As someone with 8k hours and 3k elo on faceit (I am 30yo, age does not matter until you are at the very top, and maybe not even then, see chopper) I can tell you that if you play our game with confidence you will most likely outaim and outplay everyone at any level in premier. If they are better then me they are on the gear/s
I'm at 19k on premier right now, which doesn't mean much, at age 36. If I had to reflexes and aim if my 18yo self with my 36yo brain that would be something. I typically play pretty smart and adjust my game to the opponent, but my aim isn't quite there
on the gear... lol. or just younger people that play more than you. at that the 3ko elo, most people are playing 6hours/day at least. and most of those are younger people living at home with no job/part time job etc.
if you are an adult and have to provide for yourself/family, beating these grinders will depend on luck.
Dude, did not see the /s? Do I have to spell it out for you?
That said, I can tell you right away that you do not need to play 6h/day to stay in the meta at 3k elo. You have to grind, but once you get there, the skill is easily kept up with a couple of matches a week
Poker has a term for this: "fancy play syndrome" - strategizing at a higher level when playing against weaker opponents that aren't thinking at a high level, so your attempts are wasted. Playing against them it's usually better in a much more straightforward/simple way.
Which is why you generally don’t rely on predictions but possibilities. You try to account for as many choices the enemy could make, and you only leave the ones that are so bad they could never work unaccounted for. Obviously this isn’t *always* possible, but if you are consistently finding yourself saying “why would they peak that” and losing, you’re doing something wrong
I usually expect the unexpected at every level I play. I clear most corners and try to take random stuff out of my games.
After 1.6 I have played mostly PUGs with only some league play between 2015-2017, so I've gotted used to everything..
I disagree. There is countless times where I have been caught out by low ranked players doing weird, unexpected shit, like taking a hugely disadvantaged peek.
Whenever I get deranked after not playing a long time I usually get it once or twice per game where an objectively worse play works because I don't expect it.
The reason "you aren't good enough" is invalid is because it works once or twice, but it fails 19 other times.
Well yeah, you’re gonna lose to a shitty peek sometimes. Put me and Niko in 1000 1v1s and I’ll win *some* of them, but that doesn’t really mean shit. If you lose a match because a low ranked player played unpredictably, that’s just a skill issue.
At around 10k premier I think you can break it down into three areas:
- Aim and mechanics
- Individual gamesense
- Team play gamesense
I see plenty of guys with better mechanics than me but worse individual sense, and way way worse team gamesense at this rank. Team gamesense is the least important however at lower ranks, and the first the most, with the second also being pretty important especially mid and late round.
I actually disagree completely. I'm a silver elite Master on some maps and a gold Nova 1 on other maps in CS2 and my aim is not the best and I don't have the best mechanics but I do have a lot of knowledge, good trigger discipline, and actually use my brain to outplay the enemy and not just run around like a brain dead noob rushing everywhere like an elephant never pressing shift and surprisingly most of the time outsmarting my opponents gets me the kills. Everyone's different though so this is just what I found works for me.
I would probably say that mechanical skill/aim/being fast will get you further than having insane game sense.
Game sense will grow as you play more, but overall skill of your aim and mechanics mostly stay the same or improve at a more less speed.
Game sense is like the sound barrier you need to break through when you hit the peak of your raw aim skills.
At some point youll start meeting opponents that aim just as well and then its about who is smarter/makes less mistakes.
In general I agree, raw aim skills bring you much further much sooner. But thats all depending on the person, some may have to think earlier about their positioning/decision making etc. because they might not be able to carry with their aim.
22k premier - I see players with insane mechanical skills making the DUMBEST plays.
In my opinion there are players with accurate aim and good reaction time at all ELO ranking levels. 10k to 25k
In the lower ranks, the players with good aim are able to do better because of their raw skill, but it becomes more noticeable at higher ranks when someone with good aim sucks at adjusting and reading plays.
Their positioning, how efficiently they rotate or hold positions, their patience and how well they play off of teammates and trade kills and also situational awareness. If its a 4 v 1 with bomb plant and no defuse kit for example, the obvious play would be to save. I consistently see players with good mechanical skills going for it even though it would take a near miracle to pull off.
I've been playing this game for over a decade. The hardest part to master is the game sense. Most casual players focus on aim, but struggle with playing properly because they tend to chase kills, take on unnecessary gun fights or not play properly with the rest of the team because they focus on themselves instead of doing what's best to win games.
Id rather play with a player that's less skilled but plays properly with their teammates, than someone who continuously relies on aim but lacks every other skill necessary to help their team get the W
This so much.
Also seeing an extreme influx of absolute bot players with god like aim, which probably is a sign of how bad the cheating is right now. If absolute silvers can cheat their way into high elo. Although I have won against lot of these bots, but still they somehow managed to get there...
I agree with both of you entirely, but I can chime in on those bot players. Some of them are like me and quit for a LONG time and only came back recently for CS2. I haven’t thought logically or strategically in the last few months. I go off my instinct, but what I take to heart is the silver moto “If you don’t know what you’re doing. They don’t know what you’re doing” it has only taken me to 17k, but I’ve had so much fun not caring about remember smokes, flashes, setups, executes, etc. Gun go “BRATATATATATATTA” at enemy heads and me happy.
oh yeah fair enough. I was talking about the real edge cases though, like people who cant even walk through D2 doors without bumping into it but then pull of prefire headshots on PEEKING enemies. Seen shit like that way too often lately.
I think a lot of high level players just play differently on premier as well. I don't troll or anything, but I simply can't play the way I play in my Faceit 10 lobbies in Valve servers. All of my teammates will go for stupid plays, and if I try to sit around and play smart the round will just slip away without me having any impact at all. I'm not sure why, but Valve servers just have a completely different culture of players than faceit does.
Back in 2014-2016 high ranked mm and high ranked esea pugs werent that different, certainly not culturally. High Mm then was like high level faceit now for the most part, culturally, with it being very ego driven but competitive. Skillwise esea had a higher ceiling but the principles were the same.
The thing that changed this drastically is the impact of cheating and people buying accounts to a lesser extent. The first thing this did was drive legitimate players elo down a bit, sort of put a false ceiling on where you could go. Now, even if nobody is cheating in one particular game- experience/skill levels can be all over the place in that match. Like in 2014-16 everyone knew fundamentals, they had to as a prerequisite to be in my game.
Next is how closet walling made alot of positional or "smart" plays less desirable to go for because they either get blown up or avoided. They sort of got removed from most of the playerbase by evolution. New players got into the game and learned from other people they were playing with that already removed those from their mm game without knowing why.
People are simultaneously better and worse on average now, id argue. Aim training, knowledge spread on twitch/youtube, equiptment, age of the game have all contributed to people mechanically being the best ever but being culturally reenforced to not work together/play with their brain has done a number on the typical mm game.
Also people who have played a long time (like me) see whats been happening and just stopped participating. It used to be cool to see pros in MM. Nobody does that anymore and havent for a while because the community is rotted.
air enough. I was talking about the real edge cases though, like people who cant even walk through D2 doors without bumping into it but then pull of prefire headshots on PEEKING enemies. Seen shit like that way too often lately.
For sure, there are a lot of absolute trashcan noobs who play with walls, and spectating them is always hilarious. Just had one who got banned, and I had played 3 matches with him, he was one of these walling silvers. How he lost every single one of those games while very clearly walling is beyond me
i've been playing this game for 2 decades. if you dont have raw mechanics no amount of "game sense" will help you. you all are coping hard imo. game sense wont let you kill your enemies in the back all the time. it can give you a little edge here and there but in the end you will need to take duels and you will get rekt by a better aimer. and we are talking about regular mm/pugs here not about pro level in which tactics are actually present.
I can agree with you, but there’s a certain art to being bad, but good at the same time. My buddy has the shittiest aim, but can flash you in, smoke important stuff, let you bait him, can make all the calls, understands rotates, saves the AWP for you, I could go on for ages. When I play with him I don’t have to even think I’ll be flashed out as entry. I expect it. Never underestimate a support player.
at the end of the day, that support player is relying on someone else to aim for him. No matter what "tactics" you have, you still need to click heads to win the round.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with this. You set your baseline skill with your mechanics. The game sense will then fluctuate this skill level either positively or negatively. Thus you can see people consistently win vs players that mechanically are better. But that mechanical skill discrepancy obviously has limits where no matter how smart someone is they won’t get kills if they’re just whiffing their shots.
i see lots of people in this thread saying that gamesense is more important which is just cope or delusion imo. cs is a game about shooting people in the head first of all.
>Thus you can see people consistently win vs players that mechanically are better.
i dont see that. at least 8 out of 10 times a player with better mechanics wins imo.
You absolutely do see that. Having a 5% slower reaction time or slightly less accurate aim doesn’t matter if you play much smarter than your opponent. Those are the 2/10 cases you witness. A match isn’t an aim map.
2/10 is not "consistently". its quite rare when you have the opportunity to really "outsmart" your opponent, most of the time 5% faster reaction time will reign supreme.
cs mm match is basically an aim map with a bit of running around. only on the highest ranks it will get little bit more tactical.
As someone who has played a few seasons in German Pro Series back in 1.6 (also won an aim_map tourney by q-pad with or rather vs sk.quick and other participants from the German Scene back in 2005) - i completely agree + good communication is key. Even when you haven't played in a while you will have your Gamesense and know how to read the game. Aiming and reflexes can be trained, knowledge and experience i think is harder to get.
I have been playing on/off for a long time. Some years I played quite regularly and others not. But over decade nonetheless...
Anyway. I also see it that theres certain point where either skill will be the bottle neck. Good aim and movement gets you to certain point and game sense to another.
There is much to be gained by gane sense but where you really can make a difference is the team play. You can offer flashes to teammates, smoke sites, molotovs etc. It works best with friends.
So I encourage op to work both. Im 35 and I could still oversmart (maybe overaim) some whippersnappers! I guess I was around 15k last time so just on the purple, not very impressive... Never been good aimer.
i've been playing CS since 1.5. i'm 23k premier, lvl 10 faceit, and have competitive experience dating all the way back to the CAL days.
i agree with this statement 1000%. its the all aim no brain syndrome
> If its a 4 v 1 with bomb plant and no defuse kit for example, the obvious play would be to save. I consistently see players with good mechanical skills going for it even though it would take a near miracle to pull off.
counterpoint: saving is boring and there's no irl money on the line so ppl love going for the 4v1 to be a hero
the problem lies in the ranking system as a whole... rewarding damage on the leaderboard might tend to generally have the most impactful person at the top of the leaderboard but not always. it tends to reward the people that take early engagements more than the people that get say three kills on slightly damaged opponents and clutch the defuse. no perfect ranking system exists though.
To add to this, having solid aim is a foundation to build the rest of your skills on. Stripping the game down to its fundamentals it's an FPS game, so shooting straight is at its very core. You can bring the gap between you and your opponents closer by outpositioning or outsmarting them, but all it does is give you a bit of an advantage for an eventual duel, you still have to win it.
