How To Aim In CS:GO

Before you try improving your aim, it is important to get a good grasp of what “aiming” actually means in Counter-Strike. There are various components that define the word “aim,” and understanding each of them is crucial to seeing your strengths, weaknesses, and what to improve on. Here are some of the most important aiming aspects you should consider.

Crosshair Placement

Crosshair placement is the most vital aiming tool. The idea behind this fundamental skill is placing your crosshair at an optimal location at all times to minimize your mouse movements and aim accurately. You won’t have to make too many adjustments as your crosshair should be close to the enemy player if placed properly.

Maintaining Head Level Placement

Ideal crosshair placement means you are aiming at head level at all times. Your crosshair should be placed correctly everywhere you go, since you never know when an enemy player is going to appear on your screen.

By maintaining head-level placement, you are essentially covering the vertical aspect of your crosshair, and you only need to make sideways movements to lock your crosshair on an enemy player’s head.

Shooting Methods

In Counter-Strike, there are three primary shooting styles that require you to approach your aim differently. Since weapons have recoil, you must control them appropriately, which is why three styles are needed.

Tapping

The first method we’ll discuss is tapping, which involves shooting one bullet at a time in short intervals. With this method, you are not shooting multiple bullets at once, meaning there is no need to control any recoil from your weapons.

Tapping is most effective with weapons such as the AK-47, M4A1-S, and Desert Eagle. You must master your accuracy to execute this shooting style, as there is less room for error compared to bursting and spraying. Ideally, you would tap your weapon in long-ranged aim duels since controlling recoil in far distances is incredibly difficult, even for experienced players.

Bursting

Next, we’ll talk about bursting. Bursting relies on your shooting 2 to 4 bullets in bursts. It is slightly similar to tapping, as you must wait a bit before firing your next round of bullets. However, bursting fires more bullets than tapping, allowing you to deal more damage in a short time period.

However, you must begin controlling the weapon recoil, as the spray pattern for rifles begins after the third bullet. As a result, you must slightly pull your weapon down after the first two bullets of your burst to control your recoil and aim properly.

Controlling bursts at long range will require players some practice, as it takes time to get used to. Bursting works really well in mid-ranged fights.

Spraying

Finally, we have spraying, which is arguably the most satisfying method out of the three. You’ve definitely heard of this term before, as spraying involves a player holding down their firing button and shooting the weapon without stopping.

Unfortunately, spraying isn’t as easy as it sounds. Players must have a very good understanding of the spray patterns on different weapons. Not controlling the recoil will make you shoot at the sky after less than ten bullets.

A lot of practice must be done to spray rifle weapons properly, but you can start getting used to it with SMGs, as the weapons are very easy to control.

Pre-aiming Concept

Now that we are familiar with the weapons, let’s go back to real aim talk and discuss pre-aiming.  As the name suggests, pre-aiming is when a player is positioning their crosshair at a certain angle that they expect an enemy player to appear. If an enemy player is actually hiding there, pre-aiming will greatly reduce the reaction and adjust the time when the enemy comes into your line of sight.

To pre-aim properly, you must be familiar with the Counter-Strike maps. Every map has common angles that players love hiding behind. These angles are very predictable, allowing you to pre-aim your crosshair at proper head level before peeking an angle.

Slicing the Pie

Pre-aiming is very useful for players clearing angles, especially if they are going into a bomb site with no information.

The idea of “slicing the pie” is to clear angles methodically. You are gradually exposing yourself to different potential positions an enemy could be hiding behind, which minimizes your exposure to several positions. Slicing the pie greatly increases your chances of winning aim duels when you are walking in blindly.

Mouse Movement

The tool required for aiming is your mouse, so it’s essential to understand the two main types of mouse movements.

Tracking

The first thing to remember is tracking. Tracking is the action of smoothly following a moving target, tracking your crosshair on their head.

Your tracking skills will be crucial for engagements where your enemy is strafing (moving left and right) while shooting, or if they are approaching the duel with a wide swing. Many players get destroyed by wide swings because they cannot track their crosshairs properly. It’s pretty embarrassing to lose to this type of peek, so train your tracking skills to avoid getting clowned on.

Flicking

Flicking should be a more familiar word. Instead of slowly moving your mouse to maintain a target, flicking is when you immediately make a quick transition between your current crosshair placement to an enemy player’s head.

The term “flicking” is generally thrown around for the AWP or SSG 08, but you can also flick onto an enemy player’s head with rifles. And when it does happen, you’ll feel like a king. Still, hitting flicks reliably requires precision and quick reaction time, and requires a lot of time to work on.

Distance Aiming

You will also have to adjust your crosshair placement and aim differently depending on how close or far an enemy player is.

Difference Between Short and Long Range

When aiming at short-ranged opponents, you will need fast reflexes and quick crosshair adjustments. When peeking at a player right in front of you, aim a little bit higher from the default head-level, as they will appear to be taller than usual.

