Mastering the Art of Planting Spikes in Valorant: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you’ve been playing Valorant, you’ve probably heard the term “planting spike” thrown around. But what exactly is Spike, and why is planting it so important in the game?

In this article, we’ll break down the ins and outs of planting Spike in Valorant, from choosing the right spot to the best agents for the job.

We’ll also share some tips for successfully planting Spike and discuss the consequences of failing to do so.

If you’re looking to up your game in Valorant, read on to become a Spike planting pro!

What Is Valorant?

Valorant is a competitive first-person shooting game with many gameplay elements reminiscent of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The game incorporates ability usage in a manner of Overwatch and able to purchase economy systems from CS:GO. Valorant was developed and published by the American video game company Riot Games. Riot Games is known for its only other major hit video game, League of Legends (LOL), and has offices and developers across the world.

Valorant is best described as a 5v5 tactical shooter from a first-person viewpoint with the goal of planting or defusing a spike/ bomb. Two teams compete against each other – Attackers and Defenders. When playing on the Defender side, players try to prevent the enemy from planting the spike by eliminating them all (a team ace) or by defusing the spike.

When playing on the Attacker side, the team tries to plant the spike by having everyone on the opposite team eliminated, then planting the spike and defending it from being defused. Each round is scored with the number of rounds to win – either 13 or 25 depending on the game mode. Each match is won by the team that successfully defends and detonates a bomb more times or successfully defends from the bomb plant or detonates less. The attacking team wins the game if they successfully detonate the bomb or manage to defuse it. Rounds can last up to a maximum of 100 seconds.Valorant’s rules allow a team of five players to plant the spike on the bomb site A, bomb site B, or choose annihilation-annihilation by killing every last member of the opponent’s team.

What Is Spike?

In Valorant, Spike is the round objective and bomb site plant mechanism. It is a militarized briefcase carrying a radiological dirty bomb capable of causing unparalleled destruction to an urban environment. Teams must work together to deliver the Spike close enough to the enemy’s planting site to achieve a successful detonation. Attackers must plant the Spike at an out of site of the opposing teamwhile defenders must halt their progress. For planting to be successful, the carry must put the Spike into the planting alignment time set within a 0.9s drop interval and a 4-second unlocking period followed by a 45-second ignition period. Playing the Spike round through a quick execution will mitigate the risk of the opposing team preventing the plant and improve the chances of winning the round. The screenshot of the attack map above denotes the Spike planting sites at two A bombsites.

Why Is Planting Spike Important?

Planting Spike is important for several reasons in Valorant, including the fact that initiating and flipping from attacking to defending roles is easier, it provides the chance for stealthier plays, forces the enemy team to make a move, adds extra time for a last second plant, provides an opportunity for the losing team to make a comeback, helps unlock agents abilities by encouraging more gunplay, and provides another way to win a round or further increase the economic gap.

How To Plant Spike In Valorant?

To plant the spike in Valorant, a player must acquire the spike by moving close enough to the central safety zone of their home base and pressing the 4 key on their keyboard. The spike may then be planted within the circumference of the enemy’s defuse zone around the targeted spike plant location. The spike can only be planted on the ground, so jumping or attempting to plant on the wall will result in the message ‘BOMB PLANTED’. The spike may be planted by any player, not merely the member of the team to pick it up. To plant spike in Valorant successfully a player must wait 45 seconds after securing the area and properly planting the spike. Once planted, the spike will automatically explode and the attacking team will lose if the other team fails to defuse it successfully.

Choose a Good Planting Spot

Good Spike planting spots are hidden, have cover from where the enemy will come, and are hard to defuse due to surrounding objects or having Spy cams or other vision abilities in the area. Choose a planting spot that has minimal vision from the enemy to disrupt enemy defusal. This gives allies with vision interrupting abilities more time to re-take the site. B-plant in Haven and A-plant in Icebox are good examples. Hidden spots prevent defusers from easily accessing the Spike, hence giving you an advantage even if enemies are aware from where the plant was executed.

Check for Enemies

Cells scorches the target area with her flame wall ability. Note that Spike is in easy-to-defend positions in case of an enemy attack. Check frequently.

