Combat Tactics in the New Age

[Drakestein]

I just wanted to start a thread that focused on player experience and combat tactics that are actually working in what is now the new age of Defiance. I am a casual mid ego player somewhere in the mid 2400's. I have played since day 1 and I am a season pass holder, a fact that I have mixed feelings about. Feelings that I see shared in all of the posts that have been put out since the dlc 5 dropped, but there hasn't been too much in the way of constructive conversations about how to survive and win. I could be wrong but from what I have seen a lot of good discussions are derailed by trolls.
I came a cross a fairly effective tactic last night at Sutro Tower in San Fran. 2 players, threat lvl 8, unsure of what his ego was but like I said I am a 2400. We weren't in a group so we didn't have perfect timing on all of our attacks but what worked was this. I would use my samurai sword (blu), activate blur( with all the perks that increase melee damage and heath), and melee stim. Thats when I would tank it and go to town wailing away at the Dark Matter 1 at a time in groups no bigger than 3. Any more than that and it can get messy. Meanwhile the other player would drill the same trooper with his light machine-gun. This works with regular troopers, elite troopers, and snipers because the sword hit knocks them back and keeps them from firing. Iy doesn't work as well on Monitors because of their spin kick move, it will make you dead. From previous fights I have also seen this work with 99r's and Raiders but if you try it on hell bugs you will die, a lot. Speaking of which, overall fighting this way kept our deaths in the single digits for each of us, which was nice. Could have been less probably if we had another player with a bmg.

I was using the same tactic yesterday at the same place. But another technique that has come handy is the old hit'n'run. Basically gain the aggro of as many enemies you can and kite the while the rest of the group members finish up the mission and help you taking down the baddies later.

[Manstan]

Grenades, if they took them out of the game I wouldn't notice, I never have any anyway.

[Tsort]

The new Defiance "tactics" involve using (at least) two different weapons to kill something. Which is lame. Have you ever seen an action movie where the hero uses a machine gun to burst a hole in armor then switches to a gun to finish his target? How clunky is that. How pathetic the weapons now feel. Not only you keep dumping them, but they can never seem to make the cut on their own.

I often ran a sawn-off/sniper rifle loadout before. I'd snipe from a distance and switch to the big gun if anything came close. In bunker-like co-ops I chose "lobber" weapons to fire over obstacles or through corners. In enclosed places such as Arkbreaks interior, I switched to machine-guns for more mobility without losing too much firepower, etc. That was so much closer to a tactical choice, where it all depends on position, cover, mobility choices, range, etc.

Post-DLC5 tactics? Get a Bio machine-gun, run around in circles then switch to a Fire machine-gun and run around in circles. Well, that's clever. The old tactics are still there, mind you. That's when you wanna camp 1 hour near an ammo-box though.

[Manstan]

That is unless the enemy is already camping there, which I have seen a lot since yesterday; when I came back to play some.

Seriously, I haven't ran out of ammo this much or this often since the alpha.

[CRIXDA]

Sgt. Martin- MWSS 472- United States Marine Corps, deployed to Iraq in 2004 for OIF II.

Sgt. Martin, a lot of folks may not say so anymore but I want to wholeheartedly thank You from The Dawn Patrol (and all active and veteran Service personel) for Your Service to The United States.

Tactics; as far as The Dawn Patrol goes, are fluid and depends on the situation.
At Major/Minor Arkbreaks, We deploy Fireteams and cut out/notch targets - kite them away and melt the armor and sheilds and then bleed them down. We always try to stay close and cover each other, We focus fire and leapfrop to move.
The funny thing to me is: whatever seems to work, WORKS.
I am no apparent Uber-shooter like some others, but I have good weapons (not great ones) and really good teammates.

[Nefarious]

No doubt there are quite a few difficult scenarios in Defiance now at days. And these weapons Im listing are not meant for players who have Oj Zaggers and the such and are level 5000+. These are basic support weapons with beneficial results for any level player to use during these hard times.

The Incinerator Detonator - This thing is awesome on expert Co-op maps that have Mutants or Raiders (4 out of 7 maps.) since these enemy types are really affected by being lit on fire. I don't use this weapon with the intent on killing enemies. I let my group do that. I use it to set them on fire which causes them to run around flailing their arms. And if they are running around on fire flailing their arms then that means they are not shooting at you or your team. Its the best mass spread stun weapon.

The best part is that it doesn't matter what rarity or Ego level the Incinerator that you find might be, Raiders/Mutants will be affected by being set on fire all the same no matter what threat level may be.

FRC Sludge Rocket Pod - I combo this with the Incinerator. Although enemies being set on fire is good and all, they tend to scream and sprint in all kinds of directions which can make it hard to keep track of them. Hitting them with Sludge rounds to keep them still then setting them on fire puts enemies on shut down.

An easy to acquire Sludge Rocket can be found by the not so hidden vendor anymore that's by Muir Processing plant.

Expert co-op maps go without a hitch when I do this for whatever squad Im in. And although I don't get the most kills I do end up coming number 1# with the most points. So you and your squad will both benefit greatly.

