Smoke grenades, a staple of shooting games meant to deny vision. In titles like Counter Strike the use of smokes has had an evolution unto themselves. But in Siege smokes are practically useless. Even the operator meant to be “fancy smoke grenades” in Sens is viewed as a waste of an op. If you go back far enough in Pro League you see smokes used as they typically are in FPS games, blocking line of site and hiding the planter. At some point something changed.
The root of the problem starts with Glaz. While he’s little more than a niche operator in the modern day, the Russian sniper was a real menace in Year 2 following a buff that gave him a thermal scope. This lit up all Defenders neon yellow, more importantly it also let Glaz see through smokes. At the time smoke grenades were almost as equally distributed as flashbangs were, with staple ops like Ash and Thermite having access.
What followed was a Russian smoke criminal applying massive pressure in smoke tunnels with very little the Defense could do about it. Smokes used to be nothing more than a line of sight blocked, they didn’t physically limit the Defenders beyond that. You could still make moves to reposition, fight, or push. When Glaz got his banana scope that all changed. Every smoke was an Attacker one-way that Defenders couldn’t risk peeking. A Glaz could be hiding in that cloud. What used to be something that both teams could play around created massive “Attacker only” zones.
Available counterplay was limited to a) spray through a smoke and get lucky (hope you don’t get shot) b) pray Glaz’s hit reg doesn’t work or c) don’t peek. Needless to say, these are rather lacking options. Glaz was the first operator to be able to see through smokes and it wasn’t until much later in the game’s lifespan that he balanced. Of course, that wasn’t so much the nerfs to Glaz so much as fundamental shifts to Siege in response to the operator.
Glaz may have been the first operator to see through smokes but he wasn’t the last. Because of the lack of counterplay Ubisoft started developing multiple operators to counter the threat of a thermal scope. You can actually see the shift in the Defending ops once you realize new operators took 1-2 years of development. Glaz was buffed Year 2, right after Mira’s release, and the same time next year Maestro was out alongside bulletproof cameras. Within another year Warden came out, a response to the evolved Glaz/Ying meta.
While Glaz certainly did receive nerfs and many meta Attackers lost access to smoke grenades, the real reason the utility feels so useless nowadays is simply because there’s too many counters to smoke. Not counters to Glaz, counters to smoke. There’s still very little counterplay to Glaz as an operator, what exists is counters to smoke’s effectiveness. Not only do you have two operators that can see through smokes in Maestro and Warden, too many to ban out, you also have a secondary gadget that is widely available (and popular) in the bulletproof cams.
Maestro had a long period of popularity due to his ACOG and the slow trend towards the 20 second meta, and Warden has since become a staple “support” op able to see through literally anything the Attack throws at him. Bulletproof cams are just a nail in the coffin. Simply by nature of existing, these three factors make smoke grenades weak.
What originally started as a utility to block line of sight has since become a liability, another way to burn through ADS’s and laser gates. In refusing to remove Glaz’s thermal scope Ubisoft had to compensate by giving many Defenders the same ability to see through smoke, which yes, is part of Glaz’s ability, but also affects the entire usefulness of <smoke> as utility. Now Capitaõ’s smoke bolts are less powerful to balance Glaz. Now Sens is even more niche, to balance Glaz. Because Glaz was nerfed by reducing his powerful synergies the entire concept and usefulness of smokes is limited. All for an op that only shows up for rush strats.