https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e_uJD4lg3EiYdbpLQRAS1ai_b1-_KvUS1Ti8wxdmHt8/edit?usp=sharing
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Hello everybody and welcome to the guide, the first one actually, so I should explain a little bit about how I work the format and so on so everyone is familiar. The purpose of the guides is to create a general but detailed description of basically everything important regarding a topic, usually these topics will be for a whole operator, or a whole map; etc.

These guides are not designed to break down, for example, an operator’s place in the Pro League metagame or scene, nor to be a super basic tips n’ tricks for beginner players; though both of these may pop up somewhere if relevant. The guides are designed to have a very wide range of experience for the reader; if you are a very new player, you’ll read about some of the basics such as the ideal weapon choices and overall role of said operator in the team; but if you’re on the more experienced side, you’ll also get to learn many of the little details to improve your use of the operator; such as how to position yourself, how to use your gadgets more effectively, and so on.

My objective is for the guides to have something for everyone, this is what (in my opinion) makes them work best as “in-depth” guides; we start on the basics and we go down to the more minor details or more invisible aspects of the gameplay that will set skill levels apart. If you’re a beginner maybe the first half will be the most useful, if you’re more experienced you may wanna check out the later sections, etc. I know; my system is stunningly clever.

The guides are, in average, long; and I do not expect anyone to casually give it top-to-bottom reads; plus, if you’re here for a particular point of the guide like “how can I place better EDDs” for example, you’re not gonna wanna scroll through “Kapkan is a 2 Speed operator, yadda yadda”; I get it. For this reason I try to divide the guide in as many chapters as possible so you can use the index over to the right side of the guide and just click to jump to the section you want to read. If you wanna just go for the full read, go ahead! I’m also a videogame nerd.

Anyway, this is the preface section; all guides come with one and they are usually about the context of publishing and what’s going on with me and the guide project. It is also the section where I address reader interaction the most; feedback, whatever. The actual introduction to the topic of the guide is under “Introduction”, yup.

Remember the guide project is funded via a Patreon! (you can find the link in the very end part of this guide). Patreon funding allows me to keep making these guides and also it gives my supporters some extra access to other good stuffs. Like getting to pick what the upcoming guide is about, among other things (like more guides and earlier access to 'em).

Alright so Goo why would you pick Kapkan for the pilot guide? When you think Rainbow 6: Thermite, Sledge, Ash, maybe a shield operator comes to mind first as the most iconic; definitely not Kapkan, right? Really that’s one of the reasons I picked him for the first guide to write, he’s a sorta middle of the pile pick, and he has a very wide range of people who can pick him and make him work, on various different levels of effectivity of course, and also, there’s enough to him to make a fairly interesting guide in terms of thought-process and so on that we can go breaking down.

The other reason I picked him for the pilot guide is because he could be considered, depending on who you ask, a bit one-dimensional and perhaps, may god forgive my words, boring once you place the traps. One dimensional of course is a very relative term in a game that has an operator as simple and effective as Rook, and as complex but really inconsistent operators such as Echo and Dokkaebi. So once again; our man Kapkan is in the middle. I told myself that if I can make a guide for an operator like Kapkan at least a very interesting read then I would set myself a public for guides to come. So let’s see where we go with that and you’ll tell me if I succeeded in the end. Starting with the bare basics:

Kapkan is a 2 speed, 2 armor defender that excels at controlling sections of the map by placing non-lethal but high damaging traps on mostly any sort of framed entrance, like a door or window. On the lower end of player skill spectrum (say, in a low rank situation or among beginner players) he is often just used to add a layer of protection to the reinforced objective; but as the skill of the Kapkan player increases as well as the other players in the match, his traps become both an intel tool and a punishing tool for reckless moves by attackers (drone-less rushing, last second objective contests, etc.).

Ideally, Kapkan is played in a similar fashion to Lesion; in fact, they also have comparable loadouts (30 round SMG and a Semi-auto shotgun with the possibility of a suppressor attachment), obviously their guns have very different behaviours but in essence, their purpose is comparable. This playstyle I mentioned is maximizing the effectivity of your traps with both thoughtful placements AND complementing their positions with your movement on the map to further restrict enemy routes. The difference between the two operators is most noticeable in the fact that Lesion’s roaming has to be used in tandem with his traps triggering far more than Kapkan; as stepping on Gu is barely a long term disadvantage; while stepping on an EDD in a permanent dent on your health pool. To be expected, as one is an actual old-country explosive mine and the other is like a made-in-china toothpick, i don’t know.

• Very good at creating and taking uneven one-on-ones.
  
• Affects the map landscape significantly.
  
• SMG is easy to learn to control.

• Not the best at taking actual one-on-ones with attackers.
  
• Traps can be countered with low effort checks.
  
• Traps take setting up (unlike Gu/Grzmot mid round).

In this section we go over some of the “invisible factors” in a Kapkan playstyle, this mixes game sense and operator role in a way that makes the thought process of the operator easy to understand when broken down. (at any rate, even with a really high skill player manning him, he isn’t the most dynamic operator so don’t worry about extreme changes in his overall role as a defender).

All operators have a sort of feel to them that only people who really play them a lot get down, and it isn’t an easy thing to put into guide form but I’ll try as it is definitely one of the most valuable things you can learn from another player, all that’s not obvious to the untrained eye.

The number one thing you must learn to keep in mind when playing Kapkan is “Enemy Perspective”, 100%. Enemy perspective means everything from “where are enemies going to be coming from most likely”, where are they going to expect traps and check, where are they going to expect traps and don’t check, where they are definitely not expecting traps; to what a trap placement looks from a particular attacking route, and to how will a player react in case they step on a trap.

You don’t always sprint towards your recently triggered EDD; that might be the easiest read of that attacker’s life. Playing smart is impossible to teach, but you can learn to observe enemy perspective, and if you get to the point where you understand enemy perspective you can just play around that and it will look like you’re playing smart, but the reality is that you’re just paying attention to the defender map from an attacker’s point of view. People who play roamers a lot will understand what I mean by all this, but Kapkan has to consider it to a great extent because his gadget becomes far stronger when you consider your game plan this way.

If you wanna see a really good example on all this, head to the section titled “Concealing Devices”.

Attacker Perspective is a topic I’ll go into over and over as we progress through the guide, the reason being is that Kapkan, as well as some other operators (particularly shields) benefit greatly by seeing what they do from the point of view of the enemy; that way you can act and react more intelligently to most situations presented (as long as your DM is up to par).

For Kapkan specifically, understanding attacker perspective comes down to two situations, the first one is thinking through (from the POV of an attacker) what route you’re going to take, so you can place EDDs accordingly; and the other is how will you react to. This is mostly just a way to understand game sense and develop further situational awareness; but for starters, improving the placing your EDDs.

