It has been months since Operation Riptide dropped and along with it came new stickers, collections and plenty of missions for us to grind in the hopes that we will get the new AWP skin that we have all dreamed of. But along with these new cosmetic additions, Operation Riptide also included an update that has severely impacted the meta of the game. We now have a nerfed Deagle, a possibly broken M4A1-S and most importantly, the ability to drop nades just like you could drop weapons.

Now while the initial reactions to this might have been a little over-dramatic, since we are officially post-major we now have a pretty good idea of just how ridiculous this new meta might be when applied in a strategic way. So let’s talk about this new nade mechanic, and just how you can apply it to your own public games or MM matches.

The Nade Update Explained

In the past, if you ever bought an extra nade, or say your teammate couldn’t afford a flashbang, the entire team would have to swallow their ego and waste the extra nade knowing that there was no way to give your teammate an extra piece of utility. Because of this awkward interaction, there was always a cry from the community to allow the ability to give nades to our teammates, either with a buy system or just the ability to drop their nades altogether. But with Operation Riptide, Valve has relented and given us what we asked for, with the ability to drop nades like guns now in the game.

Of course, the initial reaction to this was either pure glee or sheer hate, with some being on the side of necessary change and others on the side of gamebreaking. A lot of community members felt this was a good move and would add another tactical depth to the game that we hadn’t had in a while, while others were afraid of how much it could break the game by giving T-Side players a tremendous tactical advantage. With the perspective of time, this update has done nothing to break this game, as one-man A executes are so slow and boring that it was soon realized that it’s incredibly easy to tell when a team was stacking their utility with one person or with many. Regardless, this update has had a huge effect on how certain maps are played, and has added a whole new dynamic to the game we know and love.

Micro-Drops/Macro-Drops

I want to first talk about the different ways the nade update applies itself to the game, before we step back and look at a bigger picture with a specific pro example. The first type are what I am calling “micro-drops.” These are the drops that occur in small moments without applied strategy. This includes things like nade drops for your teammates at the moment, like throwing your teammates a flashbang because he knows a line-up you don’t. This is without a doubt the most impact that the nade update has had on the game so far. These micro-drops have greatly stream-lined teamplay and have made the game as a whole less clunky. While useful, these types of nade drops have a relatively small impact on the game as a whole, hence the name.

The opposite of micro-drops, “macro-drops” are the relatively large ways in which the new update can affect the game as a whole. These drops include setpieces that involve the mechanic, along with strategy focused nade utility and nade stacking. T-Side players have adapted this new meta by setting up executes based on the idea that one person can throw a majority of the utility, mostly large amounts of flashbangs, while the other four can run into the site instead of having to be a part of the utility usage. On the CT-side, players have figured out ways to stack extra pieces of utility dropped by their teammates in order to hold the entire bombsite without actually needing to be on the bombsite. These drops, when applied with strategy, have had a rather large impact on the way that the game is played.

T-Side

The most effective way to apply the new nade meta is by using your nades efficiently on the T-Side. This is done by either dropping your nades if you think you are going to die or using one of your teammates as a nade mule. Setting up site executes has never been easier than it is right now, as you can find lineups that exist within close proximity of each other, and effectively throw an entire site execute just with one person. This idea is a lot cooler to talk about then to actually practice, but it is still an effective way of approaching the nade update. I have found that if you want to practice single person line-ups, there are a few sets of smokes and flashes that are actually reasonable to try, like most of the smokes on Mirage for example.

However, the most effective way to use this update on the T-Side is to hoard flashbangs for one person so four people can walk out with an execute while only one person needs to flash. It makes more CT-Sided maps like Overpass or Ancient easier when you can spam flashbang grenades.

CT-Side

The CT-Side is the easiest side to apply the nade meta to, as with the addition of droppable nades, the Counter-Terrorists are now able to leave what I will refer to as a “Supply-Drop.” With these supply drops, CT players who play more complicated parts of the map like A on Overpass or B on Inferno can now control their area of the map a lot easier with more utility than the T players can really handle. It essentially forces the T players to either take more gunfights or wait and waste time. It gives a buff to the CTs that many have asked for for a long time, along with the new and improved M4A1-S.

Everyone should be very wary of your droppable grenades on this side though, as I have found that it is incredibly easy to just unload all of your nades within the first thirty seconds of the round if you are not careful. In order to utilize this idea efficiently, you must space out your nades when you feel like the T sided players are trying to take map control, instead of just raining down endless nades as soon as you arrive at your bombsite. It can also make retaking sites incredibly easy as site players can use all of their grenades and then still have nades to use for a retake.

Trust the Pros

At the highest levels of CS, this meta is already starting to take place and change the ways that pros are playing the game. Whether it be supply drops, or specifically designed tactics that use the ability to drop nades, many pros have already seen the effectiveness in using this mechanic in order to get a tactical advantage. Like I have stated before the CT-Sides are where we are seeing these changes occur the most, with many pros dealing RIDICULOUS amounts of utility damage by perfectly placing an unusually high amount of grenades in choke points of the map.

The pioneer of this idea was one of the first games played in the new update, that being OG vs. Sprout at IEM Fall where IGL Aleksib did more than one-thousand nade damage in one CT half by using grenades dropped by teammates to constantly destroy Sprout as they tried to take Cat control almost every round. CT-sided nade damage has gotten to an insane level with the pros and is causing a lot of changes to the way the game is played on the T-Side, where players are having to take map control differently on certain maps in order to reduce the chance of getting a tactical nuke of grenades rained upon them.

Conclusion

Operation Riptide has been a great joy for many CS:GO fans who wanted something new in their favorite game. While the update has been great with keeping players stocked with new cosmetics and character models, the updates to the mechanics themselves have really added a whole new depth to the game that CS desperately needed. We might have said goodbye to the days of a Desert Eagle that kills anyone in two shots to the body and we might currently have one of the most overpowered guns in CT history, but we finally have a tactical mechanic that has been added that is changing the way that many play this game.

For a lot of CS:GO diehards, it might be very easy to just forget about this mechanic and play the game how you always have, but it is incredibly important to at least try and incorporate this mechanic as it potentially can give you even the slightest of advantages and generally just makes the game feel fresh. Give it a try and be prepared to start bragging about your ridiculous nade damage as a result.