u/quicknades

Recently, I have posted the most popular smokes on Mirage and Dust2 but for Nuke that doesn't quite work because the strongest outside smokes are usually thrown in pairs. So this time I'm showing the most popular pro smoke wall on Nuke: the version spanning from main to garage, rather than the wall between red and secret. Its main weakness is that the players crossing can still be peaked from Heaven. The Red smokes, on the other hand, can be peaked while crossing from T-spawn to Red or require an additional smoke.

Execution:

1. Stand in the corner where the fence begins as you exit T-spawn.
2. For smoke 1, aim at the point where the second horizontal metal bar from the top of the silo meets with the imagined extension of the second vertical bar of the blue container in front of you. Jump-throw.
3. For smoke 2, keep the same height and move your crosshair left until the horizontal metal bar meets the vertical pipe. Aim at the inner part of the pipe and jump-throw.

Smoke 1 (first throw):

• 979 professional uses in the last six months, ranked #2 among 124 Nuke smokes. It has 2,941 lifetime uses, ranked #4 all-time.
• Top users: XertioN (62), Mezii (58), and Siuhy (44)
• Top teams: paiN Gaming (103), HEROIC (71), and MOUZ (67)

Smoke 2 (second throw):

• 1,017 professional uses in the last six months, ranked #1 among 124 Nuke smokes. It has 3,814 lifetime uses, ranked #2 all-time.
• Top users: Mezii (62), XertioN (51), and Siuhy (48)
• Top teams: paiN Gaming (112), HEROIC (76), and Team Vitality (66)

Amongst all of the over 2,500 combinations that occurred since the beginning of 2024, it was thrown by one player in 99.7% of the cases (makes sense - it's thrown from one position). So if a teammate drops you a smoke you can easily create this smoke wall by yourself and have your team take outside control.

Most of you will know this lineup already and that is because it is both not too difficult to remember and execute and still extremely powerful. Neither are you exposed while throwing it nor is there a real weakness to it. This makes it the most popular smoke on Dust2 in the last six months amongst top tier professional players.

To throw it yourself, position yourself at tucked in in the corner in front of X-Box (setpos -275.03 1345.40 -122.51; setang -12.11 129.40) and crouch. Aim at the right of the fourth wooden plank on the height of the nails. then jump throw.

Airtime: 4.2s

The pro stats (last 6 months):

• 1,302 professional uses, ranked #1 among all T-side Dust2 smokes
• 3,524 total lifetime pro uses (since the start of 2024)

Most used by (lifetime):

• Players: Most used by Chopper (143), Kyxsan (71), and ApEX (66)
• Teams: Most used by Team Spirit (314), Team Falcons (245), and Natus Vincere (168)

I explicitly excluded instant smokes from this analysis because it is a bit more advanced and not everyone might be using it. Pros quite often do use instant smokes rendering them the most used ones by far.

This is the most popular non-instant window smoke from T-Spawn on Mirage right now. It's a running jump-throw with ~6 seconds of air time. While it doesnt look particularly easy on the first glance it is actually surprisingly easy to replicate. Try it :)

The throw:

1. Stand at setpos 1422.97 36.45 -167.97; setang -20.95 163.46
2. Hold left click, press A (strafe left), jump and throw
3. You see that deepening of the wall. You start aiming at the right start of it, hold mouse 1, start running to the left until you reach the end of the deepening i.e. the start of the red colored wall, and left go of mouse 1 while you jump.

The pro stats (last 6 months)

• 198 professional uses, ranked #15 among all T-side Mirage smokes
• 551 total lifetime pro uses
• Players: Most used by woxic (30), Jame (19), and HeavyGod (16)
• Teams: Most used by Aurora (40), Spirit (25), G2 (24)

I analyzed over 6000 demos of A and S tier professional matches. The main findings are on the slides but I found it particularily interesting that this really has become a standard to use. HEs no longer are utility to damage opponents only but are also used in more than 20% of the cases to gain intel i.e. to open up smokes.

Further, it is quite extreme how much more often this is done on Nuke compared to all other maps.

Let me know what you think and what other analyses you would be interested in! I am currently also working on something a user suggested last time: how often do pros fail the lineup they intended to throw?

If you want to learn more about utility and how to throw it yourself, I suggest you check out my new website and app that is also based on professional data: quicknades.app (the iOS app has been sent for review to Apple yesterday, so if everything goes well it might be published in the upcoming week).

quicknades is a CS2 lineup app built primarily for native mobile experiences. However, due to the recent feedback of people whishing for a web version as well, I have now published it on the website as a webapp: https://quicknades.app/. All customizations, favorites etc. are synced with your account and across devices. So if you have previously used mobile all those settings and favorites will show in the web version as well as soon as you log in.

If you come across a gap or find an interesting new lineup you want to see in the app, then simply hop in the game, record the demo, and upload it at https://quicknades.app/submit-lineup.

Anywhere in the app you can send feedback at anytime through the feedback button on the top right. If you are authenticated and allow the attachment to your account, you can chat directly with me in the app about a bug or a feature request.

Let me know what you think!

P.S. iOS will follow shortly

quicknades is a CS2 lineup app built primarily for native mobile experiences. However, due to the recent feedback of people whishing for a web version as well, I have now published it on the website as a webapp: https://quicknades.app/. All customizations, favorites etc. are synced with your account and across devices. So if you have previously used mobile all those settings and favorites will show in the web version as well as soon as you log in.

If you come across a gap or find an interesting new lineup you want to see in the app, then simply hop in the game, record the demo, and upload it at https://quicknades.app/submit-lineup.

Anywhere in the app you can send feedback at anytime through the feedback button on the top right. If you are authenticated and allow the attachment to your account, you can chat directly with me in the app about a bug or a feature request.

Let me know what you think!

P.S. iOS will follow shortly

I analyzed over 2000 professional matches from the last two years and wanted to share a first overview over the kind of data that brought forward. More to come over the next weeks!

Credits to Liquipedia for allowing me to use their API to be able to quickly get access to structured professional data and hltv for providing demos to all of us free of charge allowing analyses like the attached one. I analyzed all matches in the timeframe that Liquipedia assigned a tier of 1 or 2 (pretty much S and A tier events and matches).

What questions would you be most interested in next? Which team uses utility most on average? Which player throws the most smokes? Always wanted to know on which map the most utility damage is done? Let me know and I will tackle these questions in the next analysis.

If you want to learn some of the utility that is mentioned here, consider checking out the quicknades app at Google Play or join the iOS Test over at https://quicknades.app