Guide

The Best Settings for Crisp Aim: CS:GO Mouse Sensitivity Guide

In our series of CS:GO Guides we haven't covered mouse sensitivity so far. But having the correct mouse sens is mandatory to be able to perform in the highly competitive environment of Counter-Strike. This article will help you out with that.

Mouse

Sensitivity

Guide
The Best Settings for Crisp Aim: CS:GO Mouse Sensitivity Guide

What is the best mouse sensitivity?

First of all we need to clarify that there is no general answer to that, because it depends a lot on you - the player - itself which sens is best for you. And the personally ideal sens can differ a lot from the perfect sens of other players. But there are methods to find your perfect sens, that we will cover in this article.

Sens? DPI? eDPI? - What does that mean?

To be able to find your perfect sens, you need to understand the technical terms that referr to sensitivity. There is DPI, eDPI, ingame sensitivity and even more advanced stuff like mouse acceleration. In this section we will explain all of these terms in detail.

DPI: DPI means "Dots per inch" and controls the base sensitivity of your mouse. Usually you can change your DPI on most modern mice, and this will apply not only in game. So this can be seen as the hardware part of your sensitivity.

Ingame sens: The ingame sensitivity takes your DPI and ads a multiplicator to it. You can change it via the console or ingame settings.

eDPI: eDPI means "effective DPI". Its the result if you multiply your ingame sens with your DPI. So for example: 400 DPI x sensitivity 2 = 800 eDPI.

Mouse acceleration: Mouse accel changes your sensitivity based on the speed of your movement. So the same travel distance on your mouse pad with different paces will result in different travel distances of your cursor on screen. Keep in mind that there is a windows accel that you can activate or deactivate and there's also an ingame one. Most pro's play without accel because it severly sabotages your consistency.

Which senses are the pro's using?

The perfect sens allows you to aim and flick effortlessly while also being flexible enough to turn around very quickly. CS:GO usually is a game that is played on a comparatively lower sens than other shooters due to the nature of the game. Tracking aim is not that important, because you cannot shoot accurately while strafing. If you take a look at the sensitivity of pro players, most of them will rather play at a very low sens. But there are some exceptions:

Pro

Dpi

Sens

eDpi

s1mple

400

3.09

1236

Twistzz

400

1.7

680

NiKo

400

1.375

550

woxic

1620

1.5

2430

MICHU

800

0.47

376

mopoz

400

1

400

HEN1

400

3.8

1520

As you can see the eDPI highly differs even at the highest level of competitive play. But you can also see that the majority of pro players lean towards the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to sens.

How can I find my perfect sensitivity?

So the question that is left is: How can you find your personal best sensitivity. The easiest and best option to do that is to start a local game and set up a practice environment at first. If you don't know how to do that The only CS:GO training config guide you'll ever need will help you with that.

As soon as you've done that, you need to shoot a bullet into a wall so you have a marker. Then you need to strafe left and right without shifting and try to keep your crosshair on that specific spot as best as you can.

If your sens is too low you will drag your crosshair behind like this:

Aiming while your sens is too low

If your sens is too high you will overcorrect like this:

And if your sens is ideal, it'll look like this:

Aiming with your ideal sens

So adjust your sens that way and as soon as you found it, put it to practice and hop into a deathmatch server to test ist practicability. As soon as you are satisfyed with your sens, we recommend not to change it anymore so you can build muscle memory and be consistent.