CS2 spray patterns explained: recoil, spread and RPM

What “spraying” means

A spray is simply holding the fire button so the weapon shoots at its full cyclic rate instead of tapping single shots. The first bullet leaves exactly where you aim (assuming you are standing still). Every bullet after it is displaced by the weapon’s accumulated recoil — and that displacement follows a scripted, per-weapon sequence.

One subtlety that surprises people: in CS2 your crosshair barely moves while the impacts climb. The pattern is applied to where bullets land, not to where you look. That is why you cannot “watch” your way through a spray — you have to know the shape and move your hand against it blind.

The pattern: recoil is deterministic

Each automatic weapon carries a fixed table: bullet 1 lands here, bullet 2 lands there, and so on to the end of the magazine. The AK-47’s table is the famous “7”: bullets 1–3 stay near your aim, bullets 4–9 climb hard (about 6° of vertical rise — roughly 1.3 metres on a wall 10 metres away), then the stream hooks left, swings back right around bullet 18, and wanders for the rest of the magazine. The M4A4 draws a mirrored, slightly gentler “7”; the SG 553 climbs even harder than the AK; SMGs climb less but zigzag more because they fire faster.

Deterministic means learnable: if you drag your crosshair along the exact mirror of the pattern while firing, every bullet lands back on your original aim point. That mirrored drag is what players call the pull, and building it into muscle memory is the whole game of spray control. You can see each gun’s real shape on the pattern training page — the little dot diagrams are the actual per-bullet tables, not artist impressions.

Recoil vs spread: the part you cannot control

Two separate mechanics displace your bullets, and only one of them is learnable:

• Recoil — the fixed pattern above. Same sequence every magazine, fully compensatable.
• Spread (inaccuracy) — a small random scatter added on top of every bullet. It grows when you move, jump, or fire long bursts, and shrinks when you stand still. No amount of skill removes it; you manage it by counter-strafing and by keeping bursts short at range.

This split explains a classic frustration: a perfectly pulled spray still misses occasionally at long range. That miss was spread, not your pull. It also explains why shooting while moving feels random — movement multiplies spread until the pattern drowns in noise, which is why counter-strafing comes before spray control in the skill order.

RPM: fire rate sets the rhythm

RPM (rounds per minute) is the weapon’s cyclic rate — how fast it fires while the trigger is held. Divide 60,000 by the RPM and you get the milliseconds between shots, which is the tempo your pull has to match:

• AK-47 / M4A1-S — 600 RPM (100 ms per shot): a deliberate, almost musical cadence. The AK pairs it with the hardest climb, which is why it is the reference gun for learning control.
• M4A4 / Galil / FAMAS / AUG / UMP-45 — 666 RPM (90 ms): slightly quicker, gentler patterns.
• SG 553 — 545 RPM (110 ms): the slowest rifle, but the steepest climb per bullet.
• SMGs — 750–857 RPM (70–80 ms): MP9, MAC-10, MP7 and P90 fire so fast that their smaller per-bullet kick still adds up quickly; the pull is shallower but must be smoother.

Faster RPM means less time per correction: at 857 RPM you have 70 ms between bullets. That is why SMG control feels like one continuous glide while AK control feels like a sequence of small moves.

The recoil index and the reset

The game tracks how deep into the pattern you are with a recoil index: fire five bullets and you are at index 5; the sixth bullet uses the sixth table entry. Release the trigger and the index does not vanish instantly — it decays over a few tenths of a second. Two consequences:

• Micro-bursts do not reset the pattern. Two quick 3-round bursts back-to-back continue climbing; your second burst needs pull from the start.
• A real pause does. Wait roughly half a second and the next bullet behaves like bullet 1 again — laser accurate. This is the mechanical basis of burst discipline at range: short burst, reset, re-aim, short burst.

First-shot accuracy is the other half of this coin: standing still, index at zero, bullet 1 goes essentially where the crosshair points (rifles have a tiny base inaccuracy — noticeable across the map, irrelevant up close). Everything about tap-firing flows from that fact.

Glossary, in one place

• Spray — continuous automatic fire while holding the trigger.
• Spray pattern — the fixed per-bullet path impacts follow relative to your aim; unique per weapon.
• Recoil — the deterministic displacement (the pattern). Spread — the random scatter on top of it.
• Pull / compensation — dragging the mouse along the mirrored pattern so impacts stay on target.
• RPM — rounds per minute; 60,000 / RPM = ms between shots.
• Recoil index — how deep into the pattern the weapon currently is. Recoil reset — the pause (~0.4–0.5 s) after which the index returns to zero.
• Spray transfer — moving a live spray from one target to another while keeping the pull going.