Being both a lone wolf and a team player is quite real.
What does a lurker do?
Lurk in CS: GO is a player who tries to unexpectedly strike an opponent
No-no-no, no need to remember the cozy Lurkmorie, it’s not about that at all. Lurk is translated from English as “to hide”, so the lurk, respectively, is the one who is hiding. But CS: GO is a dynamic game, and while you finish the phrase: “Someone deigned to hide there,” the lurker will kill your entire team. I’m exaggerating, of course, but just a little, and you get the point.
Now to the point. If you take a closer look at the competent game, you will notice that each player has his own role. Banal tank, support … Lurker, perhaps the most interesting role. And the things that the lurker has to do are strikingly different from those that the same tank and support do. And he interacts with the team in a completely different way. The easiest way to say is that a lurker is a player who quietly sneaks around the map and tries to slaughter enemies from behind, but there is, in fact, something more here.
Lurkers have to find all the ways alone and kill or at least disrupt the enemy’s formation at the point before the main attack begins. They also have to scout the territory and let the leader know if it is a good idea to attack this point at all. An example of such work is apartments on Inferno. Lurker can hear that most of the counter-terrorists are in the pit after you grab the banana (oh, that sounds like that). Thus, he learns that regrouping will take some time, and it may be worth trying to capture B. In addition, the lurker may well kill the counter-terrorist in the pit if this guy realizes that the terrorists rushed to V.
On the other hand, the lurker can go down to the boiler and try to kill the one who is sitting there in order to be closer to B – this way he will be next to the team and can help her after planting the bomb. When you are a lurker, a lot depends on your decisions: you can either drag the round or fail it safely. For example, you decided to kill someone in the hole, but you failed, and the counter-terrorists got out. Now your situation is not the best, rather, you are in a trap, and you will not help the team especially. On the other hand, you can provide a kill and put a little pressure on the defenders of the counter-terrorist respawn point, which makes their life much more difficult.
Who should be a lurker?
In CS: GO, the ability to work in a team is important – this is also true for a lurker
Perhaps, two traits are critical for a lurker: creativity and the ability to communicate with the team. A creative lurker can come up with a way out of such situations, where anyone else would have already bent over. It also requires a good understanding of what your opponents are doing: this will allow you to know what they are planning, as well as what they are expecting or not expecting. It is often too long for the brain to be aware of all this, so you should trust your instincts. You don’t know what to do in a given situation – you just feel it. Pump up your intuition. This will most likely take a long time, so don’t be discouraged if you are a beginner. Experience is the only thing that will help you.
Well, communication with the team. Without it, in fact, the lurker is almost useless. He must assess the situation, provide good information. If he does not locate the counter-terrorist where expected, then he must warn the rest of the team that they may be heading for a trap. Remember that information about where defenders are not can help to establish where they are.
Regular advice: it won’t be a bad thing if a person who has watched a lot of streams and championships becomes a lurker. So he will know how professionals react to a particular situation. What will defender B do on Mirage if a smoke can fly out of nowhere? Is it possible to divide players into some types? Players who are impatient and run away too early, players who are leisurely who will sit all the way, players who generally rush around chaotically? Will this knowledge help you determine which of these types is the very same defender B? Quite possible. Study the game, study the inclinations, and your chances of making the right decision in the meeting will increase.
It is also important that the lurker has a good skill. He often has to perform one-on-one, so without skill it just doesn’t make sense.
Examples in professional games
The role of a lurker will help to show resourcefulness when entering from difficult situations
This round was played during the most grand final of the Dreamhack Masters in Malmö, Sweden. Christopher Alesund, better known by the nickname “GeT_RiGhT” from Ninjas in Pajamas, began the round by going to B alone. He jumped into the lower tunnels and was lucky to find John Sukharev (aka “Edward”) on the bridge. As soon as Edward fell, the rest of the NiP team learned there was one less potential counter-terrorist on A.
GeT_RiGhT continued his lone attack and smoked the central doors. Thus, Na’Vi had no idea how many opponents were in the center. As a result, they could not move to another point. With the help of two flash drives and quietly slipping in the smoke, GeT_RiGhT killed another one: Ladislav Kovacs, aka GuardiaN.
