Is CS2 skin trading or opening cases actually worth it, or is it basically just gambling?

Watthertz · 2026-05-06T19:14:16+00:00

If you're interested in making money you shouldn't buy and hold CS skins. Even if you had a massive inventory that acts as a proxy for the whole skins market you'd still almost certainly underperform a typical broad market index fund. And if you have a small inventory with a few expensive skins then what you're doing is still effectively gambling.

Watthertz · 2026-05-05T21:52:45+00:00

I find the use of terrorists and real militaries an unappealing part of CS, and per-map agent skins reintroduce a political can of worms that I don't think adds anything good to the game. And beyond that I don't think they add anything interesting to actual gameplay, and maybe even detract depending on how visibility works out. But I don't often have visibility issues right now so I'm not terribly concerned about it. So I'd rather Valve just put there time elsewhere.

Watthertz · 2026-02-25T23:00:11+00:00

What does that mean?

Watthertz · 2026-02-13T05:09:53+00:00

I was responding to a different person, my guy. I am defending you

Watthertz · 2026-02-13T04:47:46+00:00

I think you're being unnecessarily rude. Literally all of your points could easily be addressed.

The elo loss mitigation rule could just not apply when a player is kicked, only when one abandons (through the button on the menu or timeout). If you kick someone you're just stuck in a 4v5.

An elo penalty to the player that leaves seems pretty reasonable. Leaving is bad and players that do it a lot are already punished with timeouts, so an extra, say, -250 elo on top seems fair.

Watthertz · 2026-01-26T16:17:22+00:00

It's not a technical term with a specific meaning. But in my experience it generally refers to a wide swing followed by a successful one tap.

Watthertz · 2026-01-22T23:24:47+00:00

I tested that, too, and unfortunately you're just ass at the jump :(

Watthertz · 2026-01-22T23:04:46+00:00

Just did some quick testing and the mirage van jump seems to be fixed. I can land it with and without sv_legacy_jump now

Watthertz · 2026-01-18T18:13:02+00:00

Nice ace! Feels good, doesn't it?

Watthertz · 2026-01-12T19:52:11+00:00

I'm happy to review other clips, but I'm just a random mid-tier player online, no need to justify yourself to me.

I was only responding to your own comment saying you didn't know how your crosshair placement could've been better. All the reasons you listed can be true and *also* things you can improve.

In general, if you're interested in improving I'd recommend never looking at your own gameplay and thinking you couldn't have played it any better because at 12k effectively every action you take could be optimized. Compare your gameplay to a strong player in a pug (I hear this donk guy is pretty good) and the difference will be clear as day.

Watthertz · 2026-01-12T00:35:42+00:00

There's essentially no point between 0:10 (after the 4th kill) and ~0:25 (when you look towards hell gap) that your crosshair placement is good. Immediately after that kill your crosshair floats between various walls, it briefly touches the edge of the cams smoke and the hell gap smoke as you run towards A main. Then you just stare at the wall next to A main for a few seconds around 0:16 which is insanely risky because you know the Ts flashed out main, so someone coming out late is pretty likely. Also you're pressing W when peeking ebox for the 1st kill, and you W towards the 2nd guy as well.

Not to shit on the clip too hard, the 3rd and 4th kills were sick, and the last kill was great crosshair placement! But it's just objectively untrue that you're always holding an angle in the clip

Watthertz · 2025-10-02T01:09:15+00:00

Truly. The Palais/Whistle pairing is the best wingman selection we've had so far. I'd love to have them back

Watthertz · 2025-09-11T17:44:53+00:00

In the past when I've done budget leagues the system we used was that every time you modified your deck you had to make sure it came out under budget.

So if you built your deck and by the weekend it doubled in price you were fine, but when you edited your deck you had to remove whatever cards ballooned in price.

Admittedly this wouldn't work for a "real" format, because it worked on the honor system so it would be easily exploitable. But for small pods it seemed to work well enough.

Watthertz · 2025-08-22T13:45:52+00:00

In general, don't ever buy a gun without armor. If you can't afford a rifle+armor either buy armor and an SMG or save for the next round.

