7 Tips To Instantly Improve Your CS2 Aim
In CS2, your aim is one of the most important aspects of your gameplay. You can have the best strategies in your head and constantly outbrain your opponents but if you’re not hitting your shots then you’re not going to win rounds. If you want to improve your CS2 aim then the old saying ‘practice makes perfect’ of course rings true but we have 7 tips that, when applied, will pretty much instantly improve your aim in CS2.
1. Get the correct sensitivity
There is no objective ‘best’ sensitivity since sensitivity is mostly personal, but there is definitely an upper (and lower) limit. A large majority of more casual gamers are using sensitivities that are quite simply way too high since they think ‘faster aim = better’ but in reality, this will handicap you significantly. JALbert, a Reddit user, has a fantastic explanation on why having a high eDPI (What is DPI and eDPI?) is a handicap:
If you think about your opponent’s head hitbox as roughly a circle, that means there’s a corresponding circle of area on your mousepad you need to put the sensor on to have your crosshair on their head. The lower your sensitivity, the bigger the target area is for you to hit. It’s like making the basketball hoop bigger.
Since area for that head circle equals pi*r^2, cutting your sensitivity in half means that you’re doubling r, and in turn quadrupling the size of the target area on your mousepad. If you’re seeing that your eDPI is 5x the pros, you’re aiming for a spot 25x smaller.
Obviously going too low on sensitivity makes flicks slower and turning around more difficult, so there’s a balance. But lower sensitivity makes aim way more forgiving in terms of hitting a target.
/u/JALbert
The median eDPI of CS2 pros is 830. If you notice that your eDPI is leagues higher, we recommend going cold turkey and lowering it. It’ll be hard at first, but we promise: the results will amaze you. We have an in-depth guide complete with multiple methods on how to find the best sensitivity for you.
2. Stop crouching all the time
While it can definitely be beneficial to crouch in certain situations, you shouldn’t crouch in every duel by default. Crouching has its advantages, but there are also some distinct disadvantages:
- You become immobile
- Once you crouch in a firefight, you’ve pretty much committed yourself to that exact spot. You’re almost literally a sitting duck, and sitting ducks make for very easy targets. There’s also no way for you to quickly reposition yourself to catch the enemy off guard if the duel turns into a tap/spray battle.
- You lower your head
- Unless you’re playing in the highest of ranks, players do not have perfect spray control and crosshair placement. In a hectic firefight, a lot of bullets will go towards the body. If you crouch in a firefight, you might just lower your own head into the enemy’s shots, thus sending yourself into an early grave.
Of course crouching does have its place and isn’t always a big ‘nono’ but if you instinctually crouch every time you so much as fire a shot it’s a good idea to try and get rid of that habit. Suddenly crouching in a heated spraying battle can give you an advantage, sure, but if you’re crouching before you’ve even properly connected a shot on the enemy then all you’re doing is making yourself an extremely easy immobile target.
You can practice this by playing deathmatches with the crouch button unbound, or by just being conscious of this habit during gameplay.
3. Give yourself time to react when holding angles
When pros hold corners, they almost never place their crosshair a pixel or two next to the corner that they’re holding. They usually keep some distance between the corner and the crosshair, and you should do this too. Putting your crosshair away from the angle a bit will give you more time to react, and peeking enemies will peek right into your crosshair rather than past your crosshair, resulting in less necessary crosshair adjusting from your part.
Exactly how much space to leave depends on the circumstances. Factors such as your distance from the angle, your position on the map, and even the playing style of your enemies can all influence how exactly you should hold an angle, but in a lot of circumstances it’s not a good idea to have your crosshair pretty much right on the angle.
4. Maintain/train your aim
Esports might not be as physically demanding as most other sports, but a lot of the concepts from traditional sports do translate perfectly fine. Your aim is a crucial part of your overall mechanical package as a Counter-Strike player, just like passing ability is a crucial part of a football player’s mechanical skillset. If you want these mechanical aspects of your gameplay to be consistent and reliable, you need to maintain them by utilizing these abilities regularly.
In community deathmatch (‘DM’) servers you get dozens of fights every minute, and this will give you a ton of opportunities to hone your aim. Traditional competitive matches have much fewer engagements, so they’re not an ideal place for dedicated aim training.
