How to shoot in CS:GO: Types of Shooting and How to Train It?

Introduction in CS:GO Shooting And Aiming Tips

Before we start, I'd like to say that I don't claim this technique to be the best, and certainly, do not guarantee that practicing it you will win a major prize. But, if to approach it seriously, you will greatly improve your shooting skills without a doubt. Regardless of what your current rank is.

CS:GO like any competitive cyber discipline requires regular training, and Matchmaking, FACEIT, ESEYA and other websites are some kind of a squared ring, on which you put to practice what you honed in training and not vice versa. Simply playing in a competitive mode, you will hardly learn anything. Your progress will be very slow, and the way you manage your time will be ineffective.

In order to effectively develop our shooting skills, first of all, we need to determine the main types of shooting. These are Taping, Bursting and Spraying, as well as key aiming types - Flicking and Tracking.

Now let's get to the mode for our training. As we found out earlier, tournament competitions do not suit us. Among those popular that are left are Deathmatch, Arena and Retake.

What is the problem with these modes? Actually, it is the same as with competition, we are more to apply our skills and less to train. For maximum effectiveness of our training, we need to exclude dealing with any possible interim factors that do not concern the shooting directly and thus focus solely on honing each of the shooting types. Just to ensure that you apply your skills in practice in the future in an appropriate way.

DMs, Arena, and Retakes are excellent intermediate training, but to use them more effectively we need to train basic stuff separately. Most players do not train basic skills, which makes them like a loser arm wrestling athlete, who regularly takes part in competitions, but does not train his forearm, biceps, and deltas.

Training maps

Indeed, where to train? You may ask. The answer is: "On specialized offline maps," which are now great in number, but there is one that fully meets our requirements. All in all, it is more convenient when everything is available in one place.

It's called Aim_Botz. It is not included in the Valve standard pack of maps, so you need to download it separately. You can do it quite simply:

1. In your Steam client main menu go to the Community tab, select Workshop.
2. Type "Global Offensive" in the search bar, click on the drop-down menu and you'll get to the CS:GO workshop.
3. Now look for Aim_botz map and click the "Subscribe" green button.
4. That's all, now Steam automatically downloads this map and it will be available in the client game menu.
5. Launch CS:GO. Click Play> Single game with bots> When in the "Workshop" choose the downloaded map and start.
6. In the pop-up window, check the "No bots" box.
7. After the game loads always join the Terrorist team.

The principle of playing on this map is quite simple. You start inside a room with bots spawning around you, which you actually need to kill. The map also provides the ability to fine-tune various aspects of the training process, but we will go back to this later.

Strafing in CS:GO

It is impossible to talk about shooting in CS:GO, without touching upon the topic of the player movement. These two concepts are tightly interconnected due to the game mechanics, the essence of which is that accurate shooting is possible only when you are standing still. Had everything been so simple, then all the gaming would have boiled down to an exchange of gunfire between bots standing still. And here comes to play another feature of the game mechanics called Strafing.

Strafing is the type of movement, using which the player stops before firing a tap (single shot) or a spray (series of shots). The importance of the strafe can't be overemphasized since it not only allows you to lay fire effectively but at the same time serves as a protective measure that transfers you from a static bot condition to a dynamically moving one. In other words, the Counter Strike Global Offensive is simply impossible to play without strafing.

Taping - single shots

Taping is single shots firing with an enemy's head as a priority for the aiming. This shooting method is effective for medium and long-range combat and is also particularly effective when using pistols.

The principle of training this method is quite simple: you move, stop, shoot/move, stop, shoot. Thus, it is very important to keep constantly moving and stop only to take a shot.

Thus, we simultaneously train both taping and strafing. These two things are like Romeo and Juliet, only in the world of CS:GO. Absolutely inseparable. Therefore, they need to be trained in combination alone. Our goal is not to achieve a high speed of movement, but to minimize misses. You will eventually develop a high speed automatically. It is very important not to forget to change the direction of your movement often.

Understanding what the best guns in CS:GO are can provide a significant advantage in competitive matches.

Therefore, they need to be trained in combination alone. Our goal is not to achieve a high speed of movement, but to minimize misses. You will eventually develop a high speed automatically. It is very important not to forget to change the direction of your movement often.

Bursting - firing a short series of shots

Bursting is firing a short series of shots, that is, shooting with short trigger pulls for two or three shots. Due to an excellent ability to combine it with strafing, using Bursting makes you much more mobile than when using the Spraying, and firing two or three shots significantly reduces the accuracy requirements for aiming in comparison with Taping. Moreover, the main disadvantage of using Taping is the accuracy of the first shot.

For many players, this may sound like a revelation, but there is a bullet dispersion in the CS:GO, that is, the first bullet does not always hit the crosshair center. In general, each bullet deviates for a random distance from the crosshair center.

Using a CS:GO crosshair generator can help you design the perfect crosshair to fit your playstyle.

