Valorant Spike basics: where to plant, disarm timer, radius, more

Planting the Spike in Valorant is easy, but doing it right can be the difference between winning and losing the round. If you were handed the daunting task of doing just that, here’s a quick guide so you can secure an easy victory.

The Spike is the core objective in Valorant. While getting kills gets the job done sometimes, planting the Spike not only gives Attackers an injection of money, but also puts pressure on Defenders.

However, a poorly placed Spike can be the difference between winning and losing not only the round, but the game. So, next time you get trusted with planting, follow our guide, and you’ll never lose a retake again.

How long does it take to plant and disarm the Spike in Valorant?

Attackers will need four seconds to plant the Spike. You have to finish the plant before the round timer eclipses 0:00, else the Defenders will win the round. You also have to do the plant in one charge ⁠— you can’t plant for two seconds, stop, and restart from two seconds.

Defenders will need 7.5 seconds to disarm the Spike fully. There is no way of speeding up the disarm like CS:GO, where players can buy defuse kits. However, you can disarm the Spike halfway and retain progress.

The Spike ticks at a different rate depending on how close it is to exploding. From 25 seconds onwards, it’ll tick twice as fast. It’ll then pick up pace at 35 seconds, then 40 seconds yet again.

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The Spike takes 45 seconds to explode, so defenders will need to start the disarm before 37.5 seconds elapses. Counting the pace of the ticks is a surefire way to know how long on the clock you have left.

What is the safe radius of the Spike explosion?

The Spike explosion radius doesn’t yet have a confirmed measurement in units, but a good guide is your footstep markers.

On the minimap, there’s a small circle around your character. This is a marker as to where you can be heard on the map. If you run so the Spike is outside of that circle, you won’t take any damage from the explosion.

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If you are inside that, you’ll take damage, but it falls off the further away you are from the Spike. So, if you need to stay on site for as long as possible but have a lot of health, you shouldn’t need to worry about dying to the explosion.

Best Spike placements for every Valorant map

As always, there’ll be good places and bad places to plant the Spike. If you plant it in a place you can’t defend it from, it’ll be easy for the Defenders to sweep in and get the disarm.

Here’s a list of default plant spots for every site, as well as some other options if you need to change it up.

Bind

A Site

• Inside Tetris for default
• Behind Truck for second default
• Under Heaven if Defenders are pushing from connector

B Site

• Behind the crate, facing attacker spawn, for default
• Behind the crate, facing Hookah, if Defenders are coming from defender spawn.
• Back of site, if Defenders are pushing from Hookah and connector.

Split

A Site

• Back of site, behind either box, for default.
• Front of site, in front of the far-left box, if you need to rush a plant.

B Site

• Behind site box for default.
• Underneath Rafters, if you want to cheese Defenders.

Haven

A Site

• Behind box for default.
• Under Heaven if Defenders pushing from banana or tunnels.

B Site

• Left hand side of main entrance for default.
• Right hand side, if Defenders are rotating from C.
• Back of site, if you have Gong control.

C Site

• In tetris for default.
• Back of site, behind two-stack box, for long hold.

If you are struggling getting the hang of it though, you can always test things out in the in-game Plant and Disarm practice mode.

Once you nail down timings and placement, you’ll find that planting, defending, and even retaking sites, will be a lot easier.