How to play entry fragger in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

​How to play entry fragger in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive What does an entry fragger do?

Last time I covered the support role. This time around we’ll take a closer look at the entry fragger: to my mind, the most misunderstood role in CS:GO.

Just to get it out there: how I view roles in Counter-Strike, and what I think a player in that role is supposed to do, may differ a lot from what other people might think.

So let’s get started. I think that the single most important job of an entry fragger is to play aggressively in order to create more room for his teammates to execute their strategy. This makes entry fragging a team-oriented role. Contrary to what a lot of people I’ve talked to believe, especially newer players, the entry fragger won’t put up big numbers most of the time. The only exception to this is if he’s playing against a lesser team.

The entry fragger is, however, the player who gets those high-impact kills. If your team is attacking a site with four players and you’re facing two players, it’s huge to get that initial kill and turn it into it a four-versus-one situation.

Most of the time it’s not the entry fragger who initiates the attack (unless the CTs decide to push for information). They need to be good at assessing the situation and listen to their teammates. It’s crucial that they time the push with the flashbangs that are being thrown by support players.

Another thing that I want an entry fragger to do is bait for their teammates. If they jump across a tight choke point where an opponent is peeking, chances are that they’ll shoot. This means that the entry fragger’s teammate (often the AWPer) can go around the corner and either pick up the initial kill or trade a kill before the CT’s weapon gets a chance to reset. In most scenarios it’s beneficial for the terrorists to trade kills as it’ll make it easier for them to take the bomb site.

Who should be an entry fragger?

So you’ve formed a team and you’re trying to figure out who’s most suitable as an entry fragger. What should you be looking for?

You want an individual who has fast reactions and has the ability to clear a lot of angles quickly. You also want them to be good at communicating, as they’ll be the one to get information first. If they do what they’re supposed to do, you’ll have more room to work with and know roughly where the enemies are positioned.

Your entry fragger can’t have trust issues. Because of the number of angles there are on almost every site in the game, it’s impossible for them to check all of them. They need to trust that the second and third player in are helping out with the spots they can’t cover.

Above all else, it’s crucial that your entry fragger listens to what your in-game leader says. They need to trust their leader, because if they hesitate when it’s time to initiate the push you’re a lot less likely to succeed.

In short, your entry fragger should be a humble yet fearless player who’s not afraid of taking one for the team. One of the perks of being an entry fragger is the potential for crazy highlight clips. They’ll get their moment to shine when they succeed in picking up two or three entry kills to secure a site on their own.

Example from a pro game

This example is taken from the quarterfinals of Dreamhack Masters Malmö in Sweden last weekend. The player featured in the clip is Jonas ‘Lekr0’ Olofsson from GODSENT, the team put together by former Major champion and in-game leader Markus ‘pronax’ Wallsten. This is the round right after they had lost their first buy round against the German team mousesports. GODSENT decided to go for a force buy with tec-9s, armor and some grenades.

Lekr0 gets in position for the push while his teammates line up their grenades. As soon as they throw the two initial smokes, Lekr0 pops a flash in the smoke and runs through it. Andreas ‘znajder’ Lindberg (another former Major champion) throws his molotov right next to the van in order to clear the spot of any counter-terrorists. Just after the flashes come flying over the roof of B-apartments, Lekr0 jumps out through the window and manages to kill Timo ‘Spiidi’ Richter while he is still flashed. More importantly he makes room for his teammates to take the site. At that point they don’t have to worry about any CTs from short or by the van.

The smokes on either side of the pillar towards short are absolutely beautiful. They isolate Lekr0 on short, giving him the opportunity to secure a winnable one-versus-one situation should a CT attempt a retake from short. Since this wasn’t the case, he could push the smokes to create even more chaos for the defenders. He even managed to pick up another kill with a grenade.

Another thing the smokes did was to give Lekr0 a chance to save his weapon had the situation turned out differently. With a little stretch of the imagination the bomb carrier also had the option to follow Lekr0 through the smokes and try to go for the plant over on the A-site.

In the end pronax managed to clutch out the round in favor of his team. The strategy was excellent, and because Lekr0 made sure no one could attack through the smokes on short GODSENT could swarm the players from mousesports on the site. Note that Jonas didn’t just keep going for mindless aggressive plays after the initial kill: instead, he slowed down and assisted his team. No matter what role you play on your team, you still have to be able to do a little bit of everything.

