AJ's Guide To Humans:
ForewordHello, you may remember me from the x amount of years that you have spent playing Savage. I am Arthur, Artie J, AJ, Aerrow, Edge or whatever suits your fancy. The guide that follows this introduction is my attempt, to provide to you a guide dedicated to provide you with info to hopefully improve your skills in playing on the Human Race on Savage. Firstly, I outline my intentions of why I have chosen to write this guide. There are many reasons that come to mind, and a few have been highlighted. There has not been much, if not any, guides towards playing humans created, and I believe that the reason for this is because playing humans relies alot upon the individual instincts of the players. Unlike beast, there is no way following a textbook can make you achieve becoming a player above average, you will soon learn that with humans, you do not attack and defend, but rather counter. You must know your opponent and set your mind to react to their actions and movements. Another reason for writing this guide is the lack of skilled human players that I see, I have no implication of being 'cocky' when saying this, but I believe this has to be said. If there is even just one person, especially a newbie, who takes something out of this guide and tries to implement this on the field before resorting to grabbing a balli and playing 'point and click baby' or running up a clearly irregular elevated part of a wall of a map and fluxing down at a beast thinking 'OMGOSH I MUST PWN', I would really feel that this guide to me is a success.
General Human Aspects:Blocking - We all by now should know that a block stuns your opponent for a short time, allowing a great opportunity to attack. When you block, do not follow the pred, but rather follow his/her swings and the position of the claw, there is no point trying to follow the pred because he will be leaping away trying to break your concentration, the claw is what will hit you, not his face. Once you block, do not wait, take a shot straight away before the beast player evades, the quicker you hit the more time you will get to execute your next action. After you hit the pred, you should be looking to move away to perform another block, or continue to attack after turning away from the attacking direction of the opponent, do not stand there going 'WOO I HIT THE DUDE' because a good beast player will recover at the taste of a blow to you, if they receive stamina it does not matter what their hp is, they can be just as devastating as they are with 620hp with 1hp if they have stamina.
Double Blocking - Double Blocking is a great skill to have on your belt and you will need this to excel. It is mainly accomplished by timing, footwork and experience. Immediately after blocking a pred, begin your swing (don't spam click swing or block this is where timing is important - knowing when to swing and when to block). While swinging be sure to move away from the pred as fast as possible. You'll know that a double block is possible if the lego's feet move irregularly fast while sprinting (I know this sounds weird, but it is definitely noticeable). I think the best way to do this is not by backing up (since it is the slowest way to move), but rather by turning so the pred is on the side of your screen and moving sideways away from the pred. Be sure to use sprint to distance yourself as far as possible. Now when the pred comes back (after you hit him) for the rebound swing, JUMP! and block him right when your 1st swing finishes. If done correctly, you will accomplish the double block.
Footwork - A lego standing still basically has a tag hanging around his neck going 'I want my ass handing to me on a silver plate', a golden rule in savage is to NEVER stand still. If you stand still you are as good as a npc on duel_garden_beta11. Your footwork should define your actions and should position you in the perfect position to accompany the action you are undertaking. The distance that you want to have present between you and the opponent is enough so that you can lunge forward slightly and swing, and your opponent cannot hit you in one leap. Be creative, do not move side to side in a uniform fashion because it's not going to take a genius to see what you are doing and how much of a manically depressed robot you are.
Timing - this skill only comes with time and experience. It separates good human players from decent human players. It includes the following: freeswing timing, blocking timing, dodging timing, and medkit timing. Freeswing timing - knowing when the pred is out of stam and then attempting to hit the pred without blocking. Blocking timing - knowing when the pred is going to attack, thus blocking early to compensate for late reaction times. Dodging timing - knowing when the pred is going to attack, thus moving out of the way of the oncoming attack to effectively dodge the pred's attack, thus costing the pred precious stamina. Medkit timing - don't ALWAYS med back up to full health. Sometimes only medding once back to 2/3 health is best. Especially when the pred is coming back at you on the attack.
Jumping/Dodging - As said before, it is much harder to attack a person when they are not idle. Using jump to dodge is a quite effective technique to use against beast when timed properly, it drains the beast unit's stamina and you take no damage what so ever, opposed to block. The best way to execute this is by jumping (as well as blocking at the same time, this adds as a second defence) to the side of a leaping pred while facing the pred so if he does turn (which the better beast players will do), the block will become effective.
