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Learn moreAny PC gamer who plays First Person Shooters has played Counter-Strike or at least heard of it. It's been one of Valve's premier franchises ever since it debuted back in 2000. Since then, the series has seen several new entries such as CS 1.6, Source, Condition Zero and Global Offensive, each bringing updated graphics, new weapons and other changes. However, one thing which has remained constant throughout every iteration is the amount of skill and practice it takes to become a good player of the game.
Counter-Strike has always been known to have a high skill ceiling. It's gameplay rewards practice, knowledge and teamwork. It's one of the reasons why it's so popular in the realm of eSports. Is this the same reason why you have installed Counter Strike Global Offensive? :)
The game rewards players who take the game seriously, making it highly competitive in nature. Simply hours of practice aren't enough, any player seeking to play like a pro needs an in-depth knowledge of the game's mechanics and inner workings to gain an upper hand.
CS:GO is a very complex game which has many mechanics and advanced tactics that can be taken advantage of. There are many facets to its gameplay which must each be mastered by any player who hopes to play like a pro. This includes maneuvers like bunny hopping, proper utilization of cover, different tactics of shooting and aiming and CS:GO spray control.
For this article, we'll focus exclusively on spray control and how to master recoil pattern. It's one of the first advanced techniques which amateur players should learn because it doesn't take much technique or dexterity to pull off. All it requires is the knowledge of spray patterns of CS:GO guns and how to compensate for them.
Contents:
First, let's start with understanding what exactly spray patterns CS:GO are. All guns in Counter Strike Global Offensive have recoil. Recoil makes guns progressively inaccurate with sustained fire. The longer you fire a gun, the more your aim starts to move away from where your gun was aimed when you started firing. The guns possess this behavior to model and emulate the behavior of their real life counterparts.
While it's true that recoil is a huge factor behind overall inaccuracy and increased the spread of a weapon, it's not the only factor at play. Too many novices make the mistake of assuming that all missed shots are due to recoil. The other factor at play is an inaccuracy. Inaccuracy also varies from gun to gun and decides the chance of a bullet hitting on target. It increases or decreases based on if you're running or walking, standing or crouched, jumping or surfing. Since it's random, there's no way to compensate for it.
Unlike inaccuracy, the recoil of a weapon isn't random. It follows a fixed pattern. The spray pattern varies from gun to gun, with some guns having a small and tight spread and others a large one. When considering a single weapon, the spray pattern is consistent and doesn't vary from time to time. This means that you can compensate for the spray pattern by moving your mouse in the opposite way and negate its negative impact.
To summarize, there are two factors which cause missed shots:
Each of the guns in CS:GO have their own unique spray pattern. In general, most guns first climb up when they start firing and then begin to sway left or right. Many guns even start with a bias towards the left or right direction.
For example, CS:GO AK spray starts by climbing towards the top while moving slightly towards the left, then it stops climbing and moves completely to the right and then oppositely, in the left direction and then towards the right again. This cycle of moving left and right stops only when the player stops shooting or the AK-47 finishes its magazine. The most accurate guns have a tight spread and only recoil in the upward direction.
Broadly speaking, the guns in CS:GO can be organized into two categories based on their recoil:
Here's a short description of the spray pattern of each gun:
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AK-47 Spray pattern |
AK-47 Recoil Compensation |
AK-47: The spray pattern of the AK-47 climbs towards the top while moving towards the left, then it stops to climb and moves to the right and then in the left direction and then towards the right again.
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M4A4 Spray pattern |
M4A4 Recoil Compensation |
M4A4: The spray pattern of the M4A4 is similar to that of the AK-47. The recoil first climbs up and then starts swaying back and forth between left and right.
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M4A1-S Spray pattern |
M4A1-S Recoil Compensation |
M4A1-S: Similar to its sibling, the M4A4, this gun's recoil pattern follows a path where it first climbs up and then sways from side to side at the zenith. A key difference to note is that the vertical recoil is lesser.
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GALIL Spray pattern | GALIL Recoil Compensation |
GALIL: The GALIL's spray pattern shows that along with climbing, up it's also biased to recoil towards the left. As a result, at the peak, it starts swaying right before going left again.
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SG 553 Spray pattern |
SG 553 Recoil Compensation |
SG 553: This gun's recoil pattern can be thought of as the opposite of the GALIL's instead of being biased to the left, it has recoil movement towards the right. Additionally, when the recoil peeks vertically and starts swaying from side to side, the spray pattern shows a slight dip in the middle.
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G3SG1 Spray pattern |
G3SG1 Recoil Compensation |
G3SG1: This gun is a battle rifle and is very accurate as a result. Its recoil pattern is very tight and manageable. The gun only shows slight upward deviation when shooting.
