New to Counter Strike: Global Offensive and struggling with improving your aim? Here's 5 great tips that might be able clue newcomers in to things that aren't covered by the in-game weapons course.

#1: Invest in a Good Mouse and Set It Low

CS:GO is a game where having a quality mouse is essential. Precision shots and quick mouse swipes can be ruined by a crappy mouse that has poor tracking or that sometimes skips across the screen. Here are a few of the top mice used for CS:GO:

Mouse DPI/Sensitivity Settings

When it comes to mouse DPI and sensitivity settings, stay low! Pretty much all serious CS:GO players have an in-game sensitivity lower than 3 and play with a mouse DPI of 400.

Start out by setting your mouse's DPI to 400 and then use this great tutorial to find the right in-game sensitivity for you.

Also keep in mind that playing at a low sensitivity can take a bit of time to get used to as it did for me, but rest assured that once you become accustomed it really will pay off.

#2: Get a Mouse Pad the Size of Nebraska

Fig 1. - A visual comparison.

Alright, so maybe not as big as Nebraska, but you get the point. All top CS:GO players use unusually large mouse pads. Why? The idea behind this one is that a large mouse pad, coupled with a low DPI/sensitivity, gives you a bigger area to move and place your mouse in turn allowing you to have more precision with your crosshair in an easier fashion.

Here is a few of the top mouse pads used for CS:GO:

#3: Start Shooting at Walls

Can your spray make tight bullet groupings like this?

This may sound silly, but spraying at a wall is the best way to practice and keep tabs on your recoil control. Every gun in CS:GO has a unique recoil pattern that should be learned and ingrained into your muscle memory. The two important patterns to learn are the M4 patterns and the AK-47 pattern. Here is a great video put out by friberg demonstrating those patterns and how to practice them on a wall.

When I started getting serious about my skills I spent a great deal of time during warmup rounds and deathmatches shooting at walls, practicing my spray. It made a huge difference for me and I truly believe it could make a huge difference for you too.

#4: Practice The Right Way

When it comes to practicing your aim, playing competitive matches can be beneficial. What is even more beneficial, and will produce results far faster than matches, is using practice methods such as bot execs, deathmatch, and aim training maps.

If you are new to CS:GO and combine these practice methods with the other tips I've talked about in this article, you should start seeing results at a much faster rate. Also remember that most top players spend hours every week practicing and keeping their aim on point through these same methods.

Bot Executables

If you are new to CS:GO this might be your best place to start working on your marksmanship. A bot executable is a config that you place into your Steam CS:GO files. Then when you're in an "Offline with Bots" game, you type a command into the console and it'll set up the game for you. It loads 12 or so enemy bots into the game that have no guns, don't fight back, and respawn constantly. The idea is to run around shooting at these passive bots, practicing your aim, your reactions, your accuracy, and your spray control.

Bot executables will help you get a really good feel for shooting in CS:GO. If you spend an hour or so doing this and then jump into an online game, shooting at the enemies should feel a bit more like second nature.

Here is a good guide for setting up your own bot executable.

#5: Keep on Practicing

I put practicing into two different tips to help get the point acrosst of how important practicing is! Here are more good ways for you to practice:

Aim Training Maps

Aim training maps are a fun way for beginners to practice as they can keep track of things like your speed and accuracy and also can be played alot of different ways. For example this map, training_aim_csgo, has a mode where green dots will appear at random locations on the wall. You have only a few seconds to shoot the dots before they disapear and it keeps track of how many dots you hit in a set amount of time. It's kind of like playing whack-a-mole, but in CS:GO!

Deathmatch Servers

Deathmatch is the most popular and competitive way to practice your aim. I'd recommend staying away from deathmatch servers until you feel you have solid shooting skills, because they can be fairly frustrating if you don't do well. Getting wrecked in deathmatch may hamper your CS:GO experience and deter you from playing the game altogether.

As far as deathmatch servers go, there's the standard free-for-all/team deathmatch servers. Most standard deathmatch servers stay primarily on de_dust2 (a staple in CS:GO map pool).

Also there is aim map deathmatch servers that rotate between maps like aim_usp and aim_ak-colt and allow you to focus more on long-range shooting and controlling your rifle at a distance.

Another type of deathmatch server is the headshot-only deathmatch server. The headshot-only server is the same as regular deathmatch, except that the only way to damage an opponent is by shooting them in the head. This forces you to focus and practice your headshots. Headshot-only is a type of server I'd definitely recommend staying away from until you have solid shooting skills, as it is can be very tough, especially for new players.

If you have any questions/comments/concerns/thoughts/love letters, feel free leave a comment below, or send me a tweet @billgarrr, or even message me here on GameSkinny!

Also to hammer the practice idea through to you, here is a diagram you can study: