PvP Movement Mastery
Master player combat through structured progression from movement basics to advanced PvP techniques.
Quick Start: The Essentials
A condensed pass over every technique in this guide. Read this first, or dive into the Full Guide tab for the complete write-up on anything you want to master.
Movement: Circular Strafing
Tarkov's inertia system creates dangerous vulnerability windows as your character must stop completely before reversing, leaving you exposed. The solution is quite simple: move in tiny circles, which makes you move much more smoothly since you'll be changing your direction in 90-degree intervals instead of 180-degree intervals. The below video shows the difference between standard A-D strafing (with those stalls at each end) vs the fluid circular strafing. This allows you to maintain consistent movement & is the foundation of all movement, utilized quite often in the following tips
Key Takeaways
Peeking Essentials
Staying alive in Tarkov comes down to staying behind hard cover and exposing as little of yourself as possible, which starts with prioritizing tight right-hand angles over left-hand ones. Layer on jiggle peeking, hidden height changes, knowing when to swing instead of sit, and you be able to control the majority of pvp encounters.
Enemy
PeekerKey Takeaways
Crosshair Placement & Pre-Aiming
Pre-aiming the most likely head-height spot consistenly throughout the raid noticeably increases your survival against any surprises. The less you have to move your gun after seeing your enemy, the faster your average TTK will be.
Good
BadKey Takeaways
Gathering Intel & Baiting
Gathering intel means learning where the enemy is before you ever commit to a fight, so your peek or swing becomes a prefire instead of a guess. A freelook sprint timed with a jump gets you a look across an opening (ideally from a left-hand to a right-hand angle) while keeping a blind prefire off your head, and a barrel poke into a doorway (flashlight-extended or not) can bait that same information out of them. When you can't get a visual at all, audio cues and forcing a reaction (a grenade, VOIP, a canceled heal or grenade animation) fill in the rest.
Enemy
PlayerKey Takeaways
Wiggle
The wiggle is just leaning applied to your circular movement we learned earlier in the guide. Always wiggle when you're exposed (not holding an angle). Lean right while moving right, left while you're moving left & it will move you across the enemy's screen far faster than it appears to you.
Enemy
PlayerKey Takeaways
Jump Shots
Just a fun way to farm a clip, chain a sprint-jump into a second regular jump (the first builds speed, the second raises your gun back up since it points at the ground while sprinting) & fire a short burst at the peak of the jump. Additionally, you can reverse your direction the moment you land instead of continuing the way you were already moving to increase unpredictability via throwing off your opponents tracking.