Introduction
Aim training and benchmarking can be initially challenging if you are new, there are many words and phrases that you might not be familiar with, you might have trouble finding the custom scenarios or keeping track of your scores using spreadsheets. This is a beginner friendly guide to help you get up and running and training using the Revosect benchmarks made specially for Aim Lab.
Understanding the Benchmarks
What exactly is a benchmark? A benchmark is a test of some sort that is designed to give you an understanding of where you are at skillswise. The rA benchmarks divides the concept of raw aim into 6 subcategories and uses the scores you get from tasks inside of Aim Lab to accurately rank you. Benchmarks allow you to clearly see your progress in each subsection and allows you to easily follow your progress and improvement. Benchmarks can also be quite rewarding, as each rank upgrade comes with a new role and color inside the Revosect Discord so chasing ranks will not only make you better, but will award you for it.
How can the benchmarks help me improve my aim?
Since the benchmarks divide aiming into 6 categories, you will be practicing every range of your mouse control rather than just an individual aspect of it. This allows you to be a well rounded player with overall good aim rather than being really good at one part and hopeless at another. Benchmark tasks are also designed to not only be competitive, but also to excel at training and improvement. The combination of this allows the tasks to be accurate benchmarks and also great training tasks.
Setting Up and Using the Benchmarks
Where can I find the benchmarks?
Revosect (rA) benchmarks are located in this link: http://bit.ly/ALbenchmarks It will redirect you to a Google Sheets page and you will be met with this screen (the values/rankings might be different for you, make sure to use the document that we linked rather than following through images). This sheet shows you every task that is featured in the benchmarks, the score targets for achieving each rank and the separation of the different difficulties.
Initially, it might seem very daunting as there is an abundance of different sections and numbers all around. But fear not, it is a lot easier than it looks and we will go over everything step by step.
Different Difficulties
The benchmarks are split into 3 different difficulties, Easy, Medium and Hard. As the community encapsulates people with a wide range of skills, the benchmarks need to accurately represent both the floor, ceiling and everything in between. For this reason, we split the benchmarks into different difficulties with their own unique tasks for each section and different rankings. If you are just starting your aim training journey, we recommend you start from Easy no matter your background in FPS games. You can graduate to the next section of the benchmarks once you achieve the top rank for the requirement.
Rankings and roles
The Revosect benchmarks currently have 13 rankings, 4 in each Difficulty section except for Hard with 5. Ranks allow you to see where your aim would end up against other players and to help pinpoint weaknesses. Once you achieve an overall rank, you can apply for a role in the Revosect Discord and get announced for reaching that rank in the promotions channel. Your score in each task will be ranked. This will allow you to get ranked in each task which will combine into an overall rank based on your performance.
Sections and Subsections
The benchmarks are divided into 3 sections (Clicking, Tracking, Switching) which are then further divided into 2 subsections. Each section covers an important element in aiming. There are 3 tasks in each subsection that you can pick from.
Clicking
Clicking is divided into 2 subcategories, Static and Dynamic. Static clicking is where the task is to eliminate as many stationary dots as possible in the given time, this is beneficial for training your flicking, micro adjustments and stopping power. Static allows you to clear angles faster and more efficiently and also land more headshots after flicking in tac-fps games. Dynamic clicking is where you track and click on dots that are moving around with a one shot kill weapon. Dynamic is beneficial for training your shot on targets that are moving around in scenarios like sniping.
Tracking
Tracking is divided into 2 subcategories, Precise and Reactive. Precise tracking emphasizes staying on the target more than reacting to its movement. It can also be called Smoothness as it forces the player to be as smooth as possible and stay on the target at all times. Precise tracking is beneficial for tracking targets that have a more predictable path like a player falling down from a height. Reactive tracking uses unpredictable bot patterns to force the player to read the movements and react accordingly. This is very instrumental for games where the player movements are erratic or hard to hit. Reactive allows you to read target movements more easily and track them regardless of how erratic their movement is.
