Counter Strike: Global Offensive

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As you've probably noticed, there are quite a few guys playing CS:GO right now. Personally I'm really pleased to get back to CS and brush up on those FPS skills. I hope more guys will join and we can make a regular thing out of it someday. I don't think I really need to deliver a sales pitch for CS, it's an amazing game that's stood the test of time. However, I will mention a few new things that have really impressed me in CS:GO. First: the competitive community is really mature (not the players lol) and there is a great league on the go with really good streaming and in game spectator functions. Second: there are a whole range of skins for guns and trading can really help build up your Steam Wallet. Third: the netcode is just so delicious and nothing beats the strategy and tactics.

If you're coming back to CS after a long time or you're a complete noob, I thought it would be useful for everyone to get a quick overview of the main issues you need to be aware of to not get disheartened by the insane learning curve. Your first two weeks are guaranteed to be absolutely horrifying, as every single weakness in your FPS skills is tested and broken over and over and over and over. After a while though, you get the hang of the maps and the guns then things start really getting exciting. I suggest starting out by buying the "Operation Vanguard" pass for ~$6, which will give you access to a nice series of missions that will get you some casual experience and reward you with a few skins. Whatever you do, start playing deathmatch before anything else.

I hope these bullet points and short and sweet enough, there's a lot of stuff to cover. If you're looking for some video tutorials, check out "The War Owl" on YouTube - great channel. Alternatively watch some pro players through the in game match download/view system - fantastic to see big tournament plays available to everyone. If you're interested in more information about game settings, how to practice offline with bots etc. just ask in the channel I'm sure someone will help you.

Movement:

• Generally you want to pie every corner completely and make sure you check every nook and cranny, people get very very sneaky in CS.
• Running makes little pitter patter noises that can give you away. If you hold SHIFT, you'll walk and move silently to get the jump on people.
• Your move speed is determined by the weapon you have out, so if you want to move quickly (especially at the start of a round) pull out your knife.
• You are accurate when you come to a stop from moving, stutter stepping and firing only at that exact moment when stopped is a key to getting picks.
• If you get shot, your movement will be slowed so if you're desperate to escape pull out your knife for that slim hope of escape.
• You should avoid peeking a corner close to the corner, you will be visible sooner than if you peeked further away from the corner.
• Avoid slow peeking hot spots, if you're going to go around a corner rather strafe out only as much as you need to check/prefire a position. Lingering will get you killed.
• As opposed to BF, moving does not always keep you alive. Sometimes the best idea is to camp. Juking incoming fire is fine, but an ambush goes a long way.
• You can "boost" players into special positions or get them somewhere faster by stack jumping on a crouched player.
• Running and jumping works strangely in CS, you can strafe jump and wiggle your mouse while jumping to get more distance.

Shooting:

• It is all about headshots, if you're not scoring them you're probably dead already. Seriously though, always track your crosshair at head height and go for headshots.
• Crosshair placement is so important, don't aim at a wall or the ground... always aim where the enemy would be if they popped out right now, this very second.
• Tap firing and micro bursting is what you're after in 80% of scenarios, you will need to learn to spray as accurately as possible, but this is really a last resort.
• If you get caught with your pants down and need to spray, aim head first then drag the crosshair down. To knees for moderate recoil, feet and below for the wild stuff.
• If you want to spray more accurately, full spray against a wall and then mirror the pattern as best you can to group closely. It's really hard, but possible to study.
• Moving while shooting and/or jumping while shooting is really inaccurate with anything other than a pistol or a shotgun. Rather stand, shoot, move, stand, shoot.
• You can also crouch to become more accurate and present a smaller target, I recommend you do this in literally all of your firefights over say 10m.
• Building up that muscle memory for control is key: crouch, flick to the target, 1-3 round burst and move. Rinse and repeat.
• While its good to get a kill, trading is seldom worthwhile. You need to stay alive as long as possible and maximise the team's chances.
• Don't go into a firefight if you have low HP, rather opt to cover the rear or carry the bomb. Common sense really, but it makes a big difference.
• You probably want to tone down your sensitivity as far as possible... anywhere around 400-600 DPI is ideal. Really, don't even try a high sensitivity.

