As the topic implies, I feel at times that as an infiltrator, I'm simply not as valuable to my team as say a medic or an engineer. For the record, I don't snipe, I quickly realized that kills ultimately mean nothing in this game due to the fact that there is an endless stream of reinforcements coming either from Galaxies, Sunderers or base spawn points. The real objective is to destroy or deny these critical assets to the enemy where feasible if victory is to be achieved at taking or defending an asset. That said, sure recon darts are nice, but when I'm running with my squad or outfit, the actual sense of contribution I feel I give is no where near as satisfying as a medic or an engineer. Without flanking and so on, offensive actions as an infiltrator seems very difficult, since such actions typically land me in situations that have me going toe to toe with other classes, something the infiltrator does not excel at being so woefully weak in the armor and go department. Now, please let me put this into perspective first, I fully acknowledge that this is likely because I'm still new to the game, and am slowly learning how to play. Is there anything else that I can do, aside from being a recon dart dispenser that will help me be a better asset to my squad? Time and time again I'm losing firefights, armed with the cyclone at this time due to better range and moderate CQC abilities, I feel as if I'm more of a burden or just a meat shield rather than someone who's helping my team actually take a facility. What am I doing wrong?
Don't feel bad, it takes a while to get really good with the class, and even longer to start seeing opportunities on the map where you can be most effective. For example whenever you get near a tech plant, train yourself to automatically go to the upper most attic and hack the AV turrets. Most tankers will not anticipate you doing so and you can help your entire empire by destroying the enemy tank line from behind. Often it will take several minutes before anyone disturbs you. The results can be devastating. You can do this with an entire squad too. Hack a turret for all your friends, have some heavies guarding the main floor by the elevator and drop your proxies near the teleporters on each side. Have everyone go to work in prep for allies swarming the base. Use your Scythe/Reaver/Mossie to get to places with the ejection system and drop behind enemy lines. Flashes don't really do the job because infiltration is time sensitive. You want to look on the map for the closest place to pull your ESF from, and where you need to be going. Your goal is to first - FLIP the point. Too many clutch situations have resulted where placing a beacon cost my team. Flip the point, its others responsibility to pass you leadership and hopefully drop a beacon before going inside the building. Put the onus on them to get that timing down and focus on making sure enemies cannot keep pushing on your base by flipping at least one of the points first. A good squad leader or platoon leader will have you place down beacons for the squad. Hopefully they pass leadership while your flying, giving you the opportunity to place the beacon after touchdown. Others might have you work in pairs to flip points, place beacons simultaneously, set up sundies from the opposite direction the enemy expects. To do so travel 2 hexes deep, hack a terminal and pull a stealth sundie from behind enemy lines. This tends to NOT work during the daytime if there is little cover and allot of enemy fighters in the air. There is no shame in dart spam. Your going to learn very quickly to use towers, trees windows, even allied players bodies to position your darts where you want optimal coverage. Putting down radar coverage and providing team radar is essential to winning a fight against equally skilled and even populated fights. Most players in ZERGs don't watch their map anywhere near as much as a good infiltrator. Your going to be more likely to see a enemy on radar first. Because of this you should be ready to protect your allies on their flanks and take advantage of the distraction they provide you to deal with threats. Its not your fault for feeling this way. Currently hacking is incredibly lackluster and needs a re-work to make it more effective. I like to think of our class as a flanking support class, as well as having the potential to sabotage behind enemy lines. For example just think of the fun you could have with a gate defuse sundie at a biolab. Drive into the bottom before allies arrive. Place down proxies on the teleporters, hack the infantry terminal, switch classes to engineer, drop tank mines on the vehicle pads. (All of them if you have the pouch) You can also destroy the vehicle terminals to encourage engineer repair, and in my experience this tends to also entice them to pull tanks after repairing the terminals. It plants the idea in their head 4 times you don't want them pulling any vehicles from those terminals. When they do - BOOM. Again pairs of infiltrators can put down 2 mines each at 2 exits. This makes for instant death vehicle pulls w/o mineguard. Meanwhile your gate defuser sundie with AMS is long gone, your using medkits now, and your sundie is happily spawning troops near one of the landing pads. Your actually inside already capping one of the points of the biolab, as soon as a valid lattice connection is established. Your friend is overloading the generator. Biolabs are my favorite place for team contributions right now.
