GAME MODE

Plant/Defuse

Plant/Defuse is a 5v5, round-based tactical mode built around one life per round.

HEAT Team · August 13, 2026

Plant/Defuse is on: Sunstroke, Scarred City, Blossom Crash & Eden

Attackers carry the bomb and choose where to strike, Defenders protect two bomb sites and react to the attack. Every elimination changes the strategic state of the round, and there's no respawning to bail you out.

Plant/Defuse in action.

Team Roles

Attackers

Carry and protect the bomb. If the carrier is destroyed, recover it before continuing the push.
Gather information on Defender positions before committing.
Choose the plan: direct push, delayed push, fake, split, or rotation.
Plant at Site A or Site B, then defend the bomb until it detonates.
Eliminating all Defenders resolves the round immediately, at any point in the round.

Defenders

Protect both bomb sites without over-committing to one.
Gather and communicate information to figure out the target site and timing.
Delay, interrupt, or deny the plant before the round timer expires.
After a plant: retake the site, locate the bomb, and defuse it.

Round Timers

Initial round timer: 3 minutes to plant the bomb.
Bomb timer: once planted, the round timer is replaced by a fresh timer for Defenders to defuse before it detonates. The bomb has a timer of 2 minutes before it explodes.
Plant duration: 6.5 seconds.
Defuse duration: 12 seconds.

A short delay is provided between rounds before the next one begins.

Note: these timings are current design values and may be tuned over time.

Victory Conditions

Attackers win a round if:

The bomb detonates without being defused, or
All Defenders are eliminated (this ends the round immediately, whether it happens before or after the plant).

Defenders win a round if:

The bomb is successfully defused, or
All Attackers are eliminated before the bomb is planted, or
The round timer expires with no bomb planted.

The Bomb

There is one bomb per round, carried by an Attacker.
If the carrier is destroyed, the bomb drops where they died and can be picked up by any other Attacker.
Attackers can also drop the bomb manually if needed.
Once planted at a site, that site becomes the round's active objective.

Planting & Defusing: Interruption Rules

Planting and defusing both require standing still and committing to the action. Both are cancelled the same way:

Taking any damage (including damage over time, like fire) cancels the interaction and resets progress to 0%.
Using any ability or piece of equipment cancels the interaction and resets progress to 0%.
Moving your tank cancels the interaction and resets progress to 0%.

If you're interrupted, you have to start the plant or defuse over again from scratch, there's no partial progress carried over. Picking up or dropping the bomb, by contrast, is quick and isn't affected by these interruption rules.

What You'll Know (and Won't)

Which site has been planted is always shown to both teams once it happens.
The bomb's exact location after planting is not automatically shown to Defenders. You'll see a local marker only once you're standing right in the bomb's interaction area, or a teammate can ping it to reveal the exact location to the whole team.
Whether a Defender has started defusing is not shown to Attackers. This keeps fake defuses, cover plays, and timing plays possible.
Bomb status (carried, dropped, recovered) is shared with the Attacking team so you can coordinate picking it back up.
Round result is always shown clearly to both teams at the end of the round.

No Respawns

There is no respawning once you're destroyed during a round. You'll move to a death camera, then spectate your team, then get a chance to pick your tank for the next round while you wait.

Because there are no respawns, positioning and picking your fights carefully matters far more here than in Conquest, Control, Kill Confirmed, or Hardpoint. A bad trade doesn't just cost you a life, it can cost your team the entire round.