Target Switching
Switching or Target Switching (TS) is divided into 2 subcategories, Flick TS and Track TS. All target switching scenarios require you to HOLD down Mouse1 at all times (keep firing). Flick TS is where you are required to consecutively kill floating targets as fast as possible. Flick TS pushes you to your speed limits and allows you to get faster at flicking and efficiently switching from one target to the other when there are multiple on screen. Track TS requires you to also switch from one target to another but the targets have more health and are sometimes harder to hit which emphasizes staying on target and accuracy rather than going as fast as possible.
Ranking Up
The benchmark system makes use of a points based system. In this system, achieving the base rank scoring for each scenario grants you a certain amount of points. You are also granted extra points depending on how close you are to the next rank. The amount of points you get for each score are listed above the progression sheet with the total amount of required points to get ranked are listed below the points per score.
The points per each subsection is calculated by adding up the points of your 2 best scores. Total
points are then calculated by adding up all of the scores in the 6 subsections. This system requires at least 2 scores in each subsection to accurately measure your rank (so it requires you to play at least 2 out of the 3 tasks in each subsection). Having a 2 score per subsection requirement ensures the player has completed more benchmark tasks and can be ranked more accurately.
Your lowest total subsection point should also be higher than the rank you are going to get or you won’t be eligible to rank up. This is to force players to play at least 2 tasks in each subsection and to not get away with having very disparate sections with 2 bad scores and rank up due to total points
Increasing Difficulties
You should look to progress to a higher difficulty section when you have achieved the highest rank in your current division. These are Platinum for Easy, Valour for Medium and Divine for Hard (you can’t progress further than Divine). If you start off at Easy and find that the tasks are unchallenging and you are consistently getting Platinum scores, you should move to Medium.
Common Questions
What if I can’t even get ranked for Bronze?
This is totally fine! While Bronze is the lowest rank possible, beginners might struggle to hit this level on their first week of play, don’t give up and keep pushing, you will get to higher ranks in no time. It may take time getting used to how the task plays and understanding everything, it is vital to not get discouraged as this doesn’t automatically indicate that you have subpar aim.
On my first time playing, which task should I start off with, which one should I play first?
We usually recommend first timers to go through each one of the 18 tasks at least once to get an idea of how each one plays out. Then you can pick your top 6 favorites (1 from each subsection) and push for a score on each. Remember to play the other remaining scenarios once in a while as they are also very beneficial and will accelerate your improvement rate.
Can I aimtrain only using the benchmarks?
The Revosect benchmarks are designed to be a great training source as well, only using the benchmarks is a viable way to train however it’s not recommended as you might get better at the tasks rather than improve mechanically. Make sure to shake things up once a while by playing other scenarios, rA has many more high quality scenarios in the workshop so make sure to try them out.
How often should I benchmark myself?
You should benchmark yourself every time you feel like you have improved or every 4 to 5 days to track your improvement. If you are using the benchmarks as a training tool then this won’t really apply to you as you will be benchmarking yourself every time you practice.
Why am I getting a very low score for Switching tasks?
Switching tasks require you to hold mouse 1 down for the entirety of the run. You aren’t penalized for inaccuracy in these tasks so it is vital that you constantly hold down your mouse button to keep firing.
Using Aim Lab
Finding the scenarios in the Workshop
Now that you know how the benchmarks work and are ready to take a crack at them, you need to find the tasks in Aim Lab itself. Thankfully, it is quite simple.
Once you open up Aim Lab and enter the start menu, you will find a large button with the text “Workshop” under it on the bottom left of your screen. You can also press Custom and then find Workshop through there.
Clicking it will take you into the Workshop. The Workshop is tasks that are created by other users and groups such as Revosect. They are different from the Core Aim Lab tasks like Gridshot because they are custom made. Once you are in the Workshop menu, there will be a search bar at the top left.
The search bar is where we will type our task names into. First, find the name of the task you want to play from the benchmark sheet. We will be using “rA Speedflick” as an example.
Type the task’s name into the search bar as shown in the image below. You can also copy paste it.
The task should appear in the first place, make sure the names of the tasks match up. Press subscribe to download the scenario and then play. If your play button doesn’t work, restart Aim Lab and be certain that Steam has downloaded the workshop file properly.