Range - Remember this, the range of a legionnaire's battle axe is greater than the claws of a pred. This means that you at a certain range, even if both human and beast units attack, your axe will hit where the pred's claw wouldn't. The best way to execute this is by lungeing forward while the swing is acting and then retreating back after contact has been made.
Choice of Weapon - As you all know different weapons change your playing style accordingly, seeing that Coil and Flux are the two most preferred weapons, I'll talk about these two a bit. And before I start I want to say to make sure to have Block/Leap on Right Click ON
Coil - Coil is my most preferred weapon, due to the sheer facts that it was a good range, is powerful, decent ammo and has a zoom feature if you need it. With Coil you want to do as much damage as you can, seeing that most beast players run around with a rabid, it is a good idea to have about 2 shots hitting your target before you enter melee combat. And seeing that it take 2 shots of a battle axe to kill your target, it is to block once and attack twice, even if you take a hit, I wouldn't worry too much seeing the other guy is dead.
Flux - Flux has a short range (50) but it compensates by having a continuous stream of attack which does good damage, has plenty of ammo, and also pushes the target back. If your officer it's helpful to target the unit you are going to attack to know when he enters the flux radius. Flux forces the beast to think and act sooner, and most of the time, they will start the attack from a good range away from you, giving you time to drink a cup of coffee and then block the hit. And a tip with flux is never stop firing and wait thinking your opponent will attack because this gives the beast unit plenty of time to put together an attack. A good reaction time helps, also people like using flux in third person BUT I wouldn't advise that. Also a note to be made, flux reduces the speed that a beast player's stamina regenerates, giving it another reason why it makes a good choice of weapon.
Fighting - Units:Below will indicate the strengths and weaknesses of each individual unit, choose the best unit that suits you. Alot of people believe that using a savage suits them more than a lego, I once to had this attitude. What you will find later on is that it is MUCH easier fighting a group of beasts with a Lego than it is with a Savage. Nevertheless I find using a Savage when you first start playing can be beneficial to you learning to block better as your weapon range compared to a lego decreases, promoting the necessity to use block. Keep in mind also the immobility after each swing that you will face, with Nomads and Savages block after the 3rd attack and continue your cycle to get more hits/minute, with the lego it will be after the 2nd attack, you do not want to be stuck in the exchange between a old and new cycle of attacks as this will leave you defenceless.
Nomad - The greatest aspect when using a nomad, is that players on the opposing team will look at you and already see you dead on the floor with another tally going up near their kill count. Yes, people look at you thinking free kill and this is an advantage. With a nomad you will need to be precise with your block and need to get into a tempo when you are fighting a pred, you cannot risk taking much damage. What you will need to follow is the mantra of BHBHHBHHHH (B = Block, H = Hit). A flux gun is always a nice inclusion to have and with practice, you should be able to embarrass quite a few players.
Savage - Savages like the nomad have a good attack speed when compared to the Lego, but they also boast good attack. 3 hits will kill a normal pred like the lego, but what you must keep in mind is that you do have less health and unless you have full armour, you will go down in 2 pred hits. This unit is ideal for sneaks as you have enough melee power to take down the passing by pred and you can at the same time get the garr up quick enough.
Lego - For legos, i like to go with the 3 swings, 3 hits, 1 kill. But keep in mind that I strongly advise you to not use the third hit until you are guaranteed a hit, or better a kill. The battle axe comes with a great melee range and you should always be looking for chances to get that sneaky freeswing in. With legos, you can afford to have a delay between swings and still go on with the next swing in the cycle, this makes the second swing of the legionnaire the best swing to use to freeswing when they leap (purposely use the first swing and hit with the second in the time space you are given).
Chaplain - Not much to say about Chaps besides the fact they are awesome and everyone loves to play as them. One thing to remember though is that the chaplain hits/minute rate is higher than the nomad, so if you do come in mid game and wish to pmine or construct, use a Chap.
Balli - When you have a Balli you (hopefully) should be looking to push forward and attack tech. NEVER camp areas with any siege unit because you are not going to achieve much besides create a stalemate and a boring few hours for everyone else on the server including your team and yourself if you are normal. One thing to remember is that if you do have a potential threat coming up in the distance; take him out before taking out tech. This I guess if common sense, allowing you a longer time to be alive and progress towards structures. I don't think anyone will accuse you on killing units with siege if your primary target is tech and you are pushing forward, if anything people will appreciate you, even the most anti siege-whore players out there.
