Once you climb the ranks, you'll slowly start to get surrounded by players who will use the utility more and more the higher you are on the ladder. It starts off with Smokes, molotovs, flashes, and eventually even HEs will get used with relative effectiveness. However, there is still so much more to be done with the utility in CS:GO, and this guide will try to show you a majority of ways on how to be even more effective with your flashes.

In General

Every grenade in CS:GO can be used to good effectiveness via a variety of ways. Here, I'll shortly list what you can do with different pieces of utility. I cannot guarantee that I can list every possible effective scenario of the usage of a grenade here, as people are spectacularly creative and will probably find a new way to use their utility in CS:GO. This list is meant to give you an idea of how you can use different grenades and help you fix your gap in your knowledge of grenades.

Grenades and their possible usage:

• Faking (All grenades)
  • Setting up patterns (making the enemy believe that you're read-able)
  • Drawing out utility
  • Faking presence where there is none
  • Faking a flash (Decoy especially, smoke also viable)
  • Drawing attention away from a more important angle or bombsite
• Flashing an enemy (Flash)
  • Hiding your movements
  • Limiting the number of angles you need to deal with
  • Gaining an advantage in a fight
  • Pushing a player (specifically AWPers, most of the time) away from a strong position
  • Showing where you are (to discourage an aggressive push)
  • Stopping or slowing down a push
  • Buying time
• Making the enemy turn (Flash and Decoy)
  • Hiding your movements
  • Gaining an advantage in a fight
  • Stopping or slowing down a push
  • Buying time
• Blocking (Smoke, Molotov and HE)
  • Blocking a line of sight to cross or similar (Smoke and HE only)
  • Making the enemy change position
  • Limiting the number of angles you need to deal with
  • One-Way smokes (Smoke only)
  • Stopping or slowing down a push
  • Buying time
  • Blocking a smoke line-up (Molotov)
• Dealing Damage (HE and Molotov)
  • Helping a Scout open up or finish the job
  • Finishing wounded opponents or weakening them for later
  • Through nadestacks, you can completely deny certain positions with specific timings
  • Killing

In General: Faking and drawing out utility

Often, teams don't have too much trouble finding a theoretical execute that should work in practice, too. However, the problem is that, oftentimes, these teams fail to draw out the utility from the enemy before they initiate their execute, making it practically impossible to get on-site without being barraged by HEs, flashes, and molotovs. To get around this, try to use your utility to suggest the enemy that they need to invest utility to keep you out right now. A good principle to think about this is: How would we actually use our utility if we wanted to go out right now?

The best example of this is Mirage towards A, where you can have two or three players peek out of A-Main with just a CT smoke and a flashbang above A-Main. After playing this a few times the first ~five rounds, the A players will be sure to instantly throw a few pieces of utility early round and as a reaction to any flashbang towards A. So, setting up patterns of aggression that you can abuse later to draw out utility is the most reliable way to do just that.

The same counts for faking: What would you do if you went B? Well, you'd smoke off B-Short, flash and face Van? Then do that!

Flashes

Flashes are way underutilized in CS:GO, even in Global and co. If you want to know how you fare in the flashes department, you can try to analyse it yourself via looking at the scoreboard of the last few games or connect to a service like Leetify. Everyone knows that Flashes are a great tool to turn a fight that'd otherwise be a fair one, a big no-no, into a fight with an advantage for your team.

However, many people are far removed from using flashbangs to full effectiveness. While everyone knows that a flashbang is supposed to flash your enemy and not your teammates, a lot of people still miss crucial information about what makes a flashbang good. If you intend to throw a good flashbang intended to give you an advantage in a fight as a team via blinding enemies, look out for these characteristics:

• Makes no sounds or the sound source is too far away for the enemy to hear
• Pops as soon as the enemy sees the flash
• Doesn't flash your teammates without turning around or with turning around, as long as your teammates aren't in imminent danger of being peeked

Look to fulfill all of these characteristics to a medium extent, as not every flash can be picture perfect, especially ones you throw on the fly. However, whenever you see that a flash of yours that didn't work, be sure to jump into the demo and see for yourself why exactly that is in order to give yourself a chance to improve the line-up.

If you want to use a flashbang to either blind the enemy or to make them turn around, giving your teammates an advantage anyway, you need to make sure that your flash either makes a bit of noise or is visible for a little bit, while never having a chance to blind your teammates, which means that it needs to pop behind your teammates or behind an obstacle. This will give your team the chance to advance further into the map and close the distance if the enemy has a chance to turn around, or giving them an advantageous duel against a turned-around enemy.