One way you can start understanding attacker perspective is by, after placing your EDDs and preparing your barricades, etc; is to act out what you’d do if you were entering the building/slicing the doorway/going into rooms, exactly like you’d do if you were on the attack side; but paying special attention to any particular moments when an EDD shows, or a situation is too obvious, or just think if you’d drone a particular part, etc. With practice you’ll just do this in your head and it’ll be much faster on your preparation phase rollout and everything regarding the placing of EDDs really.

In the following subsections we are going to be looking at the different elements that make up Kapkan’s loadout; if you’re already familiar with what you're comfortable with and you’re played some Kapkan before, you can go ahead and skip this group of sections (unless you wanna read about some additional reasoning behind things like the attachment choice and so on).

“THE LOADOUT” is, basically, just the standard picks for the operator’s guns, attachments and equipment choice. For some operators, with very viable alternatives (Jackal’s C7E versus PDW comes to mind) are debatable and ultimately down to personal preference. Kapkan, for the most part, has a relatively established “THE LOADOUT”, it is the following: (This doesn’t mean the other attachment options are necessarily not viable, and it doesn’t mean it is what I personally use the most).

• 9x19VSN SMG with Reflex Sight, Flash Hider & Vertical Grip.
  
• PMM Handgun with Muzzle Break.
  
• Nitro Cell.

The 9x19VSN & the SASG-12 Shotgun are Kapkan’s available primary weapons. He has the same options of primaries as Tachanka.


The 9x19VSN SMG is an overall reliable gun as far as defenders go because of its decent rate of fire and relative low, controllable recoil. It shines best in close and medium ranges as you can make better use of the rate of fire and recoil control (and of course, damage drop), but due to its fairly good recenter time it can also be effective at going for tap-fire at long ranges for headshots. Personally I can say I feel much safer going for tap fire long range headshots with the 9x19VSN than say, Bandit’s MP7 or even Ela’s Skorpion, because they have stronger first shot recoil and so do a bit worse in recentering.

In engagements I’d say you’re going to be using the first 10 to 15 bullets of the SMG’s mag in full auto most of the time. Due to the gun’s controllable recoil, you can react to an enemy by going full auto in their direction and with the first instant after your reaction, you can aim for the head (while still firing down full auto) and adjust as required, powering through the recoil. This is best complemented by the Flash Hider.

For more beginner players you could consider using a Compensator, the compensator will reduce the recoil in the second half of the mag if you just full auto with a full mag. You can play similarly as someone running Flash Hider, but the compensator will help you further down the spray instead of during the first instant of the burst; so you could say it is more forgiving/effective for those will either slower reflexes or less ability to snap to heads after the first reaction.

Muzzle Break on the SMG isn’t ideal because it only really reduces recoil for the first few bullets and then just lets go and gives you regular full recoil for the remainder of the spray; it reduces your recenter time even further but it isn’t ideal or the most helpful considering what kinds of angles you’re going to be defaulting to as Kapkan (you don’t take long lines like a Rook would for example, you’re a little more limited to a certain range).

The Suppressor is actually not bad at all on this SMG. However, you need to be very good at aim-snapping to heads; as using a suppressor will not reduce your recoil, and even further, it will reduce your damage (especially at long ranges, your damage is going to be too low to really work with). If you know how to play best with a suppressor while you roam using your EDDs, then go for it, but know your limits. Abusing the fact that enemies don’t get threat indicators from suppressed firearms can be helpful in some maps with multiple roaming routes and with average-ish skill level enemies that rely more on reaction-play than predicting and reading enemy moves. I’ll say the damage thing again, I’ve seen more than once Kapkans playing with suppressed SMG just having kills escape them because they didn’t get the headshot when covering the angle and instead they just light the target up with no injure or nothing; which is very disappointing.

For Grip choice, both are helpful for the 9x19VSN, but you should default to Vertical Grip as usual because that’s the one with the more direct effect on how the gun behaves. In the defense side especially, you’ll generally depend less on instant ADS reactions (the kind that benefit from an Angled Grip).

Laser, same thing, in defense normally you’d rather NOT have a laser sight as any reduction of hip fire spread is not worth having to constantly watch out for where your pointer is to not give yourself away (and also the fact that when you get pointed AT with a gun with a laser it contrasts with the environment much more. You don’t really need me to explain this in a guide, this is just general stuff).

Sights are personal preference but I recommend Reflex, remember you’re getting the Russian sights; out of the Russian sights, the reflex sight has the smaller frame size so it takes up less screen than the holographic for example. Also, the holographic has this reticle that doesn’t have a dot in the center, and even though it's not really a hindrance to aim, it’s kinda odd not having a perfect indicator where the shots go. In reality it is not a big deal; but I go for Reflex.
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The Super Ass-Splitting Gun-12 is a semi-auto shotgun that is generally untrue to its name as it is commonly regarded as not-the-best in the defending side’s arsenal due to its low lethal range and overall being a little wild with its high recoil - high fire rate - big spread. Playing with a shotgun requires a whole different playstyle in terms of how you hold rooms and such, so, in the case of Kapkan I don’t think it’s advisable you go for the SASG-12 instead of the SMG; just because of how shotguns can get to be inconsistent in how effective they are, depending on the map, for example, YOU CAN USE IT TO CHEESE THOUGH.

Here’s the thing with how shotguns are balanced, you have the “damage” which isn’t really “damage” but more like how far can the shotgun go and still kill or injure an enemy in a single shot. The longer the distance, the better the shotgun generally. However, having long kill ranges usually comes with some sort of disability, like very strong recoils or long times between shots, like in pump action shotguns, etc. This is one of the reasons why the FO-12 (Ela’s Shotgun) was seen as so strong by many, because it had both the killing range and the rate of fire, but it was balanced down by its high recoil and increasing bullet spread per shot.

The ideal way I’ve found to use the SASG-12 to some effectiveness is by always ADSing the first shot, and then follow up the first shot instantly by multiple really fast hip fire shots. This makes the most out of the gun’s fire rate while securing a first damaging shot with the ADS accurate spread. Still, it isn’t that unusual that I get tapped in the head while doing all this so yeah, as a shotgun it isn’t the most reliable thing ever. It can do one thing kinda well and that’s confuse the ♥♥♥♥ out of somebody (see attachments).

As far as muzzle attachments it has only one option and that’s the Suppressor, suppressor off you get the full damage, suppressor on, you get a shotgun that doesn’t leave threat marks. This may not sound like much but the only other shotgun able to do this is Lesion’s SIX12-SD, and that shotgun has a slower fire rate and a smaller magazine; the SIX12-SD is intended to one shot injure, it is not intended to be a crazy spammerino gun like the SASG-12 or the FO-12. If you play stealthily, spamming suppressed shotgun shots at an enemy that is not expecting you nor looking your way is very disorienting; as the sound of taking damage usually overpowers the sound of the silenced shots themselves; and not having a way to tell where most of the shots are coming from in time will get the victim injured or killed before they can react. This does not mean this is a good gun guys, but it is like “the thing it can do”.

