Ultimate Grenades Guide in CS2

By the end of this article, you will be able to:

Identify the different types of grenades in CS2
Understand the basic mechanics of grenades
Learn how to use grenades effectively in a variety of situations

Why do you need grenades? Types of grenades

Grenades are very important in Counter-Strike. A single nade you throw at the right time might change the whole round and turn it upside down: from almost unwinnable to pretty much winnable for your team. All you have to do is know how to throw it right and use your nade when you need it the most.

Types of grenades

The most important nade (at least majority of the players think that way) is smoke. When you throw this nade it creates smokescreen that lasts 18 seconds.

Smoke is considered to be the most important nade in CS. You can use that nade for a lot of different things

Next nade we are going to talk about is flashbang or flash. Fair to say that flash is the most teamplay required grenade in Counter-Strike, because it might be the winning factor in the round or the losing one if you throw it incorrectly. Working mechanism is quite simple - if you look at the flash when it explodes you become blinded for a couple of seconds (depending on how close you are). You have to use flashes carefully, because as we mentioned before you can blind your teammates and they won't be happy about that.

Flash is the most popular nade in competitive CS, because you can buy 2 of them and they are cheap - 200$ each

Molotov is the next nade. It can be used for clearing positions that are hard to clear with your bare hands. The man who stands in a molotov receives a fair amount of damage (every second inside the molly increases the damage you get). The fire disappears after roughly 7 seconds (7.03125 seconds to be exact). Multiple flames overlapping each other will stack the damage.

Interesting fact: a molotov is an exclusive terrorist grenade, CT's molotov name is incendiary, but players usually use callout molotov for them both. Terrorist and counter-terrorist molotovs are different not just visually, but financially too (the one CT's have costs $600, and the one for T's costs $400).

Molotov and incendiary are different, not just visually, but moneywise too. Meanwhile, lots of players still call them both as molotov

HE grenade (explosive) is a type of grenade that is not commonly used. Astralis meta changed this though, because Danes did a lot of great stuff with HE and other teams started to use them as well in certain rounds. Damage after nade explosion depends on the distance between you, the exploded nade and your armor. If you don't have armor double damage is received. Nades thrown by your teammates could also damage you, but their damage will be reduced, so you won't get too much trouble if you have more than 50 hp.

Astralis did a cool stuff with their nades. Elmapuddy reviewed some of them in his analysis

Last nade is known as decoy, the cheapest grenade in CS2 costing only $50 and almost completely useless. After being thrown, the grenade activates shortly after landing, and emits the sound of the user's most powerful weapon. Some teams found a good use even for decoy. Astralis is a good example of it.

Even decoys might be useful in the hands of professional. Ex. Astralis player Bubzkji showed a lot of things you can do with decoy

How to use nades properly?

If you have enough money to buy grenades and your economy is strong enough to have all of them - that's cool, but having utility in your pocket does not make it useful for you and your team if you don't know how to use them and when. You have to choose the right timing and know lineups, otherwise the grenade you throw could ruin the round for your team.

Smoke is commonly used to stall the attack, or if you are playing on T side you can use your smoke to block CT's vision and make your execute a bit easier. Blocking CT's vision is important, because support players won't have an opportunity to help their anchors properly: they will probably shoot through the smoke or throw flashes behind their teammates to help them in a fight.

You can use your smoke as a oneway - that`s a cheeky move and your opponent might not expect it

CT smokes could be a very important factor because every smoke you use will stall the enemy attack for 18 seconds. Terrorists most likely will have to wait until the smoke fades, otherwise it won't be an easy task for them to rush through the smoke, it can work only if they have flashes to flash themselves out. Sometimes it works even better than a normal execute because it is usually unexpected. So if you are playing on CT side and you resmoking chokepoints, be ready for this kind of move.

Flash is a key nade in case of supporting your teammates, a single flash thrown at the right time could win you almost impossible rounds. Imagine the situation: your teammate is holding B alone on Inferno and he has 4 opponents running out. He's trying to hide behind a new box and calling for help, but you understand that you are so far away and won't be there in time. The best possible way to help in this scenario is to throw your flashes behind him so he can peek and kill every single opponent (they will be all blinded).

Flashes are needed in 2 scenarios:

To clear a chokepoint / execute bombsite
To help your teammate in a gunfight

This is how blinded player looks like. He will see a whitescreen on his monitor

First one is pretty clear: if you need to go out and you think you might be watched, it's safe to use a flash and peek after it just in case someone holds this angle. If you are going to do a full site execute you also need flashes to go out, otherwise site anchors could finish your attack in the blink of an eye.

As we mentioned earlier, supportive flashes are good if your teammate is about to make a contact. If you flash behind him he won't get blinded while every opponent who fights him becomes blinded or forced to turn around which is also helpful.

This is how good teamwork looks like in killfeed :)

Molotov usage is pretty much the same as smoke one at least for CT team, because it's a blocking nade using to stall terrorist attack. Meanwhile, the T team use their molotovs to burn the most dangerous spots so they don't have to check these positions.

You can win the clutch just because of molotov - it could save you some time

How to learn nades?

We understand that learning a lot of nades is not an easy task. You have to remember heaps of lineups and it might be overwhelming. And you must know that even if you learn all the nades it won't be a done deal for you because there are always some new ones you have to learn.

There are 3 main methods to learn new nades:

From professional games (demos or streams);
With our grenade prediction service;
From specific community maps and servers (YPrac etc.);

Well, you found some nades. Next question is: how to remember them? The easiest way to do so is to spend 20-30 minutes every day throwing nades. You won't forget them in this case.