[hr] Part 2 [hr] The aim of this part is to introduce the advanced concepts that contribute towards great strafing based on what we can see in the provided in-game stats. [hr] The role of sync Sync is a very important component of a jumpstat on a basic level. A person who can only sync for 40% of their airtime is going to have a much harder time going as far as somebody who can sync for 80% of their time in the air unless the person with the higher sync has a much worse flight path. Although, sync is not a true indicator of how good a jump should be. I am known for having extremely high sync, and have even managed 100% on 9 strafes before. However, people who can not sync as well as I can are still able to go farther than me because they are stronger in other areas. Sync has a strong diminishing return due to one simple and often overlooked fact in CSGO, which is, the more speed you already have, the lower the rate of speed gain is. While this is not a problem experienced on early strafes, where you still have not started to approach the fastest movement you will attain during the jump, it matters on the last few strafes. On the last couple of strafes you perform, while they still drag the average sync down if they are out of sync, it has a lower overall impact both to speed gain and distance travelled. This occurrence in the CSGO Source Engine can be observed when comparing longjumps with no prestrafe versus longjumps using prestrafe. When the starting speed is 250 U/S, I have managed to get as much as 365 max speed. When the starting speed is 276 U/S, I have only managed around 383 max speed as my personal best. If you took 365 max speed and added the 26 units per second that the prestrafe contributes however, you would reach 391 max speed. 391 Max speed is an absolutely insane value of speed that only one player has ever surpassed. The level of consistency with which I can get 358 or higher max speed without prestrafe, which would be 384 max speed with prestrafe, shows pretty clearly that the less speed you have, the more you can gain.The reason for this is that I have spent almost no time ever practicing no prestrafe longjumps, and still gain higher comparatively when doing them. The reason that this quality of the CSGO version of the source engine leads to a diminishing return in sync is because of the factor that sync is actually related to, which is potential speed gain. Everybody has always known that more sync is better, but not many people realize precisely why this is the case. The higher sync you have, the more of the potential speed you will have already gained, which means that additional sync percentage will contribute much less to total max speed. It is for this reason that sync stops being important once you can do 85% consistently. I cover more on potential speed gain later. Not only is more than 85% sync significantly less beneficial, it is considerably more difficult to improve at. The reason is not necessarily that humans can not sync their left and right hand movements perfectly. You can, just not consistently The really difficult part comes in the last 5%. Almost everybody will achieve 95% sync within the first 6 months of seriously practicing in KZ. Most people will never hit 100% though. The reason for this is overlapping key presses. Most people are only focusing on alternating hitting their keys, but what the best results will come from is also focusing on releasing one strafe key almost entirely before depressing the other. This is part of the reason why it becomes so much more challenging to sync higher amounts of strafes. The more strafes you are doing, the more difficult it will be to not overlap key presses while still being fast enough to complete all of your strafes. Any time where keypresses overlap you have dead airtime, where it is not possible to be in sync because you can not move a mouse in two directions at once, and where your character can not gain speed, but will only maintain the speed they already are travelling at. [hr] Airtime Airtimes are a valuable tool in determining why certain jumps are not as good as others. First things first, what are good airtimes? Good airtimes are even airtimes. The actual number of airtime is not necessarily important. There is a point where airtimes are too low, and you could not have possibly gained enough speed on a given strafe no matter how much you moved your mouse. There is also a point where airtimes are too large, and too much airtime was dedicated moving away from the ideal flight path. Keep in mind, the ideal flight path is straight. Strafing is moving away from the ideal flight path. If I have to give a concrete figure as to what a good airtime per strafe is, I would say 10% to 12% depending on the number of strafes done. The problem with suggesting that airtimes should always be even causes is that it is not true when performing low amounts of strafes.. If you are not doing nine strafes or above, perfectly even airtimes will not work out for you. The reason is that the airtime on each strafe will without a doubt end up being too high, and you will spend too much time strafing away from a straight line of flight. In the case of doing less strafes, aim for the 10-12% range