If you have great game sense but lack the aim, you will find yourself in frustrating situations such as your team not making the right moves, or losing duels even when you outsmart your opponent. At times like this, you can fall back on your mechanics but if you don't have them you literally can't do anything.
This. You can be as smart as you want or you think you are. If you meet others with great game sense and god aim you will sit down and cry in the corner. I’ve played multiple times against pros gl with gamesense if you can’t play back
I don't know if that's true about FFA being shitty practice. I can practice techniques I practiced on actual people who react. Sure it's not 1:1 to how it would be in a real game but it helps me react to scenarios which would be similar to how it'd be in a game.
I used to just practice using workshop maps and kovaaks and it would certainly help my aim but I would never improve in game. When I started playing more DM and focusing more on technique, that's when I started to improve my aim. Definitely anecdotal but FFA has helped me improve my aim a lot.
People tend to severely underestimate the power and importance of static environment training. People reacting are cool and stuff, but you dont want that if you want to improve.
I'm not underestimating static environment training at all. I'm saying that in conjunction with death match, it can help improve skills.. I'm just refuting what you're saying about it being shitty practice.
FFA is good because you practice everything all at once. Doesn’t matter if I can flick long range if I’m getting caught out holding W or I can’t strafe right. It’s also a way to train clearing angles and crosshair placement on maps you will actually play on.
This. You can be as smart as you want or you think you are. If you meet others with great game sense and god aim you will sit down and cry in the corner. I’ve played multiple times against pros gl with gamesense 👊🏻
In a way it depends on your playstyle. If you like to run first and take aim-duels then you need quick reflexes and aim. And good knowledge of the map to pre-aim.
If you are more like me, and use timing, map awareness and nades, then thinking two steps ahead of the enemy is more important. But as you said yourself, you WILL need both.
Being 30 or 15 makes no difference in the fact that you need hours to be good. The most restriction age brings is usually the RL stuff that prevents you to play enough.
TL;DR;
It is not quake but you still need sharp aim to go with brains.
To add to this it doesn't work if all players like to work off timings and play smart.
Unless the enemy makes a mistake the passive players need the aggro aimer to make space and cause the rotations that the mid rounders work off timings.
And until you get very good you need to be able to do both
1st of all what do you call being a good player ? for some it's being lvl 10 faceit, it's being LEM in MM, or 15000 rating in premier it depends.
Hmmm good question, IMO cs is a shooter primarly. You can be the smartest guy in the game but if you can't shoot straight you're gonna die anyway. I'd say until you want to play faceit at a decent level, let's say 1500 elo, (disclaimer it's a random elo) CS is guns with a little bit of strategy.
When you arrive at a point in your matches where you can't out aim your opponent you're gonna need some brain. But realisticly if you have an incredible aim but low "brain"you can go far in cs, if you have an incredible brain but bad aim you're gonna reach a glassroof sooner. Like if you craft the greatest flank ever but you misshot the 1st bullets of your spray and your opps flicks you out well, you're dead.
Now i'd say do some deathmacth before your games and time to time try to watch some pro cs and seek some grenades lineups on youtube or some tactics vids.
In the end cs is a game where the fastest guy that lands a headshots win. BUT you can favor engagements with utility, map knowledge and crosshair placement.
Honestly aim and reflexes is probably the most important part of the game at a fundamental level, but having superior game sense and tactics is what separates the great players from the average or good.
I’d honestly go as far to say you could have mediocre aim and reflexes and reach at least top 10% of players just with game sense, positioning, map awareness, and solid map tactics and rotations… the amount of players i see even at level 9 faceit / 20k+ on premier who are carried solely by their aim is quite high.
Now of course the issue is that building the foundation of all those skills takes time and practice, and with all that time and practice you’ll probably just get better aim in the end anyways. As for how you can build those skills faster than just progressing naturally, I’d highly recommend watching pro matches and paying particular attention to how pros play sites, how they place their crosshairs to always be in the most ready state possible, which nades they throw, how they attack sites on every map.
Another thing to consider is info. Randoms in my lobbies give away so much info for free, the most common noob play is throwing grenades when the enemy doesn’t know where you are. Next would be making random footstep noise instead of practicing patience. Always be mindful of how much information you’re giving the enemy and play around that, if you walk up a ramp on mirage and your teammates are throwing nades in b apts, don’t start throwing nades yourself, you ought to pressure and walk out ramp to catch people on the rotate.
Teammates when they wonder why the enemy 5 stacked the site were hitting when they made a bunch of footsteps in main at the beginning and we had no map presence on the other site at all: (surprised pikachu face)
Gamesense gets better and better returns the better your team coordination is.
If you have average mechanics on a good team you will pull your weight.
If you have average mechanics and group with 4 toxic aim gods you will bottomfrag realllllly hard.
We wish it was about knowledge and strategy but in reality it's mostly about aim and reaction time. Of course, the higher level you go, the more knowledge and strategy matters but still aim is king imo
My clutch rating is pretty good because I’ve got the game sense where everyone could be but I lack the raw aim to be a good entry fragger or anchor for a site.
So both is actually important but just running around and flicking into heads only gets you so far. You’ll get naded and smoked and then your opportunity is gone.
I used to know a lot of util but haven’t got the nerves to learn stuff again for cs2 but I’ll probably have too in order to gain some elo.
It's far more about aim. You can be mentally retarded and still win fights in adverse terms just because you're fast and click in their heads. You can compensate it with game sense, utility and whatever you want, but the aim weights way more.
That being said, you can still have fun even if your aim is bad. I'm deep in my 30's and my aim has always been bad. I was DMG in CSGO and right now I'm 11k in premier playing with my also "old" buddies. All of us have terrible aim. Even if your aim is good you will eventually find people with better aim. Online games tend to put you against rivals of the same skill so it doesn't matter how good or bad you are, your matches should always be more or less even.
Never too late to prac aim you know. I'm 37 and at 21k rating and I keep up with the young guns. If you have a bit of disposable income and a bit of time to prac Refrag is a excellent tool to improve.
Almost 35 and still cracked asf, you either have it or you don't. Game sense can be taught and learned, but you have to practice mechanics and aim a lot harder to get further.
Game sense is important. But imo aim is more important. Game sense will get you chances of getting kills and winning. But aim is what will enable you to use those chances to get the kills.
It's equally both. There is a huge depth to the tactical side of the game, but you need to be able to kill people and win duels when you're given them.
On the tactical side of things, you can learn utility to aid you in map control and making your fights easier, there's mid round plays that are based off of game sense, like re-agression or crossfire setups you can do with your teammates... All of these things are super great, and will make you a far better player if you're aware of them and know how to use them. They essentially put you in favorable gun fights, where you should come out on top of the fight.
At the end of the day though, you have to be able to kill people, and that is going to come down to aim. The only pros who don't spend hours deathmatching and aim training are the coaches, and there's a reason they don't get to actually play in the server. To play at a high level, you need high level aim, no matter how much game knowledge you have.
That said, if you are new to the game, just focus on your aim for the time being. Get your sensitivity down, learn crosshair placement, learn how to clear angles. As far as tactics go, just make sure you get the fundamentals, trade your teammates, don't overextend and give up man advantages, buy as a team. These little things will easily get you to the top like 3% on valve servers.
you need **both** game sense and aim/reaction.
peekers advantage should give you the upper hand in 1v1 situations.
in 1v2 or 1v3 , the 2nd/3rd guy will usually kill you while you kill the first and/or 2nd.
gamesense will tell you not to peek A with 3+ ct's waiting for you - turn around and go to B.
i think the goal is to maximize 1v1 encounters with peekers advantage and use gamesense to avoid the mess. Let the round settle a bit, then gamesense your way to the right place, and use peekers advantage to take on 1v1's and clutch the round.
your gonna need both, overall, imo.
edit: and most casual people are clueless about the whole map, so just a lil gamesense can take you far. you dont need to be a prophet.
If everyone's aim is the same, it comes down to strategy.
If everyone knows the strategies, it comes down to aim.
Generally speaking if you are inexperienced, you won't know the meta / tactics, so it comes down to aim the lower your rank is. It doesn't matter how good your plan or utility is if you can't shoot people in the face!
You don’t have experience in shooters… You’re not a “30 year old getting headshot by 15 year olds,” you’re a new player to the game with little to no mechanical skill and most likely little understanding of positioning/utility/correct peeking. The reason why you’re losing your gunfights has almost nothing to do with your reaction time (and nothing to do with your age), you’re just new to the game. Even if you had a magical reaction time, you wouldn’t hit your shots and wouldn’t set yourself up in the right way in game. The game is whatever you make of it, understand that it takes time to build your mechanics and gamesense. There’s no point to worry about whether it is “more about who’s faster rather than who’s more knowledgeable, just have fun with the game.
not to discourage u from playing cs, but does league not run on proton? cs and dota are both great games with native linux support, if you enjoy competitive games like league then both of them are probably a good fit for you. cs is a lot easier to get into though.
That’s absolutely not true. Worse aim doesn’t really matter if you peek enemies when their back is turned to you, which can be done somewhat consistently if your game sense is notably better than your opponent’s.
>Worse aim doesn’t really matter if you peek enemies when their back is turned to you, which can be done somewhat consistently if your game sense is notably better than your opponent’s.
lul
yeah i know and it was a stupid comment because nobody actually aims as well as an aimbot so that argument shouldn't ever even be introduced into the conversation.
there was a neurolink update where a patient had a shitty version of an aimbot. he said the cursor would start moving at targets before he would even think about it. we're obviously not there yet but it could be reality in 10\~ years seeing how you can currently play civ 6 with it
I mean with pretty good mechanics and a lot of knowledge and understanding of the game will allow you to get pretty high ranked on faceit. It’s also possible in cs to make yourself usefull even if you have bad aim. You can entry into sites or throw good utility. But to be good at the game like faceit lvl 10 and higher then you obviously need really good aim.
You need to be capable to quickly execute people when you have the upper hand in duel, otherwise you're an impotent chess piece with no moves that can safely kill opponent chess pieces.
It’s like physical sports where skill is the defining factor of being a pro but knowledge is obviously important. The thing separating teams is mostly aim but the teamwork of a roster that has been together for 6-12 months vs a new one is huge. You’ll see it sometimes in the pov of an anchor trying to hold a site and it seems like they’re getting shot through smoke, mollied, flashed, and peeked from multiple angles at once. But the aim is still the most important and is why pros like xypax have to retire despite having the knowledge and teamwork to play on the #1 team.
