How to improve your shooting technique in CS:GO? Guide by SCOPE.GG

Every day we come back to matchmaking or FACEIT to try once again get a new rank or level. Right after joining the game you get a feeling that something is going wrong. Things aren’t going your way and you end up last in your team. What options do you have in this situation? You can rage at your teammates, telling them they’re doing everything wrong and they’re the reason you can’t kill anyone. You can blame the ping or noisy neighbours. But you also can calm down and train your aiming & shooting skill. Will it be difficult? Not at all, here’re some tips on how to get better at shooting in CS:GO.

What does the shooting in CS:GO depend on?

We won’t be talking about the technical stuff such as servers’ tickrate and your hardware settings in this article. Assuming you have the high-end rig and join the perfect server, you still might end up with like 10 frags in the end.

To become good at shooting in CS:GO you have to learn and understand the game’s mechanics and how the weapons work. Each and every gun has several attributes related to its accuracy. The developers have not implemented an in-depth shooting guide into the game, but still there are several issues that every player should know about.

Weapon accuracy in CS:GO

You’ve probably noticed the attribute bars like these while buying a weapon during the game, including accuracy. This attribute means the distance this weapon will hit a 30 cm plate 100% of the time. It’s quite difficult to visually determine an object's size in-game for a player, however that’s easy for the game’s engine.

Imagine a situation: you’re armed with an AK near Dust2 pit and your opponent is standing on the other side of long on A plant’s ramp. Would you hit your opponent 10 out of 10 times if both of you are standing still? No, you would not. The game itself won’t allow you to do that. Even though AK is quite accurate, there’s still some deviation even in the first bullet’s trajectory. Obviously, it’s even worse when you’re shooting with bursts.

Stuff like this is something every player learns in time. You’ll know that one-tapping your opponent on longer distances is a lottery and you’ll learn better ways of shooting like aiming slightly below the head and firing a short 2-3 bullet bursts or tapping several times.

Tapping is when you fire very rapidly but only with one bullet at a time by quickly clicking the left mouse button several times.

Recoil

That’s quite easy. The longer you hold the firing button, the less accurate your automatic weapon becomes. So-called “spray” (burst-fire mode) has a different pattern for every weapon in the game. If you’d try to shoot any automatic weapon several magazines in a row at the wall while standing still, you’d get the same “pattern” out of bullet holes every time.

Semi-automatic weapons also have a recoil. You still also need to lower your crosshair while quickly shooting from USP, P250 and the others to account for recoil.

Movement

Firing while moving is the last thing you should do in CS:GO. You can forget about whatever accuracy stat you’ve seen in a weapon's characteristics, you won’t be hitting much. You have to get really lucky to kill someone with an assault rifle while moving.

How to improve your accuracy?

The longer you play, the better you get at shooting. Sadly, there’s no magic trick around it, you’ll still have to practice your aim and reflexes to become better. However, there still are a couple of tips we can give you.2

Do some squats. It can really help!

The first thing that can help you is sitting while firing. Bullets spread less whenever you sit. Hitting the aforementioned 30 cm plate becomes much easier and any weapon’s effective range increases.

However, you shouldn’t forget that squatting makes you an easier target. The best course of action would be - find the enemy - sit - burst - run away. There’s no need to be a hero. You shouldn’t use this in every skirmish though, don’t be predictable. In time you’ll learn how to control your recoil without sitting and even while moving.

Releasing the firing button just on time

Keeping your nerves in check can be quite difficult when you have an enemy in sight. It’s even worse when he appeared out of nowhere. Inexperienced players may panic and hysterically press the left mouse button and run from side to side to evade enemy bullets. However, that's the exact moment when you should steel yourself, calm down and release the exact amount of bullets necessary to deal 100 damage. Never forget that moving decreases your accuracy.

Get used to shooting with short bursts on shorter distances and to tap on longer distances. If you click the mouse button too fast, tapping can become the same as the usual spray, making your weapon less accurate.

By the way, you can analyse your accuracy with help from our SCOPE.GG analytical service. You can link your Steam or Faceit account with SCOPE.GG and get detailed information about every skirmish during your matches along with any mistakes you made.

How to control your recoil in CS:GO?

The most direct thing to say would be - learn spray patterns of every weapon that you use and try to move your mouse during the spray so all your bullets would hit the same place. Easier said than done, isn’t it? During skirmishes, we just don’t have time to remember a picture in our heads of what the spray looks like. That’s something you have to remember intuitively and you can only achieve that with many hours of practice.

In time you’ll teach your body how to control spray so you’ll be able to kill your opponent even on longer distances with no trouble. Spraying is not the perfect way to shoot in every situation, however it is an invaluable skill. After all, we have a lot of examples of pro-players doing it and they definitely know how a player should shoot in CS:GO.

We’ll discuss practicing your spray a little bit later.

How to organize your training routine?

First of all, you should remember to warm up before playing. Stretch your wrists in different directions, let the blood flow. Don’t underestimate the role your muscles and tendons play during the game. Another benefit of warming up is that your hands and fingers won’t freeze as quickly during colder seasons of the year.

The training itself should start with playing against bots. The best way to do it now is to find a dedicated map for that in a Steam Workshop, something like aim_botz or Training Center. If you want to practice your spray control, you can easily find dedicated maps for that too - Recoil Master, for example.

Just learning how to quickly aim at the head should be enough at first, so even non-moving bots would suffice. There’s an option for that on aim_botz map. Just create a server for yourself and try to tap at the bots, you should strive for one shot - one kill efficiency. Gradually increase the firing rate. On aim_botz there’s a metronome that clicks with every frag that might help you understand your killing speed. The quicker you one-tap the bots, the faster your aiming skill will increase.

After the tapping practice it is time for bursts. The idea is almost the same, but you should shoot with 2-3 bullets at the time instead of one. Try to avoid hitting the body and always aim for the head. When you feel comfortable with the accuracy and speed of your bursts, you can practice the sprays.

Spray’s objective is not limited to quickly killing an enemy in close quarters. The ideal situation to use a spray is against two or more enemies. All you have to do is aim at one of them, press the left mouse button, kill him and aim at the next one without releasing the mouse button. It should be quite easy to do against the bots. Ramp up the enemy count as you see fit, try to kill 3-4 bots who stand far away from each other with one spray. Don’t stop practicing after getting a hundred or so frags. To train your body motility perfectly, you’ll have to get a couple thousand kills every day.

If you’re right-handed you might have noticed that moving your crosshair to the left is much easier than to the right. That’s one of the features of the human body - pushing something away is harder than pulling, even the computer mouse. Pay more attention to the flickshots to the right during your practice.

You will find even more about spray & recoil control from various weapons in a special series of articles in our Leaning Center by clicking the link down below:

What should you do after practicing with bots?

No need to rush to a competitive game just yet. Nowadays there’s a lot of ways to train your shooting skills. The easiest way to do it is to start practicing against the real players. You have several types of servers to choose from.

First, you can try the aim servers. The main feature is that your enemy won’t spawn behind you, every skirmish happens face to face. It allows you to focus on your shooting and practice aiming at longer distances.

Second is an old good DM. The DM servers might not reflect the situations that happen in proper CS:GO matches, however the constant stream of enemies all around you will keep you on your toes and it can be a great way to warm up before playing the competitive game.

If you don’t know where to find the proper server, look up the SCOPE.gg training servers. We have all kinds of servers you might want to practice your aim, check it out!

Good luck in the game!