1. Rats use audio cues to locate enemy positions.
2. Mute the opposing team because their gunfire noises can give away their position. Footstep noises are also clearer when the enemy team is muting their audio.
3. Place yourself in an advantageous position on the map/flooring so that the enemy team is required to flank a team member and give themselves up.
4. Clear the map of lurking defenders and have the team check rooms while preparing to plant the Spike.
5. Enter a plant zone with an ability to exit in case an enemy shows up and begins firing. Always have someone on watch at the entrance to the plant zone.
6. Always plant with aloe.

Use Utility to Cover Planting

Smoke and spinning blades courtesy of Viper’s Toxic Screen are some of the best supportive abilities to have when planting the spike. Using any of Viper’s smokes and the fume of her Toxic Screen when planting the bomb helps their teammates to have additional seconds as the enemy cannot see the bomb plant animation. This gives a significant advantage when the opponents are pushing back. Additionally, some players use the movement and noise of brimstone’s Incendiary ability to cover their sound against enemies.

Have a Teammate Watch Your Back

One of Spike’s biggest challenges is when enemy players try to ‘ninja defuse’ by planting the spike and then hiding. This causes the attacking team to look for the ‘ninja’ hiding somewhere on the map. A teammate watching your back can prevent such an attempt and this will give support to allow playing defense only on ‘spike planting duty’ while a full or at most semi-defense is run by the rest of the team. A ‘back watcher’ should position themselves a bit more forward from the planter so as to not get caught by sneak attackers shortly after the plant. Angelou on Pinterest provides these placement guides to watch one’s back during a plant in Jett Abilities, Viper Abilities, Raze Abilities, Cypher Abilities, Omen Abilities, Brimstone Abilities, Breach Abilities, Reyna Abilities, Phoenix Abilities, Sage Abilities, Sova Abilities, Killjoy Abilities. Make sure the plant is not going to have another player suddenly appearing to kill which would leave the back turned for too long.

What Are the Best Agents for Planting Spike?

Spike plant agents are agents that have relatively helpful abilities to reach and plant the spike. Brimstone is a spike plant agent because a well-placed smoke grenade can decentralize enemy attention and a sky smoke screen to covertly move closer to the spike area and plant the spike. The agent in Valorant most useful for plant spike roles for their array of skills to deter and kill opponents is Sova, especially when other smokes or lockdown are used earlier in the spike recovery phase.

The best agent to plant in Valorant is Sova, and they can inspire opponents to cowl and throw a spike for easier planting. However, an enemy aggressive agent such as Raze or Reyna would prompt Sova to enter the spike point less on their own.

Brimstone

Brimstone is the most common agent used with spike in Valorant. The hallucination as well as the suppressing and smoking ability of his Incendiary track suit are excellent for helping players retrieve the Spike from enemy control and to plant in relative safety. Use his Stim Beacon to give your team a bit of an edge in the plant zone and add a bit more firepower to the plant squad.

Sage

Sage is the ruinitarian in Valorant whose primary role is supposed to be to heal teammates and push to restore control of an area of the map. Unlike every other agent who loses their spike plant position eventually, the spike will keep dealing damage to Sage for as long as she can see the spike. A single second of planting the spike is one point of damage for the attackers. If attackers have set up a safe perimiter, the plant-positioning player should let Sage cover the bomb plant area and do as much damage as possible, with Sage healing damage she takes to extend her whittling away at her health to reclaim spike plant site.

Cypher

Planting Spike for the teammate turns Cypher into a strong defender immediately post-plant as he can rapidly move around his own Utility Devices to new spots with advantageous lines of sight in contrast to Omen and Phoenix who have to wait for the bulk of the 1-min spike time plus the Planting and Defusing countdowns with no guarantee of success often before they can improve their positioning.

It is useful to keep large viewscreens between Cypher and risky angles to avoid him being offline as he move traps when the attacking team approaches the site.

What Are Some Tips for Planting Spike Successfully?

These are some tips for successfully planting spike in Valorant to ensure success, or even just safely entering the site:

1. Have a utility to assist you in planting or for crucial map control before and after planting. This includes smokes (Omen, Viper, Brimstone, and Jett), devices (Cypher, Killjoy, and Sova), flashes (Breacy, Phoenix, Reyna, and Skye), and barriers (Sage).
2. Check corners and close spaces for enemies.
3. Plant for your teammates. Try to plant the spike in a way that puts it behind natural cover for your teammates or away from enemies who may defuse it.
4. Use agents with mobile abilities, team utility, and self-defense options to stay alive while planting the spike. Make sure to have some of these agents in your team composition (for example Omen’s smokes, and Brimstone’s molly) to make other players’ planting easier.
5. Practice your abilities such as smokes (to cut off point line-of-sight), flashes (to disorient the enemy while you are planting), and mollies (stints their vision) before you plant.

