How to snake in MW3: Snaking movement technique explained

Call of Duty games have featured the snaking mechanic for many years, but the movement technique has become incredibly effective in Modern Warfare 3, leaving those who don’t know how to do it at a disadvantage. Here’s how to snake in MW3.

Thanks to skill-based matchmaking in Modern Warfare 3, every match is extremely competitive. This means players need to use every tool at their disposal to gain an advantage, from running the best weapons and Perks to adjusting their audio settings.

Movement is more crucial than ever in MW3, with popular tricks like slide canceling making a return. One of the most popular movement techniques in the game is snaking, with most lobbies being dominated by players using the classic trick.

Here’s how to snake in Modern Warfare 3.

What is snaking in MW3?

Snaking is a movement technique in MW3 that lets players quickly peek out of cover repeatedly while remaining tough to hit. The main advantage is that you can spot enemy locations and pass them on to your team, all while remaining in cover with very little chance of being hit.

As you poke your head out and quickly snap away, some hidden players may even give away their location by attempting to shoot you, even though the odds of them killing you are relatively slim.

High-skilled players can even aim and shoot while snaking in Modern Warfare 3, giving them a major advantage in gunfights and making it easier to hold down key lanes on the map.

The mechanic has been a controversial topic since MW3 launched and after investigating the issue, the devs introduced a slight nerf to snaking in the Season 1 update. The nerf consists of a “delay to stance transitions,” which is meant to make the mechanic less powerful when popping up and down.

How to snake in Modern Warfare 3

Modern Warfare 3 players can snake by repeatedly crouching, while rapidly moving in and out of cover to see the rest of the battlefield. The trick is most effective when behind cover that completely hides you, as it creates a head glitch.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to snake in Modern Warfare 3:

1. Find cover behind an object.
2. Tap the crouch button repeatedly to peek up and down over cover.
3. Aim and shoot the enemy while moving up and down.

By rapidly repeating these steps, you will constantly be peeking over or around cover while staying in motion, all while making it difficult for enemies to pick you off. To make snaking as natural as possible in MW3, we recommend you enable the Tactical button layout in your controller setting, so you can spam crouch and aim effectively without the crouch button mapped to O or B.

This trick does take some getting used to and it might take a few matches to master, but once you do, snaking is an extremely useful skill in MW3 that can drastically improve your performance in matches.

For more on Modern Warfare 3, check out our other guides:

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