Credit: Steam Community Unlike Overwatch and Valorant, CS:GO matches don’t force you to pick an agent or hero with preset roles. In fact, we even talked about many differences and similarities between CS:GO and Valorant in a previous entry.
Instead of relying on their agent skills, CS:GO players slip into their roles by their own actions. You must adapt your gameplay to your team’s strategies and preferences so that you can have a useful function.
Support is one of those roles. It’s not that rigid, and anyone can fill it when needed. However, not many players know how to support their teammates effectively—or they just don’t want to because supports never get the credit they deserve.
That’s why we want to highlight this oft-overshadowed CS:GO role. Players that opt for support are like parents to all the careless team members that like to boast about how they get everything done despite you babysitting them the whole time.
What Does Support Do?
If you are looking for CS:GO sessions where you won’t need to think about ramming through choke points and narrow passages like entry fraggers yet still want to have a role that impacts your team, look no further.
CS:GO support players can control many critical map areas and player movements, making them the decisive factor in group encounters. In fact, you can’t have a proper competitive team without a proper support player. Some of the most successful teams wouldn’t be that popular—nor have such intense plays—or that many fans willing to bet on them if they didn’t have good supports.
Although these players don’t get the fan attention and appreciation they deserve, their effort is what actually keeps a team staying alive.
Behind every excellent execution is a great setup. Imagine entry fraggers entering a site without flashes, smokes, or HE grenades to back them up. They’d be DOA.
However, don’t think that support players don’t make any important plays. Although your role will be providing cover to your entry fragger most of the time, you’ll need to step your game after that happens.
In other words, support becomes the clean-up player that needs to step behind the entry fragger and make good trades by picking off all the enemies entry fraggers couldn’t. Put differently, support players are like mini IGLs (In-Game Leaders) or playmakers when site clashes occur. After your entry, fraggers storm the place and get ready to plant and hold the site.
That’s why, in many cases, support players carry the bomb and plant it, and that’s also why it is of utmost importance for you to stay alive and carry the strategy to the end.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you’ll only be playing support as a Terrorist. There are plenty of support utilities you can employ when being a CT. For instance, supports are great rotators and anchors when needed. If Terrorists manage to plant the bomb on a site, you’ll need to make sure their post-plant defense gets crippled with your flashes and HE grenades. Not to mention that support players can make enemy pushes less dangerous using mollies and other grenades.
Tips for Being a Better Support
As with other CS:GO roles, practice many hours to get better at your mechanics. However, with the role of support, your main task will be grenade tossing most of the time. That’s why you should know every nook and cranny of each map and how to toss a grenade to make the greatest impact.
There are many hallways that can get smoked or mollied effectively or walls over which you can throw a flash and HE grenades. In fact, sometimes, you won’t even need to be near a site to help your teammates with a toss, thanks to special shortcuts that can get your bombs across the map.
Another thing to keep in mind is that you should avoid early clashes and getting killed at the beginning. You must stay alive so you can save up money. In other words, you should farm enough money to help your entry fragger by buying them a rifle or your AWPer an AWP.
That’s why support players need to learn how to handle their rounds in eco mode. You’ll also need to buy as many grenades as possible, so be ready to learn how to handle your aim with guns to save up.
Of course, you’ll need to excel in communicating with your teammates, too. You won’t be able to do much if you don’t know the positions of your enemies and callouts your teammates make.
In that sense, the two main players you should keep your eyes on and listen for their directives are entry fraggers and IGLs.
Don’t let your entry fragger storm a site without you playing a little grenade symphony to enemies’ ears and eyes. If your entry fragger lives through the push, you’ll have fewer things to worry about onsite.
Finally, we have one more tip for you if you’re getting into the support role. Namely, you can use your utilities and bullets to confuse your enemy.
If your team wants to commit to a certain site, make sure you throw a grenade or make some noise on parts of the map closer to the other site just to cause confusion among enemy lines. That way, your opponents might do unnecessary rotations, or you can provide a much-needed lack of attention for your entry fragger to run onto the site more safely.
CS:GO Support: Conclusion
Playing support is a great way to help your team without needing to take many uncomfortable bullet exchanges.
Being a support player is the closest you can get to playmaking and IGL roles. In fact, consider a support role as your IGL training if you can’t get over the fact that others keep getting more attention.
Remember that there is no successful CS:GO team without at least one player doing the support role.
In the end, being a support doesn’t mean you won’t be able to slip into some other roles such as lurker, rotator, or anchor if needed. And once a round ends, you’ll enjoy many WPs coming from your teammates if you help them execute your team strategy the safest way possible.
