Feeling like you’ve been stuck fast in your rank forever and don’t know how to improve and reach the ranks that you really want? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s look at six advanced tips for playing CS:GO that we shortlisted as being some of the most important yet often overlooked tips.
1. Warm Up Your Aim, and Focus on Crosshair Placement
Aiming well is one of the most critical skills in CS:GO. Make sure to practice your aim regularly to improve your accuracy and reaction time. Even if you don’t want to put in the effort to train your aim on a regular basis, you should always at least warm up your aim before you queue any competitive match. You can do it by playing aim maps, deathmatch, or third-party aim trainers in about ten minutes for a good warm-up, and you’ll be at peak performance!
While aim training is good, you don’t need to be insane with your mouse to excel. Investing in nice skins like Karambit Damascus Steel can help you stay inspired and motivated, but for the most part, you should focus on perfecting your crosshair placement. It reduces the need to flick your mouse to reach the enemy’s head. Learn the head locations of different areas on all maps and keep your crosshair ready for when the unlucky enemy decides to swing you.
2. Grenades Are Your Best Buddies on the Battlefield
Grenades can block off areas, slow down enemies, and take down several of them together if thrown skillfully. Make sure to learn how to use grenades effectively to gain an advantage over your opponents. You can use different kinds of grenades in many creative ways and many learnable throws.
A smoke grenade alone is enough to block off an entire area and prevent enemies from seeing you. Similarly, you can use a flash bang in many sneaky ways to blind enemies and make them easy targets. Grenades are not just for throwing around randomly, hoping someone will die, but for creating opportunities. Don’t fear making things go boom with your grenades, but be smart about it!
3. Work on Your Map Knowledge and Calls
Map knowledge is crucial in CS:GO. Make sure to learn each map’s callouts and angles if you want to get to a better rank. You should know the common spots where enemies hide or position themselves, so you can jiggle peek at them without risk and maybe even get a kill or two. You can also avoid peeking at common angles alone when there’s no one to get your trade.
How often have you heard someone on your team call out an enemy’s position to be “right there!”? Yeah, that can be anywhere on the map. Without proper knowledge of location names, you can’t provide useful guidance to your team.
Even if you get good teammates who know all the callouts, you might not understand them if you don’t put in the effort to learn your maps. Learning these calls is well worth the effort, so get them done ASAP!
4. Get a Team, and Talk to Them!
Try keeping a consistent group of friends with whom you play competitive matches. This helps you learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses and plan your strategies accordingly.
Moreover, communication is vital in CS:GO. Make sure to communicate with your team to coordinate strategies, call out enemy positions, and share information. You should be using the in-game or Discord voice chat with your friends as you play. Don’t be a silent player; once you learn the map callouts and locations, you should be able to contribute to the team, even if you die without kills by sharing important info.
5. Critiquing Yourself and Watching the Pros!
Watching professional players can help you learn new strategies, improve crosshair placement, and better understand the game. Make sure to watch replays of professional matches and learn from their gameplay. You can watch professional players on streaming platforms like Twitch or YouTube, and many other websites.
Another great way to improve fast is to record your games and then review and critique them later. It helps you get a sense of whatever it is you were doing wrong and what eventually made you die. Look out for things like bad crosshair placement or bad in-game decisions and see how you can improve on them. You’ll be ranking up lightning fast!
6. Develop a Positive Mental Attitude
A positive mental attitude, or PMA as it is commonly referred to, is essential when playing a game like CS:GO. Primarily this is because these games are, let’s face it, rage-inducing. As you play through the game and climb through the ranks, you are bound to run into simply unwinnable games.
In those cases, keeping a calm, cool, collected attitude, and giving it your best is the best way to move forward. Otherwise, you’ll end up on an anger-filled spree where you ultimately won’t be doing anything productive for the entire day.
CS:GO is as much of a mental game as it is a mechanical one. If you let your mind falter, you are going to end up with an absolutely horrendous game, even if you have a perfect team. Since you won’t be communicating well, and will probably play more aggressively, the game won’t really be enjoyable for you anymore.