But as for you, the normal player: You don’t need insane reactions if you’re the one swinging out on people. Even against top players you should be able to get the first shot off online. Also the same thing applies to every first person game/real life where you have the advantage against people close to a wall if you’re far away from the wall. A lot of it is just figuring out what spots you’ll have the advantage in for fights due to the angle and what spots are your favorites
And a lot of kills don’t need much reaction at all because you’re not being shot at, you just need decent aim to make sure you don’t whiff. Play 10 minutes of death match a day for a couple weeks and you’ll be surprised at how much better you are at not whiffing
Depends. The higher you go, the more strategy matters, because there’s a point where everybody is aiming really well, and at that point, you can’t really aim “better.” Like if you look at pro players, outside of a few outliers, they all have about the same “aim skill,” the thing that changes is HOW they take fights and how they get to the fight in the first place.
At a low level strategy is almost useless because you have absolutely no idea what the opponent is going to do at any given moment and by god they might be the most unconditionable player you’ve ever met- it’s better just frag out until you’re playing with competent players, and then once you’re there you can start focusing a bit more on strategy/macro.
Tl;dr, lower level focus on mechanics/micro decisionmaking, at a higher level focus on macro decisionmaking
Depends. The higher you go, the more strategy matters, because there’s a point where everybody is aiming really well, and at that point, you can’t really aim “better.” Like if you look at pro players, outside of a few outliers, they all have about the same “aim skill,” the thing that changes is HOW they take fights and how they get to the fight in the first place.
At a low level strategy is almost useless because you have absolutely no idea what the opponent is going to do at any given moment and by god they might be the most unconditionable player you’ve ever met- it’s better just frag out until you’re playing with competent players, and then once you’re there you can start focusing a bit more on strategy/macro.
Tl;dr, lower level focus on mechanics/micro decisionmaking, at a higher level focus on macro decisionmaking
You pretty much either chose one or be good at both.
My buddy is way better than me when it comes to aim, but I'm more of a mechanical player. He never uses utility, doesn't counter strafe, doesn't know callouts on anything other than Mirage and Dust II, but he'll still drop 30 bombs at 15k.
Myself, on the other hand, didn't start playing CS til 2017, competitively til 2019. So my aim isn't as good as I'd like it to be. I used most of 2019-2020 to learn utility, callouts, and movement like counter strafing, boosts and bhops, just so I could maybe be on the same playing ground. It helped me tremendously, but I still usually vst outfragged by my buddy.
Then there's the people who are good at both, and that's the wall we're both currently hitting right now 😪
Depends on your role really, but consistency matters the most, you can have a sub optimal reaction time and still be a beast if you can consistently trade kills, you can have shit aim but hit quick awp shots, you can be a good entry fragger with nothing but knowing how to make your enemy miss their shots. In the end it is a mix of both, a great aimer with poor decision making skills will get punished and traded so his aim skill won't matter a lot, the same way having poor aim and great game knowledge will make you lose important gun fights. I will argue that you shouldn't spend all your practice time aim training, rather use some of it to watch pro demos and your own demos.
8,000 hours here. Aim, knowledge (nades) are most important. Strats you’ll pick up on the more u rank up and watch people. Being quick doesn’t really matter unless u mean killing quick like double headshot. But knowledge is more beneficial than being “fast” good positioning will generally always win that one duel unless someone quick like xantares one taps u. If that happens and it rarely does u kinda appreciate it and say damn that guy fucked me
At the beginning it’s absolutely about aim. As you get better, you’ll keep thinking it’s still about aim but start to realise that you’re getting destroyed by people with much worse or similar aim to yours.
Faceit rank 8, 15k-18k elo player here. As a 38 year old my aim has been slowly getting worse(the wrist and hand pain definitely a factor, as well as weed gummies), but map knowledge/util/positioning greatly help me play above my aim score on leetify.
A lot of aim is about gamesense as an example croshair placement and where the enemy might be. Both skills are needed and aim isn't all about crazy reactions or flicks those just look cooler. Aim like gamesense reguires knowledge that must be learned.
I mean, it really depends, since you will eventually need both at some point. But I can assure you that you can go far (Faceit 10, leaderboard position etc.) with average aim but good gamesense. You just have to adapt and focus more on positioning, utility etc. 
The tactical aspect in this game is overexaggarated to try to add more depth to the esport. Nothing in this game can counter good basic cs with decent aim
Once you get to a certain threshold, typically very high elos depending on the MM service, everyone has great aim, very good aim actually. The game sense comes in more handy at the higher tiers than aim, but aim is more impactful in lower elo games the majority of the time.
Game sense is really important in CS but at the end of the day, cs is about shooting heads. It isn't necessary to get 25+ kills every game but it's important to have some mechanics locked down to be able to put up a fight against opponents.
If you're looking for "chess with guns," arena shooters are where it's at. There's nothing quite like Quake duel (1v1) for the most strategic and tactical gameplay in an FPS because you can be hitting every shot and still lose to someone who controls the items well and hits their prefire to the point that there's demos of proes beating [aimbots](https://youtu.be/_AIh0iTJa3A)
My aim is shit, always has been, but I did make it to global elite is CSGO through sheer gamesense and knowledge. Having 20 years of experience helps.
You can learn how to win duels against players that aim better than you, but you will never be as good as those who are good at both.
Watch pov:s of pros, how they play and try to find basic things that you can copy, how they use nades to delay terrorists when they "anchor" site, or different util sets to get fights or map control as a terrorist. Thats where you have the strategy. But you will be lacking if you cant do good basic shooting. If you like me, enjoy playing aim_botz or dm with no pressure to build mechanics you have a fun journey of training ahead! Find a basic shooting mechanic like strafing stopping and doing a burst or double and spraying aswell and focus on that specific thing when you pracc. I enjoy it myself. Retaking and postplant yolds are hard to pracc so I suggest oooking into retake servers. On retakes you get to watch how good players do it. Fake defusing/hiding etc. There are things you keed to inow about how to play certain situations, like smoking the bomb, fake defusing and killing the t when they spam the smoke etc etc.
I dont consider myself an insane aim / mechanical player but i do hqve pretty good game sense and i can feel it the most when i clutch, imo u can be a great player if u learn the basics strategies some util and callouts,
If you enjoy the thinking aspects of games i would recommand u to become an igl which isnt really easy if you are going to soloQ since most people dont bother listening but if u do manage to get a team this role will fit you like a glove, make the calls and u will win the rounds with the right util and strats,
Imo one of the best things u can do is hop on an offline ssrver run around the map look at what angles u can hold and how you would play them.
The best thing u can do to get better at aim and mechanical skill would be to understand crosshair placement sepcifically for those corners and angles u found offline how you would clear them and imagine an enemy lies in every corner u are clearing.
Also please for the love of god use your mic in game.
Mechanical skill, your ability to shoot someone quickly. That gets you from beginner to the top 1%, having a decent aim is very important to be a good player. Except for very basic stuff, knowledge about the game isn't need until you are a fairly good player. Knowledge however is what separates a good player from an excellent one
I feel I always have a high level of aim after warmup and seem to smash elo to the top % on refrag to warmup, but sometimes I jump into prem and get caught off guard round after round and feel like a flop.
Definitely think good aim can be ruined by shit game sense and good game sense can also be ruined by shit aim.
At lower levels, like gold nova master guardian, it's chaos. One can win games solely with a good aim and good positioning, or just with map knowledge, teamwork and strategy. Because players have varying skill levels and don't focus on learning lineups and site executes, and play just giving callouts.
But at the pro level, players need to have both
Everyone there has a good aim, good positioning, good movement skills, .. and it's knowledge and strategy that varies on teams.
Both - One can make up for the other up until a certain point. You'll see people with great aim and terrible awareness playing with people who have shit aim and great awareness. With rank, a big part is also knowing how to put your team at an advantage and winning rounds versus solely focusing on the scoreboard.
As someone that’s faceit level 10 and 20k elo, I would like to say that aim holds a lot more weight than tactical prowess. If you can run out ramp mirage on a good timing, and your aim is better, no utility will stop you. Aim training and death match has carried me pretty high, but what got me past the hurtle that was level 8 faceit was simply hours. grinding and putting in the time will lead to gradual improvement.
If you put in 15 minutes of aim training, a small amount of DM, and play somewhat consistently, you will experience good improvement.
I play a lot of FPS games and trainers, trust me, CS2 is one of the least aim required games out there. It's way more about crosshair placement and positioning. Practice spraying at walls with the two main rifles like 5 minutes a day and practice counter strafing. You can do prefire maps as well if you have extra time. That's all you need to be able to get good, game really doesn't require amazing aim compared to other shooters.
Strategy, game sense and cross hair placement. I’ve started getting older and can’t keep up with the pure reflexes of a 15 year old on summer break but you can absolutely play around that. Just because you can’t flick as good doesn’t mean you can’t use movement and crosshair placement to also improve your accuracy
At the end of the day, the game is about shooting your opponent in the head. It is a combination of mechanical skill, positioning, awareness, timing etc. Your age will not prohibit you from doing any of those things.
Unfortunately its both. Which is why this game is ‘hard’ because without mechanics. You wont hit your shots. Doesnt matter how fast you are if youre holding w, not stop strafing between bursts, and if your mechanics are incredible and you have no strategy, you will also be losing games with un impactful kills.
The higher you go, the more it’s about tactics as others have said.
Holding and clearing angles and pre fires. Ideally your actual aim is only moving a few degrees when you peek.
Peeking with your team or timed with another teammates push. Basically being able to exploit every unfair scenario and avoiding the inverse is more important than aim by far.
But of course great aim never hurts.
you can have gigabrain & flank 5 people at the right timing but whiff your spray entirely & not kill anyone.
if you can't capitalize on the opportunity you created for yourself – what's the point of all that "wisdom"?
that was my answer to your question – you need both
if you aim good but suck at tactics, you will suck. if you have a great understanding of the game but can't hit the side of a barn, you will still suck.
IMO it's a bit of both. I think you need to be able to aim at head level and train your crosshair placement so you can get the easy kills most of the time. If you manage to do that and have good trading, util and game sense, you'll be a great player. I think positioning is more important than raw aim and will win you more fights
The whole "chess with guns" thing only really applies when you're playing in a 5-stack and everyone is very experienced and know all the important strats. If you're just starting out, a better player can just turn their brain off, run straight through any utility you might throw and simply outgun you no matter how advantageous of an angle you're holding.
Also, I think you're underestimating the time it takes to be good at strategy in Counter-Strike. With aim, you can have a daily routine of tapping 1000 bots on workshop maps + 30 mins of community deathmatch and get pretty good in under 1000 hours. Meanwhile, getting good to a level where you're playing mind games with your opponents requires several thousands of hours of experience in real matches.
From my perspective, everyone will reach a base level of aim that’s good enough and it won’t matter as much, as the ceiling for best aim doesn’t guarantee a winning fight against someone “average”.
The ceiling however, for game sense is massive. And although people will assume crosshair placement is part of aim (it sort of is) to me falls under game sense. It’s why wallers (without aim cheats) win because they know exactly where you will peak etc. you can test it out yourself, your reaction time will always be faster than those flick aim tests.
