We'll drop a grenade for ya'

It wouldn’t be a big CSGO update without some drama, would it?

And while all you filthy casuals were getting excited about the gold AK-47 and Scuba Steve, us serious students of CSGO were getting very, very angry at one part of this update:

You can now drop grenades in competitive.

Making such a big change one month before the Major is problematic even for good updates. And it’s even more problematic when everyone hates it.

How this can be used

1. We can now have 1-man executes: 4 players can go palace and the other (probably karrigan) can find a way to throw all three A smokes and ten flashes.
2. You can’t make reads on numbers of players from the number of nades anymore. You can fake flash with… a flash. Multiple times. No, seriously, click that link.
3. You can also drop 4 smokes in CT spawn on Inferno, and have the top of Banana smoked off for 1 minute every round – without even having to rotate players.
4. A similar situation can be found on Overpass, with A players re-smoking Monster from CT spawn 3 times, letting B anchors save their grenades for the execute. Of course, there’s an element of risk-reward to this. It does makes the other bombsite weaker...
5. ... And to do this on Inferno you have to give up Banana control. Plus you’ll have to go back to CT-spawn to pick up the smokes, unless you want all your A players heavily delayed every round. If you do a one-man execute, there will be a big gap between nades landing, so you’ll either have to go out too early or let them rotate.

So are pros over-reacting? 70% of voters on our poll actually think it’s a good change - there are clearly some fun consequences and it will throw every strategy-book into turmoil.

There's even a role for us now

In the late-round, low HP players, instead of becoming bait, can now throw utility sets. You can drop all your grenades before you go into that One-And-Done spot. And you don’t need to teach your noob friend smokes anymore, you just throw them for them!

As a community we’re pretty bad at change. Mostly because it’s normally really bad (remember Revolver?).

So will dropping grenades improve the game? Probably not. Should it have been released before the major? Definitely not. But it's not going to break the meta, or make MSL win that Major, aizyesque.

Life goes on, and so must you.