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FAMAS Spray pattern |
FAMAS Recoil Compensation |
FAMAS: The FAMAS has a tendency to spray from side to side, along with the upward recoil. It starts by deviating slightly towards the right and then deviating left, forming a smooth curve. Then it sharply swerves right and then left again.
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AUG Spray pattern |
AUG Recoil Compensation |
AUG: The AUG's recoil pattern is very vertical in nature, with sideways movement creeping in only after all vertical motion has been exhausted. The drawback of the AUG is that it has a lot of upward recoil.
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AUG Scoped Spray pattern |
AUG Scoped Recoil Compensation |
AUG Scoped: This is more or less the same pattern as that of the standard AUG, with the difference of being a much smaller spread.
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SCAR-20 Spray pattern | SCAR-20 Recoil Compensation |
SCAR-20: The SCAR-20 is a highly accurate gun with a very small spray spread. It's similar to the G3SG1 and shows some upward and downward recoil only.
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MAC-10 Spray pattern |
MAC-10 Recoil Compensation |
MAC-10: Most submachine guns in CS:GO have some horizontal deviation in their recoil pattern and the MAC-10 is no exception. It shows a 15° bias towards the left when climbing.
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MP7 Spray pattern |
MP7 Recoil Compensation |
MP7: The MP7 has a pretty tightly knit recoil pattern for an SMG. It starts with a slight left bias, starts moving exclusively right, climbs up slightly more and finally moves exclusively toward the left.
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UMP-45 Spray pattern |
UMP-45 Recoil Compensation |
UMP-45: This gun's recoil pattern is very curvy and doesn't show any sudden movements or change in direction. It starts with a slight a slight bias towards the right before shifting to the left.
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PP-BIZON Spray pattern |
PP-BIZON Recoil Compensation |
PP-BIZON: This gun has one of the most unique and hard to master sprays patterns in the game. The first few shots go towards the right while the rest of them move the gun to the left and the final shots form a clump in the end.
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P90 Spray pattern |
P90 Recoil Compensation |
P90: This gun's recoil pattern is similar to that of an assault rifle's, with more sideways movement mixed in with the vertical movement. It deviates to the left in the middle of the climb, before coming back to the center.
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M249 Spray pattern |
M249 Recoil Compensation |
M249: Like most machine guns, this gun's recoil spread is huge. The gun starts by deviating to the left and then to the right while moving up. Towards the middle of the magazine, most of the shots fired around sideways with the exception of some shots that show a deviation to the downward left before coming back to where the rest of the shots were going.
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NEGEV Spray pattern |
NEGEV Recoil Compensation |
NEGEV: While this machine gun shows less sideways movement when climbing, at the peak of its vertical recoil, it's movement becomes very erratic with the shots moving upwards, left and right and downwards.
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P2000 Spray pattern |
P2000 Recoil Compensation |
P2000: This gun has a completely straight, upward recoil pattern.
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GLOCK-18 Spray pattern | GLOCK-18 Recoil Compensation |
GLOCK-18: The GLOCK-18 has a very tight spread with most of the shots moving the gun up and only a handful of shots showing very slight sideways deviation.
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USP-S Spray pattern |
USP-S Recoil Compensation |
USP-S: This gun is very accurate and easy to manage since it's recoil only pushes the gun up and not towards the left or right side.
The easiest way to deal with recoil is to simply wait for a few split seconds between bursts of shots to allow the weapon time to reset and the crosshair to get back down to its pre-recoil position. This is an amateur strategy, though, which effectively limits the fire rate of a weapon.
A better strategy is to move your mouse and aim in a way opposite to that of the recoil pattern to compensate for it. This is considerably harder and will take a lot of practice to perfect for each weapon that you use. There are mainly two things to focus on when trying to counter a spray pattern:
The simplest way to see how a gun sprays are to start up CS:GO and start an empty server. Here, fire whichever gun you wish to practice with at a blank wall. When firing, take note of how much the gun moves and in which direction. Then, go up to the wall and inspect the bullet marks you made. This should show you the spread of the gun and how much sustained firing can impact aim, especially at long ranges.
Alternatively, there are many sites online that you can use to look up the bullet spread patterns of all the guns that the game features. These sites don't only show the deviation of each bullet, but also the pattern you should follow to counter the recoil in the form of an animation so that you can see how to exactly to time it as well.
In conclusion, there are many different techniques which one must master to get good at CS:GO. Controlling bullet spray is the easiest place to start from and the best way to improve the damage output of rapid-fire guns. Mastering this pivotal aspect of CS:GO can give you a competitive advantage over players who don't know how to counter recoil and fire more inaccurately as a result.