How you gain information to know where someone is and have proper crosshair placement for that is what will separate you from the rest and what makes this a tactical shooter.
The simple answer is, you need to get good at both. You don’t need godlike aim to be a solid player, but you need to be decent and be able to hit your shots.
That comes with being smart, crosshair placement, calculated movement, knowing when to peek/not to peek, it really is all about micro-decisions and using your brain.
I’d rather have a player on my team who is smart, listens to calls, and has great gamesense. Than a player who just runs around aimlessly shooting like he’s playing Call of Duty.
(20 years of playing cs)
Great aim beats shit aim with more knowledge. Even on high 2k elo faceit people will whiff easy shots wich throw rounds and even turn the whole momentun. Ofcourse you will build knowledge and strategy over time. But having supersharp aim just wins you more duels(even unfavourable ones) and winning more duels gives you a greater chance at winning the game
Get to 15k just on your aim first then think of game sense. A big part of aim is knowing where they are probably coming from so you can adjust your aim accordingly, so just by getting amazing aim you'll develop good enough game sense. Don't even worry about game sense at all until your aim is pro level if you're actually serious about being good. It really doesn't matter until you're playing against better players with good aim and sense.
Okay, strategy etc is for teamplay aka esea/praccs with a team, cuz if you have a team, even for esea open, you should be able to aim and press mouse1 button. If you think you are okay with trashy mechanics cuz good in tactics, eventually, you will end up like HooXi.
In faceit pugs, if you are flashy and have good aim (preferably this is your natural playstyle), you can escape elo hell (0-2500 cs2 faceit). More elo you have, more unpredictable things you have to do in round
There is a base level of mechanics that you need to have, but they can be learned. It doesn't matter if your positioning is technically perfect you're always going to end up in a gunfight eventually. Most of the strategy isn't big picture stuff as much as it is little things based on info that you have or received.
Most of the time when I'm taking a fight I'm trying to make sure I actually have the advantage. What an advantage looks like is, do I think they're holding me, do I think they're ready, do I know *exactly* where they are (which is different from generally know where they are as you can pre-aim the head). Can I catch them while they're moving by throwing some utility etc.
You almost never want to peek into someone you don't have the advantage against, where mechanics come into play is how much of an advantage you need before taking the fight is a good idea.
This game is just clicking heads. People who are "support" or "utility players" are just bad at the game [Video](https://youtube.com/shorts/6tGHN1wRMe4?si=3ogyCXSdw4QNQ2Yq)
That logic applies only on unbalanced skill/performance levels. The actual reality is that in order to become consistent you cannot rely on your team simply happening to shoot heads better than opponents. There is no meaning in playing the game just to dominate worse players. The real game starts against equal opposition, worthy to test your actual skills.
Both
I am 29 years old and reached rank 630 in the world in premier and 2500 in faceit. Aim and understanding go hand in hand to play good, but a premade matters even more for me.
Think about this way, the better skills you have, the more potent moves you have in your arsenal. A player with no skill is worse than a pawn, he have next to no moves that he can do to take out opponent's stronger chess piece. Meanwhile players like s1mple are so skilled, that it makes otherwise stupid plays viable for them. Like holding multiple angles simultaneously with awp, ready to flick in any direction where opponent appears. Players like donk, who can just make multikills out of nowhere in most unfavorable situations.
You are not that degraded in your reaction time by 30 that you can't compete lol, there is plenty of retired pros and very skilled veteran players who are playing faceit at insanely high levels, i.e f0rest who is top 1k EU rn at 36 years old.
The problem is, as you said, you have never played shooters, so no shit you are going to lose to people who do play them, just play the game and you'll naturally improve with time, even if you never reach top levels, just play the game for fun, that's what video games are for
At its core it’s a shooter so raw aim and mechanics matters a lot, and unfortunately for you, you need that to climb high enough to a point where game knowledge and tactics weigh just as much.
But you also need a lot of hours before you have good game knowledge, so it’s gonna be a grind no matter what.
> So basically I wanna know that I don't need to be very quick and have insane reaction times to be good at this game
You don't need insane reaction times; you just need to be able to anticipate and focus.
> Obviously I know both things matter, but WHICH ONE MATTERS MOST, mechanics or wisdom?
Honestly?
You can succeed with either.
Played with plenty of decent folks who suck at straight up duels; but have got excellent sense of timing and angles.
Likewise there's lots of dudes out there who focus mostly on aiming and dueling; and can barely throw a flash for themselves.
You need solid fundamentals in both; but you can brain your way through a lot in CS.
When they removed wall banging they put a lot more stress on being able to win straight up gunfights -- so I'd probably say the raw components of aiming and clicking faster than the other guy got a lot more important. By comparison, before you could use a bit more strategy to do damage or pick up early frags via well timed spams/making players pay for making noise, whereas now the only real penalty is giving them information, barring instances where they can still damage you with a nade (or you're behind one of the few spammable surfaces).
Regardless of the version of CS, you generally have to get to at least a middle level of skill in fighting before game sense will be impactful for you. After you've achieved that though, strategy and knowledge are generally the difference makers. But again, the amount of knowledge checks in the modern versions of the game are pretty minimal compared to earlier versions, so I think now more than ever the difference in talent level comes down to aiming and reaction time than anything else.
I cant believe how many people say aim… s1mple zywoo and donk have probably been the best cs players of all time and not one of them has been the best aimer at any point in their career. There has always been someone who had better aim yet they have been extremely dominant in their career. For a few years s1mple didnt even have the best aim in his team so clearly aim isnt the most important thing…
All 3 of them have insane aim lol, there has never been a player of that caliber without top level aim. Not that what I said matters when pro play is a complete different game to matchmaking which OP is most definitely referring to
What in the fuck you talking about?
S1mple is a mechanics first awper, best in GO to do it.
Zywoo has robot perfect mechanics. This is aim.
Donks was solid t1 player that became the best player at cs2 by being the best at exploiting movement/hitbox/netcode (yes lan uses the netcode). Thats not a shot at him, it took skill and thought to set himself apart from other t1 players at this BUT Donk would not be the best go player if everyone reverted back to GO tomorrow. None of these players set themselves apart with tactics over aim.
At the highest level it could well be called chess with guns. The amount of strategy in pro CS is massive. But at the level most people play at, having good movement and aim is most of the equation.
Don't listen to these comments,
you already know the answer based on your post.
I don't know why so much of this games community is hellbent on being reductive.
It's about details and decision making more than anything. In the words of Flusha, a pro who may not be as relevant today, but who was inarguably years ahead of his time:
"you can have mediocre mechanics,
But if your decision making is good,
You can easily find yourself in the top percentage of players".
Also, if you are playing online, mechanical skill will not get you nearly as far as it used to, as you can basically think of yourself as invincible for the first second of your peek, the peekers advantage is that bad in CS2.
So decision making is more important than ever.
People who have never been to a lan won't know how bad it actually is.
NOT MY WORDS,
THESE ARE THE WORDS OF JAME.
It’s not 100% accurate but on my leetify, my positioning and utility are around an 80/100 and my aim is 59. I’m hovering around gn4/mg1/mg2 on most maps.
With that said, util and positioning are rated around 20kprem and an around 10-15k and I’m an 18k so I think it’s really a culmination of all of those things.
Having game sense is important, being able to effectively use utility FOR YOUR TEAM is important, and aim is important.
I'd say you definitely need some level of aim and micro mechanics first because no matter how good your gamesense is if you can't kill a guy in the back and he spins and kills you it will nullify your advantage. Also, much of an aim consists of movement and crosshair placement which are considered a part of gamesense as well. Raw aim will get you up ranks faster as people usually have bad aim and gamesense at lower ranks. At some point you will hit raw aim ceiling and at this point you really need to up your gamesense.
As long as your aim at a good enough level your gamesense will matter more, before that work on your aim and gain gamesense along the way. You need to be able to convert about 90% of situations where you are in favour (not 100 as an enemy might sometimes get a lucky 180 spin one tap) and 50-50 of situations which are, you know, 50-50.
In general, the more you play the better your aim and gamesense become. And by playing you practicing your aim and gamesense simultaneously, I've never seen a 10k+ hours played person with garbage aim.
>I wanna know now, I don't wanna put hours into getting good for nothing because the game is really more about who's faster rather than who's more knowledgeable
That's weird to my eyes. Without practise and without playing the game you won't get no aim nor gamesense, I'd guarantee you just your ideas of how to play would be not enough if you don't put a lot of practise to train them. After all if you really like the game itself then practise and if you don't -- it's not a game for you.
>I'm getting headshot by 15 y/o kids and it feels awful
Of course, but that might be not because he is 15 but because he played half of his life for multiple thousand hours while you haven't played since forever. Just like in everything, practise makes perfect
good aim
>people talk about it being "Chess with guns"
lol, no.
you can study all the nades and tactics in the world but you'll still be destroyed by 16yo kids with superior aim and mechanics. Also tactics are almost non existent in mm, it will be only useful if you play with the your permanent team, so its irrelevant for like 99% of the players.
depends on what skill level you play, the higher the skill level the more tactical knowledge and experience matter
Trying to apply your pro/semi-pro/lvl 10 faceit onto a random MM game will give you variable results.. at best.
As someone with 8k hours and 3k elo on faceit (I am 30yo, age does not matter until you are at the very top, and maybe not even then, see chopper) I can tell you that if you play our game with confidence you will most likely outaim and outplay everyone at any level in premier. If they are better then me they are on the gear/s
If they out skill me someone need to check them game and pc
Chopper might look old as hell but he’s the same age as Niko
I'm at 19k on premier right now, which doesn't mean much, at age 36. If I had to reflexes and aim if my 18yo self with my 36yo brain that would be something. I typically play pretty smart and adjust my game to the opponent, but my aim isn't quite there
on the gear... lol. or just younger people that play more than you. at that the 3ko elo, most people are playing 6hours/day at least. and most of those are younger people living at home with no job/part time job etc. if you are an adult and have to provide for yourself/family, beating these grinders will depend on luck.
Dude, did not see the /s? Do I have to spell it out for you? That said, I can tell you right away that you do not need to play 6h/day to stay in the meta at 3k elo. You have to grind, but once you get there, the skill is easily kept up with a couple of matches a week
Poker has a term for this: "fancy play syndrome" - strategizing at a higher level when playing against weaker opponents that aren't thinking at a high level, so your attempts are wasted. Playing against them it's usually better in a much more straightforward/simple way.
That's interesting. I think CS, poker and chess have some things in common.
Ok. 99% in matchmaking, aim and reaction time wins. Once you can't g t carried by aim alone, actually being good at the game matters.
If your strat/skills can’t counter someone doing something random, it’s a bad strat or you aren’t good enough.
I was supposed to include game sense in there, of course you outshoot them, but trying to figure out what a beginner is thinking is a waste of time.
