Important skills you need to be a good CS2 player
To become a good Counter-Strike player, you need to be able to make lightning-fast decisions while navigating tons of information. This article is a perspective on which qualities and skills a good CS2 player has. The skills can be seen as different abilities that form the basis of your performance. If you master these skills, you’ll be in a much stronger position and continue to perform at a higher level.
Let’s get right into it.
1. Mechanical skills
Mechanical skills consist of your aim and movement. Or in other words how you act with your mouse and keyboard to what you see on the screen. Your aim can be seen as your raw fundamental skill. Your aim can at any given time surpass any other skill to gain victory. Mastering aim and movement take a lot of consistent practice. An aim training routine can help you a long way towards fulfilling your aim potential.
To keep motivation up over a longer period of time, make your practice fun and enjoyable, and make sure to change your aim of training from time to time. This also creates more variety in your training. Variety is important for creating changes in the brain. If you get used to doing the same thing over and over again, the brain will stop changing and you will likely hit a plateau.
2. Attention skills
Your attention has a direct impact on your mechanical skills and is crucial for how quickly you can react. If just a small part of your attention goes away from the game you give your opponent a huge advantage. Your attention makes you able to switch your focus back and forth between the different elements of the game. Often you have to receive and react to several pieces of information at once. It can be at some point compared to driving in traffic, where you have to be aware of various aspects and move your attention around to navigate the road.
With great attention, you can focus intensely for a longer period of time while collecting all valuable information to make great decisions. To improve your focus, you can make use of a daily mindfulness practice. Mindfulness will strengthen your ability to narrow your focus to whatever is important. Besides that, mindfulness makes your brain more flexible so you can make even faster and better decisions.
3. Communication skills
Good communication skills are about delivering what information you have for your teammates as accurately as possible. Make sure to speak loud and clear, sometimes it can be hard to hear much because bullets and grenades are flying around.
Don’t be toxic, always be nice and friendly to your teammates. Be careful about commenting on how your teammates play unless it’s a really good idea. You risk taking away confidence in the other person, which does not bring anything good to the team.
Communication outside the game plays a bigger role when you play on a regular team and the closer you get to being a pro player. It is essential that you can talk openly and honestly with each other about your problems. Disagreements on a team that is not cleared out are never reasonable.
4. Decision-making skills
Your ability to make the right decisions is often what determines the outcome of the game. This applies to the duels you have with the enemy in each round and the tactical level that goes on as the game continues. As an in-game leader, it’s essential to assess and adjust the team’s strategy on an ongoing basis. If something doesn’t work, it’s a stupid idea to continue on the same path.
To improve the way you make decisions, you can review your demos for mistakes. To correct your mistakes, you need to consciously focus on the content of the demo. For many, this is a boring task. However, it is extremely necessary if you have the desire to perform at the top level.
Another big part that affects your ability to make decisions is your sleep and your everyday lifestyle. If you don’t get enough sleep, your decision-making skills decline very quickly. Fortunately, you can do a lot to optimize your sleep. Other things that influence your decision-making are exercise and diet. If you eat healthily and drink plenty of water, you will ensure that your body and brain have what it needs to perform at best.
5. Meta skills
The Counter-Strike meta is known for changing over time. This is also what makes the game so beautiful as it keeps evolving. The meta can be said to be the smartest way to play. Are you playing on a team who adapts and creates new ways to play based on the experiences you make? If that’s the case, you are in a much stronger strategic position and become significantly harder to defeat. But really, you just have to learn to analyze the situation you are in and buy according to which strategy you want to use.