“When thrown, the decoy grenade emulates the sound of the most powerful weapon you are carrying, creating the illusion of additional supporting forces.”
―Official description
The decoy grenade is equipment featured in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Overview
When thrown, it emits the sound of the user's most powerful weapon and creates an "enemy" icon on the player's radar at its location, giving an illusion that an enemy nearby is firing. After a certain period of time, the decoy grenade will self-detonate. The decoy will also appear as an enemy on the opposing team's mini-map while it is emitting sound.
After the December 3, 2012 update, the Decoy grenade now physically resembles a flashbang and can cause enemies to react as if it is one. The only difference between the two is that the Decoy grenade has a red stripe in the middle instead of a blue stripe.
Advantages
- Very useful in creating distractions or luring the enemy away from you
- Can create the illusion of additional/suppressive fire
- Can intimidate enemy players and they may not want to engage you or enter into the area with the emitting decoy grenade
- Very cheap (only $50).
- Can be used as a "fake" flashbang to make enemies turn away.
- Great for distracting bots.
Disadvantages
- Once enemies become aware that a decoy grenade has been thrown, they will focus their attention on previous or new objectives
- Furthermore, if the opposing force is able to communicate effectively and frequently, they can alert each other if they discover an active decoy grenade thus rendering it completely useless afterwards.
- Noisy (not recommended to use when the enemy is occupied elsewhere and if you do not want to be seen)
- The grenade must be thrown wisely otherwise, the enemy force may actually arrive to your position!
Gameplay
Tactics
- The Decoy grenade mimics four things: A flashbang, the sound of your weapon, the sound of HE Grenade explosion, and the visual effects of Incendiary grenade/Molotov Cocktail explosion.
- Throw a Decoy Grenade at areas where enemies are unlikely to see them. For instance, corners and (flat) rooftops should be sufficient.
- This grenade is very often purchased at pistol rounds, due to its low cost.
- If enemies catch the sight of a decoy grenade in mid-air, they can briefly back up and look away, giving you a chance to rush and kill them while they're off-guard. Compared to a real flashbang, using a decoy has special advantages as you will not get blinded when doing this (with a real flashbang, you will need to wait for it to go off first, which could take time and they may not even be blinded at all). This tactic is not recommended if you are facing multiple opponents, as while you are killing distracted players, their teammates could kill you as well. Oddly, this tactic will NOT work for bots.
- It is recommended to use this grenade at areas where combat is occurring. Distracted enemies will have a hard time figuring out the difference between a decoy and a real enemy player.
- Avoiding hanging around areas for excessive periods where a Decoy grenade has been deployed.
- Throw a decoy grenade at (or near) the location of a deployed smoke grenade. This will make it harder for enemies to differentiate real players from "fake" players.
- Alternatively, you can toss a flashbang and if enemies are blinded, they may not notice a deployed decoy grenade.
Gallery
Trivia
- The explosion that occurs after the decoy grenade expires inflicts around 5 points of damage to any player near it.
- It is also possible to kill someone by directly throwing a decoy grenade and hitting another player, similar to a flashbang and a smoke grenade.
- There was no HUD kill icon if a player was killed by the explosion; only the name will show up without a kill icon. Also, if a player was killed by it, the screen will show up "<player> killed you with " ". This has been fixed in an update.
- It is also possible to kill someone by directly throwing a decoy grenade and hitting another player, similar to a flashbang and a smoke grenade.
- After the 2/5/2014 update in Global Offensive, all grenades received a secondary fire where the grenade will be bounced for short range throw, as well as a third medium-ranged throw (by holding both primary and secondary fire buttons).
- If a player was equipped with a USP-S, attached the silencer, and used a Decoy Grenade, the P2000's firing sound were used instead. This was later fixed in an update.
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