Using Grenades Effectively on Dust 2

Map control is crucial on Dust 2, with portions of the map being split into contested zones that lead into a bomb site. These areas allow you to push into the sites but generally are Counter-Terrorist controlled at the start of the map. If you do not have proper grenade usage going into these areas, then you can easily lose a player while the CT's get to fall back without repercussion. The grenades included in this article will allow you to take control of these areas with little to no danger.

Throwing a Long corner smoke is crucial, blocking off any AWPer on the corner and blocking off vision from A site into Pit, allowing you to clear the area around pit before committing to the A site. The smoke for Long should be accompanied with 2 flashbangs in order to flash anyone in Pit, close to the door or anyone trying to make a play around your smoke.

Throwing the Smoke

Fig 1: The smoke can be thrown 2 ways, with the easiest being by the first door itself.

Throwing Pop Flashes

Fig 2: The two pop flashes to full flash anyone in or around Pit.

Now that you have A Long you have a multitude of options. You could quickly execute onto the A site, or you could leave 1-2 people in A Long to retain control of it and attempt to make picks onto the A site itself, while working elsewhere on the map.

Advancing from A Long to A site:

If you have Long control and want to push into the site itself, there are a few things you must do. The most crucial part of the plan is to smoke "Cross". This denies vision from players rotating from B to help out A Long, and without this you can lose up to 3 to 4 players simply by crossing into site.

A variation of this is to smoke CT instead, smoking CT allows you to clear "Elevator", denying the enemy team the potential to boost players onto site and giving you more control towards CT Spawn.

Then throw a flashbang to flash back anyone on site. If you're pushing Long then you should keep your AWPer behind in Pit to hold a strong post plant position and hinder early enemy pushes through CT Spawn.

Fig 3: How to line up a CT Spawn smoke

Fig 4: How to line up a "Cross smoke"

In order to take A Short or Catwalk control, you need to fully deny vision into Mid. One of the most powerful ways to do this is to throw a smoke that lands on X-Box in mid, allowing you to push up Catwalk with little to no hindrance from Mid. In addition to an X-Box smoke, it is also crucial to smoke Mid Doors, allowing any players coming from Lower Tunnels to cross over into Short safely.

To take the stairs area of Short, you should execute 2 flashbangs: one to fully blind the Mid player and the other to clear out any players that have taken a position pushed up on Short.

 
Fig 5: A simple smoke for X-Box

 
fig 6: The 2 flashbangs for clearing Mid and A-Short

Advancing from A Short to A site:

To take A site from Short you need to "split" the site. While this seems counter-intuitive as you're all in the same area, it is quite easy to split the A site via a "CT drop", where you send one or two players into CT Spawn by dropping down from Short.

In order to "drop" correctly, you need the right smokes and flashbangs or else players can be picked off from outside B or from Short as they're falling. To facilitate this drop, we will need to use 2 smokes: one to deny the A players from seeing the dropping players and one to block off vision from B. The two smoke grenades required are a "crossing" smoke on Short and a CT smoke, which can be thrown from Long or Short

 
Fig 7: Short crossing smoke

 

Fig 8: CT smoke from Short

To take B, it is almost always crucial to split through Mid. To do this, you need to smoke off CT and take control of CT Mid, which is generally defended by one Counter-Terrorist. Sending 3 players through Mid and 2 through Tunnels is generally the go to strategy. To do this, two smoke grenades are required: one to enter into the B bombsite via Tunnels and one to enter B via Mid. Two flashbangs shall also be used in tandem with the smokes, to popflash B site and to flash anyone watching Mid Doors.

Fig 9: Throwing a CT smoke and a Mid popflash

 
Fig 10: Throwing a B Tunnels smoke and popflash

In conclusion, using utility is crucial to get control of areas on the map as a terrorist, and using the correct smoke grenades and flashbangs can turn an easy multikill for a Counter-Terrorist into an easy trade frag or free map control for the T sides players. This dynamic is important to understand and utilize as the Counter-Terrorist inherently get better positioning and can make easy picks off of any disorganized Terrorist team.

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