GuidesOct 27, 20265 min readCS2Sell

CS2 spray patterns: how the AK-47, M4A4 and M4A1-S recoil works

CS2 spray patterns explained: why recoil repeats, the AK spray pattern and M4A4 spray pattern described in words, and the offline commands to practise them.

CS2 spray patterns are the fixed paths your bullets take when you hold down fire with an automatic gun. Because the recoil follows the same path every time, you can learn it and drag your mouse the opposite way. This guide explains how recoil and spread work in Counter-Strike 2, describes the AK-47, M4A4 and M4A1-S patterns in words, and shows how to practise them offline.

Recoil, spread and inaccuracy

Two separate things push your bullets away from the crosshair. Recoil comes from a table of values stored for each gun. Every shot in a spray moves one step down that table, so your third bullet always kicks the same way as the last time you fired a third bullet. The first shot isn't affected by recoil at all and lands near the crosshair. When you stop firing, the table winds back to the start after a short moment, faster on some guns than on others.

Spread, also called inaccuracy, is random and is added on top of the recoil. The Counter-Strike Wiki notes that crouching doesn't reduce recoil and moving doesn't increase it, but movement does widen the spread. Compensating with your mouse cancels the recoil, never the random part, which is why players stop moving before they shoot.

That is also why short bursts work. A pause between bursts lets the recoil reset, so each burst starts again with the accurate first shots. Valve's own in-game description of the AK-47 says it is "most deadly in short, controlled bursts of fire."

Did CS2 change the spray patterns?

Only slightly. In an interview with PC Gamer published on 27 October 2023, Valve explained that tick rate had affected spray patterns in CS:GO, so sprays on 64-tick and 128-tick servers differed. CS2's sub-tick system let Valve pick one standard. Sprays look slightly smaller than on 64-tick CS:GO, because "128 tickrate CS:GO sprays are roughly the size you currently see in CS2." The sub-tick explainer covers the wider debate.

Later changes touched how a spray looks on screen rather than where the bullets go. On May 21, 2025, Valve made the view-angle movement from recoil render per frame instead of per tick, and Dust2.in noted that the guns kept their recoil patterns; what changed was how spraying feels. On April 21, 2026, camera motion due to recoil was adjusted "to match CS:GO more closely", while bullet trajectories "should continue to match CS2". The Cache return article puts that update in context.

The AK spray pattern in CS2

The AK-47 fires 600 rounds a minute from a 30-round magazine, according to the game's weapon file. It is the Terrorists' main rifle partly because one headshot kills through a helmet, which neither M4 can do. Prices and damage for every gun are in the weapon stats guide.

The pattern has two parts. The first eight or so bullets climb almost straight up, leaning slightly to the left as they rise. Then the climb stops and the spray moves sideways: it swings right and stays there for several bullets, comes back across to the left, and near the end of the magazine turns right again.

To control it, you move your mouse the opposite way. A trainer built on community-measured CS2 data gives these ranges:

Bullets	What the spray does	Pull your mouse
1	Lands near the crosshair	Nothing
2–8	Climbs	Down
9–15	Swings right	Left
16–26	Swings back left	Right
27–30	Swings right	Left

Learn the climb first. The sideways part only matters if you keep firing past the first ten or so bullets, and the same trainer puts the AK's total climb at about 11.7 degrees, the largest of the three rifles.

Three AK-47 finishes: Vulcan, Bloodsport and Neon Rider

M4A4 spray pattern

The M4A4 holds 30 rounds and fires slightly faster than the AK-47. Its cycle time of 0.09 seconds per shot works out to about 666 rounds a minute. Valve describes it as "more accurate but less damaging than its AK-47 counterpart", and its climb is smaller too: about 9.7 degrees in the same measurements.

The shape is close to the AK's. PC Gamer described the M4A4 pattern as going straight up, then to the left, back to the right and then left again. Reversed, that gives you the pull: down, with a small correction to the right as the climb tops out, then a drag to the left while the spray swings right, and back to the right for the last stretch of the magazine.

The M4A1-S

The M4A1-S fires 600 rounds a minute, like the AK-47, but holds only 20 rounds. Valve's description says the silencer gives "quieter shots with less recoil and better accuracy", and the measured climb, about 6.3 degrees, is a little over half the AK's. PC Gamer called its pattern basically the M4A4's, only a bit slower and ending after 20 bullets, so the same pull works on a smaller scale.

Keep the silencer on. The Counter-Strike Wiki notes that removing it increases both recoil and spread, and that the silenced rifle fires no tracers, so enemies have a harder time seeing where the shots come from.

Two finishes each for the M4A4 and the M4A1-S, the Counter-Terrorist rifles

How to practise spray control

A private match on your own offline server is the easiest place to start. Open the console and enter sv_cheats 1, then sv_infinite_ammo 1, which keeps your active weapon from ever running out of ammo; it is cheat-protected, so it needs the first command. Two more server settings help. sv_showimpacts 1 marks where your bullets hit, red for the client and blue for the server, and weapon_accuracy_nospread 1 turns off the random spread so the wall shows the pure recoil pattern. Spray at a wall from a fixed distance and compare the marks with the table above.

The Follow Recoil crosshair setting, console variable cl_crosshair_recoil, makes the crosshair follow the weapon's predicted recoil while you spray. Since September 22, 2026, crosshair options sit in the Crosshair/Scopes tab of the settings menu. In practice, the goal with it on is to keep the moving crosshair on the target.

The Steam Workshop map Recoil Master - Spray Training (CS2) takes the opposite approach. It draws a ghost crosshair on the wall that you follow while spraying, covers the AK-47, M4A4, M4A1-S and most other automatic guns, and has buttons for infinite ammo and no spread.

Patterns are measured in degrees, so the distance your hand moves depends on your sensitivity and mouse DPI. Change either and the movement has to be relearned, even though the pattern itself stays the same. Once the pull feels automatic at a wall, try it against moving targets in Deathmatch, one of the modes covered in the game modes guide.