How to Practice Recoil Control with DignitasVIE player, f0rest
f0rest has a few tips to help you improve your recoil control on CS:GO.
Recoil - one of the hardest aspects of a CS:GO beginner to master and even something that very good players don’t know how to properly control or practice. Counter-Strike, ever since its first iterations, has had the particularity of having a recoil system on its weapons that create a very high skill ceiling for the players. By making it harder to master (and even understand at first), the game has distanced itself from other First-Person Shooters. In fact, it even sparked some memes! Who has never heard of the classic “just shoot at the feet and you’ll get a headshot!”. It’s not that simple…
To give you even better tips on how to improve your spray training regime, and consequently improve your spraying skill, I’ve teamed up with the legendary Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg, considered by many one of the best players of all time, now residing on the DignitasVIE CS:GO team.
So, First Things First - How Do You Practice Recoil Control?
Most veterans of the game that nowadays are known for having some of the best spray control in the game didn’t have the tools that exist today. With the ease of access to Valve mod tools that allow for virtually anyone to create new maps, there are countless entries on the Steam Workshop that will help you practice your aim. But, sometimes, nothing is better than just making it as simple as possible.
That would definitely be to either go into your own server, join dust_2 for example, or aim_botz, or any map honestly, and try to spray on the wall without trying to control the recoil, so you can see where the bullets are going through the bullet's holes, without even doing anything, just so you can see the pattern of the recoil. After that, you can just keep on practicing and try to control that recoil - you know the pattern now, so it's just trying to counter it and practice, practice, practice. That's all it comes down to, just knowing where the recoil is going to go and understand how to adjust so you can make it more centered.
When asked for general tips about improving your spray control, f0rest keeps it really simple. Just get into a server and spray at a wall from different distances. That way, you’ll see how the recoil of each weapon behaves and then you can start trying to replicate it to make the bullets go to the center as much as possible. But remember that you need to counter the recoil in exactly the opposite direction the bullets go - only that way will they be centered. Let’s say the bullets start by going up and then a bit to the left. The way you counter that is by shooting while dragging the mouse down and then a bit to the left - the exact opposite. Although it might look difficult, it’s something that will eventually become muscle memory and you won’t even think about it when doing so.
Practice, practice, and practice - that’s all there is to it!
f0rest also talked about aim_botz, easily one of the most popular Steam Workshop submissions ever. If you never heard about it, you can download it here. It’s essentially a small map that has several different tools aimed at improving your aim or even warm-up - an amazing map that is widely used by the majority of professional and amateur players.
aim_botz is undoubtedly one of the most well-known community made maps
In fact, I’ve asked f0rest right after the first question if he knew any other good maps good for recoil practice and he once again referred aim_botz:
Not that I know of, but I do know that aim_botz is a really good map for practicing! You can practice spraying from afar or close-distance, there's a lot of customization options on that map and it's one of the widely known practice tools for a lot of professional players as well.
Like I said at the beginning of the article, it’s rather common for the more veteran players to not have the knowledge of these maps, since when they didn’t exist when they were still new players to the game. They’re not needed, f0rest being a perfect example of that, but since there are better tools nowadays, why not use them, right?
One of those tools, and pretty much the only one you’ll need, is a map called Recoil Master, from the same creator of aim_botz. Recoil Master is, as the name implies, a map fully focused on recoil training. With every weapon available for you to choose, it shows exactly where you should move your mouse while spraying, from different distances. Instead of just practicing against a wall, you get visual information on how you should move your mouse to compensate for the recoil.
You can download the map from the Steam Workshop.
One crucial tip: Even after having learned the recoil of a gun on Recoil Master, get on an empty server and do it against a wall without the visual assist. It’s a totally different story, and you want to practice on conditions as close as possible to the ones you have during matches.
Ok, You Now Have an Amazing Spray. But Should You Use It in Every Single Situation?
That’s actually a question that f0rest was kind enough to answer as well:
It's not a golden rule, but it's something that newer players can try to stick with. When in medium to close range, always try to burst or spray, that will be your best chance to kill him. And then at long range, that's when you start to tap. Tapping is a lot easier to control the recoil on long distances, it's all about aim there, spraying will not help you there. A well-positioned crosshair will grant you the kill by tapping compared to spraying on a far distance.
This should be obvious, but I feel it’s always important to refer. When fighting on far distances (like Long on Dust2, for example), you should prioritize tapping over spraying, because controlling the spray to make it centered enough to hit small targets can be really hard, and on a game where every enemy player is trying to kill you as fast as possible, you should use any advantage possible.
Spraying will likely get you more kills than tapping, except for long-distances! Spraying is definitely a good choice when it is medium to long-range!
At close range, there’s not a single doubt: just spray your heart out. Even if the recoil control is not perfect, most of the bullets should hit your target. And then there are those fights at medium range, and that’s where spray control is king - the player with the best control over it will most likely win the fight, but be ready to fight against a possible trader if you’re playing against decent opponents.
Thank you for reading this article and hopefully, it helped you in any way while trying to master the recoil of some or even all the weapons in CS:GO! You can reach out to me via Twitter for feedback or suggestions.
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