The top of CS:GO’s subreddit was recently dominated by a post stating that the deagle
needs a change. In it, Woody says that the deagle is meant
to be a weapon that rewards skill and accuracy by delivering precise, one-tap headshots.
The sort of weapon that can even challenge rifles at range if used by a skilled player.
He argues this doesn’t happen because it’s too inaccurate, and because its base damage
is so high that it encourages players to opt for easier 2-hit kill body shots instead.
In my opinion it sounds like Woody wants the weapon to return to how people perceived it
back in the days of CS 1.6, when just a handful of weapons in the game were viable options,
the deagle being one of them. In that game, it was the only pistol to be capable of one-hit
killing an armoured player, on full health. In CS:GO, there are other weapons capable
of that same accomplishment, so perhaps that’s why the deagle’s no longer perceived as
being THE dominant, over-powered hand-cannon that it used to be.
If you ask me, I think it’s dangerous to see older games as being what CS:GO should
aspire to imitate. Compared with like, ANY OTHER GAME IN EXISTENCE, CS:GO’s weapons
have been far more rigorously balanced to ensure that they all serve some sort of purpose.
The deagle is a victim of this, being demoted from budget sniper rifle to becoming… well,
what it is today.
Let’s investigate what it is today, shall we. Woody’s post brought about a series
of clips of the deagle missing shots that it apparently should have hit, so it seems
like the primary issue people have with this gun is its accuracy.
I’m going to go through a few of the posted examples of the deagle missing to try and
explain what’s happened. Before I do this, remember: you shouldn’t see posted clips
as being representative of what’s normal. People don’t post normal stuff because it’s
boring. It’s why you see so many people ‘getting lucky’ with gambling- it’s
cos everybody else who isn’t so lucky isn’t so keen to post it.
Right now it’s all the rage to post clips of the deagle missing shots, and it’s that
stuff that’ll get upvoted. Extend the search back a week and you can see examples of the
opposite. It’s just how media online works. Right, so let’s begin.
This post claims that the deagle is the most accurate gun in the game. I guess this is
said to make shots seem unjust when they miss- because the gun has never claimed to be the
most accurate at range- not by a long shot! Slothsquadron’s and Blackretina’s weapon
spreadsheet states each weapon’s accurate range. Without going into specifics, this
is the range at which the gun is guaranteed to hit a circular target that’s about the
size of a dinnerplate. That’s about one foot across… or just over 30 cm.
With an accurate range of 24.6 metres, when stood, the deagle is the most accurate pistol
in the game, just beating out the USP-S. Tougher competition comes about if we extend the list
to every weapon in the game, though. It handily beats all SMGs and shotguns, but still falls
behind the bulk of the rifles. The deagle’s 24.6 metres is still more accurate than the
AK’s 22 metres, but a bit behind the M4’s 28 metres. It’s not bad.
And this is just when stood. If you crouch, the deagle’s accurate range extends to 36
metres! This now puts it ahead of all rifles, bar the scoped AUG and SG, and the first shot
of a Famas burst fire. So yes, I think the deagle does live up to its reputation of being
‘surprisingly accurate’, as it’s claimed to be in the weapon’s description, seen
here in another recent post on CS:GO’s subreddit. Nice sticker.
It’s just, to get the most out of the deagle you need to understand how to use it. You
need to crouch, and even then you need to know that a ‘surprisingly accurate’ weapon
doesn’t guarantee a hit 100% of the time. Here’s another post that’s gained traction
recently. A shot, clearly on the head, misses for some reason. I attempted to replicate
this. Using the console command ‘cl_weapon_debug_print_accuracy 1’, I was able to see the ‘accurate range’
of the weapon, as well as how far away the target was.
In this example, the person happens to be about 36 metres away from me- quite a lot
further away than the deagle’s standing accuracy value of 24 metres, so it’s not
fully unexpected for the shot to miss. HOWEVER, if I crouch, this extends the accurate range
all the way up to 36 metres. This example nicely represents the deagle’s maximum accurate
range, if crouched… which the player in this clip wasn’t doing.
Had he crouched, his chances of hitting the target would have been greatly improved. Though
still not 100%, since I believe a head is still a bit smaller than a 30 cm-diameter
dinnerplate. So maybe he should have aimed for a bigger target, like the body.