After that I recommend you equip the Vertical Grip + Laser to minimize as MUCH as possible all the upwards kick and spread the gun has by default. It can equip an angled grip but it, in my opinion, far inferior for what the vertical grip offers. Sights are up to you again, choices are the usual suspects. Lastly, keep your eyes on your ammo cause the SASG-12 only comes with 4 reloads.

I’ll start with the PMM because that’s what I put up as part of the “THE LOADOUT”.


Basically the PMM is a low mag, high damage handgun that got even higher damage with the last rework to all the pistols. It is more commonly seen on the attack side when you run a shield Fuze; but, in my opinion, it’s even stronger when played on defense, here’s why:

With its 60+ damage the pistol is basically saying “please shoot at chest thanks”. With the low mag capacity, going for headshots is a bit of a risk as missing like 3 bullets and hitting nothing leaves you with little to defend yourself with. As the gun shines at taking down people without needing headshots the armor of your enemy actually matters a lot; and it is far more common to find 3 armor in defense than in attack where there’s really only Fuze and the shields (that’s why I consider the PMM to be a little stronger on defense). You’ll see this problem clear as day if you ever have to resort to using your pistol and you’re going against a Montagne or something and they seem to be able to take more than half the mag without going down.

Keep in mind that the PMM as a high power handgun starts to spread quite a bit after the first few rapid-succession shots. You can try it yourself on a wall to get a feel for it; when using iron sights, especially pistols, tend to have a weird feel to the recoil as it doesn’t relate to the kickback of the viewmodel.

The PMM can equip a Muzzle break or a Suppressor as muzzle attachments; and a Laser.

It is worth also mentioning that both the PMM and the GSH-18 have pretty good iron sights.
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The GSH-18 is the opposite of the PMM, it is a relatively low damage pistol with a big, 18+1 bullet mag. It is also inferior to the PMM in terms of rate of fire and it cannot equip a Laser, but the overall superior amount of ammo may be what you’re looking for in a sidearm if you’re only using it to take out drones and such; or if you’re going for headshots on longer range encounters (as successive firing does not reduce accuracy of the shots as much as it does on the PMM).

Many Kapkan players (and guides I’ve seen in Steam for instance) just tell you to pick the PMM over the GSH-18 every time since the pistol rework (the damage buff to the PMM made it a really strong pick) but I’d say the GSH-18 has a place more on the beginner’s side of play, with more shots per reload it may save a new player’s life in the event of full mag potatoes; albeit with inferior stopping power.

Aim for the head though.

Kapkan has the option to equip a Nitro Cell or the classic pair of impact grenades. In the standard loadout I wrote Nitro cell as the standard pick for equipment because that’s what is used the most; however impacts are rarely a “completely wrong” pick.

In previous versions of the game, when Barbed Wire slowed enemies way more you could make a case about how going for a Nitro cell was a gamble-y selfish pick; but since the throwing mechanics changed and Kapkan was buffed to 2 speed you can use the Nitro cell quite effectively, and with operation Chimera only allowing for “selfish picks” in the form of the choice of Nitro or Impacts; you’re no longer choosing between what benefits the defense and what benefits you personally or your roaming; but just choosing between what handy explosive fits you best.

The Nitro helps you, first of all, to deal with shields (especially Montagne), as they are very resistant to your EDDs and will threaten you by getting really close up to you. After that, the Nitro is just your regular ol’ c4 to toss and try for no-line-of-sight kills.

Impact grenades are very different; first of all, I’d say you’ll probably wished you went for Nitro if you hear a shield around the corner, but Impacts have their own uses and you get 2 of them, which can come in useful for a handful of situations. First of all, sometimes you get injures from EDDs and actually going about and peeking to finish the downed enemy off is too dangerous; so you’d use your Nitro (in hopes of also getting a second kill in case they are being revived). If you miss, that’s your nitro gone; if you hit, that’s still your nitro gone. With impacts you have much more throwing distance and precision for this particular case of finishing off DNBO operators off. I’ve gotten kills on injured enemies using a Nitro cell through walls and through the floor that I could have gotten with impacts just as well without going overkill with the C4. Impacts are also silent when compared to the classic nitro cell velcro rip.

Impacts are a more roam-y choice; allowing you to connect rooms and open hatches (which was only possible before if you either wasted your nitro or were running SASG-12). While roaming you can impact walls to create distractions, to mask the sound of movement while changing positions, to rotate between rooms, to connect sites if it gets down to that (maybe more likely in casual where coordination is less effective during prep phase, etc). You’re probably familiar how 3 Speed operators use impacts aggressively, and Kapkan having impacts doesn’t really allow you to do this consistently as Kapkan is physically much bigger than say, a roaming Ela (even though she doesn’t have impacts anymore, nudge nudge) and the 9x19 VSN as solid as it is, it is not a monster roaming weapon. My recommendation is to use your impacts, if you pick them over the Nitro Cell; to use them as you’d use the impacts on Rook, or Lesion; and don’t go crazy with them. Let them come.

The Entry Denial Device, also known as EDD, is Kapkan’s gadget. You get 5 EDDs as Kapkan to place on door/window frames. There’s a bunch of technicalities to the EDD itself that you should know before getting to the “placement” part of the guide:

When triggered, the EDD detonates dealing damage to everyone (enemies and also allies) in a 3 meter radius. The damage of the explosion scales accordingly to the level of armor the target has, starting at 60 damage for 1 armor operators, exactly 51 to 2 armor operators, and 45 to 3 armor operators. Also, the EDD blast takes into account the percentage of exposed surface of an enemy; this is especially important to know when you’re playing as a shield against Kapkan. So if you are facing the blast and you’re standing up as Blitz or as Montagne without the extended shield you’ll take more damage than crouching, as your legs are exposed while standing up. Crouching with the shield in front of you covers a larger percentage of your body, so you take even further reduced damage.
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EDDs will also kill and injure enemies if they are low enough on health. Remember Injure health is 20. Also remember you don’t always take full damage from a trap, if you’re walking by a allied attacker who has a shield, and you are standing behind them you’ll take reduced damage from the explosive. The following values are for full damage/effect explosions:

• 1 Armor = Under 60
  
• 2 Armor = 50 or less
  
• 3 Armor = Under 45

• 1 Armor = Under 40
  
• 2 Armor = 30 or less
  
• 3 Armor = Under 25

A lot of people don’t know this but the EDD is triggered when any part of the enemy’s player model crosses the invisible laser the device projects. This means you don’t HAVE to cross the doorway for the trap to trigger, and crossing the doorway will not always trigger the trap. Traps can also be triggered by walking into them from the side they were placed from even with a barricaded doorway (as long as you trip the laser).

