Before you think about aim, strategy, or rank, your game has to be set up so it is showing you information instead of decoration. Most of the settings below exist to remove clutter, raise clarity, or cut delay between what happens and when you see it.
Connectivity Feedback — Icons Only Frees up clutter.
Defuser Pickup — Both Lets you run over the defuser and still pick it up without exposing your body to defenders.
Drone After Prep — Manual / Semi-Automatic Being force-ejected from your drone at spawn stops you watching a drone a teammate parked on a cutoff for roamer awareness. Manual gives you complete, active coverage of a room you droned in prep, so you can call whether it is clear or whether your team has an early pick available for a man advantage.
HUD elements exist to familiarise you with the maps and the mechanics. While they are on, actively absorb what they are telling you — with the goal of eventually turning them off to reduce clutter. Disabling things like health and teammate outlines feels drastic at first, but it forces you to build game sense, relying on environmental awareness and communication instead of a screen full of icons.
Compass Appearance — Simplified Frees up clutter. Advanced adds nothing.
Loadout Inputs — Off Turn these off once you are comfortable knowing where all your keys are and what they do.
Health — Off, or Numbers Only A flashing red bar in your peripheral vision is a distraction at the exact moment you need focus.
Action Reminder — Off Same reason as health.
Teammate Username / Outline — Turn off one of them Reducing visual clutter improves your read of the screen. Preference varies: some players prefer disabling usernames, others outlines. Outlines help identify teammates, but they also add clutter and cause problems when an enemy is between you and a teammate. Switching to icons demands active awareness of your team’s positions and clear communication about where everyone is and what they are doing.
Dynamic Range — Night Mode or Hi-Fi Night Mode boosts quiet sounds while lowering the volume of gunshots, breaches, and other loud noises. Depending on your audio setup, that boost can meaningfully improve your awareness of footsteps and drones. Hi-Fi keeps a wider sound stage and can make certain cues easier to place without Night Mode’s compression. Being comfortable with your audio is what matters
— test both.
Music — Off Music sets the atmosphere of Siege beautifully and does nothing for your competitive mindset.
Voice Chat Volume — Medium Set it slightly low, because some teammates are loud. If your team is in Discord it matters less.
Mute on Unfocused — Off Alt-tabbing to check something is normal. You still want to hear the round start or a rush so you can tab back in on time.
Make sure you are running the highest refresh rate your monitor supports. Understand that resolution can restrict the maximum refresh rate available to you. Do not go below 1920x1080. If your monitor cannot exceed 60 Hz, buy a new monitor — 144 Hz is the minimum.
In a game like Siege, rounds are decided by reaction time, which makes refresh rate critical to having the most current information on screen. Verify your monitor is set to at least 144 Hz in all three places:
Display Mode — Fullscreen Windowed and Borderless can cap your frame rate and introduce stutter or screen tearing.
Refresh Rate — Maximum This tells the monitor how many times per second to update. There is no reason to run below your maximum.
Aspect Ratio — 16:10, 4:3 or 3:2 (stretched) Which stretched ratio you choose is personal. Experiment. Avoid the default ratio, which makes opponents appear smaller. A stretched resolution distorts the image and takes time to adjust to, but the one you settle into will give you an edge.
V-Sync — Off Synchronising frame rate to refresh rate introduces input delay. If you get screen tearing with this off, there is a different problem to solve first.
FPS Limit — Off Never cap below your monitor’s refresh rate; it introduces input lag.
Field of View — 83 to 90 Generally the usable range. Anything lower puts you at a disadvantage because you cannot see enough of what is around you.
HUD Display Size — Personal (I use 83) Set it lower and see whether you like it. I run 83 because when I am locked in, I want all the information close to the centre of the screen.
Brightness — Around 60 Depends on your monitor, but 60–70 is generally right. Too high and colours wash out, blurring opponents while you clear a room. Too low and your monitor cannot display enough separation between a dark corner and a player standing in it.
Texture Quality — Low / Medium Saves a frame or two, and low keeps the visuals from being over-stimulating.
Texture Filtering — Linear Filtering blends pixels so surfaces look smoother. In Siege you want to see pixels change colour rather than blend when someone peeks. If your monitor is poor and you already struggle to see anything, raise it so the image at least looks clean.