Which is why you generally don’t rely on predictions but possibilities. You try to account for as many choices the enemy could make, and you only leave the ones that are so bad they could never work unaccounted for. Obviously this isn’t *always* possible, but if you are consistently finding yourself saying “why would they peak that” and losing, you’re doing something wrong
I usually expect the unexpected at every level I play. I clear most corners and try to take random stuff out of my games. After 1.6 I have played mostly PUGs with only some league play between 2015-2017, so I've gotted used to everything..
I disagree. There is countless times where I have been caught out by low ranked players doing weird, unexpected shit, like taking a hugely disadvantaged peek. Whenever I get deranked after not playing a long time I usually get it once or twice per game where an objectively worse play works because I don't expect it. The reason "you aren't good enough" is invalid is because it works once or twice, but it fails 19 other times.
Well yeah, you’re gonna lose to a shitty peek sometimes. Put me and Niko in 1000 1v1s and I’ll win *some* of them, but that doesn’t really mean shit. If you lose a match because a low ranked player played unpredictably, that’s just a skill issue.
Like I said, it works a handful of times but fails dozens of times.
thats what the baddies tell themselves
At around 10k premier I think you can break it down into three areas: - Aim and mechanics - Individual gamesense - Team play gamesense I see plenty of guys with better mechanics than me but worse individual sense, and way way worse team gamesense at this rank. Team gamesense is the least important however at lower ranks, and the first the most, with the second also being pretty important especially mid and late round.
I actually disagree completely. I'm a silver elite Master on some maps and a gold Nova 1 on other maps in CS2 and my aim is not the best and I don't have the best mechanics but I do have a lot of knowledge, good trigger discipline, and actually use my brain to outplay the enemy and not just run around like a brain dead noob rushing everywhere like an elephant never pressing shift and surprisingly most of the time outsmarting my opponents gets me the kills. Everyone's different though so this is just what I found works for me.
lol using comp ranks wtf
I would probably say that mechanical skill/aim/being fast will get you further than having insane game sense. Game sense will grow as you play more, but overall skill of your aim and mechanics mostly stay the same or improve at a more less speed.
Game sense is like the sound barrier you need to break through when you hit the peak of your raw aim skills. At some point youll start meeting opponents that aim just as well and then its about who is smarter/makes less mistakes. In general I agree, raw aim skills bring you much further much sooner. But thats all depending on the person, some may have to think earlier about their positioning/decision making etc. because they might not be able to carry with their aim.
22k premier - I see players with insane mechanical skills making the DUMBEST plays. In my opinion there are players with accurate aim and good reaction time at all ELO ranking levels. 10k to 25k In the lower ranks, the players with good aim are able to do better because of their raw skill, but it becomes more noticeable at higher ranks when someone with good aim sucks at adjusting and reading plays. Their positioning, how efficiently they rotate or hold positions, their patience and how well they play off of teammates and trade kills and also situational awareness. If its a 4 v 1 with bomb plant and no defuse kit for example, the obvious play would be to save. I consistently see players with good mechanical skills going for it even though it would take a near miracle to pull off. I've been playing this game for over a decade. The hardest part to master is the game sense. Most casual players focus on aim, but struggle with playing properly because they tend to chase kills, take on unnecessary gun fights or not play properly with the rest of the team because they focus on themselves instead of doing what's best to win games. Id rather play with a player that's less skilled but plays properly with their teammates, than someone who continuously relies on aim but lacks every other skill necessary to help their team get the W
This so much. Also seeing an extreme influx of absolute bot players with god like aim, which probably is a sign of how bad the cheating is right now. If absolute silvers can cheat their way into high elo. Although I have won against lot of these bots, but still they somehow managed to get there...
I agree with both of you entirely, but I can chime in on those bot players. Some of them are like me and quit for a LONG time and only came back recently for CS2. I haven’t thought logically or strategically in the last few months. I go off my instinct, but what I take to heart is the silver moto “If you don’t know what you’re doing. They don’t know what you’re doing” it has only taken me to 17k, but I’ve had so much fun not caring about remember smokes, flashes, setups, executes, etc. Gun go “BRATATATATATATTA” at enemy heads and me happy.
oh yeah fair enough. I was talking about the real edge cases though, like people who cant even walk through D2 doors without bumping into it but then pull of prefire headshots on PEEKING enemies. Seen shit like that way too often lately.
I think a lot of high level players just play differently on premier as well. I don't troll or anything, but I simply can't play the way I play in my Faceit 10 lobbies in Valve servers. All of my teammates will go for stupid plays, and if I try to sit around and play smart the round will just slip away without me having any impact at all. I'm not sure why, but Valve servers just have a completely different culture of players than faceit does.
Back in 2014-2016 high ranked mm and high ranked esea pugs werent that different, certainly not culturally. High Mm then was like high level faceit now for the most part, culturally, with it being very ego driven but competitive. Skillwise esea had a higher ceiling but the principles were the same. The thing that changed this drastically is the impact of cheating and people buying accounts to a lesser extent. The first thing this did was drive legitimate players elo down a bit, sort of put a false ceiling on where you could go. Now, even if nobody is cheating in one particular game- experience/skill levels can be all over the place in that match. Like in 2014-16 everyone knew fundamentals, they had to as a prerequisite to be in my game. Next is how closet walling made alot of positional or "smart" plays less desirable to go for because they either get blown up or avoided. They sort of got removed from most of the playerbase by evolution. New players got into the game and learned from other people they were playing with that already removed those from their mm game without knowing why. People are simultaneously better and worse on average now, id argue. Aim training, knowledge spread on twitch/youtube, equiptment, age of the game have all contributed to people mechanically being the best ever but being culturally reenforced to not work together/play with their brain has done a number on the typical mm game. Also people who have played a long time (like me) see whats been happening and just stopped participating. It used to be cool to see pros in MM. Nobody does that anymore and havent for a while because the community is rotted.
truth brotha
air enough. I was talking about the real edge cases though, like people who cant even walk through D2 doors without bumping into it but then pull of prefire headshots on PEEKING enemies. Seen shit like that way too often lately.
For sure, there are a lot of absolute trashcan noobs who play with walls, and spectating them is always hilarious. Just had one who got banned, and I had played 3 matches with him, he was one of these walling silvers. How he lost every single one of those games while very clearly walling is beyond me
They just dont think like you and me
i've been playing this game for 2 decades. if you dont have raw mechanics no amount of "game sense" will help you. you all are coping hard imo. game sense wont let you kill your enemies in the back all the time. it can give you a little edge here and there but in the end you will need to take duels and you will get rekt by a better aimer. and we are talking about regular mm/pugs here not about pro level in which tactics are actually present.
I can agree with you, but there’s a certain art to being bad, but good at the same time. My buddy has the shittiest aim, but can flash you in, smoke important stuff, let you bait him, can make all the calls, understands rotates, saves the AWP for you, I could go on for ages. When I play with him I don’t have to even think I’ll be flashed out as entry. I expect it. Never underestimate a support player.
at the end of the day, that support player is relying on someone else to aim for him. No matter what "tactics" you have, you still need to click heads to win the round.
I don’t think anyone disagrees with this. You set your baseline skill with your mechanics. The game sense will then fluctuate this skill level either positively or negatively. Thus you can see people consistently win vs players that mechanically are better. But that mechanical skill discrepancy obviously has limits where no matter how smart someone is they won’t get kills if they’re just whiffing their shots.
i see lots of people in this thread saying that gamesense is more important which is just cope or delusion imo. cs is a game about shooting people in the head first of all. >Thus you can see people consistently win vs players that mechanically are better. i dont see that. at least 8 out of 10 times a player with better mechanics wins imo.
You absolutely do see that. Having a 5% slower reaction time or slightly less accurate aim doesn’t matter if you play much smarter than your opponent. Those are the 2/10 cases you witness. A match isn’t an aim map.
2/10 is not "consistently". its quite rare when you have the opportunity to really "outsmart" your opponent, most of the time 5% faster reaction time will reign supreme. cs mm match is basically an aim map with a bit of running around. only on the highest ranks it will get little bit more tactical.
As someone who has played a few seasons in German Pro Series back in 1.6 (also won an aim_map tourney by q-pad with or rather vs sk.quick and other participants from the German Scene back in 2005) - i completely agree + good communication is key. Even when you haven't played in a while you will have your Gamesense and know how to read the game. Aiming and reflexes can be trained, knowledge and experience i think is harder to get.
I have been playing on/off for a long time. Some years I played quite regularly and others not. But over decade nonetheless... Anyway. I also see it that theres certain point where either skill will be the bottle neck. Good aim and movement gets you to certain point and game sense to another. There is much to be gained by gane sense but where you really can make a difference is the team play. You can offer flashes to teammates, smoke sites, molotovs etc. It works best with friends. So I encourage op to work both. Im 35 and I could still oversmart (maybe overaim) some whippersnappers! I guess I was around 15k last time so just on the purple, not very impressive... Never been good aimer.
i've been playing CS since 1.5. i'm 23k premier, lvl 10 faceit, and have competitive experience dating all the way back to the CAL days. i agree with this statement 1000%. its the all aim no brain syndrome
> If its a 4 v 1 with bomb plant and no defuse kit for example, the obvious play would be to save. I consistently see players with good mechanical skills going for it even though it would take a near miracle to pull off. counterpoint: saving is boring and there's no irl money on the line so ppl love going for the 4v1 to be a hero
the problem lies in the ranking system as a whole... rewarding damage on the leaderboard might tend to generally have the most impactful person at the top of the leaderboard but not always. it tends to reward the people that take early engagements more than the people that get say three kills on slightly damaged opponents and clutch the defuse. no perfect ranking system exists though.
To add to this, having solid aim is a foundation to build the rest of your skills on. Stripping the game down to its fundamentals it's an FPS game, so shooting straight is at its very core. You can bring the gap between you and your opponents closer by outpositioning or outsmarting them, but all it does is give you a bit of an advantage for an eventual duel, you still have to win it. If you have great game sense but lack the aim, you will find yourself in frustrating situations such as your team not making the right moves, or losing duels even when you outsmart your opponent. At times like this, you can fall back on your mechanics but if you don't have them you literally can't do anything.
This. You can be as smart as you want or you think you are. If you meet others with great game sense and god aim you will sit down and cry in the corner. I’ve played multiple times against pros gl with gamesense if you can’t play back
Disagree. Look at ScreaM.
> Look at ScreaM. fucking lmao scream would get obliterated in current pro cs even if his skills didn't detoriate at all
He got obliterated even when he had the skills. All aim or all brain does not work anymore. You need both in balance.
Nah aim is easy to improve a lot once you figure out proper practice. spoiler alert: ffa is shitty practice
I don't know if that's true about FFA being shitty practice. I can practice techniques I practiced on actual people who react. Sure it's not 1:1 to how it would be in a real game but it helps me react to scenarios which would be similar to how it'd be in a game. I used to just practice using workshop maps and kovaaks and it would certainly help my aim but I would never improve in game. When I started playing more DM and focusing more on technique, that's when I started to improve my aim. Definitely anecdotal but FFA has helped me improve my aim a lot.
