[Guide] My Probably Archaic LA strats

Good evening boys and girls! As I've previously mentioned when I last annoyed all of you with an original thread, I am a returning player with a fair amount of experience of ye olde days in both TR and NC. When I used to play this as my main game, my de facto class would for the most part be the infamous Light Assault. You know, that one class that heavies eat for breakfast and that blows your tank up with cheese blocks from heaven C4 from above. Well, after a single comment I read which called the LA one of if not the hardest class of infantry to play, I decided to share some possibly old-as-heck wisdom to you fine ladies and gentlemen. Why? First off, because I love this class and want to spread the love and educate all others that I can into why jetpacks are so worth trading a repair tool and a turret. Second, because I am 110% certain there will be a better LA reading this with up-to-date wisdom who can possibly spread it into my own brain and improve my epic comeback tour. Without further ado, here is my guide!

Your Wishlist (loosely in order

• Max Advanced Shield Capacitor
  • LA is pretty good at classic hit-and-run tactics, and very weak when you're spotten and got your shields shot out. IMO the sooner your shields are up, the sooner you can get back to fighting, which is naturally better. You may have a different suit slot you prefer, which is totally fine. I'm only some random person on the internet hiding under a fake name.
• Max Rank Drifter Jets
  • Let's be honest, drifter jets are AMAZING! They recharge fast as heck, make you go far as heck, go that distance fast as heck, AND you can hip fire while outrunning other classes locked into sprint only. If you aren't noticed by the bad guys, you can even still climb with these things, albeit slow.
• At least 2 Medical Kits
  • Yes, strange enough as it sounds I put medkits above C4. I'll go on more about this in the mindset section, though the general idea is you're an anti-infantry trooper before an anti-tank trooper. You're also probably not gonna be close to many medics most of the time, so being able to put your own band-aids on is paramount to your success.
• 2 C4 bricks
  • Of course, I can't ignore these. When it comes to oblivious armor both in the form of tanks or MAX suits, C4 is more than your best friend. It's your high school sweetheart who you got back in touch with during college and are now friends with benefits. C4 is an amazing tool when the situation arises and is arguably the only thing that keeps the LA class competitive. They're a must if you take the class as seriously as I do.
• Max Rank Jump Jets or Icarus Jets
  • I use "or" because I do not have a whole lot of experience yet with Icarus jets, but also because purely vertical movement is the only reason I have Jumpers on the list which I hear Icarus outdoes. Yes drifters can bring you upwards with patience, but sometimes the enemy will be hunting you and you are not going to have enough time to go upwards (which you definitely want to do, more on that later)
• Carbine of choice with the Suppressor purchased
  • Pretty self-explanatory, carbines are a decent jack-of-all-trades weapon for the LA. The supressor is going to be very important for smaller engagements because of the mindset you will want to keep (again, more on that later). Personally, I love the Cougar for TR and the Razor for NC, both bring some good stopping power and especially for the Razor a lot of recoil control. That reload speed is also just flat-out divine
• Shotgun of choice with Slugs purchased
  • A shotgun is kind of a no-brainer, it benefits every class possible when used right and is the cause of much crying back in my time. Slugs however serve a unique purpose, as with them equipped with a decent scope and an understanding of bullet velocity and drop you have yourself a walmart-grade battle rifle. A niche purpose which you should only use on rare occasion, but a nice option to have regardless. Because of the use of slugs and fast-paced gameplay, I would recommend against the pump-action shotguns, though ultimately that's up to you.
  • Pistol(s) of choice with the Supressor purchased
    • As I will go on in my mindset section, you will want to have on your person at all times a supressed ranged weapon. It may not always be your carbine and it can never be your shotgun, so having a pistol you're comfortable with that also keeps you off the minimap will be essential. Though of course if your primary is suppressed you can carry a revolver and take out the bad guys Clint Eastwood style. Up to you in the end.
  • SMG of choice with the Suppressor purchased
    • SMGs are rather awesome too, and I do love them enough to have all but the MKV on NC, though Carbines do medium range better and shotguns to close quarters better. If you think you'll need a gun for both then grab an SMG if you can. If not your carbine should suffice with enough skill and practice.