One more thing that people often forget is how blinded enemies rarely gain ground during that timeframe. This can be used to gain time and stall the bombsite (re-)take via flashes. A perfect example for this is the B-site situation on Dust 2 that a lot of B anchors face where there either isn't a B push or it's five Ts pushing out of Tunnel with their guns blazing. Flashing to your side or in front of you while you hide and jiggle behind obstacles will not just buy you time, but also give multiple chances to take a favourable duel.

Common Mistakes:

• Calling the flash too late or not at all
• Not giving direction where to look when throwing a flash - if you don't tell them that you're flashing behind them, your teammates may turn around instinctively and get blinded anyway
• Letting the enemies turn around when they're not intended to with a flash that's visible for too long

HEs

HEs can be incredibly useful, but most people don't really use them to maximum efficiency. I think most people would do great to look at a demo of the map they want to increase their HE effectiveness since almost every demo you'll see the timings with which Ts and CTs will be at certain positions. To show you a few concepts of increasing your damage dealt with HEs, we'll look at the map that has the most obvious nading spots, Inferno.

The spots shown in the image below are arguably the most effective nade spots on Inferno, barring the nadespots from Banana to B-site since you require a fully trained team to use those. I colour-coded them to show you when or how these spots are naded, as a red indicator shows you that you can throw a nade there with a good spawn and timing without being shot at and the yellow one shows you a spot you can nade to damage an enemy that doesn't have a line-of-sight of you since these two ways of nading are the most effective and safest ways to inflict damage on an enemy player.

Timing nades are intended to deal damage to players that are trying to get somewhere (a CT crossing mid or a T trying to enter Mid from T-Stairs) or peek you (a CT in top Banana), having the great side-effect of often giving you a free kill if you communicate with your teammates and you throw your nades at around the same time. It's important to be sure that you'll actually be able to nade the position you want to nade before you can get killed, which is the most fundamental characteristics of a successful timing nade.

A different kind of nade is the prediction-nade that is based around reads of giveaways from the enemy. For example at the corner of Top Banana, where you can bunch up as a T in Banana and nade said corner to often highly damage or kill an AWP waiting there. This kind of situation often emerges when you already took map control around the map and are ready to inflict further damage to the opposition. Try to remember when and where the enemies were the round before, enabling you to reliably damage or kill players. It is important to seek spots where you will be able to stay in cover the entire time when setting up these nadestacks.

Common mistakes:

• Running out with a nade in your hand to get to a nadespot
• Not having the needed map control to throw a prediction-nade
• Not communicating, only dealing ~40 damage every time to an enemy sniper, followed by getting picked off

There's more! Since HEs make a lot of noise, they can be used to mask certain sounds, like a teammate dropping or dropping the bomb or similar sounds you don't want the enemy to hear. Similarly, you can use HEs to bang out windows or doors, not allowing the enemies to play around said doors on their terms anymore.

Molotovs

Ah, the molotov, certainly one of the strongest pieces of utility in all of CS:GO. With its additive damage, culminating towards the later parts of a molotov's life, it can cripple the players who have to push through, delay the Ts as they're deploying a smoke as a fire extinguisher, or simply stop a push from happening.

But, when do you actually use a molotov to make sure that it is effective? Look out for the following characteristics:

Are the enemies already pushing you? If the answer is yes, then there isn't much use in a molotov waiting in your inventory: It is definitely worth it to molotov off the most used chokepoint, like Hut on Nuke A. Thus, you'll either get a bit lucky and completely stop the push or at least buy a bit of time and give you an advantage when you're fighting the Ts who are exiting their own smoke that they put up to extinguish your molotov.

Need to limit the number of possible angles on a bombsite take? Using a molotov to completely deny the CTs the ability to stand at a certain spot on the bombsite will give your team the ability to focus their firepower on fewer spots, making it more likely that you're going to win this round!

Three incredibly strong positions that you are better off molotoving, at least when you can

Do you know someone is hiding in a corner? Well, especially in a combination with a nade, molotoving a corner someone is hiding in is giving you an incredible duel against a damaged opponent who won't be sure where exactly you're waiting. This can also be done in collaboration with a teammate, where you're molotoving a corner from point X, but your teammate is waiting at point Y, further confusing the enemy as the molotov came from a different general angle than where your team will fight him from.