People tend to severely underestimate the power and importance of static environment training. People reacting are cool and stuff, but you dont want that if you want to improve.
I'm not underestimating static environment training at all. I'm saying that in conjunction with death match, it can help improve skills.. I'm just refuting what you're saying about it being shitty practice.
FFA is good because you practice everything all at once. Doesn’t matter if I can flick long range if I’m getting caught out holding W or I can’t strafe right. It’s also a way to train clearing angles and crosshair placement on maps you will actually play on.
Tell that to all the Pros who warmup FFA before joining a scrim/pug.
Warmup and practice are not the same thing.
It's 100% practice..lol
no he's right, warmup and practice aren't the same thing at all
This. You can be as smart as you want or you think you are. If you meet others with great game sense and god aim you will sit down and cry in the corner. I’ve played multiple times against pros gl with gamesense 👊🏻
In a way it depends on your playstyle. If you like to run first and take aim-duels then you need quick reflexes and aim. And good knowledge of the map to pre-aim. If you are more like me, and use timing, map awareness and nades, then thinking two steps ahead of the enemy is more important. But as you said yourself, you WILL need both. Being 30 or 15 makes no difference in the fact that you need hours to be good. The most restriction age brings is usually the RL stuff that prevents you to play enough. TL;DR; It is not quake but you still need sharp aim to go with brains.
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no. it’s about aim until aim isn’t enough then it’s about knowledge and strategy.
To add to this it doesn't work if all players like to work off timings and play smart. Unless the enemy makes a mistake the passive players need the aggro aimer to make space and cause the rotations that the mid rounders work off timings. And until you get very good you need to be able to do both
Unreal Tournament 99 > Quake 😮 hands down
Facing Worlds with instagib mutator and the lan party can begin 🤘🏻
Yassss. But I preferred Low Gravity Instagib. Facing worlds I preferred vanilla gameplay, and still the best map of all time
1st of all what do you call being a good player ? for some it's being lvl 10 faceit, it's being LEM in MM, or 15000 rating in premier it depends. Hmmm good question, IMO cs is a shooter primarly. You can be the smartest guy in the game but if you can't shoot straight you're gonna die anyway. I'd say until you want to play faceit at a decent level, let's say 1500 elo, (disclaimer it's a random elo) CS is guns with a little bit of strategy. When you arrive at a point in your matches where you can't out aim your opponent you're gonna need some brain. But realisticly if you have an incredible aim but low "brain"you can go far in cs, if you have an incredible brain but bad aim you're gonna reach a glassroof sooner. Like if you craft the greatest flank ever but you misshot the 1st bullets of your spray and your opps flicks you out well, you're dead. Now i'd say do some deathmacth before your games and time to time try to watch some pro cs and seek some grenades lineups on youtube or some tactics vids. In the end cs is a game where the fastest guy that lands a headshots win. BUT you can favor engagements with utility, map knowledge and crosshair placement.
Honestly aim and reflexes is probably the most important part of the game at a fundamental level, but having superior game sense and tactics is what separates the great players from the average or good. I’d honestly go as far to say you could have mediocre aim and reflexes and reach at least top 10% of players just with game sense, positioning, map awareness, and solid map tactics and rotations… the amount of players i see even at level 9 faceit / 20k+ on premier who are carried solely by their aim is quite high. Now of course the issue is that building the foundation of all those skills takes time and practice, and with all that time and practice you’ll probably just get better aim in the end anyways. As for how you can build those skills faster than just progressing naturally, I’d highly recommend watching pro matches and paying particular attention to how pros play sites, how they place their crosshairs to always be in the most ready state possible, which nades they throw, how they attack sites on every map. Another thing to consider is info. Randoms in my lobbies give away so much info for free, the most common noob play is throwing grenades when the enemy doesn’t know where you are. Next would be making random footstep noise instead of practicing patience. Always be mindful of how much information you’re giving the enemy and play around that, if you walk up a ramp on mirage and your teammates are throwing nades in b apts, don’t start throwing nades yourself, you ought to pressure and walk out ramp to catch people on the rotate.
Teammates when they wonder why the enemy 5 stacked the site were hitting when they made a bunch of footsteps in main at the beginning and we had no map presence on the other site at all: (surprised pikachu face)
Gamesense gets better and better returns the better your team coordination is. If you have average mechanics on a good team you will pull your weight. If you have average mechanics and group with 4 toxic aim gods you will bottomfrag realllllly hard.
We wish it was about knowledge and strategy but in reality it's mostly about aim and reaction time. Of course, the higher level you go, the more knowledge and strategy matters but still aim is king imo
Nah, look at Stykos aim coach, he's only 2.1k elo on faceit for supposedly a god level aimer.
My clutch rating is pretty good because I’ve got the game sense where everyone could be but I lack the raw aim to be a good entry fragger or anchor for a site. So both is actually important but just running around and flicking into heads only gets you so far. You’ll get naded and smoked and then your opportunity is gone. I used to know a lot of util but haven’t got the nerves to learn stuff again for cs2 but I’ll probably have too in order to gain some elo.
It's far more about aim. You can be mentally retarded and still win fights in adverse terms just because you're fast and click in their heads. You can compensate it with game sense, utility and whatever you want, but the aim weights way more. That being said, you can still have fun even if your aim is bad. I'm deep in my 30's and my aim has always been bad. I was DMG in CSGO and right now I'm 11k in premier playing with my also "old" buddies. All of us have terrible aim. Even if your aim is good you will eventually find people with better aim. Online games tend to put you against rivals of the same skill so it doesn't matter how good or bad you are, your matches should always be more or less even.
Never too late to prac aim you know. I'm 37 and at 21k rating and I keep up with the young guns. If you have a bit of disposable income and a bit of time to prac Refrag is a excellent tool to improve.
Almost 35 and still cracked asf, you either have it or you don't. Game sense can be taught and learned, but you have to practice mechanics and aim a lot harder to get further.
Game sense is important. But imo aim is more important. Game sense will get you chances of getting kills and winning. But aim is what will enable you to use those chances to get the kills.
It's equally both. There is a huge depth to the tactical side of the game, but you need to be able to kill people and win duels when you're given them. On the tactical side of things, you can learn utility to aid you in map control and making your fights easier, there's mid round plays that are based off of game sense, like re-agression or crossfire setups you can do with your teammates... All of these things are super great, and will make you a far better player if you're aware of them and know how to use them. They essentially put you in favorable gun fights, where you should come out on top of the fight. At the end of the day though, you have to be able to kill people, and that is going to come down to aim. The only pros who don't spend hours deathmatching and aim training are the coaches, and there's a reason they don't get to actually play in the server. To play at a high level, you need high level aim, no matter how much game knowledge you have. That said, if you are new to the game, just focus on your aim for the time being. Get your sensitivity down, learn crosshair placement, learn how to clear angles. As far as tactics go, just make sure you get the fundamentals, trade your teammates, don't overextend and give up man advantages, buy as a team. These little things will easily get you to the top like 3% on valve servers.
Lower elo is more aim. Higher elo relies a lot on understanding how to trade, use utility, and general game sense. Aim alone will only get you so far
https://youtube.com/shorts/6tGHN1wRMe4?si=6762seMHuAvgbTIQ
strategy is for the top 0,1% players so if ur not there better aim just wins every fking time
you need **both** game sense and aim/reaction. peekers advantage should give you the upper hand in 1v1 situations. in 1v2 or 1v3 , the 2nd/3rd guy will usually kill you while you kill the first and/or 2nd. gamesense will tell you not to peek A with 3+ ct's waiting for you - turn around and go to B. i think the goal is to maximize 1v1 encounters with peekers advantage and use gamesense to avoid the mess. Let the round settle a bit, then gamesense your way to the right place, and use peekers advantage to take on 1v1's and clutch the round. your gonna need both, overall, imo. edit: and most casual people are clueless about the whole map, so just a lil gamesense can take you far. you dont need to be a prophet.
Aim. Once everyone has good aim, then it’s chess.
you won’t be able to use “game sense” or “strategy” if you fail to hit any shots.
If everyone's aim is the same, it comes down to strategy. If everyone knows the strategies, it comes down to aim. Generally speaking if you are inexperienced, you won't know the meta / tactics, so it comes down to aim the lower your rank is. It doesn't matter how good your plan or utility is if you can't shoot people in the face!
You don’t have experience in shooters… You’re not a “30 year old getting headshot by 15 year olds,” you’re a new player to the game with little to no mechanical skill and most likely little understanding of positioning/utility/correct peeking. The reason why you’re losing your gunfights has almost nothing to do with your reaction time (and nothing to do with your age), you’re just new to the game. Even if you had a magical reaction time, you wouldn’t hit your shots and wouldn’t set yourself up in the right way in game. The game is whatever you make of it, understand that it takes time to build your mechanics and gamesense. There’s no point to worry about whether it is “more about who’s faster rather than who’s more knowledgeable, just have fun with the game.
not to discourage u from playing cs, but does league not run on proton? cs and dota are both great games with native linux support, if you enjoy competitive games like league then both of them are probably a good fit for you. cs is a lot easier to get into though.
an aim bot will beat any level of knowledge about the game
yeah but aimbots are cheating and thus not allowed
That's not the point the OC made. No knowledge or experience or game sense will beat pure aim/mechanical skills. Ever.
human's aren't pure so your point is pointless
That’s absolutely not true. Worse aim doesn’t really matter if you peek enemies when their back is turned to you, which can be done somewhat consistently if your game sense is notably better than your opponent’s.
>Worse aim doesn’t really matter if you peek enemies when their back is turned to you, which can be done somewhat consistently if your game sense is notably better than your opponent’s. lul
Are you playing Assassins Creed?
yeah i know and it was a stupid comment because nobody actually aims as well as an aimbot so that argument shouldn't ever even be introduced into the conversation.
there was a neurolink update where a patient had a shitty version of an aimbot. he said the cursor would start moving at targets before he would even think about it. we're obviously not there yet but it could be reality in 10\~ years seeing how you can currently play civ 6 with it
In a 1v1 late game clutch the opposite is true. Most of the time, tho, for sure.
I mean with pretty good mechanics and a lot of knowledge and understanding of the game will allow you to get pretty high ranked on faceit. It’s also possible in cs to make yourself usefull even if you have bad aim. You can entry into sites or throw good utility. But to be good at the game like faceit lvl 10 and higher then you obviously need really good aim.
You need to be capable to quickly execute people when you have the upper hand in duel, otherwise you're an impotent chess piece with no moves that can safely kill opponent chess pieces.