How to practice

As with every other role, there are things you can and should practice outside of actual matches. You can go on an empty server and look for different entry paths you can take when you’re attacking different sites. There are 14 bombsites in total and you can push from different directions. Needless to say there is a lot of work to be done. You want to be able to enter sites in different ways to make yourself less predictable, depending on what strategy your team is executing. The more games you play the more comfortable you’ll get in knowing what spots are common and which angles to prioritize.

Pop flash

A flashbang thrown in such a way that it ‘pops’ just as it enters your opponent’s field of vision, giving him less time to turn away from it.

Try to spend some time trying out different things with your support players. Will you get blinded if he throws a certain flashbang at a certain time? If so, is there anything you can do to correct that? Maybe throw the grenade a split second earlier or later or maybe you can make sure to have your back turned to the flash as it pops?

It’s of utmost importance that you’re comfortable with your mouse sensitivity. When you clear angles you want your crosshair placement to be as good as it possibly can be. You’ll also need to be able to land flick shots when you spot a defending player in an area that you didn’t expect.

Luckily CS:GO is full of community-made custom maps for all sorts of practice purposes. One that I particularly like is training_aim_csgo2. Subscribe to the map, go to ‘play’ and then ‘offline with bots’ and then the Workshop tab, where you’ll be able to find all the maps you’ve subscribed to.

On one of the walls there’s a board where you can change your settings. I usually set the delay between the dots to 0.25 and static target duration to 0.50. If you’re not comfortable with the speed you can start a little higher and work your way down. Remember to vary the distance as well, so that you get comfortable with your sensitivity on various ranges. This way of practicing became immensely popular after Adam ‘friberg’ Friberg from NiP showed it on his stream in 2014. He said that he tries to go for around 80% hits, so don’t get discouraged if you miss a few shots. Even the pros miss.

Remember that how you play when you practice is how you’ll play when you’re under pressure in games because that’s what will come naturally to you. Make every practice session count!

Try to play aggressively when you’re on deathmatch servers. That way you’ll get more used to pushing forward even when the odds are stacked against you. The more aim duels you take, the more confident you’ll be when it counts the most.

Watch the pros play

I can’t stress this enough: download a few demos from HLTV.organd learn from the best. How do they push sites and what spots do they clear? In what order? Why? Obviously it’s going to be a little bit different when you play (unless you are in fact a professional), but you’ll learn the most common spots on your level from just playing games.

There are a lot of good entry fraggers to watch. I’d recommend you to take a look at some of the plays Dan ‘apEX’ Madesclaire from EnVyUs makes. Admittedly his team has fallen off a bit lately, but I still consider him one of the best entry fraggers in the world.

Then you have Paweł ‘byali’ Bieliński who plays for the Polish team Virtus.Pro. When he’s on form I’d say he is a contender for the number one spot in the world when it comes to entry fragging. He can single handedly lay waste to some of the strongest CT setups CS:GO’s ever seen.

For pure entry fragging I’d say former Cloud9-player Ryan ‘freakazoid’ Abadir is great to watch. He might not be the most skilled player out there, but he’s made a career by being a role player. Download some demos from Cloud9’s games from last summer, when Sean ‘sg@res’ Gares managed to make the most of the players he had by assigning them roles they all seemed to enjoy playing. For a brief period of time they were a top team in the international CS:GO scene.

Also, you shouldn’t underestimate how much you can learn from watching your own demos. It’s tempting to watch the games where you got a lot of highlight worthy kills and stomped your opponents and you should do that. That’s a good way to boost your confidence as well as to remember what tends to work well for you. Even if it’s not as much fun, however, you’ll probably learn more from watching your losses and looking for your mistakes. Try to figure out what you could’ve done differently and try new things the next time you’re in a similar situation.

One last quick tip that’s been useful to me when I’ve played entry fragger: visualize how you’re going to attack and try to have a plan ready before you go in. Of course you’ll have to adapt to the situation, but it’s helpful to know what to do next once you’ve moved past that corner. The fewer decisions you have to make on the fly, the easier it’ll be to focus on hitting your shots.

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