Sticks: drift & analysis

Put the controller down on a flat surface, take your hands completely off the sticks, then read the resting offset. A healthy stick sits at or near zero and stays there; a drifting one holds a steady non-zero value, which is what makes a character walk off on its own.

As a rough guide from ordinary pads: under 3% is normal, 3–8% is mild and most games' built-in dead zone absorbs it, and above 8% tends to be noticeable in game. These are practical reference points rather than a manufacturer specification — what matters more is whether the offset stays steady and whether you can feel it while playing.

Try the cheap things first: clean around the base of the stick, and update the controller's firmware — the Xbox Accessories app for Xbox pads, or plugging a DualSense or DualShock 4 into a PlayStation console. Some controllers also have a recalibration routine in their maker's own app. If the offset survives all of that, the stick module is worn and needs servicing or replacing.

Rotate a stick slowly along its outer edge and the app compares the traced path with a perfect circle; the average deviation is the circularity error. Lower means the stick reads consistently in every direction, which is what keeps aiming even. A large error usually feels like one direction being shorter than the rest. (Pro)

Push the stick very slowly out from the centre; the smallest movement that produces any reading approximates the dead zone. A larger dead zone means small aiming corrections get ignored. This is an estimate based on what the controller reports, not the value a game applies internally. (Pro)