Smoke grenades, flashbangs, incendiary, Molotov. CSGO has an array of exceptional grenade based firepower for both attackers and defenders to take advantage of. Each one has been purposefully built and designed to offer value in some avenue to both teams, and proper use can be the difference between victory and defeat.
Then there are frag grenades. Now, don't get us wrong, frag grenades are perfectly fine, and see play at the top level of the pro scene. However, for the standard competitive player, you're going to see far more value come out from the other grenades.
Not only more value, but the benefits you get from getting good with the other grenades far outweigh the benefits of getting good with a frag.
To understand why we need to understand the difference in the grenade's purpose. With smokes, flashbangs, and even molotovs, you get utility. Sure, you can use molotovs for damage, but the far better use for them comes in the form of cutting parts of a bomb site off. With frags, you don't get that.
You don't get to cut a line of sight, or to blind the enemy, or force them to move, all you get is pure raw damage. Now, as we said, this has its uses. If you know an enemy location, you can throw a grenade to soften them up before a gunfight, and you can even win rounds with grenades when it's late, and everybody is weak, and you know where an enemy is on-site, chuck a frag grenade their way for the easy win.
So this isn't ragging on frag grenades, we are simply saying that you are better off getting good with the others first.
Even for defenders, you don't get utility. You can use them in the same way as attackers, or how you would a Molotov, throwing it into a choke point in the hopes of it landing in the middle of a group of enemies, but you're relying on luck for that.
On top of all this, grenades don't have pre-existing grenade spots in the same way the others do. You can't stand in an obscure spot, aiming at a single pixel, and throw your grenade to hit a specific part of the site. Even if you could, why would you? You don't get any real site utility from it, and frags are much better the later in the round it is.
For this reason, if you do decide to use frag grenades, hold on to them until you need them. This rule applies to all grenades, of course, but frags in particular. The longer the round goes on, generally speaking, the weaker the enemies are.
When the enemies are lower on health, your frag has a greater chance of killing them, therefore increasing its value.
Personally, we would recommend getting a Molotov, smoke, and two flashbangs over a grenade, especially on defense, but what you do is up to you. If you think you can make good use of a frag grenade, then go for it, it's your MMR on the line after all.