FRC Partical Ultimag with Shock Nano - This one is not as common as any Incinerator or Sludge Rocket. But its the same concept in that it doesn't matter what rarity or Ego level it is. It's stun effect is the thing that counts. I've had this low Ego blue one for a long time and always thought it was fun to mess around with and use, but it wasn't until DLC 5 where it really started to shine. Stunning a single enemy will stun all enemies close by. And against Expert/Threat 10 enemies this thing is a god send.

All Hellbugs including Monarchs, all Scrappers, all Mutants, all Raiders, all Afflicted, all Dark Matter get stunned by this thing from a simple charge and shoot for a 100% guaranteed stun effect . The only things not affected are skitterling's, mongrels, Hulkers, and Volge.

For example I use this when playing Commander Cronkite Expert for those 5 Bulwarks that come out at the end. I just stun the whole group of them with the Ultimag and keep them stunned until they are dead from my team mates shooting them. Its a pocket stun gun. Its great.

Explosions 101 Expert - Its a long level. It really is. But nothing says you have to confront and kill every Raider on the island. Varus just wants you to place bombs on the factories to blow them up. That's the mission. So once that chick gets shot and you acquire the bombs you can cloak/blur past the Raiders to place the bombs and then move onto the next one leaving all the Raiders behind you.

The longest level just became the shortest.

The only thing is that when you get to the place before you fight the 2 Hulkers is that you have to fight and kill all the Raiders in that area or else they will phase through the door into the Hulker lair after you if you leave them alive and behind. Its not a good idea to just skip that whole area like the others. And fighting the 2 Hulkers with and army of Raiders coming in is not something you want.

And of course there is a way to kill Dekuso within 60 seconds or less but that's probably going to get fixed so im not even going to mention it.

Going into a Major Ark Break - Now going into one of these is a hell of a fight. Its not that the Volge are to powerful, its that the level layout of Major Ark Breaks suck. Everyone enters through one entrance. And we willingly go in to be met by a Volge firing line.

We get into this mess where the Volge literally camp our spawn point and kill us on arrival over and over and over ..and over again. (Mt Tam Mutants and Kenn Farm Afflicted are lol'ing at us)

What I do to cope with it is that I use an Ablative Armor stim and toss down a Protection Spike at the door for everyone else and then run to the other side behind the Volge and play it safe. And sooner or later everyone over comes the odds.

[Raiithe]

Did Sutro Tower last night. 2 players were already there and the turrets were nearly all online. Sadly the massive amounts of Dark matter in party outfits made the rest of the mission take an extremely long time. At one a couple of points we were all on the top floor sniping them while i would occasionaly BMG to heal us up from stray fire.

It was sorta fun... but took to long to be considered truly enjoyable. Using my Bolt-action or splitter and shooting them 5+ times in the head just to get the shields down is not fun.

It actually reminded me of a different game, an rpg (really dodgy) and one of the end bosses had many millions of health and despite having best equipment and abilities still took 30 or so minutes to kill just cause he had so much health, not difficult or deadly either just really boring.

I'm all for tactics, i'm all for difficult enemies but the way this has been implemented so far has been totally painful.

Surprise attack- won't work, you need to hit a single enemy multiple times in order to kill, at which point the only surprise would be if there were no other enemies around shooting you.

Flank attack- enemies take too long to kill, by the time they are dead your flank attack has turned into a frontal assault.

Use cover- Hellbugs are close qtr generally, so taking cover is largely pointless since they will mainly be quite close to you already. Raiders/humanoids, many have grenades of various types and immense pain, at best cover may give you a second to get the shield started back up. Volge..... if they are only shooting, then cover is great if they seem to be bulling out high explosives as fast as your weapon fires then cover is pointless. Funnily enough, cover only truly works on the bigger enemies. Regardless of whether cover is used or not the kill them before they kill you is the true issue and they will often have more health and shields than you.

Honestly the only tactic that seems to work in most cases is keep moving with cover breaking LoS with your enemy at regular intervals and dodge like a nutcase if against bombers.


I think trion needs to rebalance perks/abilities/weapons/shields/mods in order to make this difficulty scaling thing they've done viable and thus tactics once again useful.

-Mods need to be checked does the difference a mod make at TL10 improve a players chances or is it extremely minor.

-Shields need the same. At face value, the stat improvements look amazing, until a guided grenade one shots you due to a kindly bomber.

-Weapons. The same as the above.

-Perks and abilities. They were originally made with the intention to give players a bit of an edge over enemies that did not increase dramatically in difficulty. Thats no longer the case, many of the perks are a joke and a poor one at that. Abilities are the same, decoys/overcharge/stealth to a lesser extent blur, need to be scrutinized. EG. You hit a enemy in the back of the head while stealthed or overcharged with a high powered rifle (or most weapons really) should kill or gamewise really damn hurt NOT dent the shields.

Trion has implemented a game changing feature, now they need to change the whole game to make it work not just a couple of item types and enemies but the WHOLE kit.