Long story short - start sniping. It all comes down to a) crowd control b) denial of service c) restricting the enemy flow a) locate enemy sunderer. Dumbing it down - enemy can flank left, right or go stright. Pick good position, and for example - kill everyone going left. After 5-10 guys - NO ONE - will go using left side. Sometimes there will be occasional hero trying to outsnipe you, kill him too. For few long minutes enemies will be going straight or right side. Team up with a squad, and you will make sure enemies will walk straight into defences. b) Plain simple. Enemy is occupying bridge, lodge or something and pounding your empire armors and infantry which renders "victory" march halt? Go behind them, pop every head on the turret. Suddenly your empire armor column will start pushing in. c) Again - pick good elevated place. Enemies pouring in from every side to your tower? Pay attention - they are actually making stops in 3-5 places before they go in. To take med pack, to recharge shield, to be healed, take ammo etc. Snipe them in those places. After 20 kills - they will start to run straight into the tower without stop - with half ammo, half heath, no shields - straight into your happy guys with turrets. One infiltrator can make daaamn difference in the battle outcome. Kills are just the means to accomplish goal. Pick startegy, and result will be seen in few minutes.
Just to get a few opinions out of the way... - If you don't feel effective as a sniper, your doing it wrong. My 3 most common targets are HAs with RLs, Engineers and other Snipers. Occasionally you come across a rezing medic, but most of them have the sense to keep moving so they are harder to hit. Now there is something very important to keep in mind about snipers. Bad snipers are usually there because they are also bad at the short game.... harassing them back into the short game, usually as a support role, makes fights better overall. I see this as doing a service to the game a whole. As for RLs and Engies, those are high threat targets to begin with, so suppressing them helps your side..... but I just skip the suppression and go straight to killing them. - Aside from the Darts, everything about the infiltrator class revolves around opportunity. Your not meant to crack something, your meant to make that crack bigger. Confusion and blindness are your strongest Allies. And the very fact that its gotten significantly more difficult to be an infiltrator with all the improvements they've been getting over time, mean everyone else is scared. If your looking to support your squad, I recommend trying out the Stalker. Slightly better range then the Cyclone, making it great for fire support and control. If you can find a good nest to last you a few minutes, you can threaten or kill enough people that "THEY" start getting paranoid about moving around. That kind of mental damage leaves them open to getting killed by other people.
Hmm, I have that unlocked, but don't seem to do too great with it, constantly out gunned by medic assault rifles, seems to be ineffective past 50m, even with burst fire. Probably just need to get used to its recoil pattern. Any suggestions on what kind of attachments I should have on it? currently all I have is the infrared optic and the x3.4 optic unlocked for it. Suppressing it doesn't seem to do much, it's still louder than a drunk Scotsman in a pub during happy hour.
2x and it was never meant to outgun any other class-weapon - especially not assault rifles - in a perfect situation. Also, the weapon isn't really meant for longer ranges. Use forward grip and try to land multiple headshots.
If your infantry and not playing max or medic, then yes, your are most likely a wasted slot on the squad roster?
Inf can make a difference, just don't expect him to make a difference equal to a LA/engy that blows up a sundy. That said, inf is damn good at sundy protection job.
Infiltrators. If you use them well are great. Shooting engies as they try to repair their tank. If you manage to knock them out your friends can take out whatever armor they have spawned. Shooting medics as they stop to try and revive someone. Shooting engies as they try to repair base turrets. Ghost capping and laying down AI mines. Knocking out a heavy as he stops to fire a rocket. SMG/commissar cloaking close range killing if you want to up your K/D ratio. Just make sure nothing has radar. You don't knock out sundies or tanks. You knock out infrastructure and key people on the battlefield.