This feature was implemented specially for adding a randomness factor to the shooting, which in the case of the first shot from AK 47, for example, though is palpable at medium and long distances only, acts as an absolute con of Taping, because even in conditions of perfect aiming at the head it makes you miss from time to time.

This is not to mention some Desert Eagle firing, the dispersion for which sometimes diminishes the chance of hitting the target to the one of a specific case opening. Thus, Bursting is the golden mean between an ultra-mobile Taping and a static Spraying.

In terms of training, Bursting does not fundamentally differ from Taping. This method is also directly related to strafing. Therefore, we train it in the same way. Since the spray pattern of the first five bullets fired from any automatic weapon is a vertical line, it's enough just to compensate for the recoil by moving the aim down for a successful Bursting.

Spraying - firing a long series of shots

Spraying is a continuous controlled shooting. When you pull and hold the trigger of any automatic weapon, its muzzle starts to move along a certain trajectory in space. This is caused by the weapon recoil. Each weapon in CS: GO is characterized by its own recoil. That is, the nature of the trajectory traced by the muzzle of each weapon is unique.

Spraying can be used at any distance, but with the distance increase even with a perfect control the shooting will be too dispersed. Therefore, it is recommended to use spraying fire only at close and medium distances. So why is this method is actually dominant?

Firstly, this is due to sticking to the banal principle of "more shots - more likely hits."

Secondly, with the fact that the Spraying technique implies aiming not at a tiny head like Taping or Bursting, but at the body, which is much easier. Thirdly, because most of the skirmishes occur in the near and middle sections of game maps. Well, fourthly because of Tagging.

Tagging is the reduction of the speed of movement and acceleration of the player, which is hit by one or more bullets. The more powerful the weapon fired, the greater the movement speed reduction, but the most interesting thing is that the slowing down also depends on the weapon wielded by the player that got hit. That is, in a case of good control of your spraying fire, Tagging makes your opponent's strafing almost useless.

On October 2, 2014, Tagging was updated and ever since has been the most imbalanced type of shooting. Specifically, after this update, Scream and other iconic tapers began to transition to Spraying.

There are many specialized maps for training your spray control. The most popular of which was developed by the same person who made the Aim_Botz, but it is not included in this post like the rest of these maps.

As we have already explained, every automatic weapon in CS:GO has its own unique spray pattern. Many of you probably have tried training on this map, or used the wall for that, and know well that achieving a stable, high-quality and most importantly unintentional reproduction of the bullet spray pattern of AK 47 requires well just unreal amount of time, not to mention the fact that Kalashnikov is not the only weapon in the game, which you have to use for Spraying.

There is a much simpler way of training your Spraying, but before studying it you need to understand the mechanics of this process.

For that we will need the following console commands:

1. sv_showimpacts 1 - to see better where the bullets hit;
2. gods - for making bots immortal;
3. weapon_accuracy_nospread 1 - to disable the random dispersion, this command is not needed for the training itself, it is needed only to demonstrate clearly how the crosshair behaves regarding the points where bullets hit.

Pay attention to where the crosshair is and where the bullet flies. The crosshair and bullet vertical axes match.

The exception is only two bullets shot in the middle and at the end of the pattern. Hence, it follows that when you use the spraying technique, it is not necessary to perfectly memorize and reproduce the pattern of a certain automatic weapon. It is enough just to compensate the crosshair position towards the player's model. And it works with any automatic weapon.

Of course, using this method can't enable you to consistently plug 30 bullets in the target as two or four bullets in the middle and end of the pattern will be a miss, but even then this method covers 99% of the game situations, in which ordinary players find themselves. And those who are not satisfied with such a training will have to shoot in the walls and learn the patterns and recoil compensation.

Spray Transfer Hack

Also, thanks to this method, it is possible to easily perform the so-called Spray Transfer, which is a controlled relocation of the field of fire from one point to another when firing a series of shots. Find two bots standing nearby, pull the trigger and fire at one then move the crosshair below the second one practicing the principle described above, thus compensating the crosshair position with a shift in the direction opposite to the crosshair original movement.

The second spray training is very similar to how we train Taping and Bursting. The only difference is that we do not aim at the head but in the body.

Why in the body? Because for the shooting in the enemy head there are Taping and Bursting, which, in a case of not hitting the target, will give you the opportunity to quickly change your position by strafing. If you start to spray fire from the head and do not hit the mark, then you become an easy target.

This is particularly critical in situations where your opponent has a gun, whose head is hard to hit due to the opponent's high acceleration. But it's easy for the opponent to kill you in such a situation because you stand still for a long time. To plug the first bullet into the body is much easier than in the head, and after getting hit the enemy will slow down and the next bullets are very likely to finish the opponent. Of course, this takes a little longer than just performing a headshot, but this factor is easily compensated by a much higher stability.

Flicking - reflexive aiming

Flicking is a type of aiming that relies on unconscious actions and muscle memory. Uh, what is unconscious or reflexive? This is a pretty trivial thing, this is what enables you to walk without planning every step, or catch an object that you dropped, or ride a bicycle. Conscious thinking is quite limited and allows a person to perform from 5 to 10 tasks at the same time, but unconscious one allows much more and is much more complex.

