Hidden Path Entertainment released a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) update today that will have a major impact on the meta-game of CSGO. These changes will be felt most by the pro players in the competitive scene as these changes have gone live with the ESEA North American finals starting tomorrow and DreamHack starting a week from today.
The most important changes in this patch are the following:
- Fire devices have been modified ( Molotovs and incendiary grenades )
- Fire can now be extinguished by smoke grenades and deployed smokes now deny fire device detonation and spreading.
- Fire now spreads a bit faster and not quite as far.
- Fire "tagging" slowdown has been removed.
- Adjusted fire armor penetration value.
- Smoke grenade visibility inside a smoke has been reduced to give less advantage to players inside and more to players outside.
The changes to fire devices are going to completely change how competitive teams play as Counter-Terrorist (CT). Previously, fire devices were overpowered in that they did a lot of damage and they slowed you down. This meant CT's could throw them on major choke points at the beginning of the round allowing them to get into good position and effectively stop any early aggression from the Terrorists (T).
This lead to bank rolled CT's throwing fire devices at every major choke point while they got into ideal position and the T's were forced to sit and wait.
Read more about the effect of these changes, as well as some insight from Michael3D, professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and member of Team Curse CS:GO.
Now, with fire devices being extinguishable by smoke as well as not slowing down effected players, it will be far more likely for T's to rush a location regardless if there is fire or not. T's could also pre-smoke commonly fired choke points to prevent any fire in the first place.
Regarding the smoke visibility change, we once again see HPE attempt to balance smoke grenades. If you remember, early in the beta, people outside the smoke had a huge advantage. This was then patched and people inside the smoke were able to see players outside quicker than those outside could see in. Now, they are once again giving the advantage to the player outside the smoke. This will hopefully end the lame CT tactic of throwing a smoke and sitting in it.
Michael3D of Team Curse CS:GO had this to say about the recent patch:
One of the biggest things to plague CS:GO as of late is that you could one way a smoke and just freely shoot people when they can't see you. With the recent patch running through a molotov isn't necessarily a bad thing now. I think you will see a lot more teams play aggressively on Terrorist side since you only take damage from fire grenades. I think Hidden Path Entertainment is headed in the right direction with these patches, they genuinely seem to listen and care about the community.
Make sure to follow Team Curse on Twitter @CurseCS and Like them on Facebook.
Of course these aren't the only changes made to CS:GO in the latest update. Many changes were also made to the recently released GOTV among other things which you can see here.
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