News - Is The Emd Grenade Better Than Stuns Warzone 2. Full Breakdown
This is the EMD grenade. This is something I haven't done a full breakdown of yet, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've seen people use this in game, and I really think a lot of people are missing out, especially after they got buffed with the season 2 reloaded update. While I did cover the basics of what changed with the EMD grenade with that update, I still haven't done a full-on breakdown of the EMD. So that's what we're going to be doing in today's article.
In game description
And without further ado, let's dive. Right into this, and we're going to start it off with the description they mentioned in the game: this applies a tracking device to enemy hits, revealing their location and direction.
Pre-patch emd
On your team's mini map, let's quickly recap what changed with the season 2 reloaded updates.
This is what it looked like pre-patch. When you hit somebody with that EMD grenade, there'd be a little ripple effect that follows their character model around on the mini map, and then every few seconds, you would get that red diamond that would ping on the mini map, so prep-patch definitely had some utility to it, but it's pretty easy to miss that little ripple effect.
When you're in the heat of the moment, in the game, and as a result, I wasn't too surprised that not a ton of people gravitated toward the EMD grenade.
What the emd does post-patch
Post-patch, however, is what it looks like when an enemy is tagged by an EMD grenade. In addition to this, something you might be noticing while watching this is that the duration is insane; it actually lasts for a total of 30 seconds if you don't do anything to counter it, and 30 seconds in Call of Duty terms is a very long time.
That's like a kill streak reward, not something you would tend to see with a piece of tactical equipment. So far, it's looking pretty good for this EMD grenade, especially post-patches.
Removing the tracker
However, a key thing to point out is that when you're on the receiving end of an EMD grenade, you will have this that pops up in the center of your screen, and you'll also have a little pinging sound in the background.
I'll just play a clip for a few seconds so you guys can listen to what that sounds like. I would highly recommend trying to find some time to remove that tracker, because it's not the type of thing where, if you ignore it, it'll just fade away. A few seconds later, this is going to be following you around for a total of 30 seconds.
Huge hit radius!
As for the next thing I wanted to point out with the EMD grenade that makes it quite powerful, this is the total hit radius that this has when you throw it down, which based on my testing appears to be around 12 M or so, so you just have to get that EMD grenade within about 12 M of the enemy player, and it will tag them as long as that player is within the line of sight of that tracker. So this doesn't work through walls or anything; you do have to get it within a line of sight of the players when it goes off, but that 12 M radius is very forgiving.
How many enemies can it track?
To make this even more interesting, I think this is the part where a lot of you guys are going to be quite surprised. It appears currently that the EMD has no limit on the number of enemies that it will tag as long as those enemies are within 12 M and within the line of sight of that.
When it goes off, it will tag all of them, especially when we're talking about small-map playlists. And I guess another thing to mention here that may also surprise you is that this isn't just working for you; this works for your entire team, so right here my teammate threw an EMD grenade, and this is what I get to see, and if that doesn't convince you to break away from stun grenades every now and then and give the EMD a shot.
I don't know what will, but that really goes to show just how powerful this grenade can potentially be.
How to counter the emd
Now, at this point, you're probably wondering, What about counterplay? and it turns out cold blooded does nothing against this however Ghost and the Assassin vest both of these will somewhat protect you against the EMD but it's not a full counter, it's just a pretty good partial C counter and with these they both work the same to counteract the EMD grenade but of course with the ghost TV camo you do have to be moving in order to keep that activated if you stand still it won't be activated but with that in mind if you're using one of these two once you get tracked by an EMD grenade you'll never show up as a red diamond on the enemy's mini map, but that little ripple effect will still follow you around in real time, and therefore it might not be quite as obvious for enemy players to find you and track you it's not really going to catch their eye as much as a red diamond would but if a player is really paying attention to their mini map they'll still be able to track exactly where you are in at least almost real time. And therefore, even if you are using the Assassin vest or the ghost perk, you still generally want to find that moment to remove that tracker from an EMD grenade, because an alert player will absolutely be able to find you and kill you still.
My thoughts on the emd after the buff
And there we go. That's going to wrap up all of the important stats to know about the EMD grenade in Modern Warfare 3, and personally, I think this is extremely underrated.
In the game's current state. I'm surprised I'm not seeing more people use this, and honestly. I wouldn't mind seeing more people use this just to get people branching away from stun grenades a little bit more, because as of right now, it seems like stun grenades are being spammed like crazy. Mass Perk isn't an amazing counter to the stun grenade; you can still get killed very often while using that counter, so I honestly wouldn't mind seeing people branch out and use something a little different like the EMD grenade in saying that, though after doing the breakdown of this honestly.
I do feel like 30 seconds is a bit too long to be tracked in Call of Duty terms. That's a decent percentage of a match for you to be tracked in real time by a piece of equipment that you just spawn in with every single time you respawn. I think now that we've seen a very notable buff to the pinging effect, it's going to be pinging you every 250 milliseconds as a red diamond.
