Wolfenstein: Enemy Terrritory is a very fast game. In close combat often the player wins who hits first, so timing is crucial. While your opponent gets hit it will be much harder for him to aim at you or rather hit you because his screen shakes and you start off the fight as it were more health for you.

Headshots usually do 40/50[*] damage while bodyshots do less. Further more you got to know that the first shot usually hits where you aim at – without any weapon spread!

These two things we combine to the following rule:

Always point your crosshair at head-level where an opponent will most likely appear (or in the middle of two points when the likelyhood of an opponent popping up there is euqal) while you wander through the map.

Note that it doesn’t matter if you are searching for opponents and thus are moving forward or if you are escaping a firefight and are running backwards – your crosshair will stay always at the point where the head of your next opponent will most likely appear, so you minimize the way you got to move your crosshair until aiming directly at your opponent. I sometimes point the crosshair in the middle of two points if the likelyhood is equal for an opponent to pop up from the right and the left side. Avoid uneven and difficult terrrain in order to keep your cross-hair in place.

*Tip: use grooves to be on head-level

In many maps you can additionally use markings on the wall to keep your aim always on track (e. g. grooves on the walls inside buildings, see the thumbnail* or video-example**). Don’t look on the ground except for reviving, placing a mine, stealing an uniform and stuff like that or if you expect an opponent move along beneath you. Be prepared at corners where opponents often camp and enjoy the corner-camper calling you a wallhacker when you got him. Also include obsticles like crates in your pre-or “as if”-aiming when nescessary. First it may be hard to pursue this rule but after some time you will see you benefit because this makes sure two important things for you:

1. you are the first one of both giving damage in the duel
2. you probably initiate the fight with a headshot giving maximum damage

But: Instead of aiming for the forehead of you fictive oponents model, you should go a little deeper (have a look at W:ET’s hitbox-model). If your opponent hits you first – for any reason – from the front, your screen-shakes will make your cross-hair move up (see the analysis from madscientist under “shakes”). So if you aimed for the forehead in such a situation, you not a single bullet probably would have hit.

[*] damage given per headshot may be lower than 50 due to helmet protection on (usually -20% = 40 damagepoints per headshot), long ranges etc. Please find information on how many damage each weapon in ET gives here.

**Video-Example: Use markings on the walls to keep your cross-hair on head-level