CS2: Is Nuke Washed?

Everyone's favourite CT sided map is looking a little fifty-fifty in CS2. Let's figure out what's going on.

Once considered one of the most CT sided maps!

Preamble

The first full season of CS2 has ended. The constant cycle of tournaments to watch and maps played may mask the fact that we are slowly approaching an entire year without CS:GO - and yet, at least in my opinion, we are far from solving many of CS2’s riddles.

One prominent riddle stood out to me as something people have forgotten in the midst of larger changes, both in terms of game mechanics with the shift to CS2, and the external circumstances of roster chaos and a future in 2025 with even crazier schedules and tournaments, is the shift Nuke displays in terms of favouring the CT side.

There are a number of possible factors and elements at play here, so let’s go through what we can measure, and guess at what we can’t, in order to come to a conclusion on this enigma. It may not be a problem in the first place, but I’ll try and solve it.

If you have any suggestions or simply wish to discuss, reply to me on Twitter!

The Basis

The shift in CT round wins has gone from ~55% to ~51%. (By the way, the Nuke stats are all LAN vs Top 20 - for CS:GO it includes 2023 CS:GO maps, and for CS2 it includes 2024 CS2 maps, minimum of 6 for teams in both cases.)

This by itself could also be seen as a continuation of a trend that had slowly been happening in CS:GO regardless. Alongside the many changes to CS:GO over the years, such as economy tweaks and gun balances, the standard amount of CT rounds on Nuke has shifted as well. An 11-4 score years prior may have been satisfactory, but in 2023 you’d have to aim for a 9-6 to ensure an equivalent sense of calm during half time.

Another relevant data point is that while in 2023 Nuke was far from the most played map (indeed it was the third least played map, only above the ever-hated Vertigo and the new addition of Anubis), in 2024 so far Nuke is the most played map by far. To put it in perspective, in 2023 Inferno and Mirage were first and second with 149 and 146 maps respectively - in 2024, Nuke sits at 110 while Ancient is next at 95.

So it’s not as if Nuke has fallen out of favour - on the contrary, more teams are willing to play it. Given that Mirage and Ancient remain unchanged yet are played less frequently, this seems like the right conclusion.

Let’s start with the most obvious point and go from there.

12 round half - just win the pistol?

The first thing I look towards is any changes in pistol rounds. (We will get to broader economic changes later on!). There is a somewhat significant drop-off in CT pistol win rates moving into CS2 Nuke - whether you attribute this to changes in peeking, smokes, or anything in between, the fact is that losing a pistol tracks strongly (at least on a similar level to CS:GO) with losing the subsequent round. Less pistols can easily mean less rounds in the half, even without considering the overall effects on the half.

It’s a tragedy that economic statistics about CS are so lacking. In my long unreleased pistol round article, almost a year ago, I was manually watching each round to count. This took forever and was unrewarding, and we run into the same problem here.

However, perhaps the indirect effects of economic shifts are visible through other means…

The Knock-On Effects - Weapon Purchases

If we can’t measure exact economic statistics, the next best thing would be to look at changes in weapon purchases. To summarise: more M4A1-S and MP9 purchases, less AWPs and M4A4s.

This is a conclusion you could easily have come to by watching the games yourself, or even playing some matchmaking. The combination of a cheaper silenced rifle, and the desire to try to gain control on CT while you lack the rounds to save and ensure a complete buy round results in a compromise in one direction or another. Either you give up on utility and commit to the rifles, or you sacrifice the weaponry and enjoy the MP9.

The plot thickens when you take a look at some other maps, though.

Any absent weapons are missing because they didn’t exist in the HLTV pie chart in one of the iterations, because they were too minor and were subsumed into “other”.

Similar changes are observed for CT weapon purchase rates on Ancient - however, no shifts in win-rate were observed for the CT side.

The implication is that purchasing patterns across maps experience similar shifts (at least, for Ancient, Nuke, and Mirage) as a result of the shift to MR12 and change in economic conditions, however this does not result in a major shift in win rate for the maps that aren’t Nuke.

My suggested conclusion is that Nuke as a map simply requires more utility and full buys in order for the CT side to live up to their potential. Smokes, incendiaries, grenades, all play a massive part in a standard hold on Nuke.

Outside benefits greatly from AWPs to hold long angles, and in general it is harder to play around those angles with a close-range MP9, putting CTs at a disadvantage no matter which side of the compromise they lean towards.