Catas - Catas are stronger than Ballis but their downside is their fire rate and their inability to defend themselves against units meleeing them, although this may be compensated by their HP. I would suggest the times you would want to use a Cata instead of a Balli is when you have a sneak up, have a good view of your shots, or if you can make use of the parabolic property that the catapult has.
Fighting with Buffs:Buffs should be used wisely and effectively, they should be used mainly against your bid to destroy buildings or to accompany you when you are fighting a group of opponents where you have something to gain besides just kills. Of course if you have a buff pool of 300+ and some neeb decides the only way he has a chance to kill you is to buff continuously, I'm sure your team would not mind sparing an elec. Remember though, that there might be someone who may achieve more if the buffed was spared for them and that you are disadvantaging your team if you drain the buff pool just for a few kills here or there. Play nice, and hopefully the opponent will play nice as well.
Timing of buffs is a skill as well, and there is no point using a buff and seeing 5 of your opponents run away like scared little children running away from Michael Jackson.
Mag - Mag is great for places where you will take alot of damage, but do remember that you do take damage and you are not impervious, if you are getting lot on health do med and don't randomly swing like a lunatic in the Cronulla riots. Mag is effective in demo runs, fighting a group of preds, killing that annoying little summ called skope etc
Elec - Elec is a great tool for the person looking to destroy buildings with a foot unit. When attacking buildings, elec as soon as you are about to touch the building with your weapon and make the most of that buff. If you see a person leaping towards you looking to kill you, take a swing while on elec and him and watch him fly 20 feet that way, but, do not block a player and then elec the player before hitting buildings, this is mainly to show that you are interested in having the building down, as well as you will get alot more swings early when people do not realise you are in their base rather than when you have blaze, surge and frost bolts coming from left, right and centre.
Chem (Adrenaline) - The Chem buff is one of the most versatile buffs. Boosting your land speed, it is great for outrunning the shots of different spires before placing demos, running into important sections of a battle, destroying gates etc.
Fighting against Buffs:Fire - You can always resolve the matter with any of the above buffs killing the player, but it is always nice to know how to kill the guy without buffs. With the fire buff, to be honest, the buff itself does not do much damage, besides the fact it stops you from blocking much. The fact is, fire or no fire, a beast without stamina is pretty useless and if you take 3 hits at him, he will die. Players on beast do tend to get over-excited from the pretty flames that pop out of the ground and this may resort to them playing alot less skilfully than they can. Also keep in mind that while using a fire buff, the beast player cannot use and items such as frenzy, mist, storm etc. It is a nice time to exploit their lack of item use.
Strata (Heal) - Well a heal is a heal, not much of a strategic analysis can be given about this. If a player does just refuse to die and buffs continuously in a desperate bid to stay alive, remember to keep your cool. If your team can spare an elec it is always nice to use it, or jut play conservatively of your HP and give him a v76 or v71 just to tell him how much he sucks at this game. Remember, that person is disadvantaging his team and is doing nothing constructive in the teams best interest.
Entropy (Gate) - If your team is any decent you should really have sensors all over the place, help your commander and he will help you. I really do expect that by now there should be a 'Gate!', 'Nvm, its dead guys.
' in about 5 seconds at the most.
Things to bear in Mind:The Range Attacker - Do remember that when you are fighting more than one opponent, and you have players attacking you from a distance, if you do have a Coil
Rifle or another weapon with good range, kill of the players attacking you in a distance first before the melee attackers get to you. Even if it is a scav, do not feel guilty targeting them off first because it doesn't matter if it a pred or a scav, if they are both using a tempest, both hits are going to do the same damage, if you are faced with a scav and pred attacking you from a range, take down the scav, then the pred (presuming they both have full HP).
Relocator + Your role in the Battle - The relocator is a great item for humans to be equipped with. I am not saying this because you avoid taking a tally to your death score, but rather because of the huge amount of gold you save and the time you avoid waiting to respawn on the field. To make the best out of the relocator, you must know when the best time to hit it is. Do not hit the reloc because you see a good player approach you, or because you see 2 preds coming your way, you will never know what battles you will win until you first enter them. Only reloc when: you are out of meds and are on low hp, you need to get back to base, you are out of ammo and you need ammo to progress, you have reached a point of the map where there is no activity, you feel you can be of more use somewhere else, you are on the brink of dieing. If you reloc every time you get scratched, you will find that you are not doing much for your team and you won't be getting kills much either. If you see good human players that reloc a bit, you will notice that they all will have low deaths, but have a high kill/minute rate, this is what you are trying to achieve, but to achieve by melee kills and not sitting back and getting last shots from a coil and leaving your team-mates to do all the work.