Do the enemies have to execute right now? A good example of this is B on Inferno, where you heard a step or two and the Ts are preparing for their last possible push at 20 seconds in front of B. When you now molotov off Top Banana, there is no way they'll have enough time to thoroughly check every spot on B, also giving your teammates time to arrive to help you out.

Do you know where the enemy will be next? After getting rekt three times from the same position earlier, you might want to start thinking about blocking off that spot to allow you to either cross through the line of sight you had lost the last three fights to before or to simply delay the play of the Ts. A good example of this is Banana on B as a CT, where two molotovs are often enough to hold the Ts out of Banana for the time being. This way, you'll also be able to block-off popular mid-round spots like Car in Banana on B as a T, allowing you to rush B without giving the AWPer a free kill when he peeks from Car.

Every enemy is different. How many times you need to use which kind of molotov is completely up to how the enemies play, which means that you shouldn't hold onto your pre-set idea of how and when to use molotovs. Use them with caution and adjust to how the rounds are currently playing out in order to ensure maximum efficiency with the molotovs!

Common Mistakes:

• Using the molotov too-late when trying to push away the CTs, leading to blocking your own team
• Holding onto them forever, even as your bomb is ticking down and the CTs are attempting the retake

Smokes

Smokes are the most versatile pieces of utility, giving you the ability to fake from across the map, giving you a favourable duel with a one-way, or limiting the angles that you need to focus on in a bombsite take. Throwing a good smoke, however, is easier said than done. In general, there should never be gaps in a smoke. If the size of a gap between two obstacles that you want to smoke is simply too big, you're better off investing two smokes for that.

Now, I don't see enough people utilize the almost never-ending supply of one-way guides, as they are often very good for two or maybe three rounds in a map where you will be able to open up a round without really being in too much danger, giving you a free kill way too often. So, my first piece of advice is: Make use of the many one-way smokes out there!

Also, a smoke can be used as a defensive piece similar to the molotov as is mentioned above, giving you the ability to completely stop pushes of the Ts or making them choose between pushing through the smoke, which is very bad, or waiting it out, which can be worse, depending on the time left on the clock. If you can, keep onto your smoke for as long as possible, especially against very late-round centric enemies!

Limiting angles is also a really important aspect of utilizing smokes to their fullest potential, as you can seriously simplify the next bombsite take for you if you just smoke off the strongest CT positions. An obvious example of this is Mirage A, as you can see in the radar below. Keep in mind to communicate properly with your teammates so they know where to look and where not to look.

As you can see, blocking off Stairs, Jungle and CT will give
your team the ability to completely focus on A-site

The smoke is also able to grant you a lot of map control early- or mid-round when you use it right. Think about the ground you'd like to have in the current round and then think about when there is a good time to smoke-off said area. One example of this is Top Banana on Inferno or Long Corner on Dust 2, where you seriously impede the CTs in their attempt to gain ground themselves. Keep in mind that you shouldn't be out in the open and up for grabs when you throw such smokes, however, this counts for every smoke, basically.

Extinguishing molotovs is probably one of the most important late-round uses for smokes, on CT and T-side, as you want to advance further if the clock is already low, no matter what. So you can either keep the push going with a dedicated smoke carrier in the third or fourth position in a closed push or already smoke off the bomb so that the Ts can't molly you off of the defuse as is often the case on Train B.

Common Mistakes:

• Often times, people throw bad smokes that will give the enemies a one-way. Practice your smokes!
• Using one-ways too many times, giving the enemies a free kill
• Only using smokes when you full execute somewhere. The enemy IGL never had an easier job predicting you a good 10 seconds before you can even plant

Think About When You Use Your Utility

Even top teams often forget this principle, which is that in order to stop a push or retake or to cripple the push of the enemy, you don't need to block off every pathway. The best example of this is B-site on Dust 2, where the Ts tend to throw everything they have away in the first ten seconds of the retake, meaning that they're blank the following 35 seconds of the potential CT retake, opening themselves up to lose a safe round. When you can, only block-off a few or one of the pathways, limiting the viable ways the CTs can enter the Site, saving utility to always keep a (few) entrance(s) shut.

This will increase your chances of winning to a constant 90%, instead of having a 100% the first ten seconds, followed by 50% the rest of the afterplant, when you don't have any utility anymore.

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