Your saved lineup is not a set of coordinates but a physics contract: release point, initial velocity, surface normal and friction, bounce decay. When the patch touches any one of them, the contract expires while your hands keep executing the old terms.
Most people's default lineups are borrowed: one screenshot, one crosshair pixel, one crouch-jump rhythm, drilled into muscle memory. The problem is that what you memorized was never "coordinates" — it was a set of physics contracts: release point, initial velocity direction, the normal and friction of the collision surface, the bounce decay coefficient. Touch any one of them in a patch and the contract is void, while your hands are still executing the old terms.
1. The wall normal is the real "crosshair pixel"
The bounce direction of a grenade is decided by the normal of the collision surface, not by your view angle. The crosshair pixel you see is just your view direction converted into a ray; what actually decides where it flies is the orientation of the face it hits.
This explains a common phenomenon: the same smoke you land rock-solid from position A scatters the moment you shift your stance. It's not feel — the face you hit has changed, from a flat wall to a slanted one, from a slant to the side edge of a crate. A few degrees of normal difference translates into a visible horizontal offset after the bounce. This is the first reason default lineups need re-practice each patch: once map collision geometry is nudged (edge patched, gap sealed, ramp reshaped), the normals change and the bounce segment of every old line shifts.
In practice, when redrawing a line, don't hunt for the landing spot first. Confirm three things: release height, orientation of the hit face, and whether a second collision follows the bounce. The second collision is the most overlooked — many lines are actually "two hops," and a small change on the first hop amplifies into half a meter of landing drift on the second.
2. Bounce decay: not every wall returns the same speed
A grenade loses speed on impact, and the decay ratio is tied to the collision type. Hard surfaces, soft surfaces, ground, player models — each gives different feedback. If your line depends on "hit once, then slide," it actually depends on the residual speed after decay, not on the initial throw force.
This creates a training trap: you practice in a workshop map, the landing is stable; in a real match, it drifts. The cause is usually not the network but that your line leans too hard on the low-speed segment after decay — that segment is hypersensitive to the release frame, and one frame off means a visible landing offset. A genuinely stable default line is one where "the first segment lands it, the second only fine-tunes," not one that "creeps across on three bounces."
So when re-practicing, I suggest subtracting first: split a line into "the first landing point that must hit" and "tolerable subsequent drift." The first landing must sit at the center of the tolerance zone; the drift only needs to stay inside the smoke coverage. That way, when a patch lands, you only re-test the first landing point instead of rebuilding the whole line.
3. Release frame and height: what you practice is actually timing
Same crosshair, same run-up, release one frame early or late, and the landing can differ by a visible distance. The reason default lineups feel "hereditary" is that they encode release timing too — what you remember isn't just the crosshair position but the rhythm of "walk here, let go."
That means any change affecting movement speed, jump height, or landing detection indirectly rewrites your lineup. The utility itself wasn't changed; your time of arrival at the release point was. When re-practicing, lock the release frame first, then adjust the crosshair. Reverse the order and you fall into a loop where nothing you tune feels right.
Closing: to redraw a line, measure three things first
My habit: the moment a patch stirs, measure three things — release height above ground, orientation of the first hit face, and the position of the first landing relative to the center of the tolerance zone. If any one of the three is off, the line gets redrawn. The rest is ground out by repetition.
A default lineup is not legacy code; it's a contract with an expiry date. The patch signs, and you renegotiate.