Who is Shroud and what do you need to know?
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CSGO is a world-wide popular game with hundreds of thousands of players and competitions clashing teams from every corner of the planet. With the high competitiveness and incredible dynamics of these tournaments, the rotation of popular pro players is quite high, and a typical pro doesn’t span a career longer than several years. It makes it ever so harder to remember all the Counter-Strole celebrities around. Yet, there is one player whose name is chiseled into the fundament of CSGO history very deeply, if not for his incredible achievements, then surely for his heartfelt passion and insane community-building skills, and it’s none other than Shroud.
He’s a Canadian with Polish roots, who’s been a part of a professional CSGO team called Cloud9. Internauts once proudly named him The King Of Reddit for the popularity and responsivity of the content of his streams.
Shroud came to international renown for his supportive role in Cloud9, especially during elimination brackets. Although he never wanted to be an “all-star”, his aim was almost legendary and contributed to many balance-changing situations.
Everything you need to know about Shroud
As far as interviews with Shroud and his family go, he was an avid gamer since a young age. His father has been a computer techie his whole life and he was the one who showed Shroud video games, along with Counter-Strike. He didn’t play much CS: Source but came back to the franchise once he was gifted a copy of CSGO.
Shroud has always been a fan of streaming, so inspired by one of the players he was following – Summit – he started streaming himself, at first with little audacity, but later becoming more and more popular.
For a time, he was a stand-in player at a North American CSGO clan called Complexity. Later, along with his several of his clanmates, he was transferred to Cloud9 and became a permanent player for the team. He was renowned for his incredible aim, and in certain situations, he was able to dominate the match on his own. He also proved to be a great support player. Cloud9 took part in several competitions throughout 2015 and 2016, winning a couple of them, most important seemingly being ESL Pro League Season 4 Finals with a whooping $200,000 prize. In 2017 the team came second to SK Gaming during ESL One: Cologne 2017. After that, Shroud decided to step back as a stand-in player, eventually resigning from professional CSGO gaming and focusing on his streaming activity.
Shroud Setup
It’s understandable that one would want to follow in an acknowledged player’s footsteps, so we’ll try to summarise Shroud’s settings that you can mime and see if they improve your playing performance. For example, you might want to copy the Shroud CSGO sens mouse setup to check if your aim improves.
When it comes to hardware setup, he notably uses Cougar CONQUER Gaming Case, Intel Core i9-9980XE PC Processor, NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2080 TI FE, GIGABYTE X299 DESIGNARE EX Computer Mainboard, Logitech G Pro Wireless Gaming Mouse, HyperX Alloy FPS RGB Mechanical Gaming Keyboard and an Acer Predator XB252Q Gaming Monitor.
Here are Shroud CSGO settings as registered on, as listed on prosettings.net.
SHROUD LAUNCH SETTINGS
-novid -high -tickrate 128 -freq 240
DPI – 450
SHROUD MOUSE SETTINGS
Sensitivity – 2.40
eDPI – 1080
HZ – 1000
Zoom Sensitivity – 1.00
Mouse Accel – 0
Windows Sens. – 6
Raw input – 1
SHROUD CSGO VIDEO SETTINGS
Resolution – 1920×1080
Aspect Ratio – 16:9
HZ – 240
SHROUD CSGO CROSSHAIR SETTINGS
cl_crosshaircolor 3
cl_fixedcrosshairgap -2.5
cl_crosshairstyle 1
hud_showtargetid 1
SHROUD CSGO VIEWMODEL
viewmodel_fov 68
viewmodel_offset_x 2.5
viewmodel_offset_y 1
viewmodel_offset_z -1.5
viewmodel_presetpos 3
cl_viewmodel_shift_left_amt 0
cl_viewmodel_shift_right_amt 0
viewmodel_recoil 0; cl_righthand 1
SHROUD CSGO CL_BOB
cl_bob_lower_amt 5
cl_bobamt_lat 0.1
cl_bobamt_vert 0.1
cl_bobcycle 0.98
His highlights
Shroud’s aim often proved very useful in defending a planted bomb as a terrorist, attacking a planted bomb as a CT and in various clutch situations. One example of this might be the triple kill + bomb defuse on Train during Round 24 of ESL Cologne 2017 quarterfinals, where he successfully baited NiP out of their angles and utilized his surgical precision. Another good situation to present this is from the same competition’s semifinals, where in Round 21 against Navi.G2A he nailed the Overpass B clutch against two enemy players.
YouTube is full of compilations of Shroud’s plays and funny moments, the most epic ones being those filmed during his eased out, casual streams. Without the thrill of the tournament he was usually able to perform very intensive, interesting strategies.
Where is Shroud now
After quitting the competitive CSGO, Shroud found his new home in Playerunknown’s Battle Ground. Some say that the aim he tailored during his CSGO career was a very good boost into the PUBG gameplay and made him a literal death machine. However, it’s not the only game he indulges in. He also streamed Fortnite, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 or classic World of Warcraft.
Besides that, his laid-back playstyle, no-drama attitude and consistent output made him popular in online communities. He has always been eager to interact with his viewers, play along with the suggestions of the stream chat and make the play enjoyable without indulging in clown-like humor.
He became extremely popular during his Cloud9 career and was able to uphold the interest of viewers after stepping back from the pro scene. His wholesome approach also manifests in peculiar raids, where he unsuspectedly hosts the streams of less popular streamers to get them more viewers and donations.
How did Shroud impact CSGO scene?
In CSGO Shroud was most notorious for his supporting role. Although Cloud9 didn’t have their team roles set in concrete, Shroud usually stayed behind to lurk and wait for transitioning enemies. This often proved useful when entry frags didn’t go well – on many occasions he could turn a bad situation on its head hiding well, keeping a good angle and scraping three or even four kills at a time. His play was a good reminder that it’s not only about hitting first or awping.
His short, yet intensive CSGO career brought to light certain strategies and some grenade play that wasn’t either meta or popular. Additionally, other pro players named him as inspiration for aim and composure, including Stewie2K.
Summary
When it comes to CSGO Shroud is a great example for a person who doesn’t need to become the creme de la creme of world’s players to still remain an important, influential figure. He proved his skill, he mastered backing-up tactics and also showed that his supportive attitude extends to real life. He’s a role model for online, competitive players who do care about the community.