Your Mindset



Now, most of the time when you play anything but infiltrator you imagine a guns blazing kind of approach when facing off against the enemy, with LA being no exception. Well let me tell you right now that you are wrong. The LA is second in squishyness only to the infiltrator, has even less utility than all the other classes, and some of the smallest guns of the game. If you treat this like an engineer that can jump high, you are going to be very sad. Instead, may I suggest you play not as a normal front-line trooper, but an Infiltrator who traded their cloak for a jetpack.

This is why I put supressors on all your wishlist items and prioritized the speedy jets over the jumpy jets. Out in the field, you should think of yourself as a fast-pace, adrenaline-filled, sneak. Why? Because your number one strength is your amazing ability to flank the enemy. Flanking, as you can imagine, gets much harder when the other guy knows you're coming. It gets much easier though when you can farm the other guy AND the medic trying to pick him up. If you're doing this with a suppressor, it will be even harder for them to find you among the chaos, though if the battle is chaotic enough (nearing 96+ and all that jazz) there will be enough minimap blips to forego it if you really want to. Just in case though, if you find yourself cut off and need to kill something in your way, it's certainly a good thing you still have a suppressed pistol that is plenty powerful enough to do the job if you aim well and fire quick.

Because you are relying on not being seen, you'll have to pay real close attention to enemy callouts. It's important to AWAYS assume when you hear "Enemy Light Assault" that they're talking about you and get ready to scram the moment you can. Also because you are trying to stay hidden among the chaos, going solo or with another LA wingman certed out as the guide suggests is preferrable. All it takes is one blueberry to give away your position to ruin that one spot for the rest of the fight.

Your Optimal Conditions

Any base that's all about elevation (i.e. Towers, Tech Plants, almost anything on Esamir) should make you happy in the murder loins. The whole strength of your class is that nothing can follow you when you abuse that Z axis. Towers especially should be your wet dream, all those tightly packed enemies looking downwards at the blueberries on the ground while you're actually standing above them ready to teach them the meaning of hot lead/magnetic bullets/plasma. Escape when discovered also becomes trivial, either hop upwards or drop downwards and find a wall to separate you and your enemy long enough to be forgotten about.


Your Worst Conditions

Anything indoors with a low ceiling, or an open field with zergs on either side, will leave you at a huge disadvantage. There's nothing vertical to take advantage of in these places, and even if you can be super sneaky the other classes have access to the same close-quarters weapons as you, and even better long-ranged gear. Especially for the open fields there's also no suitable cover for you to take, so you're gonna stand out more than a Republican presidential candidate at a gay wedding. This is when you either wanna switch to something with more appropriate oomph, get in the gun of a tank or sundy, or because you are all free agents in the end tell me to stick my guide where the good lord split me and do better than me (or at least try)


Conclusion( TL;DR)

In short, you want a good carbine you can use, a silenced pistol, a maxed out jet pack, and shields that come back quickly so you can too. C4 is great, but medkits take priority. When out in the field you'll want to sneak harder than an infiltrator, cling to vertical buildings and shun the horizontal. I either hope this helps out those aspiring to kick butt as maximum squish in the sky, or have someone that knows this class better than me to help me learn to kick maximum butt. Either way, thank you for reading this far and I hope to hear your feedback.

Great stuff.

I can't agree with supressing my Carbine though. But that's a personal taste, not saying you are wrong in general. I just can't stand how stupid=slow it makes the already stupid-slow bullets.

Oh yeah Drifters are REALLY awesome now. Any fight where you have some height advantage on vehicles/max's, it's a must use imo.

And as always....

Where is the tldr ffs!