Ask a student of a physics and mathematics institute to calculate the trajectory of a stone thrown, adding weight and speed factors. All calculations will take him quite a long time. Or throw a child the same stone, who at a subconscious level for a fraction of a second will calculate the trajectory, speed, and weight and will put his or her hand in the right place to catch the stone. Of course, this is quite a far-fetched analogy, but it just works great with flick shooting.

Many players try to always aim consciously, but this works well only when you shoot the AFK targets. Or when your flick-fired bullet was initially put not exactly on a player model but, for instance, a little to the right. In this situation, you can correct your the crosshair position using a conscious aiming based on where to the target moves, but this is not entirely proper.

A CS:GO bind generator can simplify the process of creating complex binds, enhancing your in-game efficiency.

You need to learn to put your flicks where you need on the first try. Because the main advantage of an unconscious aiming (Flicking) is in the speed, we do not need to waste time thinking over, the hand skips this part and moves reflexively, and then stops at the right point.

How difficult is it to train muscle memory and unconscious reproduction? This is very difficult, especially if you have not done this before, but if you train hard, over time, your skills of shooting using any method will improve incredibly due to flicking. In fact, flicking is a tool through which you can practice a certain type of shooting.

Whether it's Taping, Bursting or Spraying. You can have an outstanding spraying control, but if your flick shots stop a meter from the enemy, then your spray is worthless. Therefore, if you want to improve your shooting skills you will have to train Flicking. And, ideally, with different weapons. But the priority, of course, is AWP. AWP is a weapon that can not be fired without flicking. With all else being equal, an inaccurate flick or a long aiming makes you an easy target. AWP is a very powerful weapon, but its low mobility and recharging speed are absolutely unforgiving for mistakes.

Training is carried out as follows. We move across the map, stop, zoom in, so that a bot model is in the corner of your zone of view, flick shoot, and kill. With that, we try to focus not on speed, but on accuracy. It is very important. You may end up in a failure for the start, it's normal, you have to arm yourself with patience and go on. You should not try to perform this as quickly as possible right from the start. You'll develop the speed with time.

To train the flicking shooting using pistols, we first need to remove the helmets from the bots. This is done as follows. Just shoot two times at the Helmet menu item.

Take the USP-S or P2000. Why them? Just because they have the smallest dispersion.

Find a cluster of bots, or just a couple of bots, the distance between which allows us to flick fire at them without lifting the mouse from the rug. And try to kill the bots by flick shooting at them with a quick aim shift from one head to another.

Yes, the vast majority of people when starting to perform this exercise kill one bot at best, but do you know what? The vast majority of people in CS:GO are absolutely bad at shooting. We are here exactly to learn this.

Therefore, no matter how hard it may feel at the beginning you should understand that there are no magical and shortcuts to achieve this goal. Training, training, and training again.

To practice a flick Spraying, take AK or any other automatic weapon, move around the map, flick shoot, hold the trigger, flick shoot and hold the trigger again. Again, for the reasons described above, you need to flick shoot not in the head, but in the body.

Tracking - tracking of target

So we eventually got to Tracking, the last but not the least chapter of this video. By tracking, we mean target tracking. That is, if this bot goes to the right or left, I will need to keep an aim on it. This is tracking.

If flicking is needed to quickly cover large distances from the crosshair, the tracking is used for short distances.

To train the tracking you need to move at the first speed and along a random trajectory. Then choose some random bot and try to keep your crosshair on it. I'll cut to the chase and say that this is a very exhausting exercise, especially for players with a low sensitivity.

Try to perform it as gently as possible, otherwise, your hand will start to hurt very quickly. This is not a shooting method, but a tool using which you will improve your shooting by Taping, Bursting and Spraying. The most illustrative example is the pistol matches, in which opponents strafe very quickly from side to side for short distances. It is such matches where players who have good tracking skills earn an advantage.

Knowing how to counter strafe in CS:GO can greatly improve your movement and shooting accuracy during gunfights.

There is another good option. If in the first exercise we had a moving enemy, in this one we ourselves move. The principle is the same: we try to keep the aim at the target, but we do it when moving.

Conclusion

As for the duration of training, they should not be shorter than 20 minutes total a day, with the maximum duration limited only by your enthusiasm and spare time, but you should not get too involved either.

If you feel tired, you should stop. After going through these basic training, I recommend not to rush to MM, FACEIT or Ecea right off the bat but to play on DM or Arena for an hour or so instead. There are a lot of suitable servers, I personally play on the European HSFACTORY servers (IP: 87.98.160.172:27016).

As for Arena, I can recommend a server, on which I regularly play - K1nd3r Arena. (IP: 46.174.49.209:27015) The server has a very sane administration, there are no garbage mods, it has good maps, and very skillful players, including professional ones, play on the server. And as you know, the best way to improve is to play against a superior opponent.