Intro

Today, I’m going to talk about the mindset of an entry fragger. Entry Fragging is probably one of the toughest and least satisfying roles in a team. If you don’t entry properly, people will yell at you for being a bad entry fragger and not properly opening up the site and if you do your job, you will probably end up dying early on in the round, leading you to feel like one of the lures that people use for fishing. Sometimes, you’ll do your job perfectly, but you will die due to a lack of utility/support and you’ll watch as the opponent gets away scot free while your teammates yell at you again for not being able to open up the site.

Compounding that is the fact that even if you do your job; say, get a one for one trade or a two for one trade while providing the necessary info for your team, your team will sometimes STILL lose the round completely independent of your actions. Given all this, it is ridiculously easy to tilt and get angry at CS:GO. However, as everyone knows, tilting is not exactly conducive to playing the game well or getting along with your teammates. Thus, this article will cover the proper mindset of an entry fragger and how to potentially minimize tilting off the planet.

Trading/Relaying Info

As an entry fragger, your mindset should be to at least trade one for one or have your teammate trade your death. In addition to that, you have to relay info to your teammates so that they can follow you into a bombsite and be comfortable with committing. If you don’t clear an angle, tell them to watch it. It is not your job to clear all the angles and meticulously check the site. You are just the person who will be first in, trying to get valuable knowledge and possibly kills. The job of an entry fragger is better explained here, in an article by fellow Team Dignitas writer gMp. In general, your mindset should be to enable your team to clear the site as quickly as possible to get the bomb plant, while providing the relevant info and kills needed to do so.

Be/Stay Positive

This is crucial as an entry fragger. The ability and mindset to stay positive is almost a must for the person who has to be first point of contact. If you don’t stay positive as an entry fragger, you tend to become more and more reluctant to actually entry, throwing off the timing of your team’s pushes, potentially leading to lost rounds and matches. In addition to your mental state as a whole, your projection of your mental state as a whole can be reflected in your communication with the team. If you don’t communicate where you died from/where the enemy team is and instead spend precious seconds yelling at your teammates for not following you into a bombsite and trading your kill, you are hindering your team. Thus, you must be able to stay focused yet relaxed throughout the whole game even if the score line is extremely lopsided.

In addition to this, you are the person who is going to be watching your teammates the most due to probably dying the first. Encourage your teammates; make sure to note their good plays and motivate them. Note the positives in any situation; if you get a 1 for 1 trade, tell your teammate “Good kill man, way to open up the round!”. Any words of positivity will make your teammates feel appreciated and play better. Use your voice and don’t ever ever ever be passive aggressive in chat. If you have frustrations, voice them in a non-tilting fashion and reserve the typing for compliments and observations.

Be Able to Take Constructive Criticism

In general, this is probably one of the most important things that are good to learn as a person. In CS"GO, this is also highly relevant. Presently, I’m playing on a team with a very good friend of mine, who we clarified at the very beginning, was going to be our entry fragger. Three weeks in, we learned that he was a mediocre entry fragger, consistently bottom fragging while not communicating the info we needed, such as where the enemies were located, when he was throwing utility, and which angles he had checked. Worst of all, he would walk sideways into a site and not forward, often delaying our push or outright stopping it, forcing other people to entry and die. To our confusion, he would always manage to be the last alive in a round and we would consequently yell at him.

Now, everybody understands nobody likes being yelled at. However, when we sat down and talked with him, he distinctly refused to take our criticism, instead spending a majority of our meetings arguing with the observations that multiple of us were making. This forced us to consider cutting him off the team, finally settling for shifting him to a support role. You see, being bad at a role is completely fine. Given that this is maybe something that you haven’t done before, your team will understand if you communicate your desire to improve and your ability to listen to what they have to say; they will cut you some slack. What a team won’t understand is if you constantly butt heads with them, refusing to acknowledge that you might be doing something wrong.

Therefore, as an entry fragger, you must be able to take constructive criticism and reason with your teammates. If you feel like something is off or what they’re saying is wrong, try to talk through it with them but also understand that you have to listen to them too.

Request Support/Clarify Issues with Your Team

The above point naturally leads to this point. If you are taking constructive criticism, you can also talk to your team about what they’re doing wrong. Talk to your IGL about the executes and what utility they can use to help you get on site. Talk to your team about improving the timings on which you come out of certain positions. If you feel like you’re dying with no purpose and that your teammates are late to the party, bring it up after round or during a timeout. Don’t ever clam up and refuse to talk to your teammates while you rush into sites all willy nilly. Your teammates will take this the absolute worst kind of way. Instead, communicate about what you need from your team. Don’t be afraid to confront the issues that you are facing with your team; remember, you’re in this game together win or lose and you’re probably going to be in the team together for the whole season.

"Ideally, my fellow teammates, I'd like them to be like the above picture." - You

Ask for a Role Change

If you feel like your mindset or the way you play is not suitable for an entry fragger, ask for a role change. It is completely acceptable and understandable to ask for a role in which you feel more comfortable. Worst comes to worst, your team will say no. In that case, you’ll have to adapt your game and try to change. Take this as a learning experience and slowly grow as a player, knowing that in your future experience, you will be able to say that you can entry frag. If he says yes, then you can promptly settle into a role you are more comfortable with. Take note that this is a last option scenario; only ask for a role change if you feel like there is no other way for you to be in this team if you continue to entry frag.

Conclusion

Entry Fragging is a dirty and underappreciated job. Your stats will sometimes not always reflect the amount of impact that you have on the game. Think TACO from SK, Apex from G2, or Rush from C9. They don’t have the HLTV rating of their superstar teammates, but they are just as important. Just remember to stay in the right mindset!

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