Free Fire Battle Royale Game Guide, Crouch Spray Vs Standing Spray
In this game guide, you will be learning about a highly debated topic in Free Fire. That topic is about spraying. We’re going to differentiate the two sprays, and determine the big question in people’s minds: Should I be crouching when spraying? Is there a time and place for crouching, or should I straight up just avoid it? With standing sprays, when you see an enemy, you want to let go of all movement keys and focus on shooting. With crouch spraying, what some players will do, is when an enemy is in sight, you stop any movements and immediately press crouch prior to spraying your weapon.
Crouch Spraying
With that being said, lets talk about the pros of crouch spraying in Free Fire. The primary reason that players crouch before spraying is that it increases the accuracy of your bullets. This can be a big advantage, particularly at long ranges where enemies are more difficult to hit. Along with that, when crouching you decrease the vertical height of your player model, thus making yourself a smaller and therefore harder target for enemies to hit. While those are the two primary advantages of crouch spraying, they can also be seen as disadvantages as well.
First, when crouch spraying the location of your crosshair is going to change, which can affect your aim. So if you had your crosshair placed at head level on an enemy and then crouch, your crosshair ends up lower and you hit the body rather than the head. This results in you taking longer to eliminate your enemy and potentially causing you to lose a fight or take significant damage.
Second, the biggest disadvantage of crouch spraying is that it significantly limits your mobility in Free Fire. If you decide to crouch during a fight, you’re fully committed. Since the time it takes for you to uncrouch and then move is long enough that the fight is probably going to be over before you can get out of your original position. You’re essentially stuck in one place and if you whiff your initial spray, you’re going to have to continue firing where you are, while the enemy potentially is able to move around.
Standing Spray
Now, the pros and cons of standing spray in Free Fire. When standing to spray, the biggest advantage is that you’re able to be mobile. For example, when taking long range engagements, the best way to take out an enemy is through short bursts. The longer you spray, the more RNG you will have to deal with. After the initial spray, you have the option of strafing around to make yourself a harder target before shooting another burst of bullets.
This is most clearly seen in Free Fire, particularly when you’re hiding behind an object on the map. When trying to engage an enemy, you can perform a quick peek, perform a burst spray, and then back up for cover. This is only possible if you remain standing. Performing the same peek, but crouching, would increase the time it takes for you to get back up and get into cover. Which is why in this situation, it’s very advantageous to remain standing.
Now that the pros have been said, the biggest negative about standing spray is that it makes you an easier target for enemies to hit. Compared to crouching, standing means that your player model will have more vertical height, and therefore the enemies have less room for error during their spray. If their crosshair is in line horizontally, they’re likely going to hit their shots onto you, whether it’s to the head, body, or legs. Particularly at the higher levels of Free Fire, where players have very good crosshair placement at head level, standing can make yourself an easier target to deal with.
The Final Answer
With the pros and cons of each out of the way, that leaves you with the big question. Should you crouch when spraying? And the answer is, it depends. There’s a time and place for crouching, but a big mistake that most players have a tendency of doing is they’ll crouch too much. They crouch during every engagement in the game regardless of the situation. This is where you’ll find most players crouching at bad times and thus causing them to lose fights that should’ve been easily won.
It may appear to make things confusing on whether players should be crouching while spraying. However, you’ll find common trends between the professionals that determined when they would crouch spray versus standing spray. Plus, they align with the pros and cons that are mentioned above between the two techniques.
When Should You Crouch?
There are 3 situations where you should be crouch spraying. First up, we recommend crouching in the close to medium ranges. The reason for this is that crouching will make you a smaller target for enemies, while also increasing your own accuracy. Since the enemy models are going to be bigger at these ranges, you wouldn’t be able to strafe shoot. The fights are going to end much quicker and therefore once you see the enemy, you’re going to be committed to the aim duel. In this case, movement isn’t a consideration and crouching will help improve your accuracy. Plus, it will create more trouble for enemies to eliminate you with this sudden movement and change of position.
Next, if you aren’t able to eliminate an enemy after the first 6 or so bullets, we recommend crouching afterward. After this initial burst of bullets, you’re going to start experiencing recoil that you need to control if you want to land further shots. Crouching during this situation can actually help you do so. Because the initial recoil is mostly vertical, crouching will lower your crosshair and help you control this recoil. Not only that, but crouching after an initial spray will change your player model’s position. If players were initially trying to aim at head level, crouching during the middle of the enemy’s spray will allow you to actually dodge these bullets. So when crouching in this scenario, you’re essentially killing two birds with one stone.
Lastly, if the enemy crouches during an engagement, you should crouch as well. Not only will this force the enemy to have to adjust their aim, but it will also help you adjust your aim onto the enemy as well. If you’re aiming at headshot level and the enemy suddenly crouches on you, all you have to do is crouch back to realign your crosshair quickly to get you back on track.
To wrap up this section, we want to give a rule of thumb particularly for players that may currently be at lower ranks such as gold or below. If you fall within these ranks, we recommend that you do not crouch at all. The reason being is that at these lower ranks, players tend to be aiming more at body level. By crouching against these opponents, you’re actually going to be helping them place their crosshair at your head, causing you to get killed easier and quicker. By keeping yourself standing during all engagement, you’ll be more likely to take body shots.
With good crosshair placement from yourself, you’ll be able to easily out aim them with a headshot in these situations. This is different in higher ranks, where players tend to have their crosshairs placed at head level. Then crouching would be more useful to dodge their bullets. So consider your enemy’s skill level, and if you notice they have a tendency to hit only body shots, make sure that you avoid crouching.
When Should You Stand?
Now you need to go over when it’s best to stand and spray. There are two scenarios where we recommend standing. The first is during long range engagements. Since these engagements tend to be longer, it can get difficult to take out the enemy with the initial spray. It’s better to remain standing so that you’re able to strafe in between your shots if needed to make yourself a more difficult target for your enemy to hit. Second, standing sprays are highly recommended when performing shoulder peeks next to cover.
This is for a similar reason, where remaining standing will allow you to quickly peek an angle and strafe back out within moments. This will allow you to get a few shots before hiding under cover and determining your next move to either peek again or change your position.
It is particularly important when you’re holding an angle and know that multiple players are coming your way. You want to remain standing in this scenario, so that you can fire at the first enemy you come in contact with. Then you’ll be able to jiggle back into safety so that the enemy’s teammates are not able to quickly trade you out. The one situation that is an outlier is when you’re in extremely close range, where it’d actually be to your benefit to stand and run and gun against the enemy.
And when we say to extremely close range, we mean that the enemy is essentially face to face with you. In which case even if you run and gun, there’s a very high chance you’re going to hit them while keeping yourself mobile and therefore a harder target to hit. Again, this is an outlier and rare case scenario. When planning to run and gun, you have to ensure that the enemy is close enough that you’ll safely be able to land your shots.
