CS2 Spray Control Guide (2026): AK-47, M4A4 and M4A1-S Patterns

Spraying in Counter-Strike 2 is the part of aim you can learn like a piece of music. Every automatic rifle throws its bullets in the same shape every time you hold the trigger, so the pull-down that saves you in a 1v2 is something you can rehearse until your hand does it on its own. What makes it hard is everything around the pattern: the random spread on top of it, the distance, a target that moves, and the 2026 changes that made the camera kick differently and made a wasted magazine cost more. This guide takes the three rifles you'll buy most — the AK-47, M4A4 and M4A1-S — phase by phase, tells you when to tap, burst or spray, and ends with a practice plan. Checked 8 November 2026: Valve's notes up to 5 November 2026 changed nothing about recoil since April.

How recoil works in CS2

Two things move your bullets when you hold the trigger. Recoil is the fixed pattern: bullet 7 of an AK spray always wants to go to the same place relative to bullet 1. Spread (or inaccuracy) is a random cone around that point, which grows when you move, jump or keep firing. Refrag's breakdown of CS2 recoil puts it plainly: weapon recoil "always follows a static pattern with an added element of spread, or randomness". That's why a perfect pull-down still leaves a cluster rather than a single hole — and why your patterns look bigger and messier on a wall twenty metres away than five.

Valve's own weapon file shows how much the game cares about standing still. For the M4A4, the only one of the three rifles in the part of weapons.vdata the community mirror can display, the moving inaccuracy is about 28 times the standing value. No pull-down fixes that — the counter-strafing guide covers how to stop before you shoot.

• AK-47600 rounds a minute · one bullet every 100 ms · 36 damage · 30 + 90 rounds · one-tap headshot (CSDB)
• M4A4667 rounds a minute · one bullet every 90 ms · 33 damage · 30 + 120 rounds · vdata: 0.09 s per shot
• M4A1-S600 rounds a minute · one bullet every 100 ms · 38 damage · 20 + 60 rounds · better first shot than the M4A4 (CSDB)

Magazines and reserves: Valve's numbers (our weapon prices guide). Fire rate and damage of the AK-47 and M4A1-S: CSDB's spray trainer (community).

Two display settings are worth knowing. The default crosshair since 22 September 2026, Dynamic Quad, "better reflects weapon accuracy", and Valve corrected how crosshairs show inaccuracy and spread on 30 September. Follow Recoil (cl_crosshair_recoil) makes the crosshair chase the spray, so you can watch the pattern happen. Both change what you see, not where the bullets go — the crosshair guide has every setting.

That April change is the one people mix up. The screen now kicks more like it did in CS:GO, which makes sprays feel calmer, and you also see the full camera motion when you get shot regardless of your ping. The bullets themselves still follow CS2's patterns, so what you learned in Recoil Master before April still applies.

The AK-47 pattern, phase by phase

The AK-47 is the rifle every Terrorist buys and the one with the most violent pattern. CSDB, whose pattern pages are generated from the game files, describes it as climbing "almost straight up for roughly the first 9-10 bullets", then drifting left and swinging back to the right. Read it as four phases:

The climb is where you win or lose. If your first ten bullets stay on the chest and head, most opponents are dead before the sideways part starts. Two habits make it consistent. Start pulling at the second bullet, not the first — bullet one goes where the crosshair is. And pull harder than feels natural early on: the AK's first rise is larger than most weapons', as Refrag notes.

Text guides disagree about which way the first sideways drift goes; Metabot's describes a kick right and then a sweep left. That's partly because some describe the wall and some describe the mouse. Our drawing follows CSDB. Don't take anyone's word for it: spray 30 bullets at a wall with sv_showimpacts 1 on a practice server and look. CSDB's spray trainer suggests resetting an AK spray after about 15 bullets anyway, and in a real fight we'd stop well before the tail.