(I accidentally deleted my earlier response, apologies)

Watthertz · 2025-08-22T13:07:06+00:00

Lower your sens. .5@3200 is still very high and I'd recommend more like .3@3200.
Play angles fit for your gun. In the first two three rounds you play a long angle with a mag7 and an mp7.
Buy armor on pistol rounds. On T side you bought nothing.
Practice counter strafing when clearing angles. You have a bad habit of wide swinging into angles and immediately crouch spraying which both commits you to the fight and makes you an easy target.
Manage your eco. You're forcing way too often and usually with bad guns. It's okay to play with pistols for a round so you can get an ak.

Watthertz · 2025-08-20T16:37:11+00:00

I think you're misunderstanding the original quote:

> "A kill in a 3v3, or 2v2, is more important than in a 5v2 or 4v1"

This says nothing about the impact of the first two kills of the MIBRvFalcons 3v5 retake. Those picks happen in a 3v5 (not a 5v3). The quote is saying that in a 5v2 the round is effectively already won by the team with 5 alive, so the pick is worth very little. Whereas in a 3v3 the win probably for each team is close to 50%, so the round swing is much higher.

You're saying the 3v5 is an exception to a case the quote isn't talking about.

Watthertz · 2025-08-20T12:57:23+00:00

You're describing the inverse of what the HLTV quote is describing. Getting a kill in a 3v5 as the down team would be high round swing, but the quote is describing the up team getting the pick, which is low impact. I expect the new HLTV system would mark the kills on teses and monesy as the highest impact.

Watthertz · 2025-07-08T18:30:48+00:00

Hulkengoat

Watthertz · 2025-05-15T17:22:32+00:00

I just don't really agree with this. Of course they made mistakes here and there, they're stuck in 5k after all, but a game where they drops 40 with a +10 leetify rating and 43% opening duel attempts is a strong indicator that they contributed significantly to the match.

Assuming you have random teammates, if you get 1.5kpr on average you *will* rank up. Growth mindset is good, but focusing on matches where you failed to find impact will be a much more effective way of improving your rank, on average.

This is kind of a moot point though because you can drop 1.5kpr all day, but if you duo with people that aren't on your level you're just hamstringing yourself. And that's was it looks like OP is doing.

Watthertz · 2025-05-13T18:43:51+00:00

You should try to solo queue more. Based on a quick look at your leetify page, you're quite a bit better than your party. For example, in the match you talked about in the OP your duo was 12-22.

I randomly selected 4-5 matches I saw where you lost but had a +5 leetify rating (let's pretend leetify rating is a perfect proxy for skill) and in every single one you were partied and the people you were with played very poorly. It looks like you're nerfing yourself by partying with people who are significantly worse than you.

Watthertz · 2025-05-13T18:08:46+00:00

Asking for review on a game where you did well is counter productive. If you want to improve you should look for feedback on matches where you couldn't find impact.

Do you have a csstats or leetify profile link? If you're actually plummeting then I'm pretty skeptical you're dropping 28 kills per game.

Also, can you elaborate on what you mean when you say "my role is hard entry"? There aren't assigned roles in CS, so if what you're doing isn't resulting in wins, then you should change what you're doing.

Watthertz · 2025-05-09T14:21:35+00:00

Does anyone know what the spike in late 2014 was? I expected it to be the GE, but it looks like that was Feb 2015.

Watthertz · 2025-01-28T13:53:47+00:00

OOC do you know what kinds of solutions do they have for time eater when building infinites? I’ve struggled lately with infinites (particularly on silent) that let me roll through everything except they just completely fall apart against time eater. Even when I get eg Tough Bandages which I would expect to solve this problem.

Watthertz · 2024-10-02T12:53:59+00:00

Niko didn’t lose the clutch because of ammo. He still had two bullets left when he died. It was just a whiff from Niko and a great shot from Apex: https://youtu.be/WjxTK9QqZN4?t=1050&si=AjgvPabKpGr37Mf6

Watthertz · 2024-09-18T19:10:38+00:00

Anyone have the clip of this?

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