This doesn’t mean that you need to spend an hour in a deathmatch server every single day. Just ten minutes (the precise amount of time of course varies from person to person) a couple of times per week will do. You should play for longer if you want to steadily improve your aim, but there’s no need to spend hours grinding DM if maintaining your aim is your main goal.
Doing a short deathmatch session on days where you’re not playing competitive matches will keep your aim consistent and reliable for those times where you are going on the grind. It will also prevent you from going on ‘cold streaks’ that can last for multiple matches where it seems like you just can’t win a fight.
There’s a reason even pro footballers are still doing simple passing drills every single day. Skills need to be maintained.
You can also consider aim training software if you want to train your raw aim in isolation.
5. Focus on crosshair placement at all times
It sounds so easy, yet so few people do it properly. Keep your crosshair at head height. A lot of players try to do this when they’re holding a corner or peeking an angle, but then completely forget about it in other scenarios.
In general, it’s a good idea to always be ready for an enemy, even if you think you’re safe. Besides, looking at the ground has 0 benefits, so why would you do it when it’s just as easy to keep your crosshair at a more ‘ready’ height?
Lower ranked players often let their guard down when it comes to crosshair placement, and this gets them killed by lurkers or other unexpected enemy encounters, as their crosshair simply wasn’t ready for an engagement.
Maintain proper crosshair placement at all times, and you’ll be surprised at how many extra kills you’ll start to rack up.
Obviously this doesn’t apply during confirmed downtime (all enemies are dead, first few seconds of a round, …) but crosshair placement is way too often forgotten by inexperienced players.
6. Don’t default to spraying
In mid to high distance engagements, spraying all the time isn’t a good idea. You might have the spray pattern of your rifle perfectly memorized, but the slight randomness in the actual direction of the bullets really makes a difference at longer distances. It can be alluring to lay down a spray since more bullets = more chances to hit, but bursting or tapping is a lot more effective at distances. This is especially important in CS2, where a lot of players have noticed that spraying feels less reliable than in CS:GO.
As an added bonus, bursting and tapping will allow you to more easily reposition yourself during a fight. An enemy who is committed to a spray is usually (unless they’re running and gunning, but they won’t hit anything that way) a lot less mobile. If you’re tapping or bursting, you can strafe in between bursts and taps, making you harder to hit.
You can get a feel for the ideal distances for spraying, bursting, and tapping by playing deathmatch.
7. Take your time to line up your shot
When you get into a pure aim duel, it’s a good idea to take that extra millisecond to line up your shot, especially in duels that are out of the spraying range. It can be tempting to fire as quickly as possible in order to outpace your opponent, but if you shoot too early you might miss entirely, and by the time you get off a second shot you’re probably dead.
Weapon inaccuracy can also come into play here. If you’re the first to rattle off a Desert Eagle shot but you miss, it’ll take a lot of precious time (relative to how long fights generally last in CS2) for the gun to reset. During this reset time, you’ll probably miss even if your crosshair is right on the enemy’s head due to weapon inaccuracy. In such duels, your enemy might’ve taken just a fraction of a second longer to line up their headshot and delete you from the round.
Obviously there’s a balance here. If you take two seconds to line up your shot then you’re never going to win an aim duel, but being the first to shoot isn’t the most important thing in an aim duel. Being the first to hit is what matters. If that means taking an extra 0.2 seconds to click your mouse button, it’s well worth it. Many players in the lower ranks start shooting before they even properly have their crosshair on the enemy, only to then get killed by the player who did take their time to aim.
All of the above of course takes place in less than a second ingame, but it’s worth thinking about and working on if you’re someone who’s often dead even after being the first person to shoot.
Conclusion – Improving Your CS2 Aim
When it comes to aiming in CS2 (or really any game) there’s of course no substitute for practice. You quite simply cannot get better unless you practice the very thing you want to get better at, so if you spend absolutely no time in the game itself you’re not going to see any improvement. With that being said: you don’t need to spend dozens of hours in deathmatch servers and aim trainers if you want to see improvement in your ingame aim. The tips in this article can more or less be applied instantly, and you’ll see results in less than a week, provided you play enough to apply them of course.
CS2 is a highly technical game, but there’s a surprising amount of strategy involved as well. This also goes for your CS2 aim. Setting yourself up for success is as important as having the ability to perform sick flicks, and if you’re a bit more conscious about how you’re aiming in CS2 you can see fantastic results in a very short amount of time without having to grind your mechanical skills.
