The pinnacle of CS: GO: Skill aim or strategy?

Legendary teams like LDLC—the team that won first place at the 2014 DreamHack Winter Major—are famous for playing without over-use of tactics. On the other hand, teams like SKGaming, known for their tactical gameplay, spend more time researching material than playing games.

Both teams have similar records, but SK Gaming and LDLC have a completely different approach to the game. On the one hand, the Brazilian team is very successful thanks to a thorough analysis: every smoke position, every check site, every direction and every element of the game. In short, SK Gaming uses ‘brains’ to play. LDLC is also familiar with SK’s playstyle, as most of them used to play under In-Game Leader (captain – IGL) Kevin “Ex6tenZ” Droolans during the early days of CS:GO. Ex6tenZ is famous for its tactical gameplay, however, LDLC later rejected the approach and switched to a more active style. That’s getting ‘skill overriding’.

Today, the best teams in the world can’t tell their playing style correctly. There is no such thing as a purely tactical team or skill-based team. Teams must know how to combine these two distinct characteristics into a particular playstyle. To see how that happens, it’s necessary to consider the weakness of each playstyle in this day and age of Counter-Strike.

The analysis community in general, is quite fond of tactical play. Because they have to analyze the game, analysts are more likely to stick with players with that same style. As CS players, we clearly understand that playing the game is more fun than sitting around thinking ‘how’ to play. Moreover, we know that studying the strategy will make it possible for us to apply all the methods (eg fake site/smoke in the right position) to win. Instead of just relying on aim skills, the tactical team will take advantage of positions and angles.

Instead of rushing into the site with just a flashbang, they will use smokes to reduce the possibility of facing opponents, thus reducing the possibility of being attacked when entering the bomb site. As can be seen, the tactical team will use all the tools they have, minimizing the reliance on the aim skill, to succeed. One obvious advantage to this playstyle is this: while the aim can be erratic, the placement of the smoke is unaffected. Using tactics often has better results, which is also why teams specializing in tactics are more stable but teams don’t put that much emphasis on it.

A clear example is the SK team. Teams like SK Gaming have consistently made it to the Playoffs in the top leagues, even after they’ve been past their peak form at ESL One Cologne. Starting in January 2015, TeamSoloMid is at times more stable than SK, having achieved a high number of Playoffs in over 15 months, something unprecedented. They have only been eliminated four times from the group stage or the first round of the tournament, under the leadership of captain Finn ‘Karrigan’ Andersen.

However, it is impossible not to mention the weakness of this gameplay. Using everything in the game means having to consider all the options in the match. In any sport, tactics cannot always predict the opponent’s actions and reactions. There is always the element of unpredictability. For that reason, in any round, there will always be a moment when a player has to change a decision made, in a split second. Do I fake bomb or continue? Should I stick my head out or is he just faking it? Should I stick my head out or go straight into the gunfight? Such thinking slows down decision-making, or worse, causes unimaginable damage.

These difficulties can be better understood through North, who has talented players in the world, but fails to show that talent in the game. While IGL Mathias “MSL” Lauridsen has built a strong tactical team with an extremely weak T-side, individual skill (aim) has collapsed. The selection of the talent Philip ‘aizy’ Aistrup has come at the expense of his in-game decision-making abilities. The status of the North team shows that there is always a trade-off between ‘specializing in tactics’ and ‘taking skills to suppress’.

When a player doesn’t have much in-game knowledge to solve a problem, he has only one option: the first bullet fired is also the last to finish the opponent. Although playing ‘skill over’ does not have as many advantages as playing ‘tactical’, it opens up a new direction for players. Teams like EnVyUs in early 2015 or Fnatic in early 2016 are far more effective when they focus on only one thing: shooting.

Teams that specialize in skills will be at a more tactical disadvantage. Since the tactical team uses a lot of tools to reduce their reliance on aim, they don’t need to have extreme shooting skills to succeed. In a match, the tactical team often chooses a very advantageous position, which means that the big skill team must shoot very well to be able to overcome this limitation. This is a perennial problem for a lot of teams currently in CS:GO, where any team in the top can use ‘overkill’. Teams with ‘skill over’ like Fnatic have a hard time gaining an advantage, as they can’t win aim matches against players like Marcelo ‘coldzera’ David or Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz, who belong to the apply team’ specializing in tactics’.

Faulty teams like North, unable to transform tactics into strength, and Fnatic, unable to aim against another team, reveal an important development in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive meta. The top teams in the world — SK Gaming, Astralis and Faze — were able to combine ‘strategy’ and ‘overkill’ to show both at the same time. All three teams have fairly similar roster compositions, which allows them to break out of said rut.

Combine superstars like coldzera, dev1ce and Nokola ‘Niko’ Kovac with an IGL that’s both good at shooting and a good support, and you’ve got a versatile team that includes both skill and strategy. Counter-strike has now proven that to be the best team, they need to find common ground between these two methods.

Source: espn.com