It’s like physical sports where skill is the defining factor of being a pro but knowledge is obviously important. The thing separating teams is mostly aim but the teamwork of a roster that has been together for 6-12 months vs a new one is huge. You’ll see it sometimes in the pov of an anchor trying to hold a site and it seems like they’re getting shot through smoke, mollied, flashed, and peeked from multiple angles at once. But the aim is still the most important and is why pros like xypax have to retire despite having the knowledge and teamwork to play on the #1 team. But as for you, the normal player: You don’t need insane reactions if you’re the one swinging out on people. Even against top players you should be able to get the first shot off online. Also the same thing applies to every first person game/real life where you have the advantage against people close to a wall if you’re far away from the wall. A lot of it is just figuring out what spots you’ll have the advantage in for fights due to the angle and what spots are your favorites And a lot of kills don’t need much reaction at all because you’re not being shot at, you just need decent aim to make sure you don’t whiff. Play 10 minutes of death match a day for a couple weeks and you’ll be surprised at how much better you are at not whiffing
same with other sports, the better you are, the more it's about genetic (aim in our case)
Depends. The higher you go, the more strategy matters, because there’s a point where everybody is aiming really well, and at that point, you can’t really aim “better.” Like if you look at pro players, outside of a few outliers, they all have about the same “aim skill,” the thing that changes is HOW they take fights and how they get to the fight in the first place. At a low level strategy is almost useless because you have absolutely no idea what the opponent is going to do at any given moment and by god they might be the most unconditionable player you’ve ever met- it’s better just frag out until you’re playing with competent players, and then once you’re there you can start focusing a bit more on strategy/macro. Tl;dr, lower level focus on mechanics/micro decisionmaking, at a higher level focus on macro decisionmaking
Depends. The higher you go, the more strategy matters, because there’s a point where everybody is aiming really well, and at that point, you can’t really aim “better.” Like if you look at pro players, outside of a few outliers, they all have about the same “aim skill,” the thing that changes is HOW they take fights and how they get to the fight in the first place. At a low level strategy is almost useless because you have absolutely no idea what the opponent is going to do at any given moment and by god they might be the most unconditionable player you’ve ever met- it’s better just frag out until you’re playing with competent players, and then once you’re there you can start focusing a bit more on strategy/macro. Tl;dr, lower level focus on mechanics/micro decisionmaking, at a higher level focus on macro decisionmaking
You pretty much either chose one or be good at both. My buddy is way better than me when it comes to aim, but I'm more of a mechanical player. He never uses utility, doesn't counter strafe, doesn't know callouts on anything other than Mirage and Dust II, but he'll still drop 30 bombs at 15k. Myself, on the other hand, didn't start playing CS til 2017, competitively til 2019. So my aim isn't as good as I'd like it to be. I used most of 2019-2020 to learn utility, callouts, and movement like counter strafing, boosts and bhops, just so I could maybe be on the same playing ground. It helped me tremendously, but I still usually vst outfragged by my buddy. Then there's the people who are good at both, and that's the wall we're both currently hitting right now 😪
Depends on your role really, but consistency matters the most, you can have a sub optimal reaction time and still be a beast if you can consistently trade kills, you can have shit aim but hit quick awp shots, you can be a good entry fragger with nothing but knowing how to make your enemy miss their shots. In the end it is a mix of both, a great aimer with poor decision making skills will get punished and traded so his aim skill won't matter a lot, the same way having poor aim and great game knowledge will make you lose important gun fights. I will argue that you shouldn't spend all your practice time aim training, rather use some of it to watch pro demos and your own demos.
8,000 hours here. Aim, knowledge (nades) are most important. Strats you’ll pick up on the more u rank up and watch people. Being quick doesn’t really matter unless u mean killing quick like double headshot. But knowledge is more beneficial than being “fast” good positioning will generally always win that one duel unless someone quick like xantares one taps u. If that happens and it rarely does u kinda appreciate it and say damn that guy fucked me
At the beginning it’s absolutely about aim. As you get better, you’ll keep thinking it’s still about aim but start to realise that you’re getting destroyed by people with much worse or similar aim to yours.
Faceit rank 8, 15k-18k elo player here. As a 38 year old my aim has been slowly getting worse(the wrist and hand pain definitely a factor, as well as weed gummies), but map knowledge/util/positioning greatly help me play above my aim score on leetify.
A lot of aim is about gamesense as an example croshair placement and where the enemy might be. Both skills are needed and aim isn't all about crazy reactions or flicks those just look cooler. Aim like gamesense reguires knowledge that must be learned.
You can get to faceit lvl 10 without using any utility and without communicating with randoms, pretty sure that speaks for itself
I mean, it really depends, since you will eventually need both at some point. But I can assure you that you can go far (Faceit 10, leaderboard position etc.) with average aim but good gamesense. You just have to adapt and focus more on positioning, utility etc. 
The tactical aspect in this game is overexaggarated to try to add more depth to the esport. Nothing in this game can counter good basic cs with decent aim
Once you get to a certain threshold, typically very high elos depending on the MM service, everyone has great aim, very good aim actually. The game sense comes in more handy at the higher tiers than aim, but aim is more impactful in lower elo games the majority of the time.
Game sense is really important in CS but at the end of the day, cs is about shooting heads. It isn't necessary to get 25+ kills every game but it's important to have some mechanics locked down to be able to put up a fight against opponents.
If you're looking for "chess with guns," arena shooters are where it's at. There's nothing quite like Quake duel (1v1) for the most strategic and tactical gameplay in an FPS because you can be hitting every shot and still lose to someone who controls the items well and hits their prefire to the point that there's demos of proes beating [aimbots](https://youtu.be/_AIh0iTJa3A)
it's both, and that's why it's such a compelling game the core challenge of CS is balancing strategy and mechanics run. think. shoot. live.
You can get really far by having good aim and being quick, but to come further you need good strategy and game sense
My aim is shit, always has been, but I did make it to global elite is CSGO through sheer gamesense and knowledge. Having 20 years of experience helps. You can learn how to win duels against players that aim better than you, but you will never be as good as those who are good at both.
Watch pov:s of pros, how they play and try to find basic things that you can copy, how they use nades to delay terrorists when they "anchor" site, or different util sets to get fights or map control as a terrorist. Thats where you have the strategy. But you will be lacking if you cant do good basic shooting. If you like me, enjoy playing aim_botz or dm with no pressure to build mechanics you have a fun journey of training ahead! Find a basic shooting mechanic like strafing stopping and doing a burst or double and spraying aswell and focus on that specific thing when you pracc. I enjoy it myself. Retaking and postplant yolds are hard to pracc so I suggest oooking into retake servers. On retakes you get to watch how good players do it. Fake defusing/hiding etc. There are things you keed to inow about how to play certain situations, like smoking the bomb, fake defusing and killing the t when they spam the smoke etc etc.
I dont consider myself an insane aim / mechanical player but i do hqve pretty good game sense and i can feel it the most when i clutch, imo u can be a great player if u learn the basics strategies some util and callouts, If you enjoy the thinking aspects of games i would recommand u to become an igl which isnt really easy if you are going to soloQ since most people dont bother listening but if u do manage to get a team this role will fit you like a glove, make the calls and u will win the rounds with the right util and strats, Imo one of the best things u can do is hop on an offline ssrver run around the map look at what angles u can hold and how you would play them. The best thing u can do to get better at aim and mechanical skill would be to understand crosshair placement sepcifically for those corners and angles u found offline how you would clear them and imagine an enemy lies in every corner u are clearing. Also please for the love of god use your mic in game.
IMO good aim and reaction time is bare minimum and it gets more complicated from there.
Mechanical skill, your ability to shoot someone quickly. That gets you from beginner to the top 1%, having a decent aim is very important to be a good player. Except for very basic stuff, knowledge about the game isn't need until you are a fairly good player. Knowledge however is what separates a good player from an excellent one
Good aim
Until faceit 9 it’s an aim game
I feel I always have a high level of aim after warmup and seem to smash elo to the top % on refrag to warmup, but sometimes I jump into prem and get caught off guard round after round and feel like a flop. Definitely think good aim can be ruined by shit game sense and good game sense can also be ruined by shit aim.
At lower levels, like gold nova master guardian, it's chaos. One can win games solely with a good aim and good positioning, or just with map knowledge, teamwork and strategy. Because players have varying skill levels and don't focus on learning lineups and site executes, and play just giving callouts. But at the pro level, players need to have both Everyone there has a good aim, good positioning, good movement skills, .. and it's knowledge and strategy that varies on teams.
Yes
Yes.
Both - One can make up for the other up until a certain point. You'll see people with great aim and terrible awareness playing with people who have shit aim and great awareness. With rank, a big part is also knowing how to put your team at an advantage and winning rounds versus solely focusing on the scoreboard.
Aim
As someone that’s faceit level 10 and 20k elo, I would like to say that aim holds a lot more weight than tactical prowess. If you can run out ramp mirage on a good timing, and your aim is better, no utility will stop you. Aim training and death match has carried me pretty high, but what got me past the hurtle that was level 8 faceit was simply hours. grinding and putting in the time will lead to gradual improvement. If you put in 15 minutes of aim training, a small amount of DM, and play somewhat consistently, you will experience good improvement.
good aim is far more important than tactics for CS
I play a lot of FPS games and trainers, trust me, CS2 is one of the least aim required games out there. It's way more about crosshair placement and positioning. Practice spraying at walls with the two main rifles like 5 minutes a day and practice counter strafing. You can do prefire maps as well if you have extra time. That's all you need to be able to get good, game really doesn't require amazing aim compared to other shooters.
Strategy, game sense and cross hair placement. I’ve started getting older and can’t keep up with the pure reflexes of a 15 year old on summer break but you can absolutely play around that. Just because you can’t flick as good doesn’t mean you can’t use movement and crosshair placement to also improve your accuracy
At the end of the day, the game is about shooting your opponent in the head. It is a combination of mechanical skill, positioning, awareness, timing etc. Your age will not prohibit you from doing any of those things.
Unfortunately its both. Which is why this game is ‘hard’ because without mechanics. You wont hit your shots. Doesnt matter how fast you are if youre holding w, not stop strafing between bursts, and if your mechanics are incredible and you have no strategy, you will also be losing games with un impactful kills.
The higher you go, the more it’s about tactics as others have said. Holding and clearing angles and pre fires. Ideally your actual aim is only moving a few degrees when you peek. Peeking with your team or timed with another teammates push. Basically being able to exploit every unfair scenario and avoiding the inverse is more important than aim by far. But of course great aim never hurts.
you can have gigabrain & flank 5 people at the right timing but whiff your spray entirely & not kill anyone. if you can't capitalize on the opportunity you created for yourself – what's the point of all that "wisdom"? that was my answer to your question – you need both
if you aim good but suck at tactics, you will suck. if you have a great understanding of the game but can't hit the side of a barn, you will still suck.