Guns:

• Most guns do not have sights, so you will need to learn to shoot from the hip as it were versus constantly switching to a sight like in Battlefield.
• Guns are effectively lasers, there is no bullet travel time and no drop off or kentucky lagage to be done. Just centre the crosshair and blat.
• You should master the P2000, Glock, P250 (pistols), UMP-45, MP-7, P-90 (SMGs), Galil, FAMAS, AK-47, M4A1 (Rifles), SSG and AWP (Snipers).
• The AK47 reigns supreme. Although it has really crazy recoil, it's first shot is almost absolutely accurate so Counter Terrorists will sometimes drop their gun for it.
• The AWP sniper rifle is a one shot from the knees up, all the time. So it's a key part of every team. Be aware of it's price, power and the slow reload time.
• The P250 pistol is available to both sides and is the cheapest one shot headshot pistol available for taking out players with body armour and a helmet.
• Most SMGs are really bad against armoured targets so don't expect them to be effective in late game. The P-90 has the best armour penetration of all SMGs.
• The P90 is a great noob friendly gun, but you should play to it's strengths and try force close combat ambushes where you are most effective.
• The Galil and FAMAS are decent cheap assault rifles. They're not really accurate though, so learning to burst and spray with them is a good idea.
• Your first round is always a pistol battle. If you win, you can upgrade to SMGs. Then go for a cheap rifle. Then a proper rifle.
• If you're the dedicated AWPer it may make sense for you to buy an AWP early in place of armour and grenades versus a round or two with the Scout.

Grenades:

• Most good opening strats will involve grenades and grenades are almost always required to retake or hold a bombsite too. BUY GRENADES.
• A good general Counter Terrorist loadout is: smoke, frag and flash. A good general Terrorist loadout is flash, flash, frag.
• Generally speaking smoke is used to obscure a sniper, provide cover for an advance or just to slow a team down (going through smoke blind is often suicide).
• I would argue smoke is really a Counter Terrorist thing (to slow down the Ts), but you may need it to get through certain areas as Terrorist.
• Flash's are for breaching or getting the edge in a gunfight. If a player is going into a hot spot, you must always flash them in (or flash yourself in).
• Spotting an incoming flash, you can turn your back to it and reduce the effects. So if you throw a flash, try to avoid throws that will be visible for a long time.
• Incendiary and Molotov's put fire on the ground to make it costly to move through a certain area. Great for defensive plays. They don't last long though.
• Counter Terrorists pay more for incendiary grenades than the Terrorist Molotov - they are almost identical, but the molotov is marginally more powerful.
• Frag grenades don't have a very long fuse so don't expect to throw them across the map. Use them to get an enemy behind cover in a gunfight.
• Good strategic grenade placement is literally critical to winning, you should absolutely practice throwing set grenades on your favourite maps.

Teamwork (and the Economy):

• In defuse mode, the terrorists are the aggressors and the counter terrorists the defenders (until the roles reverse when the bomb is planted) - don't hunt as CT early.
• Make sure you have a game plan: spread out and wait for an opportunity, rush a certain lane or play really defensively. Whatever the plan is, stick to it.
• Sometimes it's just not worth it to go for the defuse on a bomb or to try and clear out multiple enemies - it may make more sense to just back off and save your gear.
• You have to earn money and buy weapons in CS: so be sparing with your money if you intend to make the maximum impact throughout a match.
• Your first round is always a pistol round, buy body armour unless you are the dedicated grenade man (in which case you are NOT the first through the door).
• Typically you should prioritise grenades and armour over weapons. I know that sounds crazy, but buying the most expensive gun you can is seldom the right plan.
• A team might go for an "eco" round to try and save money, buying only pistols/SMGs and if they're lucky some armour and a few grenades.
• Eco rounds are all about getting picks on geared players, then using their guns to make the round work. Make it expensive for the enemy and pull back economically.
• Your money is the team's money, if you have lots and a friend has none, buy him a gun and throw it to him (G) so everyone is properly geared.
• If you see an expensive gun on the ground (e.g. the AWP) pick it up near the end of the round and give it to someone at the start of next to avoid buying.
• Having 5 AWPs is not a solid game plan. Having 4 AWPs is not a solid gameplan. Having 3 AWPs is not a solid gameplan. Having 2 AWPs is.

Specialised Roles:

• Entry Fragger (1 or 2 on team - saves frags for late game) - slightly higher sensitivity than usual probably with smg or rifle depending on map/player
• Support (1 or 2 on team - early frags) - peek killer low sens - rifle
• Bomb Carrier / Leader (survivalist/rotator) - generally plays safe middle and makes calls in game (counts kills left)
• Lurker/Roamer - rear guard or flanker
• Sniper - map control and intel collecting

Maps:

• Generally you will only need to learn a handful of maps: Dust II, Inferno, Nuke and Mirage. Obviously the more you know the better, but those are popular ones.
• Most maps generally split a left channel, a centre channel and a right channel. Each is unique, some will have sneaky routes, but that's the general idea.
• A good general Counter Terrorist defensive strategy is to put three on the closest bombsite to the Terrorists and two on the further one. Then rotate as required.
• Being able to rotate when your team is spread out across the map is critical: you need to be able to respond to a rush or provide back up relief to a rush.
• As you walk around a map, the area names are provided in game (really good feature) so you can offline and get to know the right call names easily.
• Get to know the typical sniper spots, the typical ambush spots and the general places people tend to occupy. You'll probably want to prefire these.
• Meeting points on maps are really important, you need to know where typically teams will start engaging each other and how the flow plays out early game.
• Placing a good bomb is crucial for a Terrorist win: you can place it in a safe spot or place in spots to maximize chance of shooting a defuser.
• More here another time, I'm tired now jooooooo and I'm sure you are too... buy the game already!

great thread Hubs!

