Valorant Brimstone Haven Defensive Smokes Guide

by MxChamp24

Hey everyone, i’m Dragonmar and welcome to a little guide i’ll be writing up for Brimstone and his smokes. In the following post, you’ll see tips for proper smoke placement, timings, retakes, and much more. This is geared toward smoke as a Defender, but some tips are more universal! As always, with my posts i’ll include a link to the video they are based off of, however everything you need will be written here as well.

THE VIDEO

Tip 1: Staggering Smokes (Why Using Smokes At Round Start Can Be Bad)

• There is no reason to waste smokes at the VERY start of the round if there is no immediate benefit to you, or your team. Think about B-Mid on Haven, why would you smoke off the doorway to B, if you are on defense, as soon as the round starts? Do you do that? Well here is why it’s a problem:
  • First, you’ve completely blocked off your vision
  • Second, you’ve given the enemy a clear path out of Window, one of the most difficult spots to get through as you have to jump out, sacrificing aim and movement
  • Third, the enemy now has full vision and control of mid steps, all they need to be careful of is you on top of the boxes on site
• As you see, throwing smokes immediately at round start is not always a good idea. Instead you should stagger your smokes throughout the round. A great example is at C-Long. If you can wait until you here footsteps or make visual contact with an enemy to start your smokes, you are automatically better than 67% of the playerbase. By waiting, you are allowing valuable time to be lost by the attackers and potentially allowing for your smokes to be up for the entirety of the rest of the round.
• I would also highly suggest to let smokes expire, wait a few seconds, and then resmoke. There are some great aggressive pushes to be made while smokes are dropping but at the same time you are increasing the total duration of smoke time as most players don’t immediately push as they expire.

Tip 2: Proper Smoke Placement (Cracks, Depth)

• One of the most frustrating things that can happen in a game is relying on your teammate to properly block off an angle with smoke, moving forward assuming its done right, and getting shot through a crack in the smoke. It’s very important to remember that smokes, while VERY easy to place, still have a little nuance to them. Remember to always overlap the nearest corner if possible, you never want people to be able to see through them. You may know it’s not a perfect smoke, but most likely your team won’t
• Depth is weird way to put it, but i’m talking about the total smoke on each side of a doorway for example. Let’s talk A Long coming from the garden right outside. You want to take the orb right? So you throw your smoke at the top of the doorway.
  • Closest to you we’ll call “D”, closest to attackers we’ll call “A”
  • You want the majority of the smoke’s physical body to be toward A. Why? Because if too much is toward D, you give the enemy and opportunity to sneak out through the doorway, hug the wall, and get into the cubby at long A.
• This is a problem on a LOT of maps, in a LOT of spots. You’ll probably remember a time when someone was in an unexpected position even though a smoke was placed. Most likely they were able to use the depth of the smoke to get into that corner. Be very cautious of this, it’s a huge problem for new players.

Tip 3: SMOKES ARE NOT JUST DEFENSIVE, YOU CAN RETAKE SITES WITH THEM

• WHY WHY WHY DO PEOPLE NOT KNOW HOW TO RETAKE WITH SMOKESSSSSS, REEEEE
• Sorry, i’m very passionate about retakes. The gist here is that if a Brimstone has smokes left and you need to retake a site, you should ALWAYS end that round with 0 smokes left. You might be thinking, but if they have site control how can that help? Great question, here’s how:
  • First, if there is a pesky angle or potentially a LONG angle being held be an AWPer, then you’ll have a great opportunity to throw a smoke down and render them completely useless.
  • Second, if mutilple smokes are available, you can cut bombsites in half with 2-3 smokes allowing your team to group up, and easily trade kills as the attackers will most likely be too split up to help eachother.
  • Third, smoking the bomb is a great option to force pressure. There are a lot of ways to smoke a plant, whether is be next to it, inside of it, etc. Remember if you are going to smoke for a defuse, you’ll often be met with a barrage of bullets so it may be a good idea to fake the defuse in that case
  • Forth, you can smoke off potential rotates from out of position attackers. If your entire team is CT pushing C Site, smoking off garage into C can actually help you a lot especially if attackers are still coming to the defend the plant from mid, etc. Rotating happens on both sides of the game.
• There are some great option to retake with smokes, even using them to allow passage into site by walking through them as a personal favorite of mine that I’ve yet to use in ranked though.

Tip 4: Aggressive Smokes (Proper Pushes and How to Clear Angles)

• Finally, defensive smokes can allow for some pretty aggressive plays. One of my favorite smokes is at the top of A-Short/Garden and taking control of that lobby area. If you smoke off the top of A-Short, but place the smoke a little bit to the right, it allows you to walk through the smoke safely into the corner behind the box(Taking Advantage of Tip 2 here). A lot of people will not check these corners and you can EASILY get 1-2 frags each time.
• Mid-B is another great aggressive smoke where you smoke not only Window, but also Alt-Mid, connecting it to the close corner where the boxes are. This allows for you and your team to take full control of mid steps and walk all the way to window without being compromised.
• The key with a lot of aggressive smokes, is to place them in a way where the enemy team won’t think much of it. It’s important to cover yourself the best you can, but you need some element of surprise here to really make this work. You can be too obvious if you triple smoke B-Mid and just stampede your way down steps. Think about your audio as well when getting aggressive with smokes, teams are rarely caught off guard by defenders in forward positions when they heard you elephant stomp your way there.
• Aggressive smoke should also be placed in such a way as to allow for you to only worry about clearing 1 angle at a time. The double B-Mid smoke allowing you to push under Window is a great example. You want to get out quick, but you still have to weary of someone running toward the double box outside of garage. Nonetheless, that is only 1 angle to worry about, instead of 3 if you didn’t use smokes at all.

BONUS TIP: Assume Every Smoke Has A Player Behind It

• As a smoke pushing enthusiast myself, aim your gun at headshot level, and push those smokes with conviction baby.

Thanks so much for reading everyone, hope some of you may have learned some new things. Good luck grinding ranked everyone and I hope to have some more awesome guides out for you in the future. IF you have any SPECIFIC smoke questions or Brimstone questions, i’d love to answer them in the comments below!