Just sittin here, waiting for Iridar to descend like the glorious lord of Dakka and LA.

It's really not an issue once you get used to it, especially on a medium-range carbine with HVA, though I totally understand why you'd prefer not to. If the fight is chaotic enough of course you can hide among the friendlies and let them mask you on the minimap

Thank you.....I am not coherent at all lol.

Are you really discriminating against c4 like that?

Not quite, when I talk about it I do mention it's very important but actually more niche than you'd think. My strat is after all not to stick with the zerg or to take out vehicles, but to kill infantry and keep them guessing as to where I am. When facing infantry away from the team, you'll need portable heals more than AV options

That i s c4 genocide bro

That's oppression!

Are you high or something? You've been speaking random nonsense all day.

Goddamn we need the PS4 forums to come back.

No detonation without medication!...or was it taxation and representation, I forget

Park invisi sunderer on a mountain

Use drifters to float over 600 meters and C 4 to bomb tanks and sunderers that are camping for over an hour because theyre too dumb to adjust

Get wrekt by the invisi sunderer that actually kills you a bunch of times

Get pissed and drop with Valkyrie and tank mines

Fail

Try again with a liberator

SUCCESS

Good day of light assaulting ending with a suicide bomb

..well not what I'd suggest but I have a similar (AND TRUE!) story

Get Infiltrator friend

Get 2 more dudes with C4

Stick C4 to Infiltrator

Infiltrator runs into enemy sundy

Infil screams when at sundy

We detonate

Quartz Ridge saved

Ive given up on that entirely still

Flash C 4 has always failed me and im convinced it always will

C4 infil is a much more precise instrument if you use a mic, can co-ordinate to detonate the moment the C4 lag glides itself into place, and you get to make a joke I can't say on the forums probably

Well, it really does sound like something old.

• Max Advanced Shield Capacitor

Using ASC is something I strongly disagree with, using nanoweave for higher total effective HP pool is in majority of situations better than having faster shields. If you can find cover to regen shields for 6 seconds, you can do it for 10 seconds, and nothing says you can't engage without full shields. And LA is the easiest to find good cover with.

• Max Rank Drifter Jets

Ever since hip fire nerf while flying years ago, slide-by-shooting with drifters has stopped working, if it ever did. Maybe it's fast, but predictable movement, since you can't change directions fast, and can't return fire accurately.

Standard Jump Jets can do the same things as Drifters, just over shorter range. The thing is - I've never felt extended range of drifters was necessary. There's no point in going deep behind enemy lines, since very few enemies will be there, and chances are - they're not contributing to the fight in any way, and by killing them you won't help your faction in any way.

It also feels, well, cheesy. Like towerstomping a nearly empty tower or camping a terminal with stalker, or spawncamping. It's an easy way to get kills for sure, but IMO it's not honorabru and not challenging and not interesting.

For actual maneuvering around front line, Jump Jets are perfectly sufficient. The only thing Drifters do better is hunting vehicles with C4, which - as you said - isn't primary purpose of LA.

• Medical Kits over C4

Ever since the introduction of implants, we can use Regeneration implant and get both C4 and a way to restore own health. Med kits are not so much a way to sustain over multiple engagements, but a way to escape from unfavorable situations.

• Carbine of choice with the Suppressor purchased

This is something I can agree with for the most part, one of my favorite LA loadouts includes a suppressed T5 AMC. I do wanna point out that different carbines are affected by suppressor in different ways. Razor and T5 AMC are affected by suppressor the least. High RoF CQC carbines also remain potent in close range, but become very weak and hard to use at 30m+. Just something to keep in mind.

• Shotgun of choice with Slugs purchased

Meh. After many nerfs, shotguns are crap, and so are slugs. For ranged engagements we now have Blackhand, and it's absolutely amazing for that purpose.

• Pistol(s) of choice with the Supressor purchased

I can stand behind a suppressod pistol in combination with unsuppressed primary, but otherwise - not worth it, IMO. Suppressor has a strong effect on pistols, and makes engaging at 10m+ basically impossible.

