Reachings excellence can be hard. Only when you try to minimise every single and ever so small mistake from you and your team's play are you are on the way to becoming truly excellent at what you do. To help you on your quest of reaching said excellence, we will today look at the advanced advice cromen can give you about your, or your team's, entryfragging.

Mechanics

The in-game mechanics of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are the bread and butter of every single player. So, before we jump into the theoretical part of good entryfragging, we first need to look at what mechanics are crucial to becoming a good entryfragger.

In this video, cromen talks about how you can improve your aim in general, but from 4:50 onwards he references entryfragging specifically. He mentions a few things that I will list below:

Two-Tap Bursts: Because entryfraggers shouldn't spray a lot, mainly because they would block the team as they would have to stand still, they should master to learn the short and controllable Two-Tap Burst in order to maximise the probability of hitting the crucial headshot with their AK. Two-Tap Bursts reduce the chances of the natural inaccuracy of the AK to screw you out of your kill.

Crouch only if necessary: Crouching will handicap your teammates who are trying to help or trade for you. Unless necessary, ignoring the urge to crouch when you engage an enemy while entrying will significantly help your team support you the right way, as you won't be blocking them.

cromen about entryfragging

First of all, I would like to thank cromen for taking his time and answering my questions about entryfragging. This allowed us to take a look at the inner thought processes of a top tier entryfragger.

Mentality/Mindset

One of the most underrated skills for any Counter-Strike player may be the mentality and mindset he puts forth.

"[Be] a guy that doesn't tilt even though he feels baited by his team (not getting refragged) [- someone not blaming his team]. [Be] a guy that
is willing to "sacrifice" for the greater good basically. You just have to be cool and don’t think about it too much. Sometimes you can
have a bad match, but you should think about what you’re doing wrong and try to correct/come up with new stuff for the next round."
-cromen

Even though it sounds cliché, it is important to stay in the right mindset at all times. It is important to not to dwell on bad thoughts, to not to let toxic thoughts determine your actions. It is important to restart. After all, dying is part of the job of an entryfragger as long as the team capitalises on your death. If you do not restart and start doing things the same way every time you will become more and more predictable, and won't find any light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon.

Non-Aim Skills

Movement, timing and other things are just as important as aim to become a truly successful entryfragger.

"Good reaction time, both aim wise and callouts. Understanding the point of being an entryfragger, creating space
for your other teammates so the (CT/defence guy) can’t just spray down and get an easy 3k - [being] able to jump in/run
in and create space [or create a different angle]."
-cromen

Obviously, being the first guy in, the entryfragger needs to be sure to be able to react fast to whatever he may encounter: He needs to instantly decide when and who to shoot if he sees enemies, maybe chasing a CT if necessary. Furthermore, similar to your mindset, you need to be able to understand what your team needs from you. Instead of just running in and blocking your team, you should widepeek so the CT has to adjust his aim - adjust it away from your incoming support who will kill him whether you die or not. If you do not create space between you and your teammates quickly, you run the risk of being sprayed down.

Guns and Utility

Guns and utility and their usage is important to any player, but especially for the entryfragger.

"If it’s a strat being called in the freezetime you got to sacrifice the AK for smoke grenades and if you can't
afford both, UMP/kevlar/nades is pretty common even though you could afford the AK. The UMP
can be good if you know you are rushing close corners as the entryfragger, or just to be more mobile."
-cromen

Depending on the situation, removing yourself from your comfort zone in order to use a more mobile weapon or to get more utility for your team can be crucial to your team's success. If you know that you have to run through multiple choke points, no one will look funny at you for prioritising a cheap weapon over the AK to be easy on your economy, to farm money against ecos, or to create more space for your teammates.

Switching It Up

Switching your roles for your team is feasible, if necessary or favourable.

"You really shouldn't mix it up too much, but it can work: normally the entryfragger has good aim, so on
aim heavy maps like Cache, it could be useful to have the entry as a lurker (aggressive lurking) where you
try to find kills when the other guys are pressuring somewhere else."
-cromen

Especially since lurkers are often predicted, as well as the name of the dedicated entryfragger shining through in the killfeed giving away your plan, switching it up from time to time can depend on what kind of team you're playing against. If they rotate instantly as soon as they see the name of the entryfragger, it can be helpful to switch the roles with the lurker so you can throw easy and rather cheap fakes. Also, if you actually do rely on aim and you are playing an aim heavy map, using the entries good aim to aggressively lurk and dismantle the CT defence on his own can also be an option.

Do Not Give Up

Giving up sometimes seems like the only option left if you failed again and again.

"Kind of a hard topic to talk about, sure you could say it’s better if someone's just killing everyone and no one can
stop him. But at the same time [someone hitting his shots] could go in first and die every round
after that and lose the "roll" he is on. I would say it’s best to have the guy hitting every shot as the
second/third guy so he can revenge everyone and doesn't have to worry too much about all the angles."
-cromen

If you are not feeling it or someones just does hit every shot, the idea of switching roles right now from support to entry and vice versa seems like the only solution. After all, the support is just feeling it right now, doesn't he? Even though this surely depends on the team and the players, generally dying is not a problem as an entryfragger. If your support hits every shot then there is no need to switch it up, as you would just expose him to unnecessary risks for tilting or simply losing the streak he was on, even if you are not getting entrykills.

Entrying is a Team Effort

Even though only one man entries, the team is trying their best to maximise the chances of success.

"We play out of our default setups and try to get the entryfrag where we see an opportunity to get easy kills/
try to block off angles with smokes so it’s only one place to worry about. We usually agree on where to seek for kills
before we go (get flashes from teammates etc.) or we have set-tactics where everyone knows what to do.
Sometimes it can be good to throw a right-click behind you while you run for contact, but 95% of the time it’s better
with a popflash from team mates."
-cromen

The teammates have a responsibility towards the entryfragger. They should do many things right. One of those things is the usage of the team's utility to blind the enemy, block his view, or force him out. All of this can make the first man's job a lot easier, which may allow you to enter any bombsite with a 5v4 advantage instead of 4v4. One of the other responsibilities is to tradefrag the death of their entry. Not every entryfrag attempt is successful, and this is the reason why a team should try to always tradefrag him in order to not to lose their advantage after just gaining ground.

I hope that cromen could help you on your journey to becoming one of the best. I am aware that a lot of people do not play on a team, and if they do, it may not be at a high level where all of this would be applicable, but they can still use many pieces of advice from this article. For example, if you know that the teammates should flash their entry out and you are playing MM, you can either ask for a flash or ask if you should flash. This reverse engineering is applicable to most of this article.

Check out this highlight video from our very own entryfragger, cromen!