Not saying the whole games difficult either, some areas are horribly easy and that needs to be addressed too. But I find it incredibly difficult to believe in or use tactics that are invalidated simply due to uncooked game mechanics.


I'm not even going to mention the sieges/incursions and players or enemies disappearing and reappearing cause cooping with others is invalid straight off in those situations.

[Deunan]

The Incinerator Detonator - This thing is awesome on expert Co-op maps that have Mutants or Raiders (4 out of 7 maps.) since these enemy types are really affected by being lit on fire. I don't use this weapon with the intent on killing enemies. I let my group do that. I use it to set them on fire which causes them to run around flailing their arms. And if they are running around on fire flailing their arms then that means they are not shooting at you or your team. Its the best mass spread stun weapon.

The best part is that it doesn't matter what rarity or Ego level the Incinerator that you find might be, Raiders/Mutants will be affected by being set on fire all the same no matter what threat level may be.

You can also use a Bonfire RL if you don't have an Incinerator Detonator

Going into a Major Ark Break - Now going into one of these is a hell of a fight. Its not that the Volge are to powerful, its that the level layout of Major Ark Breaks suck. Everyone enters through one entrance. And we willingly go in to be met by a Volge firing line.

We get into this mess where the Volge literally camp our spawn point and kill us on arrival over and over and over ..and over again. (Mt Tam Mutants and Kenn Farm Afflicted are lol'ing at us)

What I do to cope with it is that I use an Ablative Armor stim and toss down a Protection Spike at the door for everyone else and then run to the other side behind the Volge and play it safe. And sooner or later everyone over comes the odds.

Yes, making a straight line to the other end is essential to make this as painless as possible. From there stick to basic fighting strategies against the Volge and take out the Bombers first while using the pylons as much as possible for cover. Players are still going to die but they'll die less frequently and the room will thin out much more quickly if everyone does this. As always, the Viscera should be saved for last.

[Sir Psycho]

Not saying the whole games difficult either, some areas are horribly easy and that needs to be addressed too.

Like the Thorn Liro arenas. Without the increased threat lvl I tore through them last night like a hot knife through butter. Which is convenient because I got bored with the grind to get the oj sword, but now its not a problem.

And thank you Crixda. That means a lot.

[riyuzaki]

I just wanted to start a thread that focused on player experience and combat tactics that are actually working in what is now the new age of Defiance. I am a casual mid ego player somewhere in the mid 2400's. I have played since day 1 and I am a season pass holder, a fact that I have mixed feelings about. Feelings that I see shared in all of the posts that have been put out since the dlc 5 dropped, but there hasn't been too much in the way of constructive conversations about how to survive and win. I could be wrong but from what I have seen a lot of good discussions are derailed by trolls.
I came a cross a fairly effective tactic last night at Sutro Tower in San Fran. 2 players, threat lvl 8, unsure of what his ego was but like I said I am a 2400. We weren't in a group so we didn't have perfect timing on all of our attacks but what worked was this. I would use my samurai sword (blu), activate blur( with all the perks that increase melee damage and heath), and melee stim. Thats when I would tank it and go to town wailing away at the Dark Matter 1 at a time in groups no bigger than 3. Any more than that and it can get messy. Meanwhile the other player would drill the same trooper with his light machine-gun. This works with regular troopers, elite troopers, and snipers because the sword hit knocks them back and keeps them from firing. Iy doesn't work as well on Monitors because of their spin kick move, it will make you dead. From previous fights I have also seen this work with 99r's and Raiders but if you try it on hell bugs you will die, a lot. Speaking of which, overall fighting this way kept our deaths in the single digits for each of us, which was nice. Could have been less probably if we had another player with a bmg.

i kind of miss those arkfalls where you have to destroy the ark fragment things, you know, the orange red arkfalls? i remember when i was more focused on playing with my sniper rifle and my smg and wolfhound pistol, i would always get the best score on those because with the hellbug variant of that, i would just take out my wolfhound and crouch in front of the little bump thing that the skitterlings made, and start critting the hell out of it, totalling around, like 30k dmg or something at least after i let out all ammo in my clip, and just kind of sprint around the crystal the entire time. i could solo an arkfall like that. and i'd get about double of whoever was behind me in score. it was always a fun time for me, i especially liked when i would have a smoke while watching people do an arkfall, and halfway through id just join in and get the highest score by doing that, while everyone fired a bunch of useless rockets at the crystal, that somehow managed to not hit the skitterlings sometimes.

i miss those days.

but now, im enjoying using my bmg/infector or lmg setup for healing, but i wish i hadnt started now, and had started earlier, because everyone is using bmg's now. and it really makes leveling them annoying.

by the way, blur comes in handy if you like healing i've found, if you want to spec for healing/rezzing i would go with blur and not decoy, as long as you have a decent group, you can just blur to someone and rez them, and every time my shields break i move faster, which also has come in handy for keeping myself alive for the group.

sorry most of my post isnt focused on current tactics, your post just made me nostalgia a little back to those times when i actually liked defiance a lot more.