LOD Quality — Ultra Increases the distance at which high-quality models load. Siege is a game about angles, and a low-quality model at range is a direct disadvantage. This is the last setting you should ever lower for frames.
Shading — Low There is no benefit to improved lighting quality when your goal is to see everything.
Shadows — High Lets you see operator shadows.
Reflection — Off Siege has very few reflective surfaces. No real benefit.
VFX — Off Particles, dust and debris make the game look good at the cost of visibility, especially through breaches going off and soft walls being shot.
Ambient Occlusion — Off Like VFX, extra shadow obscures enemies. It darkens parts of the map unnecessarily — you want to see people wherever they are.
Lens Effect — Off Distracting, and a disadvantage.
Zoom-In Depth of Field — Off It blurs everything outside your scope, restricting your view.
Anti-Aliasing — Off Leave it off unless your display is genuinely poor, such as a laptop panel — then try FXAA. Do not use TAA. It forces your GPU to re-render the frame, producing a blurry image, and it will tank your frame rate by rendering above your resolution and downsampling.
Graphics summary: set everything to Low, then set LOD to Ultra and Shadows to High, and set Anti-Aliasing to the second option (off).
It should not need saying that aiming is the core of Siege. Your sensitivity is something your brain adapts to over time. Change it slowly and note how your aim responds. The end goal is never having to revisit this section again — one permanent sensitivity you use for Siege and every other game you play.
Make sure Windows mouse acceleration is off: Settings → Devices → Mouse → Additional Mouse Options → Pointer Options → uncheck “Enhance pointer precision”.
Raw Input — On Raw input lets the game receive data directly from the device instead of going through the operating system’s processing.
Mouse Horizontal and Vertical — Identical Matching horizontal and vertical sensitivity keeps your movement consistent in every direction, which matters most when the target is on a diagonal from your current aim point.
Mouse Sensitivity Low enough that a single sweep can turn you 180 degrees. Beyond that it comes down to your mouse, your mousepad, and how much desk space you have. If you cannot reach targets fast
enough, raise it. If you consistently overshoot, it is too high. Many players run sensitivity so high they cannot control recoil or make micro-adjustments. Roughly 5–8 for horizontal and vertical, 30–45 ADS for 1.0x, and 42–70 for 2.5x is a reasonable baseline if you are lost.
DPI Know what your mouse is set to. 400, 800 or 1600 are good standards. Higher DPI gives a marginally faster response. A 1000 Hz polling rate is the expectation; search for a polling rate tester to confirm what you actually have.
Gadget Deployment — Advanced Lets you deploy any utility — Banshees, Evil Eyes, Black Mirrors, breach charges — with the option to cancel the placement and get back to your gun. Gunfights are decided in milliseconds and you do not want to be locked in an animation.
Drone Deployment — Advanced Stops you from being pulled into the drone the instant you throw it. This lets you throw drones far away to be used later, bait a defender, or stay aware while the drone lands so you can drone safely.
Be deliberate about what you bind to your mouse buttons, or to any key. If you find yourself performing unintended actions in ranked, that key is not bound correctly for you. If you struggle to deploy or activate your gadget on middle mouse, middle mouse is not your key.
Your controls should be personal, comfortable and intuitive — second nature, so you are never fighting your own hands. If you use a gaming mouse, avoid binding anything to the forward side button; the misclick rate during a gunfight is high, and this is not a game where you want to rely on probability.
For toggle versus hold on walk and lean, the defaults are generally right. If a different setup suits you because of previous games you have played, use it. Monitor yourself: if you are on toggle and keep sprinting or walking unintentionally, switch to hold. If you consistently fumble a keybind, rebind it to something more comfortable.
Reassign your DPI button as well — changing DPI mid-session actively works against building consistent aim.
Screen Shake — Off There is no benefit to being unable to see.
Motion Blur — Off Keeps your screen clear when you take damage.
Crosshair Colour — Personal With the variety of Siege environments, some colours simply work better than others. Green and red are the defaults and perform well across all maps. If you struggle to locate or place your crosshair, your sight choice or dot colour may be to blame — experiment with both until one becomes second nature.
Related: the Settings Lab and the sensitivity calculator.
This chapter is from The Principles of Competitive Siege, a free guide by Szhutsen K. Liang. SiegeIQ puts the same thinking on your own clips: upload a round and get a breakdown of what actually went wrong. Try it free.