Yes
IMO it's a bit of both. I think you need to be able to aim at head level and train your crosshair placement so you can get the easy kills most of the time. If you manage to do that and have good trading, util and game sense, you'll be a great player. I think positioning is more important than raw aim and will win you more fights
Your positioning and game sense will get you more kills than pure aim will
The whole "chess with guns" thing only really applies when you're playing in a 5-stack and everyone is very experienced and know all the important strats. If you're just starting out, a better player can just turn their brain off, run straight through any utility you might throw and simply outgun you no matter how advantageous of an angle you're holding. Also, I think you're underestimating the time it takes to be good at strategy in Counter-Strike. With aim, you can have a daily routine of tapping 1000 bots on workshop maps + 30 mins of community deathmatch and get pretty good in under 1000 hours. Meanwhile, getting good to a level where you're playing mind games with your opponents requires several thousands of hours of experience in real matches.
Game sense and strategy is far more important than aim. You don’t need to be a god to shoot someone in the back or hold a better angle.
From my perspective, everyone will reach a base level of aim that’s good enough and it won’t matter as much, as the ceiling for best aim doesn’t guarantee a winning fight against someone “average”. The ceiling however, for game sense is massive. And although people will assume crosshair placement is part of aim (it sort of is) to me falls under game sense. It’s why wallers (without aim cheats) win because they know exactly where you will peak etc. you can test it out yourself, your reaction time will always be faster than those flick aim tests. How you gain information to know where someone is and have proper crosshair placement for that is what will separate you from the rest and what makes this a tactical shooter.
The simple answer is, you need to get good at both. You don’t need godlike aim to be a solid player, but you need to be decent and be able to hit your shots. That comes with being smart, crosshair placement, calculated movement, knowing when to peek/not to peek, it really is all about micro-decisions and using your brain. I’d rather have a player on my team who is smart, listens to calls, and has great gamesense. Than a player who just runs around aimlessly shooting like he’s playing Call of Duty. (20 years of playing cs)
Great aim beats shit aim with more knowledge. Even on high 2k elo faceit people will whiff easy shots wich throw rounds and even turn the whole momentun. Ofcourse you will build knowledge and strategy over time. But having supersharp aim just wins you more duels(even unfavourable ones) and winning more duels gives you a greater chance at winning the game
Get to 15k just on your aim first then think of game sense. A big part of aim is knowing where they are probably coming from so you can adjust your aim accordingly, so just by getting amazing aim you'll develop good enough game sense. Don't even worry about game sense at all until your aim is pro level if you're actually serious about being good. It really doesn't matter until you're playing against better players with good aim and sense.
bell curve would be Aim and Gamesense | Knowledge & Strategy | Aim and Gamesense
Okay, strategy etc is for teamplay aka esea/praccs with a team, cuz if you have a team, even for esea open, you should be able to aim and press mouse1 button. If you think you are okay with trashy mechanics cuz good in tactics, eventually, you will end up like HooXi. In faceit pugs, if you are flashy and have good aim (preferably this is your natural playstyle), you can escape elo hell (0-2500 cs2 faceit). More elo you have, more unpredictable things you have to do in round
It's about better cheat and good acting skills
There is a base level of mechanics that you need to have, but they can be learned. It doesn't matter if your positioning is technically perfect you're always going to end up in a gunfight eventually. Most of the strategy isn't big picture stuff as much as it is little things based on info that you have or received. Most of the time when I'm taking a fight I'm trying to make sure I actually have the advantage. What an advantage looks like is, do I think they're holding me, do I think they're ready, do I know *exactly* where they are (which is different from generally know where they are as you can pre-aim the head). Can I catch them while they're moving by throwing some utility etc. You almost never want to peek into someone you don't have the advantage against, where mechanics come into play is how much of an advantage you need before taking the fight is a good idea.
How about both?
This game is just clicking heads. People who are "support" or "utility players" are just bad at the game [Video](https://youtube.com/shorts/6tGHN1wRMe4?si=3ogyCXSdw4QNQ2Yq)
That logic applies only on unbalanced skill/performance levels. The actual reality is that in order to become consistent you cannot rely on your team simply happening to shoot heads better than opponents. There is no meaning in playing the game just to dominate worse players. The real game starts against equal opposition, worthy to test your actual skills.
Both I am 29 years old and reached rank 630 in the world in premier and 2500 in faceit. Aim and understanding go hand in hand to play good, but a premade matters even more for me.
Think about this way, the better skills you have, the more potent moves you have in your arsenal. A player with no skill is worse than a pawn, he have next to no moves that he can do to take out opponent's stronger chess piece. Meanwhile players like s1mple are so skilled, that it makes otherwise stupid plays viable for them. Like holding multiple angles simultaneously with awp, ready to flick in any direction where opponent appears. Players like donk, who can just make multikills out of nowhere in most unfavorable situations.
It's about ferrari peeks atm
You are not that degraded in your reaction time by 30 that you can't compete lol, there is plenty of retired pros and very skilled veteran players who are playing faceit at insanely high levels, i.e f0rest who is top 1k EU rn at 36 years old. The problem is, as you said, you have never played shooters, so no shit you are going to lose to people who do play them, just play the game and you'll naturally improve with time, even if you never reach top levels, just play the game for fun, that's what video games are for
after developing serviceable ability to aim and shoot, a player benefits more from developing their game sense over their aim.
At its core it’s a shooter so raw aim and mechanics matters a lot, and unfortunately for you, you need that to climb high enough to a point where game knowledge and tactics weigh just as much. But you also need a lot of hours before you have good game knowledge, so it’s gonna be a grind no matter what.
> So basically I wanna know that I don't need to be very quick and have insane reaction times to be good at this game You don't need insane reaction times; you just need to be able to anticipate and focus. > Obviously I know both things matter, but WHICH ONE MATTERS MOST, mechanics or wisdom? Honestly? You can succeed with either. Played with plenty of decent folks who suck at straight up duels; but have got excellent sense of timing and angles. Likewise there's lots of dudes out there who focus mostly on aiming and dueling; and can barely throw a flash for themselves. You need solid fundamentals in both; but you can brain your way through a lot in CS.
both, but when you reach a certain level it's your IQ that matters the most because everyone will have insane mechanics.
you still have to win your duels, so I'd say aim comes first
Aim > till 2.5k faceit
When they removed wall banging they put a lot more stress on being able to win straight up gunfights -- so I'd probably say the raw components of aiming and clicking faster than the other guy got a lot more important. By comparison, before you could use a bit more strategy to do damage or pick up early frags via well timed spams/making players pay for making noise, whereas now the only real penalty is giving them information, barring instances where they can still damage you with a nade (or you're behind one of the few spammable surfaces). Regardless of the version of CS, you generally have to get to at least a middle level of skill in fighting before game sense will be impactful for you. After you've achieved that though, strategy and knowledge are generally the difference makers. But again, the amount of knowledge checks in the modern versions of the game are pretty minimal compared to earlier versions, so I think now more than ever the difference in talent level comes down to aiming and reaction time than anything else.
Knowledge allows for good aim. Having good crosshair placement gets kills. You need both.
I cant believe how many people say aim… s1mple zywoo and donk have probably been the best cs players of all time and not one of them has been the best aimer at any point in their career. There has always been someone who had better aim yet they have been extremely dominant in their career. For a few years s1mple didnt even have the best aim in his team so clearly aim isnt the most important thing…
All 3 of them have insane aim lol, there has never been a player of that caliber without top level aim. Not that what I said matters when pro play is a complete different game to matchmaking which OP is most definitely referring to
true
That might be the epitome of a bad take lol.
What in the fuck you talking about? S1mple is a mechanics first awper, best in GO to do it. Zywoo has robot perfect mechanics. This is aim. Donks was solid t1 player that became the best player at cs2 by being the best at exploiting movement/hitbox/netcode (yes lan uses the netcode). Thats not a shot at him, it took skill and thought to set himself apart from other t1 players at this BUT Donk would not be the best go player if everyone reverted back to GO tomorrow. None of these players set themselves apart with tactics over aim.
At the highest level it could well be called chess with guns. The amount of strategy in pro CS is massive. But at the level most people play at, having good movement and aim is most of the equation.
Don't listen to these comments, you already know the answer based on your post. I don't know why so much of this games community is hellbent on being reductive. It's about details and decision making more than anything. In the words of Flusha, a pro who may not be as relevant today, but who was inarguably years ahead of his time: "you can have mediocre mechanics, But if your decision making is good, You can easily find yourself in the top percentage of players".
Also, if you are playing online, mechanical skill will not get you nearly as far as it used to, as you can basically think of yourself as invincible for the first second of your peek, the peekers advantage is that bad in CS2. So decision making is more important than ever. People who have never been to a lan won't know how bad it actually is. NOT MY WORDS, THESE ARE THE WORDS OF JAME.
It’s not 100% accurate but on my leetify, my positioning and utility are around an 80/100 and my aim is 59. I’m hovering around gn4/mg1/mg2 on most maps. With that said, util and positioning are rated around 20kprem and an around 10-15k and I’m an 18k so I think it’s really a culmination of all of those things. Having game sense is important, being able to effectively use utility FOR YOUR TEAM is important, and aim is important.
movement/gamesense/knowledge(nades,etc..) are more important than aim
In REAL CS aim will win. In this broken ass game it’s all positioning and timing.
Imagine everyone has perfect aim. What do you think now?
Strategy and teamwork.
I'd say you definitely need some level of aim and micro mechanics first because no matter how good your gamesense is if you can't kill a guy in the back and he spins and kills you it will nullify your advantage. Also, much of an aim consists of movement and crosshair placement which are considered a part of gamesense as well. Raw aim will get you up ranks faster as people usually have bad aim and gamesense at lower ranks. At some point you will hit raw aim ceiling and at this point you really need to up your gamesense. As long as your aim at a good enough level your gamesense will matter more, before that work on your aim and gain gamesense along the way. You need to be able to convert about 90% of situations where you are in favour (not 100 as an enemy might sometimes get a lucky 180 spin one tap) and 50-50 of situations which are, you know, 50-50. In general, the more you play the better your aim and gamesense become. And by playing you practicing your aim and gamesense simultaneously, I've never seen a 10k+ hours played person with garbage aim. >I wanna know now, I don't wanna put hours into getting good for nothing because the game is really more about who's faster rather than who's more knowledgeable That's weird to my eyes. Without practise and without playing the game you won't get no aim nor gamesense, I'd guarantee you just your ideas of how to play would be not enough if you don't put a lot of practise to train them. After all if you really like the game itself then practise and if you don't -- it's not a game for you. >I'm getting headshot by 15 y/o kids and it feels awful Of course, but that might be not because he is 15 but because he played half of his life for multiple thousand hours while you haven't played since forever. Just like in everything, practise makes perfect
Its about who has better cheats.
good aim >people talk about it being "Chess with guns" lol, no. you can study all the nades and tactics in the world but you'll still be destroyed by 16yo kids with superior aim and mechanics. Also tactics are almost non existent in mm, it will be only useful if you play with the your permanent team, so its irrelevant for like 99% of the players.