Melee/using your knife causes the arms of your character to extend forward; this means you could be trying to break a barricade and accidentally put your arm through the wood and trigger the trap on the other side (as long as you were unlucky enough to hit the same height the EDD was placed on).

As so, the traps are height-sensitive and can be prone’d under without triggering them as long as they are placed up at like chest height. Crossing a trapped doorway without triggering the explosive can also happen if the operator vaults over an ankle-high EDD; this can be the operator vaulting a partially broken barricade, or a deployable shield placed in the doorway.

The vaulting can be very inconsistent though; many times you’ll vault through a barricade which is trapped at ankle-height and still trigger the EDD. To increase the chances of not triggering it, you must go as straight through the doorway as possible and continue moving forwards as you cross the doorway; 3 speed operators are more likely to vault over EDDs without triggering them, especially if they are sprinting after vaulting through the barricade.

Deployable shields are trickier because they can be in a number of different positions, like an inch closer or further to the door frame and this will affect the chances of someone vaulting over the trap. The safer way to make sure people do trigger the traps if you place EDDs on a doorway that’s being covered with a deployable shield is making sure the convex side is outwards.

When placing the traps you must keep in mind that the EDD blast damages things around it, it will:

● Break the barricade it is placed on.
● Destroy all barbed wire in the blast radius.
● Destroy all nearby gadgets such as Jammers, ADSs, Deployable Shields, Welcome Mats, etc.
● Damage Kapkan himself and allies inside the blast radius.
● Blow up nearby soft walls and floors.
● Blow your eardrums out for a few seconds.

Funny tip: If an attacker starts extracting the hostage and they step on an EDD, the hostage can be injured and if it is, defenders will need to revive it. This is especially game losing when the hostage is injured outside the building.

This is a section I intend to include on all future operator guides (and it is something I used to do with other game’s character guides); basically I try to condense whatever explains the difference in playstyle of that particular character and the rest in a simple manner that’ll be easy to remember for somebody that has never even tried the operator in this case. This is what I’ve come up with: Kapkan is an operator that shines at “anchoring” rooms that aren’t the actual site, but key rooms to the defense of the site itself. (For example, keeping control of CCTV or Offices when defending Border’s armory). Other than that, his objective is to (in this order):

● Kill enemy operators before they breach into the objective room.
● Lower the health of enemy operators with offensive EDD placements so you and your allies have the upper hand on late-round firefights.
● Buy time so that enemies have to rush the site push at a tactical disadvantage (triggering traps, funneling, not droning, etc).


The reason you don’t outright anchor the actual site is because Kapkan’s SMG will be at a disadvantage if you’re dealing with attackers that are checking the common anchor spots inside the site (or even worse, droning the site out before going in); and your EDDs are far more predictable and easy to deal with when they are on site.

By choosing a nearby room to lurk about in and anchor instead, it allows you to be more savvy with your EDD placements and with the angles you decide to hold (that should ideally be about mid-range so the 9x19VSN has no problem dealing with incoming enemies. If you’re running shotgun, the game changes but I’m not about to cover the whole technicality of defending with shotguns (that’s material for like a shotgun guide or something).

Kapkan is one of those operators that makes use of the Preparation Phase (the Drone round) a relatively decent amount. In this section I’ll guide you about some of the stuff you should be thinking about during the prep phase:



First of all, and as you’ll see in section 6, there’s no need to trap all entrances to the objective mindlessly; and really there’s no need to rush to placing the EDDs either.

Consider the following, as soon as the prep phase begins, enemies will start droning the map until they find the site; and after that they’ll try to figure out what operators you have, what is that you’re leaving un-reinforced, and also, they’ll be checking and remembering any traps and gadgets they see so that they can come in a break them when it’s needed (Jammers for example, or knowing where the ADSs are, and of course, stuff like Welcome mats and Kapkan’s EDDs).

If you’re playing on a really low skill game or maybe even solo-queing casuals for fun; people may not be paying attention to what’s most important to reinforce; so you’ll have to do those before anything; that is, any wall that must 100% be reinforced (like a garage for example), and any hatch that could destroy your team if opened by an attacker. While reinforcing, keep your eyes peeled for drones and try to take down as many as possible before the prep phase ends.

After using your reinforces, if there are still drones around, hold off placing the EDDs and instead go about placing all the barricades you’ll use later to conceal EDDs (see section 6c for barricade tech). Basically you want to not place any EDDs on the objective room or around it as long as there are drones spooping about. If your team kills all 5 drones then you can quickly place whatever inactive EDDs you’ll be using for the round and move along to holding the room next to objective or do whatever you feel like doing.

The general rule is 2 inactive/defensive EDDs per objective and go place the other 3 around the map as active intel providers and also to get off more unpredictable placements. Some sites with multiple viable entrances do require 3; and some very choke-point based ones can do with just one. Two is what you’ll use the most though.




We’ll use Oregon dorms as the example.



We’ll start by Reinforcing in the start of the prep phase:



After that, we’ll do all the barricade stuff that we’ll be using to conceal EDDs, as long as they let teammates through. You don’t wanna be creating obstacles for your team’s roamers or people trying to place traps or other gadgets around.



So we’re only placing and immediately breaking barricades on spots I might be putting EDDs after drones are all killed, or during the first 10-15 secs of the action phase.



Another one.



I’m making a crouch hole for this one. People who come in through lobby main door will go up the stairs and hide in the armory to drone the hallway and the bedroom to later push it; so I make the barricade so it conceals the EDD I’m about to place.



After making sure there’s no drones around I’ll start placing EDDs.



The hole on this barricade allows you or an ally to hold lobby door; this is a pretty standard angle to hold and it’s also pretty standard to prefire and check thoroughly as an attacker, so be careful.



Now we go for the rest of EDDs; bedroom door by hallway for people coming through stairs or the cam window.



Bedroom balcony door. I’m placing two EDDs in this room because it’s standard practice on Bomb to breach the bunk beds wall and attempt plants there. So this is intended to catch their breacher, or anyone that’s clearing the room before the breacher.



As an inactive EDD I can place either on white stairs door or on dorms big window; these are generally obvious spots but if attackers are on the clock this may help; plus I’ve done most of the EDDs I care most about already, so leaving this 1 is no biggie.