The only purpose of an infiltrator in the squad is spamming darts, which is very important, but that's it. Hacking for now isn't very useful, maybe that will change with the resources revamp. At least is better than the situation we had before, when parking a scout flash was all that you needed for replace an infiltrator.
Having a guy sitting on a scout radar flash is still better than bringing an infiltrator. Most large outfits have at least 1 person with a second account just sitting on the back of a flash.
no, because that guy is doing nothing, so is still wasting a slot, and if you're unlucky and the flash gets destroyed then unless you're defending you can't get another one. An infiltrator with a SMG can at least kill some players. Given how often I encounter scout flashes nowadays, i.e. never, I say you're greatly exaggerating.
Strange, I also play on waterson and I am constantly seeing AFK people on scout radar flashes. We pull a radar flash right after the sunderer when we gal drop on an enemy base.. I have spent 54hours sitting on a flash, for a total SPM of 27. We didn't used to get XP. It is my number 1 ground vehicle as far as time spent. Platoon leading, providing my team 100m scout radar, and capping bases doesn't seem to pay well far as SPM goes.
You're not in the right mind set then. The trick with the stalker to think like a Carbine, aim like a DMR, and move like your using a Cyclone. I find the HSNV to be best overall choice as its practical range is pretty much the same as Stalker's. The high lighting of bodies also helps pick out the head faster. Personally I run HSNV, Laser and Flash Suppressor. The Laser helps with hip fire to help with CQC, and use the HSNV to go for the head. Its recoil pattern is tight, even without attachments, so you don't need a grip to make it work. Usually takes about 1/3 of the clip with head shots mixed in to kill a target, over half mag if your only getting body shots. Also keep in mind its smaller mag means you'll feel like your running out of ammo too fast... but you'll get over it eventually.
The guy with pink text is wise, i would listen to him. Scout rifles are for medium/long range. Mostly they are weapons you should scope to use. The blitz for NC is by far the best close range which is a hipfire type gun in which you almost never need to use the scopes. The cyclone is good for medium/close and is pretty similar to the PDW, though i build mine with silencer/foregrip and use the scope to aim. Since most SMG's have great hipfire the pdw/cyclone are good to try to make aiming weapon out of while still being able to hipfire up to 30m. Your not supressing it for the noise as much as to make it not show a red dot on the map. Infiltrators are mostly effective as advanced units. If you group wants to attack a tech plant, you should be heading streight for the tower to hack the turrets, and hack the terminals. You should keep your group informed of what enemies you see. If i see 3 medics and 2 HA on my way to the turrets, i wont engage them, i will tell my group, and continue on. If i'm attacking an amp station, i'm going for the hardest gen. The infiltrator does not rely on fighting to beat the enemy, they rely on confusion. If you make the enemy constantly run around, look behind themselfs at all times, and be paranoid, you've done your job. It makes them much easier to fight and predict for your team. When fighting, it's almost always a better choice to cloak and flank them or get behind them. You have to trust in your cloak and not uncloak dirrectly in front of a HA and expect to win. As far as running with an SMG, that is my favorite class in the game at the moment. I'll typicly run behind enemy lines, and uncloak in the darkest corner i can find and shoot turret users and enemy snipers in the back. Do not get greedy and you can take out 1-2 at a time quite easily. Each of these guy's is worth killing 5 normal kills that your squad is killing, as they are entrenched and designed to make your group suffer heavy loses in order to take them out. Also, Cloaked flashes, transports, etc are invaluable, as you need to be whereever your going faster then your team. When in a tower and spawn camped, or when there is a large group of people, you can often sneak out, have lead swap to you, and drop a beacon. The other is running in to a large group of enemies (max's hate this) and uncloak while dropping mines, nades and fireing till you go down. You can REALLY rack up the kills, but more importantly, if you have any tactical leader worth his salt, your team can charge in right after and over run their position.
