Marksmanship – is a skill that is crucial to success in CS:GO. If you're not too good at shooting, a great knowledge of the map or the ability to plan your actions won't be much use anymore. Conversely, thanks to accurate shooting, you can save a round that is not in your favor. There are several ways to improve marksmanship, which will be discussed below.
First of all, you need to understand that a player's marksmanship is made up of several separate skills, and you can work on improving them in different ways: .
- Reaction time – the ability to quickly react to the appearance of an enemy and aim at him.
- Accuracy – the ability to aim accurately at an opponent and make a headshot.
- Reflexes – the ability to react without thinking and hit an opponent, even if you are caught off guard, due to practiced skills and muscle memory.
Game Settings
First of all, you should take care of comfortable game settings. Go to the map to customize your scope and try different variations of its shape and placement. If you adjust the parameters to your reaction speed and playing style, it will save you from unnecessary intermediate actions, and thus allow you to react faster to your opponent's movements. You can copy sight settings from famous players, but in any case, to find «your» option, you will need to spend some time to find the most successful one.
Special maps
In the Steam Workshop you can find quite a few maps to improve accuracy and reaction. And you can't do with just one map, as the exercises may involve different aspects of aiming. For example, the Training_aim_csgo2 map is good for practicing reaction speed and headshot skills: it requires shooting at small targets that appear quickly against the wall.
The AimBotz map gives players a wider range of possibilities. If you want, you can place multiple bots on it and specify how they should move around. The variety of settings allows you to use this map for practicing different shooting techniques.
Other maps worth checking out include Recoil Master (where you can learn how spray works with different weapons), FAST AIM/REFLEX MAP (where you have to shoot bots as fast as possible), and the Yprac Practice and Warmup series of maps (which include numerous shooting and enemy tracking exercises, as well as guides to competitive maps).
Programs for marksmanship training
In addition to dedicated maps, there are also standalone apps for practicing aiming. Their main advantage over the maps described above – is the ability to track your progress and get detailed statistics, thanks to which it becomes clear which aspect needs to be worked on. Often for these purposes use a free program AimLab, but there are other solutions.
It should not be forgotten that practicing skills in training – is useful, but they must be transferred to the conditions of the real game. To do this, you should regularly play in Deathmatch mode, and not just trying to kill as many opponents as possible, but focusing on a more specific task, for example, using one type of weapon or shooting from a certain point.
With regular training, in a couple of weeks you will notice the result not only yourself, but also your teammates, and your opponents will only wonder about your speed.