The Three Core Components You Need to Improve in CS:GO

There's a lot of guides out there that tell you how to improve in CS:GO. Some of them even claim to have the secret to being the best player in the world. In all honesty there is no hidden secret to improving yourself. It takes hundreds, if not thousands of hours before a player can truly call themselves a good one. In order to mould yourself into the player you want to be, focusing on these three core components: 'Aim', 'Movement' and 'Game sense'. Training these three elements will be the "secret" to moulding yourself into a better player.

1. Aim

Out of all three components, this is truly the easiest to improve on. The first thing you want to do is to decrease your sensitivity and ensure you have the correct DPI value set on your mouse. You're going to want to set your DPI to the value of 400 or 800. Having a higher DPI means your mouse is more sensitive to movement and will be more precise. It may seem logical after knowing that to have a higher DPI setting. However, most mice have a native DPI setting which is normally 400 or 800. Having a DPI higher than native means acceleration, which is bad. 800 DPI is perfect as most, if not all, mice will have 1:1 movement and not skip pixels which is very important, especially with a game like CS:GO where you need to be precise with every shot. If you'd like to read more on DPI, here is an in-depth article.

CS:GO's default sensitivity is 6. May seem fairly normal or even quite low if you're used to playing other FPS games like Battlefield. Surprisingly, 6 is a very big number in regards to CS:GO sensitivity. Most players that I've encountered tend to have a sensitivity under the value of 2. The reasoning behind this, as previously stated, is the fact that you need to be very precise in CS:GO. Heads aren't that big and if you're going to hit one from far away, you need to have your mouse slow enough to be able to track them. As it's too much information to include in this guide, below I have added a video for you to watch. The video will find your perfect sensitivity in a short amount of time and is very informative.

How to find your perfect sensitivity in CS:GO

After you've got your DPI set to a 1:1 value and you seem to have your sensitivity dialed in to feel perfect, you're going to want to tweak the in-game settings a little bit. Using the console type in the command "m_rawinput 1". This sets your mouse to use raw input. The reasoning behind this is because it completely disregards windows settings and things that may affect your mouse otherwise. Mouse acceleration is all down to personal preference. Some people prefer it but in my opinion; it ruins your muscle memory and makes it harder to stay consistent in the game. To turn it off head into the console and type "m_customaccel 0" which will turn it off. You can always try to play with it on to see if you prefer it, but again most people I have come across have it off to preserve their muscle memory.

"Aim Botz" is the most popular aim training map on the CS:GO workshop

It may seem like a long trek through the settings mountain, but once you've got your settings to feel perfect, you're ready to start training your aim. There are a lot of guides all over the internet on how to improve your aim. I will keep mine to a minimum and leave a guide written by a fellow Dignitas writer here if you'd like to go into further detail. 'Aim Botz' is a workshop map that has tens of thousands of downloads for one simple reason, it's helpful. Downloading this map and shooting bots for 30 minutes may seem boring, but it's an easy way to improve your aim. Another great way to improve your aim is to head onto a community server and search for '1v1' or 'Arena'. These servers set you up against a singular opponent in a true aim battle. And last, but not least is to head into a game of 'Matchmaking' or into a 'PUG' to test your aim in a competitive environment.

2. Movement

Movement is severely overlooked when people think about improving. A common mistake players make is to only focus on their aim. Movement can make a huge difference between winning and losing in a match. There are, of course, many ways to improve movement and they're actually quite enjoyable. It may still be training, but who said training can't be fun?

'Surfing' is an extremely enjoyable game mode and way to improve movement. It will improve your ability to strafe and intuition on how much space you need to move between certain objects. 'Bhopping' is another game mode that will help to improve strafing, but can also teach you how to use the movement technique while in official matches. The use of 'Bhopping' during matches can mean you reach an area before someone else and decrease rotation times. It's a difficult skill to master, but once you do, rotate times become slightly reduced meaning you can retake faster.

An example of bhopping being useful during a match

Arguably the hardest to master, but most efficient way to improve your movement is to play the game mode known as 'KZ'. This game mode is completely movement orientated and will require all of your movement skills combined. 'KZ' is a climbing game mode. It can use a combination of strafing, ladder climbing, surfing and bhopping all mashed into one. It may be extremely difficult at first and feel slightly rage inducing. Once you start getting the hang of it, the game mode becomes extremely rewarding. You will start to feel improvement in your movement and the translation of those abilities into official matches. For a more in-depth guide on movement, see this article.

3. Game sense

Game sense is, in other words, intuition. It means that you already know that someone's sitting in a spot on A site. It means you know 2 A smokes and a flashbang off by heart. It also means you know that there's going to be a lurker who's sitting on B short. The definitions could go on and on. If you're a higher tier player it may sound silly to you that I would include this. If you're a lower tier player you may be wondering why that's silly. The simple answer is: you can't teach game sense. Simple as that. Luckily though, I can provide sources and give tips on how to build up your inner knowledge. There are four ways that helped me build my game sense so hopefully they'll work in similar fashion with you.

Playing the game is the fundamental way to improve your game sense. It's simply the best way to do it. As you play, you work out what's happening in your mind. The more you play, the easier it becomes for you to figure something out. If you've ever played a PUG with someone who's got 2,000 hours in the game and with someone who has 500 hours. The person with 2,000 hours is going to understand the game to a higher degree most of the time. Unless that 500 hour person is smurfing... but I digress. Any type of playing will simply help you improve your game sense. Even if you just hop into a deathmatch server for half an hour, you'll still improving your game sense without even realising it.

Somebody with 3,100 hours in the game

Watching pro games is another great way to improve your knowledge and game sense. As you're watching the games make a mental or physical note every time somebody gets a kill from a position. Note down that position and work it into your play. If somebody throws a smoke and it lands somewhere make another note and use that smoke in your next game. At first it may become mundane, but as with everything, once you get the hang of it, it becomes easy. Soon you'll know positions on the map to pre-fire or play in. You'll know smokes that can help your team win rounds. It all gets added up in your head and soon you'll be fragging left and right simply from your knowledge.

Reading and watching guides of course! If you weren't reading guides like this one right now, you wouldn't be interested in improving. There are a lot of websites out there that publish quality articles that include a lot of information. There are a variety of guides from smoke strategies to config editing. Reading them will increase your knowledge and game sense. Learning smokes would be a good place to start, I recommend browsing around the web and seeing what you can learn.

Last, but not least, self-criticism. Now, you've gone and played the game for a few thousand hours and countless hours have been slain while watching pro games. It's now time for the toughest part of improvement. Self-criticism. It's easy to criticise other people. They threw that smoke wrong or made that play incorrectly. But, what about yourself? If you watch your demos you'll also realise that you aren't perfect. Maybe you also made a stupid play or threw a flash incorrectly that blinded your teammates. It's harder to realise in the heat of the moment what you did wrong. With that comes CS:GO's demo system. You can watch your own POV and see what you did wrong. When you notice something that you did poorly write it down and try to correct yourself. Were you watching A long doors for too long? Did you peek that dude with the AWP even though he was called out? Did you throw a smoke that you thought was right, but actually gave the enemy a one-way? All of these things can seem tedious, but if you're really hell bent on improving, being tedious is the best way to do so.

Final thoughts
At the end of the day, CS:GO is just a game. If you're starting to feel worn out from trying too hard to improve, give yourself a break. If you don't enjoy doing all of the above, then maybe you should just play it casually. Remember, there are many different ways to play CS:GO. You don't have to be the best of the best, just enjoy playing!

Thanks for reading and I hope this guide helped you in some way!

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