• SMG of choice with the Suppressor purchased

Meh. SMGs are almost as bad as shotguns. They require lots of skill from the user, and only then they offer comparable performance to CQC carbines and only in CQC. SMGs are a great way to train personal skill, but for actual combat effectiveness - I would never use them on LA. But even if I were, I sure as hell wouldn't run a suppressor on it. Their range is bad enough without it.

Even with Jet Pack, we can't consistently ambush people at 10-20m range bracket like infiltrators can.

I don't agree with all your gear choices, but your mindset is spot on.

Couple of notes:

Counter Intelligence implant does a much better job at telling you when you're spotted than simply listening to enemy callouts. Because you'll never hear being spotted by a sniper 200m away.

Towers - we are indeed disgustingly strong at towerstomping. So much so, that I find attacking towers that are not actively contested by your allies dishonorabru kill farming, similar to lolpodding or HE spamming. I implore fellow LAs to not towerstomp unless you stand a realistic chance to capture that tower, and stop enemy LAs from doing this to your towers.

Oh crap, I totally forgot to factor in implants...though tbh just thinking of using them makes me feel icky inside so I'll leave that slot blank for now and see how that goes

Shield capacitors I do see where you're coming from, better to take more hits immediately rather than recover a tiny bit quicker. Though not only because I only just found out I don't have a single cert in nanoweave, I do still like my ASC cause it means my shields come back before enemy HAs when we both shoot and run at near death

Weapons and attachments are definitely fair, I did make sure to say purchased rather than equipped for the sake of the reader to decide what to use

Drifters actually do give you a noticeable speed boost, either at the same speed or even above that of a LA with adrenaline boost equipped, which IMO does help with positioning fast and effectively. Also, albeit rarely but also recently, drifting around a HA has saved my life a few times. Still gotta keep giving Icarus jets more of a try to see if I like them or not.

Thanks for the feedback! It shall be put to good use in order to make my strats less arcaic...though I still don't wanna use implants, nasty little p2w things

You can still slide along ground with normal jump jets, you just have to manually control altitude by tapping spacebar. Such movement is a bit less linear, but gets the job done.

See: speed drifting:

Meh. The advantages they provide are not that huge apart from some niche playstyles. So not so much of a win. And not much of pay either, since you can't buy the implant you want, or any of the high tier implants, you still have to rely on nano cycler's RNG a lot.

By paying for implants you maybe - not even guaranteed - save a bit of time on trying to get the implant you want, that's all.

Regeneration implants of lower ranks are perfectly usable, this is the most harmless thing you can use. I roll with regeneration 2 most of the time in an effort to conserve energy. I was lucky to get lots of implants when they were first introduced, the drop rate has been reduced considerably since then, gonna be a bit harder.

And if you are gonna use C4 + regeneration combo, it just makes more sense to roll with nanoweave, because regeneration kicks in 12 seconds after taking damage. That said, I recognize ASC is extremely addictive, if you already have a habit to conveniently have faster shields, you're gonna hate the longer delay of nanoweave, and you're gonna resent me for giving you that advice

You're free to use anything you like, but I do believe nano is superior for classic, reserved LA playstyle of hopping on rooftops and engaging from cover.

I was yeah

Pretty soon i will be, again lol.

Hah, maybe not resentment (a decent chunk of me does believe you) but that addiction is definitely true. I gotta do a lot of cert farming first before I can get full nanoweave though, but I will give it a shot when I can...if I can resist not getting my second burster

How dare you get high in MY thread...without sharing!

Personally i like to run,

ASC
C4
Flashbang
Jumpjet
Regeneration1

And I use my Trac5S with a supressor, IRNV and Smoke Launcher

I get above enemies and smoke their position, then pick them off with my IRNV/Supressed weapon for lulz. I auraxiumed my Trac5S this way.