Counter-Strike 2 has been announced and the biggest change so far is a revamp of the smoke grenade. The core design of the smoke has been altered and several new mechanics have been introduced. Understanding the new smoke will be crucial to playing CS2, so read on to learn how to use it in your game.
After many sleepless nights refreshing Twitter, Valve has finally announced CS2 as the long-awaited sequel to CSGO. With the decade-old game being ported to the Source 2 engine at long last, several new changes have been announced. Some are simple, quality-of-life updates, some are for improving graphics and performance, and some could be genuinely meta-changing shifts in how the game is played. The most noteworthy change is the core mechanics behind how the smoke grenade operates in the game.
The smoke has always been an essential piece of utility, but it has never operated exactly as Valve intended it to as bugs have plagued it for years. One-ways are specific smokes that allow a person on one side of the smoke to easily see around it, but someone on the other side cannot. These are not meant to exist, and they are so powerful that they have become a crucial part of playing CSGO. There are also many glitches like seeing behind smokes and inconsistent lineups that make this piece of utility less than ideal.
These problems were well known, but they were practically impossible to fix on the Source 1 engine due to coding issues that kept the smoke in its bugged state for all of CSGO’s lifespan.
When building the game from the ground up on the Source 2 engine, smokes were remade using a new design. They now exist in the world as volumetric shapes that take up a more defined amount of space. Instead of blooming into a static bubble that bleeds through walls and has rough edges like in CSGO, CS2 smokes expand around and into the environment to fill it more realistically. This has the effect of both removing one-ways and making smokes plume in a far different way than they used to.
This new volumetric design of smokes will have a significant impact on how they should be used in the game. For one, most lineups will have to be remade as the smokes are now different shapes. So, the first thing you’ll want to do is get on maps and take advantage of the new grenade preview window to find some new smokes for your favorite map.
Forget the one-ways you used to use. Now the edges are clear, and your previously unaware opponent will be able to shoot back at you. Instead, try taking advantage of the new way smokes interact with the environment. With smokes able to expand to fill spaces completely instead of being a static bubble, they will be more useful in small areas as they will leave fewer gaps and fill a greater length of the area, allowing you to take space more efficiently. This is what old smokes were good for too, but the new ones do it better because they leave fewer gaps and fill more space.
The effects of these smokes on all maps are yet to be seen, as only Dust II is available at the moment, so the best way to use this is to try and rethink the possibilities of smokes and be creative!
More than just their design and programming, smokes have also been updated mechanically to introduce ways to clear the smoke before it fades naturally. If you throw a grenade into a smoke, it will clear a massive amount of it and allow you to see through it for a short period before it re-plumes. This is a significant update and will change the meta of Counter-Strike as we know it by providing new ways to play around smokes.
Smoke fully plumed and smoke after a grenade detonates
The ability to control how and when you can see through a smoke as opposed to having to always wait for it to clear is a colossal shift from the gameplay of CSGO. Using the grenade to clear a smoke allows people to do several key things for gathering information and taking fights. If a smoke plumes in your face, whether it’s in a chokepoint or a wall to cross an area, you can throw a grenade and see behind it to get information as to where the opponent is. This reduces the effectiveness of smoke walls and forces people to be more paranoid about the cover that smokes provide.
You can also use it to get kills as well as information. If a smoke is thrown and blocks the vision of the opponent, going through gray-screened is not a great idea. Usually, the solution is to have a flash thrown to peek through but this is risky as you’re trapped on the other side of the smoke after. With the new smoke, a grenade can be thrown to give vision without you needing to push, allowing for the reward without as much risk by getting a kill before the smoke re-plumes and retreating after.
Another mechanic was added to smokes and it is similar to grenade clearing. Instead of wiping out a large portion of the smoke with a grenade, you can shoot through the smoke to make far smaller holes to see through for a small period. This has been a controversial change as it will undoubtedly shift the dynamics of spamming smokes by making it more viable.
Smoke spam near the edge and smoke spam in center
The potential for shooting through the smoke to create sightlines is dependent on where the smoke is shot and where the player is standing. For example, if the player is standing inside a smoke, shooting will not clear anything and will just give away your position, so it is not a great idea. Shooting from outside the smoke does create a hole, but the size of the hole depends on where the shot lands. Shots towards the edge of the smoke will create large holes that can be useful for spotting enemies while shots in the center will not reveal much of anything other than your position to your opponents.
If you’re looking to get kills and an opponent is on the other side of a smoke, shooting to see may be a viable option. If you suspect an enemy is lurking around the edge or want to see around the smoke without using a grenade, shooting toward the edges is a useful idea. Shooting into the middle can be okay if you burst as spam, but it will reveal your location without giving you much vision of the other side, so it is not often ideal. Smoke spam is always risky as information goes both ways, so think carefully about when the right time to shoot is and choose your shot location wisely.
Counter-Strike 2 is bringing about several critical changes to the game and the biggest ones are coming to how smoke grenades work. The foundation of how smokes function has been rebuilt and new mechanics have been added that will alter its use and bring about new strategies. With a volumetric design and the ability to clear the smoke before it fades with grenades and bullets, players now have more control over how to play around smokes. Using them effectively in your game will be crucial to succeeding in CS2. More changes will likely come, but now is the time to get on the server and try new things for when the game is officially released this summer.