For the last one I decided to use first floor bathroom door as an aggro placement. This is far enough to be an unexpected placement. Also, the bathroom windows, just as the little office on the west side of the map are used to flank attackers holding dorms big window; if a roamer on your team ever shows themselves back here and an attacker decides to drop from the roof and cut them off, this door is the only way in from the bathroom. Also, the bathroom is one of the safer possible entrances to the building, along dining hall, to go through if you wanna go white stairs as an attacker; safe at least compared to the white stairs window itself that has a bunch of blind spots.

The crux of the matter when talking Kapkan’s Skill Scaling is the ability of that particular player to use his EDDs as effectively as possible.

Of course playing against people who don’t really watch their step will improve your effectivity as Kapkan but that doesn’t reflect any progress on your part really at all. There are many ways of improving your sense of placing traps and also creating an advantage with them after the fact; from the “reason” you are placing them on a particular spot, to the way you put them relative to the doorway or relative to an angle that is being held to increase the chances of someone not paying attention and tripping an EDD.

Now, when I say Skill Scaling; this is only to give you some leverage, the real main factor in R6 is your ability to use your gun and not die; that’s just basically the DM of the players in question (DM including raw aim, game sense, reflexes, etc.). Knowing murder holes, gadget use, and that sorta thing will give you, as I said, leverage. In some cases enough to even surpass any DM deficiencies you may have (like getting a kill on a stronger player than you because you used a 1000 IQ murder hole). But just keep in mind that DM is ultimately the biggest thing that will set players apart.

Many Kapkan guides also have the EDD section as the focus of what makes or breaks a Kapkan pick; but in this guide I’ll go over a little more into what is the thought process behind a placement so that you as a player can develop the sense for yourself and instantly get better at the operator. EDD logic is also one of the most fun aspects of Kapkan, and the complexity of his gadget potential is what makes him such a fun operator to play for me personally, on the defense side, as it keeps you far more active as the round goes than many other operators’ gadgets. The other example that comes to mind is Lesion’s Gu mines; though they are vastly different they keep you thinking many variables especially factoring in map awareness. Anyway, EDD placement isn’t really the best title for this section cause I’ll only go briefly through particular spots, and EDDs do more than just being placed, they are a very good element to play around once placed, for you as the Kapkan player; it is more like “EDD use” the section as them as a gadget require some additional awareness and when to move around than just a “Where do I place the trap lol” thing.

Inactive spots are EDD placements that I usually don’t expect to really work with or towards a kill. I am not using their information to net me kills while lurking/roaming, I am not using the damage they may deal as a granted effect. I am just making sure certain entrances ARE covered, in case the game boils down to just defending the objective I don’t wanna be the smart-ass Kapkan who thinks he can roam and that put zero traps on the objective.

Depending on the objective I’ll use anything from 2 to 4 traps in inactive spots. The logic for placement is mostly any doorway near or OF the objective site/room, that is not the most important; as these ones are subject to so much transit, fire, and attention that the EDD will inevitably be destroyed by an EMP, by a frag, get seen by any of the drones attackers are going to be chucking down the door, etc.

The worst ones are on doors that lead to the exterior, as attackers generally have to pay less attention when walking about inside. Trapping even the most obvious doorway, if it’s inside, MAY trigger sometimes because people are paying attention to angles and not really checking all their doorways. Check out the following examples:



The door for lockers in Border’s second floor is a great example of a very, very focused doorway. EDDs here will most likely not work to any effective extent, if at all; just because it’s so exposed.



Remember you’re working with chances, what are the chances of someone triggering a trap, at any given time. Placing them in exposed doorways like these ones in consulate (marked in green Xs) drastically reduce your odds of getting that EDD to do work. If you’re playing against decent attackers you might as well not even place these because you’d be wasting your EDD.

Note: These marks are for their respective sites, if you’re defending lobby, trapping lobby main door is probably not the best idea, but trapping yellow stairs may be; as it’s far enough but transitted enough to warrant the gamble.

To make it as simple as possible, to set apart what I call the “Inactive/Passive” spots versus the “Active spots” is just “what is the time in the round you expect the trap to go off”. I named the inactive such because they are, for most of the round, just there without doing much.

Active spots are detonated at other points of the round that are not always regarding pushes into the objective room; these can be getting attackers on entry, getting attackers while they comb rooms for roamers, or getting them when they are moving about to enter the objective room from inside the building, instead of outside.



Ok so, let’s look at some sites and think about possible aggro placements.

This is a Train defense (Aka Mining-Fireplace). Marked with red Xs are some common inactive placements to better hold the site. Now, these are the least likely to trigger but are the ones that if they do trigger they will potentially help the most to the team (they usually go off if attackers go for the last push of the round, sometimes attackers at this stage are low on health; so there’s really high kill potential, etc). The aggro placements are supposed to complement these and must be far more unpredictable.

Instead of thinking “Where are they going to be coming from to the site”, you have to think “Where are they going to be coming from to the building”; and place your EDDs not necessarily on those exact places, but on the routes these do. Like so:



Say you wanna consider someone going in from the terrace area from the north and they may wanna go through library. You could try the following placements:



Number 1 would be my first option here; the reason being it is the closest to the possible entrance without being the actual entrance (number 3). The chances of whoever is coming in checking the number 3 spot are usually higher as people tend to 1) Check their first step the most, and 2) Move more rapidly once they are inside so they aren’t caught by a roamer, etc; in general going inside of the building forces you to get moving and attack the site instead of just planning and sitting about like you do when you’re outside and in a safe spot. Number 2 is also good but the problem is that the chances of someone going up white stairs and taking it out are much higher than someone going in library and taking number 1 out. Now, for that same reason it is also way more unexpected for someone inside library that is looking at the fireplace door and really paying attention to their right side.
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Let’s look at another example, for Consulate this time:



This is a garage/kitchen defense. We’re skipping to a particular active spot I think is stunningly effective:



This particular side of the doorway (marked with number 1) from the visa stairs down to visa office is a really good spot to hold any of the basement sites in consulate (Garage for bomb or Archives for Hostage/Container).

Number 2 is a very blatant placement and will rarely work because people check both sides of this door regularly; the fact that it’s very blatant though may sometimes get a rushy operator. In general this is an aggro placement for such operators as Riot Barricade is the furthest spawn from the garage door in the case of bomb and people will normally gather in gas station to breach garage; though there’s always one entry fragger that wants to play the hard flank.

For number 1, this is one of the cases where I won’t do anything to try to hide the EDD because this spot is particularly dark and doesn’t really contrast with the device body (See section 6.d. and 6.e. for more on this), the point is that I wouldn’t do one of those barricade placing and ripping for this spot because it’s already rare to place the trap here so I wouldn’t any attacker thinking for even a second that a trapper has been about placing stuff and placing and taking down barricades. There are some places where you want to leave the spots as clean as possible, while there are some others where you want to create as much distractions as possible with barricades and so on to confuse attackers and overall create a very unpredictable environment for them to fight in. This placement in particular as I said is to be kept clean as if no one ever went upstairs from the basement site.

