I have always had pretty mediocre aim and have been able to climb up to high-diamond mostly on my gamesense and utility usage. However, I had plateaued due to my inability to consistently win my 1v1’s so I wanted to focus on my mechanical skill. I tried a number of aim routines in the range and was playing a lot of deathmatch (winning about 1 in every 3), but it wasn’t really translating into my ranked games that much.

Then I turned game audio completely off for deathmatch.

It made me feel naked, never having any kind of idea where my enemies where or if one was going to pop out in front of me…but it makes you have to be so much better. If your crosshair placement is even slightly off you will be immediately punished for it. If you don’t clear every single angle thoroughly you will be immediately punished for it. If your reaction time is slow you will be immediately punished for it. It truly is taking away all of the advantages you can take for granted in deathmatch (since you can almost always pre-aim off of enemy footsteps and gunshot sounds). On top of that, the silence really allows you to fully focus on your movement and crosshair placement, where with game-audio you would be hearing a bazillion gunshots at once and be mostly focused on where you should be pre-aiming off of enemy sound rather than your own mechanics.

Of course I know a lot of players play DM with music instead of silence, that part is mainly a preference thing.

If you can consistently do well in deathmatches with zero game audio, you will be a monster in ranked, pretty much guaranteed. Give it a try.