Global average Spike plant times on each VALORANT map and more

Planting the Spike is an integral part of VALORANT. One way in which the Attackers can win a round in the classic competitive or unrated game mode is by planting the Spike and letting the timer go off without the Defenders successfully defusing it in time.

This piece aims to have a look at the global average time of teams planting the Spike on each VALORANT map. The data has been taken from THESPIKE.GG's VALORANT Map Stats that boasts a rich database of professional circuits including VCT International Leagues, Challengers, Game Changers, and much more.

Additionally, we have included some data related to the Spike from the VCT International Leagues as well as VALORANT Challengers.

The Spike average plant times

*Note: The data is valid as of February 14 to May 15 and data may change as VALORANT esports matches continue taking place.

Each round of a regular VALORANT match lasts 1 minute 40 seconds. Essentially, that's how long the Attackers have to get onto a plant site and get the Spike planted. Naturally, they can just eliminate all of the Defenders to win the round as well.

Out of all the maps and their respective average Spike plant times, it takes teams on average 0.51 seconds to plant the Spike. The data also shows that Haven and Fracture are the maps where teams are the quickest to get the Spike planted; 0.48 and 0.46 seconds respectively on average. Meanwhile on Split, which was reintroduced into the active map pool at the beginning of 2023, Attackers take the longest on average to get the Spike planted at 0.55 seconds. Bind, Lotus, Pearl and Ascent sit in the middle between the highest and lowest average Spike plant times.

Additional Spike-related data

As mentioned, we've also decided to highlight some additional data using VCT International Leagues and VALORANT Challengers.

Slowest and fastest Spike planting teams

Fnatic and REJECT have emerged as the slowest planting teams at a whopping 1 minute 06 seconds on average. It is clear both teams take on a more methodical approach rather than an in-your-face, get on site, and plant the Spike method. That is not the case with Paper Rex and Dominatus who prefer to embody the latter method. While Paper Rex is typically lightning-fast to get their Spike down fast at 47.2 seconds on average, Dominatus takes that to a whole new level and get their Spike plants down at just 35 seconds on average.

Spike defuses

The data showcases the % of time the Spike is successfully defused by the Defenders after being successfully planted by the Attackers. While the 30.27% of VCT International League teams and 31.47% of VALORANT Challengers is rather close, it shows that Challenger teams are slightly less adept at retaking or are better at defending a planted Spike. The opposite is true for VCT International League teams. All in all, it could be said that VALORANT teams are able to defuse a planted Spike almost one third of the time.

Best retaking teams

Retaking a site as the Defenders after the Spike goes down is not an easy task by any means. However, Leviatán and SCARZ have become adept at this task. At 62 and 156 defuses respectively, both teams have shown that just because they lose a plant site, the round is far from over.

Closest Spike plant

We all know about close Spike defuses. What about the closest Spike plants before the round time expries? Adolfo "Fit1nho" Gallego and Chae "yoman" Young-mun of Giants Gaming and Shadow Corporation respectively have shown they have the knowledge of when they can still get the Spike down. Fit1nho managed to get an incredible time of 1 minute 39 seconds 767 milliseconds, just 233 milliseconds to spare in Round 16 on Ascent against Team Liquid. If that wasn't impressive enough, yoman's time to spare is way more impressive. At 1 minute 39 seconds 990 milliseconds, he had just 10 milliseconds to spare. The result came in at the Dplus vs. Shadow Corporation matchup on round 11 of Split.