Roam Traps are basically the same in terms of placement positions as Active traps, the difference being how you’ll react to the traps as the round goes on. First of all, EDDs notify you when they go off; you’ll get “EDD Triggered” notifications whenever a trap goes off, and you’ll also get “Injure; Entry Denial Device Bonus” notifications whenever an enemy is injured by a trap. Also, the sound of an EDD going off can be heard globally.

When it comes to using EDD as intel, there’s a lot to cover, but the basic idea can be split in two parts; the first one is using an EDD explosion to react and go finish off that particular enemy when roaming/hunting down people. And the second is using missing EDDs that have detonated or shot out to have a general idea of position; what route attackers may be taking, what room has been transitted by attackers, etc.

The first step to having the traps serve you as intel tools is remembering exactly where you placed all of your EDDs. Second step is, if a trap goes off, try to estimate by the sound which trap it was; if it sounded really far/really close. Maybe it sounded really close but it wouldn’t make sense it is one of the ones on site (maybe it’s too early on the round for a particular trap to be going off), then you can deduce it was either upstairs or downstairs, etc.

“Game sense is not gut feeling, game sense is basically just deducing the missing information from actual information you have”
-me, 2018

This may be my favorite part of the guide because I think if you’re unfamiliar to the concept because I’m sure it’ll blow some people minds.

There’s a bunch of things you have to keep in mind when placing devices, as we’ve been looking at them throughout the guide; but this section is more specifically about reducing the visibility of the devices themselves. Whatever you learn in this section you’re supposed to use on top of all other placing logic for it to be effective; here’s kinda how it goes. The following logic is, of course, assuming the person DOESN’T CHECK FOR EDDs by looking straight at the ankle height position left and right before going in.

(First thing to think about is from what side of the door they are coming, in or out of a room, so you can place the EDD on the back side, logically).

(Then, you have to put the EDD on the opposite side of the angle that is going to be held, otherwise they’ll just see it when they aim down said line-of-sight and take it in a tap).

(Players, especially those who care about not getting shot when moving up from positions, will pre-aim and often pre-fire at a second possible angle before moving up to their objective doorway, etc; you can use this to your advantage placing the EDD on the opposite side of their pre-aim angle, so that they don’t see the device by accident when taking this precaution).

(Most Weapon Viewmodels block most of the right side of the screen; this of course only works when they are NOT aiming down sights. When aiming down sites, different weapons have different blind spots depending on the sight frame, or the arms of the operator. For instance, Kapkan holding the 9x19 VSN when aiming down sights has his left side partially blocked by his left hand).

(As you’re about to see in the following example; placing and ripping down a barricade will help conceal the devices to a great extent. This depends on the depth of the doorway to certain extent, but it is generally a good habit to pick up when placing traps, if you have the time to do it).

Let’s look at an example step by step:



Ok, so this is the doorway we are going to be covering.



Enemies coming from the construction entrance will be “cutting the pie” this way. Ideally they don’t see the EDD or you.



You’ll be covering parking entrance like this, and you’ll listen for barricade breaks on your left (construction side) or right (parking, which you are holding).



EDD goes on the left side of the kitchen door.



The EDD is on the right side when walking in, as you can see the hipfire viewmodel obstructs the view considerably.



When ADSing you can actually see it:



Right there. Now, what you do is this:





From the inside, you’re going to place a barricade and remove it; so that the wooden frame stays on the doorway.



Like so. This drastically reduces the contrast of the EDD with the doorway.



As you (can’t) see here:



This is “the Goo method” for hiding a Kapkan Trap: Now you got yourself a fully fledged trap my friend.



For parking entrance this is something you can try, place EDD on the left side (from enemy view, right side for inside view).



Make a small hole so that sound can travel through better, and also to distract from the fact that it could be a trapped doorway (often people will focus their attention on the holes on barricades so they can shoot enemies through them and also avoid getting shot from them, forgetting for a minute about traps)



Then, let’s say this hypothetical enemy wants to go kitchen, so they break the barricade), then check this first angle for safety (blocking their view of the device that’s on their left hand side).



They’ll start walking forward peeking the corner, while the device is covered by the broken wooden frame from the barricade.

Now, of course this is all like “best case scenario” for you, as this implies enemies did not specifically checked for EDDs, and also that enemies did not drone their entry (sometimes they’ll drone and not check for traps, some other times they’ll drone for enemies and see traps on accident and proceed to take them out). It is ideal that you think the situations in this manner even if they may not always work, because it just straight-out improves your effectivity. When a drone comes your way you gotta react, I don’t think I have to tell you that (in fact, how to react to getting droned is a whole other deal to be talked about on a different guide). You can’t just follow each step to a tee without taking into account that sorta real-situation variables.

I’d like to add too that when you do the barricade frame thing sometimes is that because there is no barricade you can’t have Ash accidentally kill your EDD, and that in general people expect EDDs on either barricaded doors or just clear doors, when you come up to a ripped down barricade you’ll generally just think one of your attacker partners walked through that earlier (depends on the traffic of the doorway).

Now let’s talk about the barricade itself; not just how you can use the frame to conceal the device.

Sometimes barricades can be a big deal for attackers because not only they cut lines of sight and so on, they are an infinite resource defenders have to make attackers give away their positions when the break them. As an attacker, against teams of defenders that use barricades more than usual (placing them as obstacles around attack routes instead of just closing off rooms they wanna defend), you’re going to want to just take them out (shoot them) even if you’re not planning to take those routes, because later maybe you will and you’re not going to want to give away your position in a key moment of the round.

This game is full of constant, instant decision making; going right, left, do I drone this part? Do I peek slowly or fast, etc. Constantly. Barricades are very much an element that creates times for decision making. If a hallway is barricaded now the attacker has to think their way through differently, because now it’s not a matter of which route to take but more of a complicated process of: Do they expect me to break the barricade and then get me through route A, or do they expect me to avoid the barricade and then get me through route B.

In summary, they are not much of a physical obstacle but a “strategy-thinking obstacle”, and as Kapkan, your EDDs add a whole other layer to this. Another small thing barricades help do a little is identifying enemy operators by the sounds of their shooting; you can recognize as Kapkan problematic operators by their gunshots, like a Twitch’s F2, etc.

First, barricading doorways which you trap: Doing this will work sometimes but people generally have to stop for a moment to take down barricades and in that moment they will most likely check for Kapkan traps if you've been ID'd or called out earlier during the round. Not ideal; people generally expect this sort of thing. You can use it to your advantage though in the sense that you can barricade doorways and then use them as bluffs or distractions to actual doorways with set traps, so having barricaded trapped doors and barricaded doors with no traps will create at least some kind of delay on enemies to check for traps, or, best case scenario, stop checking every time. A problem with placing traps on barricaded doorways is that if Ash shoots a breaching shot at one, the explosion will kill the device and she’ll be able to just rush through.



