CoD Modern Warfare 3 and Warzone: You have to change these controller settings immediately - reaction curve, tactical sprint and co.!

 The right controller options are now essential if you want to leave the battlefield victorious - we'll tell you the best settings for MW3 and Warzone.

Call of Duty is extremely hectic, but at the same time, you have to hit with ultra-precision in order to win duels. The right gamepad settings often decide whether you win or lose.

We went through all the menus with a magnifying glass and compared our results with professionals like JGOD, Advanced Warfare world champion Attach, and The 5th Seal. Here you can find our collected results:

Key assignment

• Our recommendation: Bumper Jumper (Tactical)

Choosing the right button mapping gets a little tricky, as it depends on how you hold your controller and whether your gamepad has backspace buttons. If you use the standard grip - i.e. only use your thumbs and index fingers for gaming - the Bumper Jumper key assignment is ideal.

Then you can simultaneously jump to L1/LB, aim with L2/LT, and shoot with R2/RT without taking your right thumb off the analog stick. Especially in close combat, you can surprise enemies with sudden movements and the legendary slide cancel (pressing the jump button while sliding) will also be much easier for you.

With the Slide Cancel, you can cancel the slide, so that your character no longer holds the equipped weapon at an angle (as in the picture), but instead puts it on his shoulder as normal.

Optionally, you can switch to the tactical Bumper Jumper variant if you have gotten used to hitting your enemies in the jaw with the rifle butt with Circle/B in previous CoD parts.

However, both bumper-jumper layouts require training time. If you want to celebrate quick successes, you can first decide on your current key assignment.

If your controller has back buttons, like the DualSense Edge or the Victrix ProCon BFG, you are also well advised to use the standard or conventional tactical setting. Then jumping in a firefight is no longer a problem thanks to the additional buttons.

Swap shoulder buttons and triggers

• Our recommendation: A

If you flip L1/R1 (or LB and RB) with L2/R2 (or LT and RT) you can aim and shoot without any time delay. If you switch to bumper jumper at the same time, getting used to it could be quite tricky. We therefore recommend making both settings separately (if at all).

Controller vibration

• Our recommendation: Off

It's not a crucial setting, but disabling vibration can save you from shock moments when you get hit. In addition, your controller will no longer shake when shooting.

Trigger effect (PS5 only)

• Our recommendation: Off

Resistance when pulling the trigger is inherently evil. Away with it!

Dead zones

• Our recommendations:
• as low as possible (minimum right stick)
• 100 (Maximum right stick)
• 75 (minimum left stick)
• 0.00 (Left Trigger)
• 0.00 (Right Trigger)

Practically, for the first time in the series, Modern Warfare 3 includes a test that visualizes the movements of your analog sticks. So you can check little by little at what point your stick starts to drift to the side on its own. You should choose the level before that for the greatest possible precision.

You can also set the outer dead zone to the maximum to cover more area when aiming. The triggers, on the other hand, go all the way down - after all, you want your entries to be recorded quickly.

Horizontal and Vertical Stick Sensitivity / ZV Sensitivity Multiplier

• Our recommendations:
• 5 to 6 (stick sensitivity)
• 0.8 to 0.9 (ZV multiplier)

Although you can leave the stick sensitivity set to the default (4), it is generally advisable to increase it a few times in a fast game like Call of Duty. However, even most professional players don't turn up their stick sensitivity above 6, because the general rule of thumb applies:

You want to deal damage. If you don't hit, you don't do any damage.

As long as you don't miss the enemy model, you're on the right track.

The ZV sensitivity multiplier is no exception to this. This allows you to aim more precisely when equipping the weapon if you have it set a little lower than 1.00. CoD experts estimate this at around 0.8, but depending on the stick sensitivity you choose, you can also choose 0.85 or 0.9.

With a small check you can check whether you are on the right track with both settings: Open a map like Scrapyard in the private game and choose a target that you now have to shoot at different distances.

Then look quite a bit away from your chosen target before instinctively moving your crosshairs back to it as quickly as possible. If you over-rotated during the experiment, you should lower the sensitivity a little, but if the pan was too short, you should make the right stick more sensitive.

Here we chose the spot on the side of the broken plane to take a few shots from the turn. If we miss it even after many rounds of getting used to it, the sensitivity should be adjusted.

Sensitivity Multiplier Tactical Stance

• Our recommendation: 1.5

You won't use the so-called 'tac stance' all too often, as switching to the side weapon stance takes a long time and is cumbersome.

In some situations, however, you can use it to shoot from the hip with a bit more precision, such as when securing a ledge or door at close range.

In order to react to a fast enemy pace, we recommend increasing the Tac Stance sensitivity a lot higher.

The tactical stance is a compromise between the precision of normal aiming and the more mobile hip firing. Even with a laser attachment, it can be quite tricky to hit.

