@Eshshshss1. You are cherry picking the "total one-clips slotted by input" - By doing this you claim there is nothing else important here and this is all that matters, when its not.
2. I am not sure where this "AA only works in close/mid range" came from. I have seen videos where people literally go to firing range and strafe back and forth or whatever. We have to define "close" with an actual in game meters measurement.
3. Yes, my personal experience is what I have to go from. However, it's a shared experience. My experience is not limited to my gameplay, it's including the countless TikTok videos, YT videos, Twitch clips, etc. Even EA mentioned somehwere in a patch note that the game consists of mainly close range fights.
4. And yeah, to each there own. I will provide more videos of "close range" fights where you think the AA on my controller is "op". I literally have been called out for "spinning in circles" because I couldn't hit the dude who was bouncing all over the place in my face while lazering me.
I never once have not called "Aim assist" anything but that. What I HAVE and CONTINUE to do is disprove this idea of "AIM FOR ME" which is what every person against AA claims it does. It will never take a bad player and make them good, it will never make any player better. Even if an MNK switched to controller, they will have a learning curve to deal with it. It won't make them automatically good.
And thank you for providing that info about why you don't use a controller. I use controller cause it's what I grew up playing on. Never could afford gaming PC (till now) so always got second hand consoles (sometimes 3rd hand lol)
BUT! You cannot say "I don't want to go and buy a controller to realize that what people wrote here, devs wrote in Apex documentation (aim assist actually being helpful to a 40-60% range) and what other players told me - that it is much easier to play" because it's not always easier. This is your subjective experience talking. I wish I had the time to sit down and get used to MNK (I have troubles using my left hand to click the right keys. Even playing LoL where you use like 4 buttons I kept clicking the wrong key. This is muscle memory and like I said I just have to sit down and do it.) I also don't understand why you want to opt out so badly. (see paragraph above where I talk about what AA is and isn't).
I don't see how it adds to Apex ability to detect, remove cheats. I do programing and can think of many ways to implement an anti-cheat (this method using cryptographic signature for all input). I just don't think Apex cares enough (just like Warzone).
Summed up: I never once said AA is not helpful, but I will continue to and always say it never aims for you. I still have to do the work to aim.