One note I will make is, if people do call you a 'stat whore', 'reloc whore' etc. If you are doing what is stated above, do not let that get to your head, do not try to do things extra and become desperate for kills, because you will die, and you will not achieve what you want. Know your limits, challenge your limit, stretch your limits, but do not go over your limits. The thing is, even if you do use the reloc effectively and to a good content, there will always be people out there against you. People will either see you as a god or a role model if you have been playing for around 4 years, or people will get a bad image of you. Trust me, I've copped alot of abuse from people accusing me that all I care about is a k/d of 100/0, even from my own clanmates, but do not try to compensate your gameplay because you WILL die more, you WILL kill less and you WILL do less damage that you would normally do to the opposing team. And
really guys, if you are helping your team, helping your allies, helping your comm and playing a big role to help you win the game, I don't see why people have any reasons to complain. Remember just because a player receives Sadist or Homewreckor does not mean he/she has made the most contribution to the team. A sadist can sit back with land mines and last hits against opponents and a homewreckor just needs to sit there with a cup of tea the whole game and then pop up with a balli from the sneak garrison someone has built and take the a few shots on the lair. Sorry, I trailed of into roles you play in a game, I'll add that to the heading to compensate.
Other Tricks of the Trade:Here are some more advance things that you may like to use once you get familiar with humans.
The Human Shield - When you are vsing 2 or more players meleeing you, the last thing you want is to have one of them attacking from the front, and the other one attacking from the back. Try to use footwork to get into a position to have both opposing players ahead of you and use the players to block each other from attacking you and moving as freely as they would want to.
Mental Library - Experience really helps in this aspect. Firstly with hp, I do not expect everyone to go 'I hit a fully lved Pred who has 620hp with a Coil Rifle doing 112hp of damage leaving the Pred with 508hp left', but try to keep a mental tally such as 2 coil hits and 2 battle axe hits kills a pred.
The second part needs a really good memory. When you verse a player, notice the attack he/she executes and store that in you mental library. I find this extremely useful and when you have used this method as long as me, you will be able to premeditate nearly any attack an individual player will pull on you from his/her pre-attack stance, angle and distance etc. Most pred players will only have about 3 moves that they can execute from a certain, angle, swing, distance, aspect etc. This takes time to develop but I find this extremely useful in my game play.
Break Momentum - Some (most) beast players have a certain pattern or chain of attacks that they will execute. The thing is that though it is predictable what they will do, if you do miss a block you want to jump or strafe out of that cycle ASAP because the beast player would have pulled of those moves alot of times and usually, if you miss the first or second shot of the chain, you will die. Breaking momentum makes the beast player think of what to do and makes you command what is to happen in this battle, not them.
Playing the Dummy - Beasts rely a lot on stealth opposed to brute force, and sometimes when a beats player finds themselves concealed in the surroundings, he/she, when spotting a target, will use up all their stam to reach the target and will rely on a successful hit to regenerate their stamina. Whenever you see a beast player use excessive amounts of stamina to leap up to you and hit you, thinking that you are not aware of their presence, see if you can appear to be clueless and at the last second block your opponent, this will leave them on low stamina but timing and reflexes are crucial for this to work.
Wall Charging - You receive a lot of momentum from jumping down slopes, if you have not realised yet. A nice move to use with knowledge of this concept is positioning yourself on an elevated part of your surroundings, and then holding the run key and propelling yourself in the air with the jump key, and in mid-air click the attack key. This means that you will get the first shot at your enemy which is executed at a distance and if done correctly, you should have enough momentum to be away from them when they swing.
I will add more to the tutorial later, I hope it has helped you a bit.
I have chosen to release it early so that there is something that people can use on the forums in reference to playing on humans, although it is not complete. Any alterations/inclusions you wish to suggest would be appreciated.
Also a special thanks to McNasty for his previous work on Newerth regarding Blocking, Double Blocking and Footwork.
This is just a guide to give your imagination something to work with, to outrival fellow players in humans, or in any other race for that fact, you will need to gain experience in the battlefield and find out what works for you the best.
Cheers,
Arthur.