Communicate with Your Teammates

Plant Spike in Valorant by communicating with teammates before the round. Communicate with them about who pushes first so that whoever takes the pistol first will have a better chance of planting unhindered. In a 5v5 match, make sure to guard the bomb planting area against enemies and help out members of your team should they get into clutch battles. If defending against the spike, do not overextend and kill the person designated to defend the planting spot and instead wait.

When your chance to remove them from the planting area comes, make the most of it. If you are the most skilled player on your team, try to support the spike planter while planting by defending against enemy pushes. Make sure to keep the spike planter out of harm’s way and help him out. When attacking the spike plant spot, have the spike courier ready to pick it up after the defender has been dealt with to accelerate the plant. Make sure teammates are planting the spike by covering the planter.

Use Audio Cues to Time Your Plant

60 seconds – The audio cue of which player matches the in-game timer is typically a great time to remember for when you should be planning to ensure that you plant before the spike explodes. A map switch changes the normal equal in-game game time of 60 seconds. On the map Fracture, conservatively you can plan on cutting this down to 52 seconds before the spike explodes. On the map Icebox, conservatively you can plan on cutting this down to 49 seconds before the spike explodes.

But because the map switch comes so close to the player in question, this may need to be adjusted according to the distance of the attacking or defending player in question.

Practice in Custom Matches

Practice planting spike for real without the stress of affecting your ranking or upsetting random teammates by playing Custom Games. Encourage friends or followers on social media to join you and run several games with only the plant objective in mind. Learn the plant time, plant type percentage, and locations on each map.

You can do this best by running games with your team using the deposit score method. The deposit score method is used to mimic and control the playing experience. At the start of the match, players will not spend any currency points they have acquired. They will plant the spike in round 1, just to get the feel of the planting mechanism. Since no hostile NPCs or players to oppose them, they will plant the spike in the most exposed position to see how seconds left on the bomb timer impacts their chances of surviving.

pros and cons of how these additional settings impact the playing experience. Once you feel comfortable, turn on the hostile NPC setting to really test yourself. With the NPC+hostile Population setting turned to Low, you will have some but not an overwhelming amount of bad guys shooting at you while planting.

What Are the Consequences of Failing to Plant Spike?

The consequences of failing to plant the spike in Valorant are that the attacking team does not put the 1:30 round timer in motion and does not keep the pathway to the 21 round victory open. This maintains the upper hand with the defending team who can contain or weaken control positions as long as the spike has not been planted.

When playing as an attacker, the loss of the round means less time available to plant the spike and secure a victory. In cases where an attacking player fails to plant spike, any teammate continuously asking for a distraction to put a stop to this enemy camper problem will put pressure on the camper and protect the unskilled or less skilled spike planter, increasing the overall tactical soundness of the attacking team’s play.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the spike in Valorant and how do I plant it?

The spike is the objective item in Valorant that must be planted by the attacking team in order to win the round. To plant the spike, you must have possession of it and stand in the designated plant zone for a few seconds.

Can the spike be planted at any time during a round in Valorant?

No, the spike can only be planted during the “buy phase” at the beginning of each round or after it has been picked up by a member of the attacking team during the round.

How do I know where to plant the spike in Valorant?

The plant zone is marked on the mini-map with a red square when you are in possession of the spike. You can also look for the large glowing yellow circle on the ground in the designated area.

What happens if I start planting the spike but get killed before it finishes?

If you are killed while planting the spike, it will cancel the planting process and the spike will drop to the ground. It can then be picked up by another member of your team to continue the planting process.

Can the defending team stop the spike from being planted in Valorant?

Yes, the defending team can prevent the spike from being planted by either eliminating all members of the attacking team or by defusing the spike if it has already been planted.

Are there any tips for successfully planting the spike in Valorant?

It is important to communicate with your team and make sure you have cleared the area of enemies before attempting to plant the spike. You can also use abilities and smokes to cover the plant or fake a plant to bait the defending team.