Enemies in long-ranged fights will appear smaller on your screen since they are super far away. If you are expecting an enemy to show up soon, you will have to lower down your crosshair placement since they will appear tiny.

Aiming is all about precision, so it is crucial to have a comfortable feeling playing the game. This is why Valve has provided players with many options to customize to meet their personal preferences. As a Counter-strike player, you must take at least a few hours to configure your settings, mainly your effective DPI and your crosshair.

Effective DPI (DPI + sensitivity)

There are two components to determining your effective DPI (eDPI), which include mouse DPI and in-game sensitivity. The formula to calculate eDPI is mouse DPI * in-game sensitivity.

Your mouse DPI can be adjusted through your computer or gaming mouse, as most providers tend to have software you can download. Otherwise, most gaming mice have a DPI button that you can click to cycle through the preset DPI values.

In-game sensitivity is easier to adjust, as you can directly tweak it through the Counter-Strike settings menu.

Normally, players just use 400 or 800 DPI, which are the two most common DPI values. Then, they would mess around with their in-game sensitivity and figure out the best value for their needs.

Remember that a player using 400 DPI and 2 mouse sensitivity is the same thing as a player using 800 DPI and 1 mouse sensitivity, as both are equal to 800 eDPI when multiplied.

Professional players typically play on low sensitivity since slow movement helps players become extremely accurate and precise. Rifle players play on extremely low sensitivity, while AWP players might crank it up to hit some fast flicks.

Still, copying a professional player’s mouse settings won’t make you as good as them. At the end of the day, mouse settings come down to personal preference, so you need to figure it out yourself sooner rather than later.

Finding a Good Crosshair

The crosshair is your best buddy when it comes to aiming, as you’ll be seeing it every second of the game and it will follow you everywhere you go. So, it is important to take some time to create a usable crosshair by adjusting its size, color, and everything about it.

When crafting the perfect crosshair, try ensuring the size is small. A large crosshair will cover a lot of your screen, which can be disadvantageous since it’s always in the middle. Additionally, players who are very far away will appear too small to be in the middle of the crosshair gap.

For colors, let’s not complicate things and choose simple, but most importantly, bright colors. There are many dark areas in Counter-Strike maps, such as Tunnels in Dust II and pretty much half of Ancient is very dark, too. So, using vibrant colors such as green, light blue, or white would be ideal to see in dim areas.

Though it used to be pretty popular in the past, almost no professional players in the present are using crosshair elements such as crosshair dots or the follow recoil option where the crosshair gets bigger as you are spraying your weapon.

Just like mouse settings, you are free to copy professionals as reference but not everyone’s crosshair might suit what you’re looking for.

Now that all the boring stuff is out of the way, improving your aim comes down to your own efforts. You won’t become a better player overnight after reading the helpful tips we’ve provided, as you still have to train your own aim appropriately. Here are some things you should look to do to improve your aim.

Mastering the Weapons

The different weapons in the game have various purposes, spray patterns, and work differently depending on distance. You must have a good grasp of how each weapon in Counter-Strike works, and understand how to use them in different situations.

For example, the AK-47 or Desert Eagle is very effective for long-ranged duels by tapping or bursting, but the same cannot be said for a shotgun or the P90. You might want to run-and-gun with these weapons and take close-ranged engagements instead. You don’t have to learn every weapon in the game, but just familiarize yourself with the most common weapons in case you pick one of them up in the middle of a round.

Self-training

To become a really good aimer, effort must come from yourself. You must create aiming routines to train your aim. These routines do not have to be intense hour-long sessions, and you could do anything, really.

Some players play Deathmatch games daily and go for a certain number of kills, such as 200 to 300, while others load into an aim training map and shoot bots for 20 to 30 minutes. Putting in small effort every day will help you slowly improve over time compared to no effort at all.

Just try to focus on consistency and follow these aim training routines every day or at least once every two days. Losing consistency and missing out on routines can really slow down your progress and put you back to where you started.

Learn From the Best

If you’re tired of playing and want a break, why not watch some professional players play the game? You can tune into esports tournament matches and watch them there, or you can tune into their personal live streams and get a point of view of their gameplay.

While watching professionals, carefully analyze the way they are moving and aiming in various situations. Notice where their crosshair placement is and how it changes when they go to different areas of the map.

Look at how they approach different fights depending on what weapon they have, what weapon the enemy has, and how far away they are from each other. Look at the micro adjustments they make with their crosshairs. You will learn a ton from watching a single game!

Sign up For Aim Coaching

The final suggestion is entirely optional, and is only recommended for players who are highly motivated and have intentions of playing competitively.

You can hire an aiming coach who will watch your gameplay and analyze your aiming mistakes. They will come up with a personalized training plan to help you fix your issues and improve at the game. The feedback they provide is tailored to your specific needs.

A veteran professional player, STYKO, who has been competing for 8 years, even hired an aiming coach to improve his aim. He was shocked at how many mistakes he was making and had a great experience with his aim training coach, even though he is a top-tier professional player.