You can’t see it but the EDD is on the red X.

Second, making barricaded trapped doorways vaultable. To make a door vaultable you gotta hit it twice (or hit it on that particular spot for the 1 hit), this you’ll want to use to make a big hole at about head height for enemies; and evidently, use them on doors away from the objective but instead on doors with relative high transit and low contact chances; as these are the zones where attackers tend to sprint and play a little more carelessly. By making the hole at head height, you encourage the attacker to just ADS and check the room through the barricade hole instead of retreating and droning it out; then if they vault through they’ll trigger the trap. Again, this is just generally punishing carelessness from the attacker.





Third, breaking trapped barricades unevenly. Like you can see in the next picture this basically is breaking as much as possible of the barricade without fully taking it down. I rarely use this but it has worked the best to distract from the fact that the door is trapped. You see for yourself if it’s worth the effort for what it is.

I will say though that leaving open holes in the barricade at about head height discourages people from using breaching charges on them (why would you, you could get shot from the hole, plus the barricade is already damaged right? Just hit it and go, no need for breaching); which is a good thing for you as having your trapped barricade blown up with a breaching charge will destroy the EDD placed on the frame.



After that, the half barricade. This is the one you’d use the least because it’s not really good for the trap itself but more of holding a weird height angle. The idea is to take out the lower half of the barricade, and placing the EDD at chest or waist height. There’s a couple interesting things you can do with this sort of barricade, for instance, you can prone under it to navigate about your roaming without making noise of breaking a barricade, and it keeps the barricade up as an obstacle for attackers.

Generally you’d expect these to be trapped the least because their main use is not to kill with traps but to kill as an angle hold, you know, with your gun, not the EDD itself.



The situations you’d use any of this is up to you, and the rule of thumb for using one of the other depends on what you’re going be doing around the barricade, and once again we think “attacker’s perspective”; just imagine you’re an attacker and think about how you’d react to the obstacle, simple enough.

Last we have this weird crouch hole barricade to go along the prone hole ones. This too is a barricade you can go through without breaking, but this time in crouch height; again, this is up to you to use; it’s included in the guide because I intend to put all the possibilities so you can make your mind up on whatever.







To create these holes you need to melee the barricade twice at crouch height, leaving the lowest plank intact, and then take the higher plank out with a couple bullets to make the hole big enough.



It looks like this, and it’ll allow you to walk through crouching at full speed.







Normally attackers won’t crouch walk through it, they’ll just melee it and go through but they still serve the purpose of keeping the EDD out of sight (and also out of mind, considering people will be distracted by this huge rotation hole in the barricade they can get shot through from).

Before we move on from all the EDD placement stuff I wanna quickly go over some extra technical details about the gadget and how it reacts to the environment. Also wanna break down a bit of info regarding what to do on consecutive rounds of playing a successful Kapkan and how to adapt to enemies learning placements (especially aggro EDDs and roam-y placements that are the ones that tend to vary the most).

Kapkan is rather restricted when it comes to device placements when you compare him to other “trappers” like Lesion and Ela, as they are not locked to doorways only for their traps. The fact that Kapkan is makes it so sometimes the map itself plays against you and against trying to conceal the devices; due to narrow door frames, stark rooms and sharp lighting, color contrast, etc; are all factors that you cannot control. You’re very much limited to all the techniques we’ve gone over the past the last sections; so the following info is just a thing to keep in mind that exists with Kapkan.



The exact spot where the EDD screw goes in varies from doorway to doorway. Well, more like the place is the same and the thickness of the doorway varies from place to place. As you can see, this first picture has the EDD spike before the frame starts while, just on the next doorway on Hookah lounge, you got this:



It’s closer to the door gap; and so, it’s far easier to see from the other side as the exposing angle is far larger. Look at this one on border:



The fact that this EDD is very exposed from an angle perspective is made up by this spot being very dark in general especially during nighttime.



Here’s the EDD on the other side, it’s barely visible due to the low lighting and the color palette of border mixing with the colors of the device.



Here’s another example of nighttime border being spooky with EDDs (it’s on the left side of the door, it’s barely visible).



This corner on the other hand is well lit and you can see the device far more clearly.



The depth of the door frame also helps you hide the EDD; this door from tv to penthouse on Coastline is very thick and wide which reduces the angle from where the EDD is revealed quite a bit:



Of course, unfortunately the light is awful here (on Daytime at least).



Oh and I’ve no idea why but there’s this visual bug for the EDD spike protruding through doorways (like this one in Coastline). It’s been like this since Velvet Shell launched so pls fixeroni much appreciateroni.
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The “prediction” part of this section comes down to just remembering what EDDs placed outside the site were triggered on previous rounds.

The inactive EDD placements are usually very straightforward and even if people step on the traps you’re not going to be trying to keep track of those doorways, plus the site changes from round to round. Aggro spots you can repeat from one round to the other even when defending different sites just because the route may be used by attackers just the same; there are very common doorways to go about in, like the Visa office stairs doorway on consulate example. These you wanna keep track of:

If I place an aggro EDD that was super unexpected and it got triggered in one round, what I do normally is change the position of the EDD (obviously) to a whole different route or to a nearby doorway (if there are any good nearby doorways to trap); and then, go back and barricade over the doorway of the original first trap.

What you’re trying to achieve is make whoever is entering, think about your possible trapping-route of the prep-phase and, opposed to as when placing the aggro traps at first, make them think you’ve been around those rooms by doing stuff with barricades and so on; and wherever you place the actual aggro traps, leave everything clean.
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This is the section for Kapkan’s merry defender friends, arch-enemies and enemies who suffer the most when against Kapkan and overall interactions that are worth mentioning. Now, Kapkan overall is a very independent chap; you can first pick him, you can last pick him; having a Kapkan won’t really change the dynamic of your team too much; that means that there’s no incredible synergies to him; just little complementing of gadgets here and there:


Mute is the first helpful operator to have around, a huge issue with the EDDs is drones. No matter how ｔｅｃｈｎｏｌｏｇｉｃａｌ your barricades are and how hard you try to make EDDs not stand out, drones just come through and ruin it all. Sometimes they don’t even have to turn the drone around to check for the trap, a drone on the ground is closer to an ankle height EDD than the eye height of a standing operator; so even just on accident they’ll see them (drones don’t have the gun viewmodel either, so it’s a completely clear view); etc. The point is, drones are problematic.

Signal disruptors aka Jammers keep your EDDs drone free, and also, Twitch drone free.

