this out next time you boot up the game and let me know how it works for you.
One of my favorite parts about playing xdefiant is that i can be difficult and all of the different factions and abilities there’s quite a bit to learn, especially if you’re coming from a game like call of duty.
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