Shooting Longballs When Paintballing

by Anna on February 14, 2012

in Paintball Information,Paintball Tactics

When we talk about shooting a paintball gun, an avid paintballer knows that the usual range of a shootout is 50 to 75 feet, and that for the most part is pretty true. There is however another range that deserves to be talked about and that is called “extreme range” or “longball range.”

When we talk about “longballing” somebody, some have a record of shooting of about 250 feet and the ball breaking on them. It may not happen all the time but it can be done.

Instead of shooting a level shot – a shot that you are normally taking by aiming your marker’s nozzle on the same level where you want to hit your target, what you are going to do is to angle up.

It may sound obvious but a lot of people don’t think of this. A lot of people just do a level shot and when somebody is out of range, they just curse and swear and move on to the next target. But what you are doing when longballing is that you are purposely not making effective straight shots, instead you are shooting at an angle to make that long shot and estimate that it will land on your target.

Longballing may not be the most accurate shot that you could do because paintballs are just liquid-filled, gelatin-shell projectile balls. These are definitely not the most accurate thing on earth. However, you can predict where and how a longball is going to land with some practice and experience.

If you have a sight in your paintball marker, it is going to be somewhat useless except if you put the dot on the target then raise the dot over the target to rain in the paintball over the area.

Depending on how far away you are, raise the gun angled up. Don’t watch down the barrel instead you have to watch the ball in flight. This incident makes a light-colored paintball pretty handy because a light colored ball allows you to track it as it flies allowing you to adjust your angle as it goes.

This is particularly handy if you are paintballing in windy weather conditions or if you are playing in a terrain where there are lots of tree covers. As you know, when there is a lot of tree cover there is always a twig that comes out of a tree branch that will whack your paintball.

If you are only few feet away from what you hit, then it’s only very fine increments, very small movements. Keep in mind that one inch of your barrel travel could equal to 10, 20 or 50 feet of range in a cone. So, when you are adjusting, don’t make huge movements. Just small little adjustments from left and right and up and down are the way to go.

You shouldn’t really use longballing all the time. It’s not the best skill to take out opponents. It’s handy for big games, it’s handy if you need to keep people at bay for a long period of time but eventually someone is going to get the bright idea and rush you and it’s not going to be 100% effective. So, just keep longballing in your back pocket because it’s just another skill that you can pull out of the bag when you need it.

  • paintball

    OMG!! This is for real pros only!! 

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