After that, he waited a second or two, but no one tried to make up for the kill on B or in the center, apparently thinking that the player in B went through the tunnels for information. Perhaps the smoke outlet in the center served two purposes. Firstly, which is quite obvious, it allowed GeT_RiGhT to do dark deals with flash drives. Secondly, this forced Na’Vi to go into the tunnels for reconnaissance, because now they could not know where they were going to attack NiP. After all this, there was a possibility that they would realize that no one was actually at the point, and Christopher realized in time that the player on B might try to get close to him from the flank. This impeccable sense of the game allowed him to catch his third kill on Yegor Vasiliev (“flamie”).
After that, his work was over. He decided to stay in the lower tunnels and make sure that counter-terrorists did not attack the central doors. However, he missed the fact that Daniil Teslenko (“Zeus”) would burst in in an attempt to save his armor and the CZ75-Auto.
In general, it is easy to see what a huge effect the lurker had on the course of the game. He not only took out three players, but also confused the opponents, preventing them from understanding where the main offensive was being prepared.
How to practice to become a lurker
To successfully master the role of a lurker, you need to practice a lot – preferably with stronger rivals
So, you’ve decided to become a lurker for your team. I must say right away: you have a lot of work ahead of you. First of all, you need to, um, how to say it. Get a feel for the game. You need to be at ease. Watch recordings of your own games; notice how players of your level react to your actions. How opponents – or allies – react to a flash drive thrown at a certain point, in a certain place, at a certain time. If you notice any patterns, then you will be able to understand what provoked the response.
To get to know all this well, you need to practice, practice, and practice again. More precisely, play, play and play again. Best of all – against equally trained teams, so that you know for sure that your opponents are conferring and talking among themselves. Experiment; it is important to understand how a particular opponent acts during a particular game and how you can use this to your advantage. If your team starts an onslaught on A, and you throw flashbangs and smokes at B, how long will it take for B’s defenders to get to A? Perhaps you can do something to lead them and make them dance to your tune?
Given the nature of your role, you will have to spend a lot of time in deathmatch. You just need to learn how to win these aiming duels. As one wonderful man said: do not practice ten thousand blows at a time, it is better to repeat one blow ten thousand times. If you spend more time training than your opponent, then you have an increased chance of getting out of any situation not only dry, but also on horseback.
When you play to practice, try to mix everything up and try out as much as possible, so that for each scenario you have a template that you can then use on different occasions. But also remember that you can confuse enemies with the monotony of your actions. By repeating the same thing round after round, you can give opponents a false sense of security. This is usually done with a smoke box and a couple of flash drives. It’s important that you stay alive in the end. After a couple of rounds, the enemies will decide that they have bitten you; when you throw your trademark grenades, they will “understand” that you are Adyn, with all Adyn … And then you fall out on them with the whole Caucasian family, that is, the whole team, and the opponents are confused and cannot even really regroup. GeT_RiGhT may not be the first one to come up with this, and perhaps – just maybe, – he is not the most skillful master of this technique, but he was definitely the one who made this strategy popular and famous. And, of course, he spent a lot of time on practice.
By the way, this brings us to the next tip.
Watch the masters play
Learn to play as a lurker from the pros
Yes, yes, again. This advice is found in almost every article. And for good reason. Whatever role you choose for yourself, you will have to watch the games of professionals in order to improve. First of all, you need to answer a few questions for yourself. Go.
First, what exactly is this player doing? Thinking about this question constantly, you will involuntarily look for information that is more useful than just facts like “oh, he killed him.” In addition, it will distract you from unhappy thoughts like “I want it the same, but it’s unlikely when it will work out”. It will work if you try.
After you’ve answered question # 1, it’s time to move on to question # 2: Why is this player doing what he is doing? Here it becomes more difficult: you will have to follow not only the lurker, but also his teammates, whom, most likely, he is trying to help. Well, what can you do, rarely do lurkers do what they do, just like that.
So, we figured it out. But finding really good players is quite difficult, and especially lurkers – and even more so. Of the generally recognized ones, there is GeT_RiGhT – so far the best lurker in the entire history of CS: GO and Counter-Strike in general. In general, any player has a lot to learn from him.
Besides him, there is also Spencer Martin from Team Liquid with the nickname “Hiko”. No, he is not Russian, even though the nickname seems to hint. Recently, he moved to support; You will find a lot of useful stuff on the recordings of the MLG Columbus Major. Hiko is more passive than GeT_RiGhT, but he knows how to kill. Especially towards the end of the round.
You can find both of them at hltv.org. Go to Events, then Past Events and find links to their huge archives. There you will definitely find something to your taste.
Well, my dears, study, study and study again! And then you will definitely achieve what you are striving for
