Taking a site, playing the post-plant and retaking

01Information first

An attack that walks into a site blind is a coin flip. The initiator's first job is to find out where the defenders are: a Recon Bolt, a drone or a Haunt before anyone peeks turns an unknown corner into a known one. The rest of the team waits a second for that information instead of running past it.

02Smokes, then the entry

The controller cuts the lines of sight the defence uses to hold the entry — typically the angles from spawn side and from the site's back — at the moment the team moves, not before, because a smoke that fades as the team arrives is worse than no smoke. Then the duelist enters right behind a blind or a concuss and takes the deep position of the site, and the second player in trades the duelist if the first fight goes wrong.

• Call the utility before you throw it: a blind nobody expected also blinds your team.
• Enter together: three players arriving one second apart lose to three defenders one by one.
• The sentinel stays back to watch the flank with a trap.

03The post-plant

Once the Spike is down the roles flip: the attackers are now the defenders of a bomb, and time is on their side. Leave the site and spread out to positions that see the Spike from different angles, so the defuser can be shot from somewhere the retake did not clear. Keep damaging utility — a molly, a Nanoswarm, a Snake Bite — to stop the defuse in the last seconds instead of peeking.

04The retake

When a site falls, the defenders who were not there should not trickle in one by one. Group up with the survivors, use the recon and flashes you saved, and retake together from more than one side so the attackers cannot hold every angle. Count the attackers still alive before you commit: against three or more with a planted Spike, saving your weapons is often the better decision.

05Two sites or three

Haven and Lotus have three Spike sites, the rest of the competitive pool two. With three sites the defence is spread thinner, rotations are longer and the attack has more room to fake: information and fast executes are worth more there, and sentinels often hold a site alone. On two-site maps the defence can stack more players per site, so utility to break a set-up matters more than speed.