on each strafe and pile up a large amount of airtime on the last strafe, without doing much mouse movement before landing. You will sacrifice sync on the last strafe but you will gain distance because of it. The ratio of airtime to gain is a valuable tool also because we are able to see how much mouse movement a person is using and how ideal their movement is. As a general rule, gain should always be higher than airtime except on the last strafe. It is possible to strafe too wide or too fast with the mouse and increase how far away you go from the ideal flight path without actually gaining additional speed, however. Be aware of how wide you strafe. [hr] Gain and loss There is very little to say about gain as a stat. More gain is better in every case, and the more you can gain early in the jump, the better. What actually controls potential and actual gain will be discussed later, as it can not be represented purely as a stat. Loss is always a bad thing, however, not as bad as some people like to imagine. Loss is bad in the sense that the potential of the jump’s distance was not reached due to travelling at a lower speed. The earlier in the jump the loss is, the more damaging it is. This is the case due to the car analogy referenced earlier. A big mystery in KZ has always been the question, “What causes loss?” The answer to that question remains unresolved in a complete fashion. What is known for sure is that when two strafes overlap and the mouse is moved in the wrong direction while strafing direction is being changed, you will get loss. Simplified, a slow keyboard hand and a comparatively faster mouse hand results in loss. It is hard to determine what other factors contribute to loss. A jump that has loss will not be any different from a jump where all other variables are the same where the strafe prior to the one with loss simply never gained the lost speed. As long as a player understands gain and loss on a per strafe basis, it is not necessary to discuss max speed for a jump. More max speed always increases the potential for the jump to be far. [hr] Height Height is a reflection of at which point in the jump the player used the crouch key. The minimum possible on a normal jump is 55.8, and the maximum possible is 66.0. A player using the Plekz Height Trick will be able to achieve slightly higher than 66 height on a multi bunnyhop if they use the crouch bind for their final hop and hold duck through the entirety of the jump. 55.8 Height occurs when a player runs and jumps, regardless of whether or not they crouch. 56.9 Height occurs when a player ducks when they jump and then releases the duck key immediately, regardless of whether they duck again at the end of the jump or not. 65.9-66.0 height occurs when a player crouches as they jump and then continues to hold crouch throughout the jump. 64 Height occurs when a player does not jump at takeoff, but immediately ducks after jumping and continues to hold duck throughout the entirety of the jump. Every value of height between 55.8 and 66.0 is possible to attain by altering the timing at which you press duck in the jump, but only certain values of height are useful. A player who reaches 56.9 height by ducking before takeoff will actually get more time in the air. Above 56.9 height provides no benefit (except in the case of multi bunnyhops where a player uses the Plekz Height Trick). To achieve more height than that a player must hold the duck key while in the air, which is never a good decision. Holding duck in the air drastically lowers the rate at which you can gain speed. Therefore, it is never beneficial in regards to travelling distances on a horizontal plane to have above 56.9 height. Likewise, it is not beneficial to jumping higher on a vertical plane. A player with 56.9 height is jumping higher than a player with 55.8 height by using the mechanic of ducking before takeoff. However, a player with above 56.9 measured height is not going any higher than a player with only 56.9. The plugin simply interprets the character as having more height, however the distance between the character model’s feet and the ground are identical in any case. [hr] Proper time to release W Every player who starts in KZ is immediately made aware of the fact that W is rarely ever necessary to be held while in the air, and it is not possible to gain speed while strafing if you are holding W unless you are strafing sideways using W and S. However, many players have told me that they never learned when the proper time to let go of the W key was. Many players will say that it is best to release W at the same exact time you press your jump key, but I would disagree. While that technically should work, humans can not do that consistently enough. To get the most distance out of your jumps, I am of the opinion that you should focus on releasing W a fraction of a second before pressing the jump key. With practice, this will ensure that you get the most W release checkmarks possible. Unfortunately, the downside to this is that you will lose some of your jumps by releasing it too soon and not getting the full prestrafe. However, the amount of perfect 275+ prestrafe jumps you get with a W release checkmark will be overall higher.
