It has not been a strong few weeks for the CS:GO dev team. I reported on Friday that the Winter Update's maligned R8 revolver had been nerfed after only three days—obscene stopping power and pinpoint accuracy for its price had effectively killed eco rounds. Now, Valve has rolled back the accompanying tweaks to pistols and rifles, stating "we likely changed too much too quickly".

For rifles, the changes boiled down to decreasing accuracy, and the latest CS:GO blog post details the rationale behind them: Valve was hoping to make spraying less appealing compared with burst fire. Instead, the patch made all forms of fire less accurate and people kept on spraying anyway, penalising the minority who do tap fire.

A full roll-back is a spectacular step down for a company running a competitive game, and the saga has left many wondering (not for the first time) why Valve doesn't run larger trials before foisting changes on the whole population. This time, the magnitude of the misstep has clearly sunk in.

"We failed to anticipate the reaction of the community to changes in such heavy-use weapons," the blog reads, "and we clearly need to re-evaluate our process for making and communicating about changes in that space."

It's becoming a common refrain from Valve, but perhaps the latest uproar will prevent drastic changes from appearing out of the blue in future.

Last time we had a look at how to defend on Cache. Now it's time to figure out how to level the brick walls that the counter-terrorists have built.

When you play Cache it's beyond important to understand that the map consists of three major choke points where you will battle it out with the defenders: A-main, mid and B-halls. Even if the occasional rush could work, I prefer to have presence at all of these chokepoints during the early stages of the round. The reason for this is that your opponents can shut your rush down quite easily with smokes, flashes and molotovs. If you find yourselves waiting behind a smoke, the defenders on the other side of the map can push and call out that you're not there. Next thing you know you're trapped like rats—and hungry cats are approaching from all directions.

Cache is a map where information wins you games. When you spread out you should gather as much information as you can. After a while you should have a rough idea of where the CTs are. Even more importantly, you know how much information they have and you've made sure they can't sneak up on you.

Freedom through mid control

If you get a kill in mid you slow down the counter-terrorists' potential quick rotation to either site. Even if you don't get a kill, but take control over mid, they need to assign at least one player to make sure you can't push anywhere without them knowing. This will also slow them down significantly.

At this point, a kill on either B or A is huge. If your B-guy wins his duel, you can support him through vent and take over the site before the counter-terrorists get a chance to react. If the A-guy gets a kill on A, you can support him from highway. You get the point: mid control means freedom and flexibility.

How do you take control over mid then? If the CTs smoke mid, you can boost a guy up to clear the area below vent or simply wait for the smoke to fade.

Either way it could be a good idea to boost a player, as long as you don't do it every round and make it predictable. That player can peek over this smoke wall while two terrorists push out from garage:

Even though mid control is a huge advantage, you don't want to go for that every round. If you notice that your enemies start to put up a greater defense in mid, you want to put more pressure on one of the sites instead.

On the next page: trying your luck at bombsites A and B.

Cool flash from squeaky

For one reason or another you decide that you want to try your luck at A. Card counting might be illegal and can get you a lot of trouble—if you get caught that is. This flash from squeaky can shift the odds in your favor:

This flash is especially effective if combined with a smoke towards highway. It's a lot harder to turn away from a flash that you can't see. You can potentially flash enemies behind forklift, on catwalk, on site or behind quad, with one flashbang. Use the flash to push out from door and clear the site. Trust your teammates to take care of any counter-terrorists lurking in the area around forklift. This gives you a fast and effective access to A-site.

Molotovs are great if you want to clear areas without having to push too far. If you assign two players to throw these molotovs you can clear both quad and NBK:

This leaves you with two fewer spots to worry about when you take the site. You'll only have to clear site, catwalk and forklift which shouldn't be a problem if you still have five players alive (assuming you smoked off the area between forklift and the red container).

Smokes on B

B-site can be tricky to take if you don't know whether there's someone lurking in vent or not. If you get taken by surprise by a timed backstab from vent, your attack might get slowed down enough to allow the rotation to arrive before you get the bomb down. Again, mid control is very helpful. You should have at least one guy going checkers to clear vent and all the corners in there. His job is also to make sure his teammates don't get flanked while throwing their smokes.

These two smokes can be really effective, especially if you're facing an AWP on either upper or lower.

Plant and post-plant positions

Once you have taken control over a site you have to assess the situation. Do we have enough time to plant the bomb out in the open before the rotation moves in? If yes you should try to get the bomb down in one of these spots:

If you on the other hand think that there is a risk the CTs will get there in time, you should plant in a safer spot. Better safe than sorry. This will however leave you with fewer options for post-plant positions. For instance, you don't want to find yourself in a one on one situation where you are in checkers with sweaty palms, feeling the pressure from your team while the bomb is planted behind one of the boxes on B-site. You can hear the defuse, you hesitate for a second, decide to go for it but you don't make it in time. Not only did you fail to stop the defuse, you also lost your precious weapon and armor.

If you plant in one of the spots shown above, an otherwise bad post-plant position can turn into a really strong one. This is especially true for A-main on A and checkers on B.

As you can see there are many factors that decide the outcome of a round. Hopefully you can use your new knowledge to your advantage. Good luck out there!

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Yesterday the ESL ESEA Pro League drew to a close: the strongest eight teams of the season, four from each regional division, had faced off in the LAN finals across three days, culminating in a five-match clash between Fnatic and NaVi. Ekeing out a 3-2 victory, Fnatic retained the title and claimed $100,000 prize money. 

Narrowly securing a win on de_inferno, Fnatic increased its lead in an exhausting 16-14 slog through dust2 before ceding two games in a row on mirage and train. The final match was decisive: NaVi made a valiant effort to halt Fnatic's seven-round streak with a three-round run of its own, but sudden aggression from Fnatic left the Ukranian team floundering—16-6.

It was close-fought up until the final match, and with a $60,000 second-place prize, I reckon NaVi can take some pride in their performance against what is arguably the world's best CS:GO team.