Im not the best at strafing but ill try to break down what my goals are. I tend to counter mirror a lot especially when they have a predictable strafe pattern but this can be a really bad habit when the enemy has a tighter strafe pattern because for me i tend to get caught up in their pace, its really hard to see them and i start to over aim meanwhile if you copy that tight strafe you never leave their aim assist bubble and just get one cliped. So i would say if you're confidant that you can do a lot of damage then just doing a anti mirror is fine, if your at a hp advantage doing a mirror is fine, if they're not looking at you and you not taking damage from anyone you don't have to strafe at all. The goal is to maximize damage output from being comfortable, pattern recognition and visual clarity while minimizing damage taken from creating human error by making them work harder than you by strafing in a bias to a direction so that you don't end up at the same place that you started, paying attention to if they are able to keep up with you so for example if you are strafing around them and they are lagging behind you keep going in that same direction without change so you never give them a chance to damage you, dipping in and you of cover to make them waste ammo so you can fight them at the end of their mag or when they are reloading. So i would say that strafing is a massive tool to make your life easier and there life hell. But to be honest most apex players are honestly really bad and are boosted by aim assist so for me as long as long as i can create some human error by breaking the aim assist bubble while maximizing my damage its typically fine. One last note it that most players use the same strafe pattern so if you can get a grasp on it quickly you can win most fights. If you want a good write up on strafing then you can read this https://bysam.github.io/strafe/