Target response curve

• Our recommendation: Standard or Dynamic

The reaction curve determines how quickly your analog stick reacts to an increasing tilt angle. With Dynamic, small stick inclinations are accelerated compared to standard, which particularly benefits “Run and Gun” fans. The outer area, however, is slowed down, giving snipers more precision.

However, Standard's progressive progression should definitely suit most of you.

Only very few players are likely to benefit from linear, as the reaction to your stick inputs is extremely quick. Precision is of secondary importance, which is why the appropriate possible uses (for example if you only play with MPs) are significantly limited.

The rotational acceleration is distributed depending on the selected reaction curve. (Image source: AntonUncut / Reddit)

Own sensitivity per zoom

• Our recommendations:
• 1.1 (6x-7x)
• 1.15 (8x-9x)
• 1.2 (large zoom)

The larger the zoom of a rifle scope, the longer it takes to target enemies at medium distances. We, therefore, recommend that you raise the sensitivity multipliers a little at high magnifications in order to be able to react quickly to movements.

Aiming aid

• Our recommendation: Black Ops

Standard and Black Ops are quite close when it comes to Aim Assist, but the latter is a bit stronger, so your crosshairs stick to the enemy more often.

With Precision and Focus, however, the slowdown is a lot greater, but only if the crosshair is placed directly on the enemy. Otherwise, your aim is not as extensively supported as in Standard or Black Ops .

Automatic sprint / tactical sprint behavior

• Our recommendations:
• Automatic tactical sprint or...
• Auto Sprint: Off
• Tactic sprint behavior: Press while running

Call of Duty is pace, pace, and most of all pace in most modes. Getting maximum speed with the tactical sprint is an essential part of the game, especially since you are hardly slower to equip the weapon than when running at a leisurely pace.

So set the automatic jump to tactical sprint.

However, if you often get caught by enemies during the tactical sprint or want more control over your movement speed, you can switch off the automatic sprint and instead activate the tactical sprint by pressing a button once.

If you don't automatically use the tactical sprint anyway, you should at least replace the sprint with the faster tactical sprint by default. This works via the 'tactical sprint behavior'.

Then, immediately after pressing the button, you run across the map at full throttle and switch back to the normal sprint after the short tactical sprint duration. In any case, you'll be faster than with the standard setting, which requires a double click.

Climbing on the ground

• Our recommendation: Off

If you leave the setting on, your character will start an automatic climbing animation every time you jump in front of an object, during which you can only shoot extremely imprecisely.

If you turn it off, you no longer suddenly lose control in combat and can, for example, jump behind a car and send enemies into a hail of bullets. Extremely practical!

If the option hadn't been turned off, we would have climbed onto the hood without cover instead of aiming over it while jumping.

Sliding/diving behavior

• Our recommendations:
• Tap to slide (if you also play Warzone)
• Only slide (if you only play MW3)

A little trick for pure MW3 players: The diving jump is more or less unnecessary in 6 against 6 multiplayer, which is why you should only use sliding.

When sliding/diving, select Slide Only, as this will eliminate the short input delay in which the game tries to detect whether you are holding down the key for a diving animation.

Diving (Warzone only)

• Our recommendation: Free

In the hustle and bustle of battle, it can be quite annoying to press an extra button to dive. Especially since you usually aim upwards when you come into contact with an enemy, so you never really run the risk of accidentally diving while shooting.

Armor Plate Behavior (Warzone only)

• Our recommendation: Use all

With this option, after just one press, you push all the armor plates onto the armor until it is completely filled - and many duels in the game depend on this. If you press Y during the animation, you can interrupt it as usual.

Manual fire behavior

• Our recommendation: Off

The manual fire behavior is actually an accessibility option, but it has major consequences for all of you as it fundamentally affects every weapon that is not designated as fully automatic.

Here's how it works: Instead of firing each shot with a trigger pull, you can hold down the switch to fire continuously.

Why do we recommend leaving the automatic system switched off? Quite simply: With a few exceptions, every other single-shot weapon suffers from an exorbitantly higher delay placed between each individual bullet.

As a result, pistols and DMR rifles can hardly be used anymore, as the required break slows down your trigger finger massively. Even if you fire each shot manually, it may even happen that no bullet at all flies out of the barrel toward the enemy.

Modern Warfare 3's multiplayer is convincing

Activision released the successor to Modern Warfare 2 with just a year's delay and that was certainly not the best decision for the series.

However, we liked the multiplayer much more, even if it started with a few problems, such as an extremely rigid and unbalanced spawn system. With our settings, you might be able to get a lot more fun out of the game and, above all, win games.

Or would you recommend other values? Did we perhaps even forget a few settings? Feel free to let us know!