M4A4 vs M4A1-S: two different jobs

Counter-Terrorists choose between two rifles at the same price, and the choice changes how you spray. Here's how they compare on the numbers we can source and the pattern descriptions:

The M4A1-S is the easier spray: CSDB calls its pattern "very vertical with minimal horizontal deviation", so a single steady pull-down does most of the work. The catch is the magazine. Twenty rounds go quickly, and since the March 2026 reload change you can't top it up without throwing the remainder away. The M4A4 gives you thirty bullets at a faster rate, which is why it's the rifle for spraying into a smoke or fighting two players at once; the price is a pattern with real sideways movement after the climb. Both cost $2,900 of in-game money, so pick by role, not budget.

Tap, burst or spray: pick by distance

A full spray is the least accurate way to fire a rifle; it's just the fastest. The further the target, the more the random spread on top of the pattern matters, and the more each bullet needs the gun to settle first. This ladder is BoostPirate's rule of thumb for rifles, not a Valve number — adjust it to your own aim:

Metabot's 2026 spray guide lands in the same place from the other side: bursts of about 8–10 rounds, with the first 10–15 rounds mattering most in real fights. Whatever the distance, the first bullet is the most accurate one you'll fire, so make sure it's on the head before you press — the crosshair placement guide is about exactly that.

Resetting recoil between bursts

Recoil doesn't vanish the moment you let go of the trigger; the gun needs a short pause to return to its first-shot state. Metabot puts that pause at about ~0.3 s of idle time before the pattern restarts. Valve's weapon file is more precise for the weapons it shows, and it reveals something useful: the recovery time grows the longer you fire.

In practice: after a three-bullet burst with an M4A4, wait about a third of a second; after a longer one, closer to half a second. Count it in your head ("one-and") until it's automatic. Tapping faster than the gun recovers is the most common reason a "tap" turns into a mini spray that misses.

The 2026 reload rule: why wasted sprays cost more

Valve's "Guns, Guides, and Games" update on 18 March 2026 changed reloading: reloading drops the used magazine and discards the ammo left in it; a full magazine comes from the reserves. And most weapons got three spare magazines — some fewer, to reward precision, some more, for spamming through walls and smokes. Since 22 September 2026 you can also hold the reload key for a slower, silent reload, and since 28 October you can set that to Hold or Toggle. For spray control this has three consequences:

• A half-empty magazine is still worth keeping. Reloading after a 12-bullet spray throws 18 AK rounds away.
• Long sprays now cost you the next fight, not just this one. Spraying the tail of the pattern to finish a target is often worse than switching to a pistol.
• The M4A1-S suffers most: 20 rounds and three spare magazines. Bursts make every magazine last longer.

Spray transfers and moving targets

Real fights rarely give you a still target for thirty bullets. Two skills sit on top of the pattern:

A practice plan that sticks

Spray control is memory, and memory likes short daily repetition. Metabot's guide suggests a clean wall spray in one to two weeks, pressure control in about a month with 15–20 minutes a day. Our plan is shorter and fits before your first match:

1. Wall sprays 3 min

   On a practice server with sv_showimpacts 1 and sv_infinite_ammo on (the practice config has both), spray 30 bullets at a wall from close range. Compare the cluster to the shape. Then do the same at medium range.

2. Recoil Master 4 min

   The free Recoil Master Workshop map (4.4 million subscribers on 25 October 2026) draws the pattern for every rifle and SMG. Trace the AK, then your CT rifle, ten bullets at a time.

3. Bursts on bots 3 min

   Place bots at three distances (bot_place, bot_stop 1) and kill each with the burst length from the ladder above. Reset fully between bursts.

4. Deathmatch 5 min

   Only the first ten bullets of any spray. If the enemy isn't dead by then, stop, strafe and re-burst.

Measure progress weekly, not daily. Leetify's Spray Accuracy stat counts how many of your bullets hit an enemy in rifle sprays of three or more shots, which is a fair real-match check once you've played a few games. The longer aim guide puts this inside a full 20-minute routine.

Common spray mistakes