One thing I forgot to add was strategies. Everyone has their own interpretation of these, but these are some themes I am picking up...

TERRORIST

• All A (either zerg or split timed attack)
• All B (either zerg or split timed attack)
• All Rush Middle (zerg)
• Middle Push (with two slow flank wings)
• Slow A or B or Middle with Lurker (covering the back rage rotation)
• Slow Spread Out (2 left, 2 right, bomb middle --- take picks and opportunity plant)
• Fake A, Plant B (2 zerg A with lots of grenades, 3 very slow and quiet to B)
• Fake B, Plant A (reversed)
• Double Fake (2 rush A and 2 rush B with lots of grenades, bomb carrier takes opportunity plant) --- risky!

COUNTER TERRORIST

• 2 on A, 2 on B, 1 Middle (standard spread out)
• 3 on A, 2 on B (A favoured with rotation support)
• 3 on B, 2 on A (B favoured with rotation support)
• 1 left, 3 middle, 1 right (wings are scouts for zerg rush detection and flanking rotation support) - almost guaranteed T plant.
• 1 left, 3 middle PUSHING, 1 right (try to disrupt a plant happening at all) --- risky!

Generally speaking it's important Terrorists get a bomb plant no matter what. It gives them extra dosh which can be very useful if you're behind a round or two - since they're the ones taking all the initial risk this is important. Rush strats can be very good but they require commitment if you're going to zerg (avoiding clustering up too) and split attacks require some basic ability to time an attack or reverse plan.

In my little experience, the only time you want to get into a bomb site as fast as possible is when you are zerging, otherwise you need to set up and avoid losses until everyone is ready. If the CTs are very aggressive, sometimes playing very slow with some baiting can get a few early picks and make a good opportunity plant. Aggressive CTs can be effective against indecisive Ts or generally much weaker opposition.

Maps of course have their own specific plans and we can debate those forever. I'll post a few screen grabs of the map overviews soon with basic stuff on them so people can overlay strats in mspaint if they like and share them with people.

What an amazing post Stef!!!, some key factors every one will need to develop if they want to play comp.

Hubris, this is truly stuff that legend is made off. We had like 10 people in the CSGO chan last night, so things are looking quite sexy boys n girls!

Regarding those screenshots above, think we could get some sexy labels on them? ;) ;) ;)

Here you go :) google ftw. Don't know why I failed with the attachments. Oh well just open each one up. Get a full list here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=157442340

DUST II
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NUKE
Attachment 623

INFERNO
Attachment 620

MIRAGE
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boom! boom! boom! boom! boom!

five stars!

Nice Steff, thanks.

I watched some demos of the matches we played last night and I wanted to post a few observations:

Generally

• If we want to do better in competitive, we need boring practices to go over and actually LEARN SOMETHING. If we decide to practice like we did in BF4 and just shoot each other for 2 hours and think we learnt something I will shit the bed. No one knows how to throw good grenades, no one really knows how to attack or defend either. Come on guys, we are so many years behind everyone else from a tactical and game sense perspective that's where we need attention.
• If we're not going to practice, then fine, lets not practice... but we need to be willing to take a lot more beatings. There's no short circuiting the skill deficit.
• I suggest people start deciding what type of role they want to play and start insisting to play those roles to get traction faster. Yes we will have to be brittle and compromise now and then, but if we all try to be all rounders now it will take years before we can do anything half decent. We already have some good snipers, but they're some of our best players anyway. Do we really want to keep them tied to a scope? Maybe, I don't know. We just need some actual commitment to teamplay instead of the "fuck you I'm getting the first frag and MVP star" stuff. So make your desires known, there's no point playing a role you hate.
• We also need to give up the idea of always playing with 5 guys or not playing at all. Until we get the basics right, we will learn more in mixed games than in a 5 man. We don't have a first or second team anyway, so we rely heavily on certain combinations of players being there instead of just playing and improving. That means we often sit for hours waiting for games to happen or making guys sit out. It's such a waste of valuable time.
• We get very demoralised when we lose a round and there's a sharp drop off in communication... Guys start whining about packet loss, hackers and each other. We start not playing with the team and doing whatever we want. It's really toxic and we need to find a way to pick ourselves up and not get desperate and depressed. As a suggestion, I think we should be game-theorying (yes I just engrished) the whole time, trying to find an edge, instead of sulking.
• Our one on ones are not bad, they're not great, but not bad. Sometimes we really do get ontop of teams shot wise, but our real issue is discipline and timing.
• We rely heavily on one player getting two or three kills to put us ahead for a win and seldom win because of a good rotate or tight team play.
• We kill trade way to often instead of just letting someone else take over when you're hurt or backing off and playing an ambush.
• Kill trading is fine if you have a numbers advantage and can be done for the last one or two guys. But an early kill trade just ups the pressure.
• There doesn't seem to be a clear idea of exactly how many there are left or what they might be doing. We need to keep kill counts and take some leadership.

