This guide is made solely for people who have recently started playing CS:GO, or would like to know about the AWP a bit more before starting to play with it.

Expensive, Powerful, Accurate. Priced at a solid $4750, making it one of the most expensive weapons in the game. Two of the most crucial mistakes made when considering to buy this weapon are the fact that players usually do not check the team economy and don't know how to use it.

AWP is a weapon that requires a lot of skill and practice to get good at, and is a weapon that can make a team win, while breaking the other.

This guide includes:

The AWPer Role
The Pros and Cons
Finding your Zoom Sensitivity
Team Economy and When to Buy
Positioning
Training

The AWPer

Being an AWPer isn't an easy task. You will need to be agile, accurate and need to have fast reaction times. You need to be able to play both passive and heavily aggressive in situations that require you to. AWP requires you to constantly keep yourself at a very high level of focus. As an AWPer, missing is a big deal, but knowing how to deal with a miss is very important. This is why you need to be agile and have great map knowledge to know where to fall back to.

You have responsibilities as an AWPer, and one of them being is to always get the first pick to provide the team with control over a certain part of the map, or to open up a bombsite, like an entry fragger. Entry fraggers and AWPers are seen as two different roles, but you can be both an entry fragger and an AWPer. Though, your primary focus is to be smart about your economy, protecting the bomb from far away, and using your current location, or spawn point to have an advantage over the enemy, providing your teammate with a massive tactical boost early round. AWPers do not go for headshots but bodyshots, as risking a headshot with the AWP is unnecessary as it one hit kills on a bodyshot.

The Pros and Cons

As a starting point, the AWP is a weapon that is easy to learn, but very hard to master.

Pros:

One shot one kill against armored opponents on a body shot and a headshot, and very high damage output on legs, mostly 80-90 damage on a single shot
Most effectively used long range, giving you a massive range advantage against basic rifles such as the M4's and the AK
Good wall and armor penetration for wallbangs and collaterals

Cons:

Very slow, bolt action rifle, very hard to hold a push after your first shot
Not good at close range
$4750, making it one of the most expensive weapons in-game
Lack of vision while scoped in
$100 kill reward

Finding your Zoom Sensitivity

This is a question I've gotten a lot, and mostly it is about feeling. For the best explanation, however, I would recommend watching this video if you have not already. This short guide explains it the best, and gives the ranges for zoom sensitivities used by newer players, or players that are even advanced.

Some reddit users have come to find the best zoom sensitivity, being at a "0.818933027098955175" allowing for flicks both small and big. So you can try this out and see whether it is actually the best zoom sensitivity.

Economy and When to Buy

Buying an AWP should always be dependent upon your team's economy and callouts. You should firstly inform your team of your role as an AWPer, and they will be less reluctant to let you play an AWP. If there already is an AWP in the team, you should either ask for them to drop you the AWP, or ask whether you can play double AWP, and buy a second one.

The AWP is a $4750 weapon and requires 47 kills to make the money back from rewards, so it is a very high risk weapon in terms of money spent. Against terrorists, you can use a strategy called "Glass Cannon" meaning you will not be buying any armor against AK47s. This does mean you will get some aim punch if you aren't able to hit your shot and potentially dying in a couple of shots from any weapon, making you vulnerable even against glocks. Using a Glass Cannon strategy as a Terrorist is not recommended as most CT weapons do not one shot one kill on a headshot with full armor.

You should always focus on saving the AWP if it's a situation that you and your team believe it is hard to clutch, let it be your AWP or your teammates. Under no circumstances should you buy the AWP when your team has no money unless you are told by your IGL to do so, even then it might not be a good idea as it has more disadvantages than advantages. Losing this weapon to the enemy team will heavily boost their economy and their overall advantage.

Positioning

Positioning with the AWP is very important against any sort of danger you might face during a game. If you can't get your positioning right, then you are going to have a hard time trading kills, getting kills and even running away in the case of a missed shot. Positioning can be combined with utility as they can be used to get you out of positions or to get you in new ones, where you might be able to get new picks or just a safer spot to hold and position yourself in general.

As an AWPer, you will want to make sure that you isolate one player from a spot you are holding, and this is done best by positioning. If you can position yourself in a place where you will have enough time to pick off the first guy and decide what to do after that, either peek or fall back. However, bear in mind that peeking more than one player reduces your chances of survival.

Training

There are numerous ways to train your AWP skills including flicks. Steam workshop provides you with maps to improve your skills with AWPing. One such map is training_aim_csgo.

Moving your crosshair one dot to another can improve your muscle memory for future flicks so your brain knows how far to flick depending on how far or close the target is. Another map for such scenario is the classic Aim Botz, you can move from bot to bot just as you would do on the first linked map, however Aim Botz has more potential as you can set the bots to move.

The biggest training in terms of your AWP holds and flicks will be on this website called Playmaster. It is fairly new and still is in beta. It gives challenges depending upon your skill level in which the website will test. This map is an all rounder map, so you can train every skill but you should mostly focus on the flicks, holds and movement if you want to train your AWP skills. Once you have done your flick and hold training, you can hop into the warmup section on Playmaster as it has a very nice and clean warmup area for you to try your skills.

However, one of the most important things that did not have its own section in this guide is trusting your gut. There will be situations in which no training will be solely enough to help you. You need to combine them with your own decisions and that's where your map knowledge and your gut comes into play.

Do not forget to take breaks between your sessions and stay hydrated as this will allow you to keep your concentration high. Thank you for reading this article. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to reach out to me via my Twitter.

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