Compared to krak and frag grenades, smoke’s niche of trying to be anti-shooter isn’t performing. At the moment, it blocks line of sight, and reduces sight range of those inside the smoke.
The most glaring issue is that smokes take a while to go off. By the time it goes off, you’ve already rushed down the enemy in melee, so there wasn’t really a point in throwing it. Also, in the same branch/column, Vet is built for stealth, sprinting, and stamina regen, so again, this just creates an issue of smokes being redundant given that they have an innate timer, and the distances in this game aren’t that large.
I think the easiest fix for that issue is to make smokes detonate on impact. Although it does take away from the fantasy a bit, it’ll make them much more usable.
The other issue is that smoke blocks Line of Sight for teammates as well, but there’s no easy solution to this. Possible ones could be highlighting enemies in the smoke or other effects.
I think the sight reduction being in smoke isn’t all that useful and would benefit more from an effect with more impact like apply suppression (I dunno. Drugged smoke or something) to those caught in it.
Out of the three grenades, smokes easily fall behind and needs some tweaks.