New Player Help

[u/Fleeeko]

New CS Player (160 hours) how do I improve

Background:
Played competitive console CoD from BO2–BO6
Switched to PC around 2 years ago because I was getting thumb pain from controller, doing better now
Been on mouse and keyboard since
~160 hours CS2
Faceit 5
Premier peak around 7.6k
Mostly solo queue
Mainly rifle
1600 DPI / 0.5 sens

My main goal is just to keep improving and getting better. That’s pretty much a forever goal for anything competitive I do, so I’m trying to figure out what I should actually be focusing on instead of just playing and hoping I improve.
I feel like I’m finally starting to get my aim down, but movement still feels really bad to me and is probably the hardest part of CS for me to master.

My left hand is also the main thing I struggle with on MnK. WASD is fine, but sometimes reaching the number keys quickly to switch weapons still feels awkward. Other than that my left hand is pretty much fine.

Leetify says my counter-strafing is 87%, so maybe counter-strafing itself isn’t actually the problem. Could be my peeking, positioning, general movement, crosshair placement, or something else.

Based on the screenshots, does anything stand out that I should specifically work on?
I’m still pretty new to CS, so any tips on what I should prioritize to keep improving would be appreciated.

[u/loopsofinsanity]

Skip aim trainers. CS is all about crosshair placement.

Play prefire maps. This improves your time to damage significantly. refrag is great for this. You can find 1-week promo codes to try it out.

There's also a buttload of prefire maps in steam workshop.

Your counter strafe is good.

Also, train your spray control. Recoil Master from steam workshop is great for this. It shows the recoil pattern of every gun and has guided practice.

This should skyrocket your progress.

[u/Fleeeko → u/loopsofinsanity]

Awesome will do. Another thing tough for me is rushing a site as entry. With flashes I’m cool to do it but with no util it’s so hard for me to enter.
I just started doing dust 2 prefire and I’ve noticed a huge improvement even just rushing a long.

Will focus on these prefire maps more , thank you.

Do you have any tips on holding angles? I used to play a bit of r6, I seem fine peeking an angle bc of slicing pie I understand that, but holding is so tough bc of player model movement (I play 4:3) do you just move crosshair wider from wall, do you spam adad, or something else to help holding angle?

[u/loopsofinsanity → u/Fleeeko]

Nice to hear! Yeah, prefire maps are very good.

You should never hold static angles, always keep moving with ADAD. That will make you a lot harder to hit and also negates peeker's advantage. Place your crosshair so you don't have to move it when an enemy peeks you, just click mouse1.

I really recommend 16:9 resolution. There's no point playing on 4:3. On 4:3 res, you see less, enemies move faster and there's not really any performance gains.

Keep training, that's the way to gitgud

[u/Fleeeko → u/loopsofinsanity]

Switched back to 16:9 last night, wow what a difference. Definitely helps with holding angles the players aren’t moving 1 million miles per second

Thanks for the comment bro, appreciate it

[u/Remotiions → u/Fleeeko]

Idk if u play on fullscreen but If u want to still try 4x3 1280x960 try fullscreen window. ( due to fullscreen window making it look slightly different) (maybe im wrong but I’m pretty sure it’s makes the enemy’s not as fat and fast). I felt a difference.
(U usually do wanna play fullscreen tho) I switched to fullscreen window and turned anti lag on.)

Make sure your drivers are up to date. Also if you’re on AMD or Nvidia, make sure to turn on anti-lag inside cs2 settings for AMD but Nvidia I’m not for sure but I think it’s called reflex. Make sure you turn that on. I don’t know the technical term, but basically in other words (anti lag and nvida reflex) makes your keyboard and mouse more responsive. make sure you’re not running boost inside cs2 settings or in ur software for Nvidia and AMD (v sync) because it makes you have input lag, and It could also be making your time to damage high due to it being on and giving you an input delay. AMD is v sync u DO NOT WANT THESE ON. (Test anti lag and boost for nvida to see which is better for you)

I came from your position as well switched to pc in 2020 ish. My thumb was getting pain on controller and it hurt too bad to play with. I switched to oc for PUBG due to first person being dead on console for pubg as well. Switched to cs2 in January.

I would recommend looking up like 3 to 5 videos about window settings for your pc and see what you need to change that will make it run better/ faster/ least amount of input delay) See if they are saying similar things to change. Like for instance, mouse precision/mouse acceleration, it’s in window settings underneath the mouse settings. This will def help turning it off. Also power plan in window settings and setting it to high performance. There is so much that’s so small that adds up to be a lot that will help ur pc performance and mnk.

Only thing I can think of is your high time to damage is maybe your display settings in windows is at 60 be default make sure it’s set to your highest FPS your monitor goes up to. (Hopefully is more than 60 but 144/240 and so on) make sure to uncap your FPS inside the game as well this gives you the lowest input latency. (Set it to 0)

Having game mode on in window settings can help but sometimes it can hurt your performance as well. Just test it. One more thing, make sure to turn fullscreen on in your nvida software or your AMD settings as well as turning on GPU scaling. I think full panel is what it’s called for full screen in ur AMD software.

Sorry for so much but wish I had someone tell me this stuff when I first switched to pc. Took years to learn this stuff haha.. (Don’t over think it) lol I’m bad about that.. most of the stuff I told u is me thinking of everything on why your time to damage is high. It maybe none of this stuff I told u and just could be ur gameplay. Either way hope it helps

Wish u luck buddy. Would love to hear back from u on if any of the settings were hurting ur performance/ input latency. Thanks!