Which brings us onto the second criticism that Woody had with the gun- he says the base
damage is too high, which encourages people to spam body shots instead of going for crisp
clean headshots. It’s true, the gun does have a high base damage. And a high armour
penetration value, too. Nerfing either of these things would reduce the body-damage
dealt… but it would also reduce the headshot damage.
Not a problem by itself, but the deagle sports an insanely high damage drop-off of 19%, every
500 units. That’s worse than some SMGs! It means that, even with an impressively high
base damage and armour penetration, the deagle can still only one-hit headshot opponents
up to a range of 2000 units, before the damage inflicted drops below 100. This means you’ll
never get a dank one-hit headshot against opponents leaping across mid doors on Dust2.
Not without them being tagged first. And this clip is clearly fake.
So in terms of proposed changes, here’s the simplest I can think of. Just to show
you how it works. This new combination of values means that a headshot will always deal
104 damage, no matter if the enemy is wearing armour, and regardless of how far away they
are. And chest shots will always take 4 hits to kill. This is because a headshot in CS:GO
will always inflict 4x more than a chest shot does. If you think it taking 4 chest shots
to kill is too harsh then I could up the base damage to something like this, so it will
only take 3 hits to kill to the body. Now I don’t recommend they make these changes
to the deagle because it will come with problems of its own. Like, who wants to be killed by
3 body-shots from a deagle from right across the map? I guess you could drop the accuracy
to make this unlikely… but then the main complaint with the deagle is that it’s not
accurate enough already. Or maybe you could slow the fire and recovery
rate right down to punish people for missing their first shot. At that point it might as
well be a sniper rifle, since it wouldn’t behave like a pistol any more.
Honestly, for what people want from the deagle, you’d be better off making an entirely NEW
weapon to fulfil these criteria. …But Valve did make a new weapon, didn’t
they. They made the revolver, which players can opt for instead of a deagle, but don’t
because it’s a bit rubbish, because it takes a while to fire after you’ve pressed the
button, which works against literally everything we’ve ever learned in FPS games. Its base
stats are quite good: compared with the deagle, the revolver is less accurate when standing,
MORE accurate when crouched or moving, it deals more base damage AND that damage drops
off less at range. But this doesn’t help much in a game where you’re dead before
this gun’s ready to fire. Perhaps move the long delay to AFTER the shot is fired, re-jig
the stats a bit and the revolver could become the weapon people are looking for. But it
isn’t it in its current state.
I spoke with Slothsquadron about the deagle, and asked what he’d do. He’s already answered
this with his Weapon Balance mod for the game. He shared with me the deagle’s stats in
the upcoming version, which drops the damage dealt a bit, actually drops the armour penetration
as well, and greatly reduces the damage fall-off. For headshots it’s kind of similar to the
direction I was proposing earlier, but more delicately balanced for everything else as
well! Note how all these changes he’s proposing
are to the damage the deagle deals, and not to how accurate it is. And in most cases,
his changes will REDUCE the damage the weapon inflicts, in all but the most long-range of
shots. Do you think the deagle’s damage or accuracy should be changed? If so, what
to?
So there are definitely changes you can make to the deagle to change how it behaves. But
it won’t make it the gun that everybody wants it to be. Because guess what: it never
was. ESEA compared the deagle’s accuracy in CS:GO
and CS 1.6, and wasn’t even close; the deagle in CS:GO is far, far more accurate than it
ever was back in 1.6. All those amazing frags you’ve seen pros performing with it are
just as much luck as they are anything else! There was one difference back then- and that
was the second shot fired was often just as precise as the first. But then, surely that
would encourage body-shots? The very problem the gun has in CS:GO right now?!
The only time the gun has been the overpowered sniper that people wanted it to be was with
Counter-Strike Source. In that game, it had better accuracy, the hitboxes were bigger,
and you didn’t have to buy expensive ammunition for it. This combination made it utterly incredible
in Source. It just happens to be a version of Counter-Strike that people never particularly
liked that much. As far as competitive Counter-Striking goes,
RNG has always had a part to play with the deagle, and those wanting less of the random
element should be praising the gun in the state it’s in right now in CS:GO, in 2020.
What do YOU think should be done about it? Do you think it needs changing, or do you
think it’s already what it needs to be?