You’re not going to go about picking Kapkan and saying “hey somebody pick mute and place the jammers where i tell u”, but it is a bit of a gadget teamwork help for you if you happen to have a Mute on your team. This synergy is pretty straight forward; for the next ones there’s a little more of a stretch but you’ll see it I’m sure.

Jager’s Active Defense systems help Kapkan just as much as they help any gadget oriented defender. Against uncoordinated teams, they can zap Thatcher EMPs and Frag grenades out that could take out your EDDs.

Mira: From an attacker’s point of view, Black Mirrors have a very particular dynamic in terms of drawing attention and being a focus around the movement and behaviour of everyone. Well placed mirrors are brutal tools to chance how encounters work. Think about it, there’s many different ways 1 on 1 encounters play out and, other than just DM (death-matching, a.k.a. gun skill), it comes down to who sees each other first, or not seeing the other person at all and becoming a free kill, whatever.

Black mirrors, make encounters and staredowns, quite literally, one sided. An attacker facing a mirror will change totally how they move around in that room and even if they decide to change their push. This is when it becomes helpful to you when it comes to placing your EDDs. Placing your EDD behind a doorway covered by a mirror area, and placing EDDs in the mirror area itself, or on alternative routes are good ways to increase the chances of enemies stepping on one of the traps. Let’s look into this a little with an example:



In this spot in Skyscraper for example, if you have attackers flowing from drum and dragon trying to go into work office; you can place the two EDDs like so: If you recall from the “Concealing Devices” section, you should be putting the EDDs in such a way that enemies do not see them accidentally when paying attention to possible angles from where defenders pop up from; these corner checks are instant mostly but with a window it becomes a constant focus point you have to be paying attention or get out of the field of view of the mirror. The chances of drone-less checking for traps in front of a mirror drastically go down. The synergy goes more like you, playing as Kapkan, pay attention to where the mirrors are in the same sort of “attacking perspective” so you’re aware of where you’re going to place your traps after that.

Castle’s Reinforced Panels help you indirectly as in, they redirect the attacker’s flow and route potentially into your traps. Also it helps obstruct more doorways than you are able to by yourself just with EDDs. Castle is going to try to block off the most attacker transited doorways and potentially dangerous lines of sight; which lets you EDD all other secondary, more unexpected doorways to trap. I’d go as far as to say if you have a Castle player on your team that seems to know what he’s doing; just change your whole inactive EDD placements to play along the Armored panels and chances are you’ll get more triggers. This is a given but still going to spell it out: Don’t place your EDDs on Armored panels, because unless they break them without an explosive, your EDD will get destroyed along the barricade.

Ash has a weird relationship with Kapkan; see, it’s clear than if she shoots a breach charge at a trapped barricade the EDD goes bye bye. You’d say yeah then she’s a counter to Kapkan sorta, right? Eh, it’s not that big of a deal; Ash is a 3 speed really rush-y operator, which makes her perfect to step on a single EDD and have a real tricky round afterwards. You just gotta make sure she does and that she doesn’t breach them off.

What I do personally is to (at least give it a one-time try) is putting some extra aggro EDDs by the safest possible rushing entrance (to the building, not the site) and if I ever wanna barricade to conceal EDDs, use very broken barricades full of holes so that the Ash doesn’t use a breach on them. They won’t because, well, if you take out the breach launcher and someone keeps through the broken barricade, well, you’re toast; and also because you wouldn’t wanna waste one of your breach shots on a barricade that’s one hit from getting broken.

You can also use a vaultable trapped barricade. Now these ones are a little more suspicious cause if they know you have a Kapkan, you don’t want your barricade to tell the Ash “Hey Kapkan made me like this so a stupid rusher like you would vault through”. Plus, leaving vaultable barricades is more akin to proper roamers like Ela and so on, and you don’t want the enemy rusher to doubt pushing in because they think a roamer is around; you want them to be as safe in their head as possible so they get their legs hastily removed by a russian booby trap.

Blackbeard is more like an enemy that Kapkan is good against. Blackbeards tend to be down ADS a lot and even better, ADS on Acogs, which reduces their visibility drastically. If they are entering a room while ADSing in an attempt to cover their head behind the Rifle Shield; not only they’ll step on a trap that’ll deal 51 damage instantly, but it’ll also destroy a full health rifle shield.

Electronic Boogaloo squad (That's IQ, Thatcher, and Twitch) will take out your EDDs like nothing. If there’s no deadly threats around, IQ will just wallbang your EDDs whenever she sees one on her scanner. Twitch will zap them off from doors even when she has no plans of entering through just because she can and it’s extremely easy to do. And Thatcher will half the time just break them on accident when chucking his EMPs down the site; and the other half the time he’ll be throwing them at doors to take down Ela mines, Gu, and EDDs. Basically you see a lot more doorway-thrown-EMPs ever since Blood Orchid.

Montagne, as you probably already know, can walk through a trapped doorway and as long as he has a shield extended and is facing the blast he’ll take about 8 damage per EDD, which is about what a Gu mine does. Pretty sad. Blitz and Fuze (with shield) can also tank multiple EDDs if they walk facing the device (and crouching to reduce the % of their exposed body). Fuze is also famous for clearing entire rooms of their devices; so, similar to Thatcher (but potentially even worse than EMPs), Fuzed rooms will clear EDDs most of the time (this is only really relevant for in-site placements.

Smoke based ops (Glaz, Ying & Capitao) tend to play around smoking doorways and walking in using the smoke as cover. Capitao, for one, is the more vulnerable to EDD traps as once he smokes a doorway he has no way of seeing if it was indeed trapped or not; and being a 3 speed he gets the most damaged off the blast if triggered. Glaz can however see through the smoke; sometimes they’ll not see the traps due to ADSing tunnel vision but the overall thing here is that smoke pushes like these are generally done in large groups and with a plant attempt: The thing about big groups pushing a doorway slowly is that the chances that just one of the attackers sees the trap at any point just renders the placement useless. Ying falls in the same sorta category; especially Ying players in casual who started picking her due to her Pro League prevalence; who do solo-entries and step on the traps as they rush in trying to get a defender before the blind effect runs out.

Thermite & Hibana: Breachers mess with your in-site EDDs quite a lot not only because their main focus is making a new door that cincurvents trapped doorways and defender-favorable angles but because from these new doors and holes breaches, sightlines will give away traps as well. This isn’t for you to think “Oh breachers are a counter to Kapkan”, you’ll see at least 1 breacher every single round; this is for you to just consider this when picking Kapkan on particular sites that are very breacher oriented (like a Garage site, etc).

That’s all for the guide. I KNOW I probably missed stuff, and I KNOW I probably went way into detail into the little things, but it is what it is. I think it can be a pretty good read for pretty much anyone interested on the operator. It isn’t perfect, but I like how it turned out at least.