The Best CS:GO Workshop Maps To Get Better
Counter-Strike (Global Offensive) is one of the most popular games the world has ever seen for a number of reasons, and one of the foundations of its success is the fact that it’s very easy to understand and get started with while having an incredibly high skill ceiling. CS:GO is not an easy game to get good at, and even the best professionals are still learning and getting better every single day, partially due to using the best CS:GO workshop maps out there.
If you’re even a little bit serious about your gameplay as a competitive CS:GO player, you will want to train vital aspects of your game outside of the official servers. While it’s true that you get better by just playing the game, practicing something like spray control in official matches is not an incredibly efficient way of mastering that aspect of your game since you don’t get many opportunities to really nail and analyze a spray when playing against real enemies.
Think of it like training your passing in football: you’re going to progress a lot faster if you’re doing dedicated passing drills on the training pitch than you would if you’re only playing full matches, where there’s more pressure and less opportunities to nail the mechanics. CS:GO’s Steam Workshop offers many such training pitches, and in this article we’ll go over the very best CS:GO Workshop maps that can and will improve your gameplay.
What is the Steam Workshop?
The Steam Workshop is an integrated hub for player-created content. It’s basically a streamlined way of publishing and downloading modded content (mods) for games that support it. Contrary to the ‘old’ way of adding mods to your game, there’s no need to download files from a specific website and add them to your game by moving them to certain folders; with the Steam Workshop you just have to click one button and the mod gets added to your game.
How to add Workshop maps to CS:GO
Simply go to the Workshop page of the Workshop item/file you want to add, and click ‘subscribe’. Steam will then automatically download the necessary items, after which you can find the content in your game. In the case of maps, you will find them under ‘workshop maps’ in the screen where you choose which gamemode you want to play. Just load the map and you’re good to go!
Recoil/Spray Pattern Mastery
Mastering the recoil and spray pattern of the most used guns in the game is an absolutely vital skill if you want to become a complete player. When it comes to mastering recoil in CS:GO, there’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that every gun has a different spray pattern, and the good news is that these spray patterns always follow the same general trajectory, making it possible to learn these patterns.
The best map to do so is Mr.uLLeticaL’s Recoil Master – Spray Training map. This map has tons of options for you to master the spraying pattern of every single weapon in the game. The spraying pattern is clearly displayed above the practice wall, you can have a dot on said wall trace the spraying pattern to practice muscle memory, you can have the map spray the weapon for you to visually see how the bullets fly, …
All in all, this is one of the handiest and most essential CS:GO Workshop Maps in the game, and I would go as far as saying that it’s a necessary download for newer and beginning players.
Download Recoil Master – Spray Training
Smokes and Grenade Lineups
If you’ve watched a bit of pro CS:GO, you will know that utility (i.e. grenades) is an integral part of any CS:GO player worth their salt. As a beginner or intermediate player you obviously don’t have to know as many smokes as the pros do, but you really don’t want to be the one player who doesn’t know a single Mirage A site smoke, for example.
There are multiple maps to practice grenades, and I recommend using a mixture of Dolnma’s dedicated grenade training maps and Yprac’s map training sections. Some grenade lineups make more sense in one map and vice versa, which is why I recommend trying out both.
Using YouTube or watching your favorite streamer to learn new lineups is definitely also a viable option, but for the basics I do recommend using a Workshop map.
Download Dolnma’s Grenade Training Maps
Crosshair Placement / Prefiring Angles
If you’ve ever played (much) higher ranked opponents you might have had a few moments where it seemed like they shot you in the face almost inhumanly fast. Usually, this is the result of them prefiring (or at least pre-aiming) common angles. You can learn this skill by playing deathmatches in the maps you want to learn, but Yprac’s training maps have dedicated scenarios to let you run by the most common prefiring angles.
Download Yprac’s Training Maps
Map Knowledge / Aim / Movement / Fun
Practicing doesn’t have to be dead serious, and it can be fun to gamify it a little bit. DC’s AIM COURSE maps are a fun way of training your aim as well as your counter-strafing, prefiring, and knowledge of cheeky spots.
In these maps, you’re put through a ‘killhouse style’ run around the map, with stationary targets positioned along the map. At the end of every run, you’ll be given a time upon which you can improve. This is not the most serious and perhaps not the most intensive way of training, but it’s tremendous fun so I encourage you to check it out. The example below is on Nuke, but there are aim courses for every active duty map.
Aim Training / Warming Up
I won’t talk about the value of aim training software in order to become a better player because that’s an entirely separate topic, but most players will agree that warming up before getting into a competitive match is something that’s worthwhile.
In order to warm up, you could join any number of community deathmatch servers (I recommend community servers since those have a much faster pace to them than Valve’s official DM servers) but if you want to be a bit more casual about it there’s Aim Botz – Training by Mr. uLLeticaL. This has a ton of configuration options so that you can get the blood pumping and your aim warmed up before heading into a real match.
Movement / Jumping
Movement in CS:GO is a skill that needs to be trained, and having good movement not only allows you to get to places faster (allowing you to get a timing kill on enemies) but it will also get you to places where other people with worse movement can’t go, leading to free kills, shorter rotations, and other benefits.
There are tons of maps out there to train your movement, but a good one to get the basics down is Jumps Training by whiskeyo. Some of the jumps in this map are outdated due to map redesigns, but it’s a great way to help you get to terms with the rather unique way that movement works in this game.
Config Generator
The config generator by crashz & Misterio is the one-stop-shop for people who want to adjust their config settings. In this map, you can change your crosshair, viewmodel, HUD, radar options, and so on, as well as apply jumpthrow binds and other handy shortcuts.
This is incredibly handy and a real must for newer players, as changing up the radar zoom, inventory visibility, and the likes can massively improve your gameplay.
There are individual workshop maps that allow you to address these things separately that I’ll list below to be complete, but I really recommend just going for this map as it has all of the config options that you need built in.
Specific Alternatives:
The best CS:GO Workshop Maps – Conclusion
One of the most beautiful things about CS:GO (if you ask me) is its Workshop support. You can have hours and hours of fun playing community-made game modes and maps, and over the years there have been so many quality Workshop maps that it’s impossible to list all of them. This article contains a list of what I consider to be essentials for competitive CS:GO players, and even though not all of these maps are as essential (no need to download a config generator if you already have a config, for example) it can’t hurt to have these maps in your rotation.
These maps, when used correctly, can and will make you a better (or at least more consistent) CS:GO player, but don’t stop there. There are so many fun, handy, and downright impressive Workshop maps out there that I wholeheartedly encourage you to browse the Workshop section by yourself if you have the time. You’ll be amazed by the creativity and skills of the people who put out these wonderful maps.
Thanks for reading, and happy fragging!