Other maps, like the aforementioned Ancient, have much more flexibility when it comes to making do with limited utility. You can save smokes for retakes on the A site of Ancient, for instance, or shift the standard site hold away from the bombardment of Middle with utility. However, you hardly hear the phrase “playing for the retake” on Nuke, especially on A site. There’s nowhere to fall back from a site rush if you’re playing on top of Hut or in the site itself, unlike most standard maps.

Mirage and Ancient, on the other hand, stand out to me as some of the most “retakeable” maps in CS. You can play passive on either bombsite and find alternate holds to allow for this style. Nuke limits CT options when finances are low - and further investigation may be required!

Economic Turmoil Affects CT Cohesion?

I think it would be an obvious point, and not very interesting at this point, to state that 5v4 and 4v5s were both worse in CS2 than CS:GO. It would go hand in hand with worse buys and less round wins overall. But oddly enough, there are some interesting changes with utility damage and trading cohesion for the CT side on Nuke specifically.

While all the maps included here share the same weaponry shifts due to economic changes, only Nuke shows real differences (in fact, Ancient utility improves…) and especially in traded deaths. You can imagine that forcing CT players to play close quarters with SMGs results in a slight reduction in traded deaths, as the rifle would be able to get that trade frag in a more reasonable, flexible situation.

The T side reports no such problems in cohesion via traded deaths. In fact, overall utility damage seems to be increasing for T sides (which may require a separate investigation). The attackers do not have to make the compromises that the defenders do, and can choose their engagements more effectively in the event of lesser weaponry.

I think that the CT side changes show that Nuke is the odd one out in this respect - you would see similar changes in every map otherwise. As stated prior, protocols on other maps feel more flexible and allow for different looks compared to Nuke’s more rigid requirements.

If you’ve been watching professional CS2 recently, you’ll no doubt remember the frequency of A site rushes on Nuke T sides. It is the easiest way to punish the currently lacking CT economy - the CTs wont have the utility to keep you locked out of bombsites while simultaneously doing everything else (throwing reactive utility for instance), so you can utilise the rush more often. It also has the effect of ensuring the protocol utility has to be thrown every round, conditioning the CTs into wasting money on incendiaries and smokes and making other T rounds easier to play as a result.

Perhaps the most important and interesting aspect of all this is the dynamic of the new smokes, especially on Nuke’s Outside. No doubt the drop in utility damage for both sides (while the T side enjoys increased utility damage in CS2 on the other maps) is a result of breaking open the Outside smokes over and over to gain information. Allocating resources to this also takes away from the rest of a CT buy, and yet it seems like it must be included as otherwise you suffer a complete lack of information, not to mention the risk of being broken into by the T side.

Easier To Play?

To summarise the factors involved - the twelve round half shifts economic focus, as seen in all maps and not just Nuke. This shift forces Nuke CT sides to be strapped for resources, as seen in the weapon buys, and results in missing cohesion and minutiae like flash assists, and traded deaths.

I theorise this is why people are more comfortable to pick nuke. It is easier to break a strong CT side now than ever before, since you can exploit these patterns more reliably than before where you would have to deal with a full buy that would be able to handle the protocols alongside whatever flow chart you had for your perfect T side call.

A team with a bad Nuke can hope to get lucky in key rounds - this is perhaps why it lends itself to being picked more often as more teams see it as a common ground where no team is necessarily dominant, which was not the case historically. People remember the Astralis Nuke streaks and have treated it as a tactical battleground ever since, but perhaps this is not the case right now.

It is a matter of perspective as to whether you see this as a lowering of skill level in the map. I think the dynamic is different - there’s a reason we don’t just play every round with max money in professional CS - but I would also like to see CTs have a more reasonable shot at playing with a perfect buy. It is however mostly on Nuke that this shift happened (Overpass win rates were actually higher on CT in CS2 - you can’t punish the same lack of utility in the same way, since the bombsites are arranged so favourably for the CTs, is my guess - but we don’t need to worry about Overpass any more…) and since this is the case we may just have to deal with it, or risk shifting the meta on every other map alongside more macro changes to the economy and the game.

As of right now, Nuke is just another map that any team can win on. It doesn’t stop teams from trying to create perfect CT sides, and indeed a proper plan can allow individuals like m0NESY to break through and dominate consistently. It’s just important that you treat it as it is and not as it was.

Afterword

Thank you for reading yet another article! I never planned to make an article on Nuke but I was browsing some stats and thought it was interesting considering the history of the map and I didn’t see anyone else talking about it.

I’m working my second esports broadcast over at Dust2IN on Sunday. If you’re reading this go ahead and check if it’s live! Another thanks to my readers for being here and providing some inspiration to contribute to the desert of esports.

In the event that you have anything to say to me, have a gander at my Twitter!