How can you immediately tell if a player is a noob or not? Easy--if he stands still taking bullets to his chest willingly, without moving or trying to dodge them. When I first played Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, I had no idea how much my life could be extended by simply moving left and right as someone was firing at me. Who would of knew the simple act of pressing the “A” and “D” keys could be so beneficial to one’s life? After all, in real life, who can dodge bullets anyway? So, why bother moving when it hurts your aim? Well, this isn’t real life; this is FPS. In ET, by simply strafing, you can dodge enemy fire, and dramatically improve your kill-death ratio. Today, we’re going to go over the basics of strafing.

Sidestepping 

The most common and effective way of strafing is to side step or move left and right as the enemy is firing at you. How far left or how far right is really up to you. When you’re starting out, I recommend making large movements left and large movements right. The reason for this is that as you change directions left and right, your aim becomes worse. A new player will probably not have great aim to start with so changing directions too often will make it impossible to aim. Also, as you move, make sure you are sprinting too. This will make it even harder from them to hit you.

As you gain more experience, your movements left and right will vary and shorten naturally. It will become more of a wiggle and less of a true strafe. Once you reach the level of an expert player, you won’t blindly move left and right but rather you move according to the enemy’s fire. If he’s hitting you as you move left, turn right. And of course, the opposite is true if you’re moving right. You will learn that if it’s not necessary to strafe, then don’t, because your aim will be affected.

Once you get comfortable strafing, add in a few jumps here and there to your defensive repertoire. Jumping is a very effective way to dodge fire from an enemy who has great aim. Usually these players will hit you consistently whether you move left or right. By jumping, you can break his rhythm. Of course, when you jump, try to jump left or jump right, not toward or away from the enemy, as the latter two does not cause a change in direction.

Charge strafing 

For most players, strafing is a simply defensive strategy. They do it to avoid fire. However, an advanced player can also use strafing as an offensive strategy as well. How can strafing be offensive? By charging towards the opponent!

Say what? Charge the opponent? Are you crazy, Greedy?

On the surface it may seem counter intuitive to run towards an enemy who’s firing at you, making yourself an even bigger target for him to shoot at. Yes, it’s risky, but charge strafing can catch the enemy off guard. Most ET players tend to have their mouse sensitivity set to low. They will have a hard time adjusting as you move closer because that means he needs to move his mouse more to catch you. When you charge-strafe him, try to flank him on the left or right. If his mouse sensitivity is super low, you can catch him behind the back and kill him before he gets a chance to turn around. Usually though, he will back pedal to match you with his crosshairs because his mouse is not fast enough to catch up with you. When you have him back pedaling, you know you have the advantage because he’s scared. Strafe wildly as you put bullets into his head. Most of the time, he won’t get many hits on you. Of course, charge strafing only works if you are close to the enemy. If you are far away and try to move towards the enemy, he will kill you before you even get a chance to sniff his shoes.

Nowadays, I use charge strafing most of the time, rather than simply sidestepping. Yes, I get a lot of quick deaths as a result of it, but I also get a lot of quick kills too. Charge strafing to me is a psychological weapon. Recall Ali-Frazier to see what a psychological edge can give you. I don’t want to just kill my enemy, I want him to fear me too. By charging at him, he’s probably thinking I’m crazy, that I have no fear. And if I can get a couple of quick kills on him, he probably thinks I’m invincible too. I want him to feel frustrated when he fights me. The psychological and fear factor goes a long way in setting up for my next kill or match. This might be one of the reasons why I get banned and voted off a lot. I don’t just frag them, I intimidate them.

Strafing is one of the most important and basic aspect of FPS game play. You can immensely improve both your defensive game and offensive game by effectively avoiding enemy fire. Anyone that wants to graduate from noob status must learn to effectively strafe.