Tracking Is Prediction, Not Reaction
Every other aim skill can be described as a reaction: a target appears, you respond. Tracking can't. If you tried to track a moving target purely by reacting (see where it is, move there, see where it is now, move there), you would trail it by your full reaction delay, forever. Human visual reaction time is roughly 200–250ms, and a target at moderate speed covers a lot of screen in a quarter second. A pure reactor never touches the target; they chase its ghost.
What actually happens when you track well is prediction. Your visual system watches the target's motion for a moment, builds an internal model of its velocity and curve, and then continuously drives your hand toward where the target is going to be, without waiting for confirmation. This is the same machinery your eyes use for smooth pursuit, the eye movement that lets you follow a thrown ball. Aiming while tracking is essentially teaching your mouse hand to ride along with that pursuit system instead of fighting it.
This is why tracking feels so different from flick training: a flick is a single ballistic decision, but tracking is a running forecast that you correct in small amounts as new information comes in. When you're locked on, you're not reacting to the target at all; you and the target are simply executing the same motion.
The Path: Smooth, Curved, and Honest
In Tracking mode the target glides around the screen in a smooth Lissajous-style pattern: flowing curves that continuously bend, speed up through some stretches and slow through others, without sharp jumps or teleports. That design is deliberate. Erratic, twitchy movement would turn the mode into a reaction test, which is what Speed is for. A smooth curve is predictable in principle, which is exactly what makes it trainable: your pursuit system can model it, and the quality of your model shows up directly as time on target.
"Predictable in principle" doesn't mean easy. The curve constantly changes direction and speed, so your forecast has to update every instant. The stretches that punish people most are the turns, where the target decelerates into a curve and accelerates out of it. Matching those velocity changes smoothly, rather than plowing through the turn at constant speed and drifting off the target, is the core skill the mode isolates.
There's no clicking at all. That's not a simplification — it's the point. Removing the trigger removes every excuse. Nothing about timing, spamming, or shot selection can pad your result. The only thing being measured is whether your crosshair is inside the circle, frame after frame.
Scoring: Time on Target
Your score is the percentage of the round your crosshair spent inside the target. A 30-second round (the default, adjustable from 10 to 120 seconds in settings) where you were on target for 21 seconds scores 70%. That's the whole formula, and it makes tracking the most brutally honest mode on the site: there is no way to inflate it, and there is nowhere to hide a weakness.
The percentage is also unusually good feedback. In click-based modes, one lucky round can spike your score. In tracking, thirty continuous seconds average out the luck, so the number you see is close to your true current ability. If your percentage climbs week over week, your mouse control genuinely improved. Watch for a specific pattern in your rounds: many players hold a strong percentage for the first half, then bleed accuracy in the back half of the round. That's not an aim problem; it's a tension problem, covered below.
Tracking Exposes Sensitivity Problems Fastest
You can play flick modes for weeks with a sensitivity that's wrong for you and blame the misses on sloppiness. Tracking tells you in about two rounds. Because you're producing continuous output for the full round, any mismatch between your intent and what appears on screen is visible immediately and constantly.
Too high: you orbit the target
The classic symptom of too-high sensitivity is orbiting. Every small correction moves the crosshair further than you meant, so you cross the target, correct back, cross it again, and your crosshair traces circles around the target instead of resting on it. From the outside it looks like you're guarding the target rather than tracking it. If you see orbiting, your hand isn't the problem; your translation from hand to screen is too aggressive for the precision the task demands.
Too low: you can't keep up with the fast stretches
The opposite failure is quieter. With sensitivity too low, you track the slow curved sections beautifully, then the target accelerates and pulls away because your arm runs out of comfortable travel. You're always smooth but frequently behind, and you may find yourself lifting and repositioning the mouse mid-round, a guaranteed off-target gap every time.
| Lower sensitivity | Higher sensitivity | |
|---|---|---|
| Fine corrections | Forgiving: small hand errors barely move the crosshair | Punishing: every tremor and twitch is amplified |
| Fast target stretches | Harder: requires big arm movement, risks running out of pad | Easy to keep pace |
| Typical failure | Trailing behind, mid-round mouse lifts | Orbiting and oscillating around the target |
| Demands from your setup | Desk space and a larger pad | A steady, relaxed hand |
Most dedicated trackers end up on the lower side of the range, accepting the arm workload in exchange for stability, but the right answer depends on your setup, grip, and the games you play. If tracking rounds are diagnosing a mismatch, work through our guide to finding your ideal sensitivity, which explains cm/360 and how to converge on a value methodically instead of guessing. The mode runs with pointer lock and raw input, so what you tune here reflects how your mouse behaves in-game.
Tension: The Silent Score Killer
Sustained tracking has a physical cost that discrete modes don't. In flick training your hand works in bursts with micro-rests between targets. In tracking there is no rest (thirty seconds of continuous fine motor output), and most players respond to that demand by gradually squeezing the mouse harder. Grip pressure creeps up, the forearm stiffens, and stiff muscles can't produce smooth motion. The result is the late-round fade described above: jitter appears, corrections get jerky, and your time-on-target drops even though your "aim" hasn't changed.
The fix is boring and effective. Hold the mouse with the least pressure that keeps it controlled. It should feel closer to resting your hand on the mouse than gripping it. Check in on your forearm mid-round; if it's tight, consciously release it without stopping. Between rounds, drop the mouse and shake your hand out. How much pressure feels natural also depends on how you hold the mouse in the first place. Palm, claw, and fingertip grips distribute tension very differently, and our grip style guide breaks down what each one costs and buys you for sustained control.
Ranked Tracking and Measuring Progress
Casual rounds are where you experiment with different sensitivities, round lengths, and target sizes, and every casual round is recorded on the casual leaderboard. When you want a clean measurement, use the gold Ranked badge on the mode. Ranked runs a round at standardized default settings for every player, and only your best score per mode appears on the ranked board, so the Tracking leaderboard is a like-for-like comparison of peak smoothness rather than a grind ranking.
Expect tracking progress to arrive slower than flick progress (smoothness is built in weeks, not sessions), but the time-on-target percentage makes even small gains visible. A few focused rounds a day, relaxed hands, honest sensitivity: that's the whole program.