Play the scenario as much as you like, once the time is up you will be greeted with a screen that will show you the score that you got. It will look something like this.
So looking back at the benchmarks, a score of 121 on rA Wideflick would be ranked Divine
You can add this score to your progression sheet which we will shortly get to.
This is how you can use Aim Lab to find the Revosect benchmark scenarios and find out where you rank on them. Make sure to bookmark the benchmarks sheet for easy access whenever you need to check your scores and to see where you rank.
The FastSearch feature also speeds this process up quite a bit and you can swap to another benchmark task by just pressing the search button in the main menu or after completing a task.
Optimizing Your Settings
Graphics settings
These are the best graphics settings for Aim Lab, as this is an aim trainer, any visual effect will be unnecessary clutter that you will want to avoid. Set Graphics Quality to Fastest and turn off every setting under.
Make sure to also set Max Queued Frames to “1 — Low Latency” as this will provide you with the best input/remove any input lag and set Display Mode to Fullscreen Exclusive for better performance and input lag.
Visual settings
Visual settings are up to your personal taste, find one where you can clearly see the target. Make sure to set Shadows to Off and Override Workshop to On. For tracking scenarios, utilize textured walls for better depth perception and for static scenarios, use a blank gray wall for the best visuals.
Sound settings
Make sure to fully turn off Weapon Volume in the Audio menu. This won’t turn off the hit sound but eliminate the annoying weapon shoot sound that is completely unnecessary.
Playlists
Here are quick access links to playlists that will go through each benchmark task once.
These are playlists featuring every single Revosect benchmark task in order. If you are looking for more playlists for different skill levels or games, make sure to check #resources in discord.gg/Revosect
Using the Progression Sheet To Track Scores
The progression sheet is a very handy tool that will allow you to keep track of your scores, automatically rank you and show how close you are off a rank. It can be a bit daunting at first but once you get a hang of it, it will be a game changer.
Make a copy of the sheet
Link to the Aim Lab benchmark progression sheet: http://bit.ly/ALprogressionsheet
Once you open up the progression sheet, you will notice that you won’t be able to input any values or change anything. This is because you need to make a personal copy of the sheet. To do this, Go to File > Make a Copy and name the file appropriately.
Starting off with the right difficulty
Due to the benchmarking having 3 different difficulties with its own unique scenarios and scoring, the progression sheet is also split up into 3. Make sure you are on the right page, you can change the difficulty by switching tabs on the bottom of the page.
Inputting scores
After you get a score on a scenario, you can input it into the “Personal Best” column. We will reuse the rA Wideflick example and score to show you how it would look.
The box where the score went in has turned the same shade of red as Archon to indicate that it’s an Archon score.
Understanding other outputs
Progress Bar
From the previous GIF, you may also notice that the Progress bar has filled partially with black. This is because the progress bar shows you how close you are to ranking up in that task, with the color inside it being the same as the next rank.
Not close at all:
Very close:
Points
You are granted points based on the rank you get in each task. The total of these points are displayed at the top of the sheet and is used to calculate your rank. There is also a leaderboard for the players with the most points.
(Points for each rank)
Final Rank
After filling up the full sheet, your rank should be displayed at the top of the sheet as shown in the image below. Using the principles explained in the previous sections, the spreadsheet will automatically rank you based on the values you inputted.
As you can see with the example, we have at minimum 2 Grandmasters in each section so our rank will be Grandmaster II. To increase this to Immortal, we must get at least 1 Immortal score in each section.
Links
All the links to current Revosect Benchmark Resources:
Aim Lab Benchmarks: https://bit.ly/ALbenchmarks Aim Lab Progression Sheet: https://bit.ly/ALprogressionsheet
Guide to Aim Lab benchmarks: https://bit.ly/2ULCuN8
Apply for a rank (Aim Lab): https://bit.ly/36dpnHe
Conclusion
The Revosect benchmarks are a powerful way to train your aim and also record your progress, with many resources to help you on your aiming journey.
If you have any questions about this guide make sure to join discord.gg/Revosect and don’t hesitate to ask for help! We are always willing to do our best to help out our community.