Overview
In this guide I will be covering the basic and advanced uses of throwing grenades and using them in tactical situations where a gun just doesn’t cut it.
Throwing and timing
The thing that makes grenades so OP are two qualities.
You throw them.
You time them.
These qualities make it so you can make them explode in places where you wouldn’t be able to get to without putting yourself at risk of getting killed by the other player.
Throwing in Arcs
The first thing you have to learn about gernades are that you throw them in the secret angle
Arcs
To arc an object in duck game you need to hold down UP while flying and throwing. And don’t confuse UP with JUMP. Those are two seperate imputs. To make it easier for myself I have UP and JUMP on the same key, W. This makes it so that I have my grenade ready to be thrown in an arc as soon as I jump to get into position.
Up-curve throw
You can curve a grenade upwards by holding UP and doing a hard throw. This can be useful where you don’t have the space necessary for doing and arc throw or if wouldn’t end up in the desired position if you do any other throw. You can make the curve throw go higher by jumping while doing the throw
Knowing the path of the grenade
Knowing where the grenade will end up based on from where you throw it is critical for being able to predict where on the map it will explode.
I suggest that you study all of my throws that I showcase in the end of this guide to get a better understanding of the physics of a throw.
Usually what I do when I spawn on a map with a grenade nearby is look at where the other players spawn and identify the best throw for killing them based on the meta that I would use if I were to spawn in their position. This takes a lot of practice to be able to do within the span of time between spawning and being able to move. But by doing this I can pull the pin immediately after grabbing the grenade.
any point in these paths.
Timing
A grenade has exactly 2 seconds from pulling the pin to exploding. This might seem like a very short amount of time to plan out where you are going to throw it. But that’s why I’m going to teach you in this guide how to plan out before hand where you are going to throw it based on the other players placement and where they are heading before throwing it.
First thing you have to learn about a grenade is how far it will go before exploding after throwing it based on when you are throwing it after you have pulled the pin. For this you have to stop thinking of a grenades timer as well, time, and instead start thinking it of as distance left before it explodes.
Of course I don’t always consciously think about how much distance I have left. When you do it enough it becomes more of a feeling, you just know exactly where it will explode. This is when you can start actively using them in close combat fights.
-Medium range/Medium hold
-Far range/Short hold
Predicting
Predicting where the other player is going. The first thing that I learned when I was trying to predict the movement of the other player was splitting my focus to focus on myself and on the other player while playing to always see where he was heading and planning to do.
Questions you should think of when playing is
Where does he want to go?
What would I do if I was in his situation?
Timing while moving
This is probably the hardest part of throwing grenades. You have to be able move to a position where you can accurately throw the grenade based on the other persons movement. For this step you need to have a great understanding of predicting the other persons movements and timing the grenade.
If you grab a grenade because the other person is in a situation where you can kill him and the other person notices and starts running towards you after you pinned it, then you need reposition to a position where you can still throw the grenade and hit the other person while still keeping track of when you pinned it so you know how much distance you have left for your grenade.
If the other person moves from where you originally planned to throw it to a postition further away from you, you need to be prepared to throw it a lot earlier than you initially planned.
Hard throw/Soft throw
There are upsides and downsides with both Soft Throws and Hard Throws
Hard Throws – Upsides
- If you are good at timing grenades you can make hard throws be extremely hard to dodge since it’s going to be a really fast throw.
- You have a lot more range for your throws, meaning that you won’t have to get close enough for the other player to be able to kill you and yet deliver a killing explosion.
Hard Throws – Downsides
- If you are not that good at timing grenades yet and you throw the grenade preemptively you could give the other player the option to throw it back at you, putting yourself in a position where it would be really hard to escape since the grenade probably won’t have that much time left.
- If you do a hard throw to get a grenade into a tight space it can rebound onto you and kill you.
Soft Throws – Upsides
- Soft throws can be used to “sneak” a grenade into a position where a player might be camping.
- You can use a soft throws to get a grenade into a postiton that is below than you without having to go directly over it, saving time and avoiding being killed by a person below you.
- Since soft throws are slower than hard throws you can use them when you want to get a grenade into a position that you have too much distance left on your grenade if you were to use a hard throw.
Soft Throws – Downsides
- You have to throw a soft throw earlier than a hard a throw so that it doesn’t kill you, if a player is prepared for you to do this it would give them time to quickly throw it back .
- Soft throws have shorter range than hard throws and you have to be closer to your target in order to kill it, so if you don’t know how to time it properly you might end up just standing there and waiting for the time to throw it and end up getting killed.
Example of a Short Throw
Rebound throws
There are a lot of maps that rebound throws can ge useful. One of the best maps to use on them are random maps, where you spawn in the corner with nothing but a grenade and a player spawns above you. If the other player knows what he is doing he will go down to grab the gun above you before you, if you predict this you can grab the grenade and do a rebound throw if over the ledge without putting yourself in danger. The same principle goes for all of the situations where you would use this throw.
Zoning
Zoning is when you throw a grenade into a position where the other player could possibly go, and therefore forcing them to walk a path where you could cut them off and kill them.
You could also use zoning as a means of surivival. If a player starts running towards your position you could leave or throw the grenade in your old position forcing the player to avoid it and giving you time to get away. But be careful not to throw it too early, that could give the other player the chance to throw it at you instead.
Every meta grenade throw that I know of for the QC 1v1 Map Pack
On symmetrical maps it is given that you could do all the throws in the opposite direction aswell.
The arrows are not color coded, it’s just easier to see the different ones since a lot of them go to the same place but from different positions. I purposefully left out some throws since you wouldn’t be able to do them and get away without putting yourself in danger. I might have missed a couple of good ones though, if you see one that you think should be included, make a video of you doing it and send it to me and I’ll include it!