I could write a million points here, none of them really will make a difference. You must take the time to watch demos often... I know I'm pissing in the wind saying that, but whatever. If you want to be better at CS, you need to do that. Trust me, aim is really only about 25% of it. Strat is 25% and tactics 50%. You need to watch demos to improve tactical decision making and play. I don't know of any other way you can objectively evaluate your and the team's performance and as a bonus, watch what the enemy did. Yes it does take time and yes I know we're all busy, but we could all make better use of our time and squeeze in a little CS homework.

Go to the "Watch" tab, "Your Matches" and download a few that interest you. Then open the up one by one and watch them through in one sitting. Bring up the map overview with "CNTRL" and then type in the console "demoui" for a fast forward control. You will need to wait for the warmup to finish and the match to start before all the controls work. You will be amazed how quickly it can go if you fast forward all the crap and just watch the overview for player positions and see the themes playing out. Don't watch videos from three weeks ago though, they need to be fresh in your mind so you can actually take something positive away from it and put that into action.





Other points below, but probably TLDR long ago anyway.

Pistol Rounds

• When we blitz as fast as possible as T's, this normally works for us. Generally any "eco" round we blitz is also good for us.
• When we are CTs, we are just too spread out to react to a blitz and should think about playing 2 forward wings and 3 middle to react fast.
• I have yet to see a pistol round go into a war of attrition and an opportunity plant, it seems zerging early is popular.

CTs

• Our set up in good, we get there fast and we get into decent spots. Most of the time we hold the line and that works for us.
• Sometimes we get bored of waiting for them to come to us, so we go looking for them and it seldom pays off. Because, reasons.
• We need a roamer who can move between sites on his own instinct, not really in the fight, but just as a quick reaction presence and extra layer of insurance.
• We don't react quick enough to a wipe on a side or a zerg rush, we call for a full rotate way too late and take routes that take too long to get back in time to defuse.
• There were almost no cases where we over rotated at all. Which is good, but I guess that's because we rotate very slowly anyway and didn't face many fake plays.
• There were a few instances where we timed a re-take on a bombsite and that worked for us about 50/50. Not terrible, but could be improved I think.
• When one guy is left scouting a site and everyone else is on the otherside, he tends to camp instead of moving to flank when everyone else rotates.
• Overall I think we are a strong CT side if we are disciplined, react quickly and don't commit to anything too crazy.
• That said, on a CT eco round we should keep the Ts honest and do a blitz to disrupt them and keep that possibility in their minds. If we lose it, so what?

Ts

• We seem to want to get the bomb planted in the first 10 seconds and end up getting wiped pretty quick. Really unnecessary zerging going on against geared enemies.
• Oh my God, the number of times I see the bomb carrier running out in front or taking unnecessary peek risks is just embarrassing. Need a dedicated planter.
• On the other hand, when we do execute, everyone just stands around waiting for someone else to take the risks and I guess the bomb carrier steps up.
• We need to learn to get grouped and set up for a bomb take, hold off quietly until we execute with wave attacks to get plants in a matter of literally 3-5 seconds.
• What I'm getting at is that we tend to give up a lot of tells about where we are going with a bomb and we don't reverse plan when we do.
• When we did take it slow, covering all sides, scouting and taking picks for a plant on opportunities we were much more successful.
• We're not very good at defending bomb sites unless we have overwhelming numbers anyway - we seldom have any frags left for defending a retake.
• We tend to defend bombs way too much on the site when we have numbers, instead of getting one or two guys forward to cut off approaches to the site.
• Covering our backs is a problem too, no one really thinks that the CTs may be looping around behind us and it costs us a few times.
• We don't protect ourselves against an all out aggressive CT play, so we are vulnerable to wipes if they predict our play early and come after us.
• Our strats are okay-ish... I mean, most of the time they're unpredictable... but we take too long to actually execute and blunder our chances.

i'm in for the tactics, sometimes don't know where the good spots to guard or to look for enemies are and when we played a map i never played competitive i was useless. i thought me and granty had good communication at b site, but stuff like which way to go when A is overrun etc i need some tips. i like to be the bomb carrier, and rather have our better shooters to be shooting while i'm planting. it all comes down to the tactics as you say, i also like when one person makes the call so you can listen to the one voice instead, already to much multi tasking for my brain needed.my 2 cents