Sorry for the late reply... I've had some RL issues..
To be honest, I don't know much about smoke and I haven't bothered to look it up on the wiki so here goes nothing. Smoke release is a hidden ability that allows the user to create and manipulate smoke to a certain extent. I assume that using smoke release would be similar to using wind techniques in that smoke is really just cloudy wind, not exactly but you get the point. Uhh. That's about all I know about smoke techniques. They can be countered by their wind counterpart fairly easily and must have some sort of relationship with fire. Oh yeah. I guess I can use smoke from burning things in a battle for smoke but I don't know for sure.
I guess I'll explain U_U
Smoke Release is different than elemental release as it does not come from the body or manipulated within ones body. You will always need a source of smoke. Like some water techniques require a water source nearby for you to use it in a jutsu form. Therefore it's incredibly hard to create smoke out of no where. Yes you could burn things during a battle to use it as you wish, however to do that it's really not advantagous for you. That is way all smoke users have some kind of nozzle or pipes to launch smoke granades/bombs, most just have wrist launchers. This is standard for smoke bio's so that they can use smoke during battle. In our training you will recieve them or show me them the ones you already have [you should have this in bio].
"Shows you smoke wrist launchers"
Now you might wonder "How can you manipulate smoke?" Easy....
Shows you the wrist launchers again!
With this, it's a full automatic launcher which is also capable of a single loading barrell that can launch smoke bombs. It has an automatic loader where before loading the smoke bombs, I can infuse it with my chakra. After that I launch them where ever I wish and then once smoke gets created, I manipulate it as I wish
Weakness of smoke is:::::::::::::::::::::::::: Everything. Wind can blow it away, it doesn't block anything but vision. Fire or lightning can carry some of the smoke away due to it's speed, earth can block it or atleast make it so that it has to go around it and take up valuable time and water can supress it.
So why is it effective?
Perhaps it's a question for you to answer. But it's used for consealment. You, have to be a decent/good strategist to use this. Which in turn can be highly effective.
Now before we continue, anymore questions?