New Infiltrator looking for help

Discussion in 'Infiltrator' started by Khyza, Apr 20, 2015.

  1. Jawarisin

    In regards to education or anything that pertains to learning, you actually need someone who knows their stuff. Someone with bad stats obviously doesn't yet undestand the game enough and will either confuse or miss-lead a new player more than they will help them.
  2. MarkAntony

    Disclaimer: I do not mean to shame cutebeaver or anything of the sort. I am simply trying to make a point.

    @ Jawa: http://stats.dasanfall.com/ps2/player/CuteBeaver
    so which one is it. trust cutebeaver or don't trust her because of her stats? make up your mind. hell, in anything except knifing I statistically do better than her. does that make me the new authority on stalker cloaking?
  3. Jawarisin


    Well to be honest, I find stalker cloakers to be inefective compared to anything else an infiltrator can do. THOUGH in regard to that aspect, which is more of a patience/slow thing, cutebeaver knows best.

    As far as primary weapon goes, sure. But stalker cloak is more like a slow version of planetside. You'll fail a few times, and then boom you'll get a killstreak. Fail a bit more times, yay a killstreak.
    It's not as consistent as say, a heavy.

    Also, there's only 2 aspects of this game I haven't really touched at all, and that's stalker cloak and tanking (although I'm working on tanking, been doing it a bit more recently and I just got the AP fpc for my mag).
    Also, unless you can prove that you can perform better with stalker cloak only...

    But then again, there's other reasons but those are none of my business to discuss.
  4. MarkAntony

    Well, you'll have to take my word for it but look at the last week (started stalking again on the 23rd of April; everything before is sniping) or so on my stats dasanfall.(I wanted that crossbow aurax) That's all stalker cloak. 45-60 KPH 3+KdR with Crossbow. As usual I got better at it after copying Mustarde's gameplay style. Which he sums up fairly early in his vid about stalking with the words "unexpected flanker". I kinda disproved myself there because I thought that stalker had to be slow KPH, too.
    Disregard yesterdays stats though because after the crossbow I picked up the Blackhand. and that thing just makes stalking easy. People call it a pocket battlerifle but they are wrong. It's a semi auto sniper.

    What i can't do is climb like cutebeaver. I learned some from watching her vids but she elevates it to an art form.
  5. CuteBeaver


    Not exactly.

    Planetside 2 is my first FPS. I started out at 0.45 KD. My (now ex) fiancee who conveniently played HA encouraged me to play infil as a noob because in his mind it was the easiest... I think it took me about a year to pull it up to +1KD. Meanwhile he sat pretty on an NMG HA with a shotgun....

    Anyway I tried hard to get better at the game and pulled the KDR out of the dumps. As I succeeded, he conveniently lost interest and stopped playing the game. Took me a while to figure out what Passive Aggressive actually looked like. Anyway I still love stalker infil and am happy to play it. Nightly i average about 2.1 to 2.4 give or take. What matters though is that anyone can get better if you enjoy what your doing and keep trying. What I have learned is that people should try to improve for themselves and not for approval from others. If it isn't fun, and doesn't inspire you then try new things weapons, or even classes until something clicks.

    One the flip side: If you do find something you love, never let anyone talk you out of doing it.
    • Up x 1
  6. Extremite

    So...you're single? xD
    • Up x 1
  7. Moonheart

    Everyone starts low, Cute. But if we compare what is the K/D ratio of BR100 who mainly use the Stalker cloak compared to... well, perhaps everything else, I'm pretty sure we are not shining at all in term of raw killing efficiency.

    Still, I do think the stalker is one of the funniest things to play in the game, with the LA and the wraith.
    I miss the shenaningans I can play with C4, but raming MAX with my Wraith is priceless... backstabbing HA pointing a rocketlauncher to a friendly tank too.

    I think Stalker is not something you play to pull huge scores, nor should try.
  8. CuteBeaver


    What really bothers me about stalker is lack of ammo more the anything... that and the removal of infantry terminals.

    If you do happen to get going on a good streak, you are more or less forced to redeploy back once your out of essentials. Risking it all with a knife, or looking for enemy ammo, isn't always the best idea. (Getting Greedy has its merits but most of the time it just ends in a death anyway.) Factor in the time it takes to get back to your location, the golden moment has probably already passed. Its easy to understand why Stalkers probably shouldn't reach #1 on a score board. If they do someone else was clearly slacking off. Just numerically speaking we don't have the firepower, the ammunition, or the longevity.

    The few times I have managed #1 on a scoreboard for a base fight. I was either defending and just outright abusing mines... Attacking with the squad, and using a spawn beacon mines + EMP to clear clusters of enemies from behind over and over again.... Or simply stacking as much EXP as humanly possible, while killing more then my fair share, having a deployed sundie spawning pubs, motion spotter, beacon, and manually spotting for extra exp from a perch. In all of those cases I would have expected someone else to overtake me on the leaderboard both in terms of outright exp gain and killing enemies.

    From a lone stalker perspective it might be a good idea to routinely place sundies for your faction if you feel your SPM is low. Hopefully with the new Cloaky / Wraith Sundie it will be a viable longterm solution for this... Placing sundies should be pretty standard for all infils, but someone who primarily plays stalker should seriously consider making it a routine habit.

    You could also experiment with an ammo or repair sundie near other vehicles. If time permits tank mines on the road ect ect.
  9. Sir Cypher

    My stats suck (You'll find them with this name), but I'll give it a go. I don't do stalking, so this goes mostly for sniping only, maybe to other disciplines of infiltrating also. MisterSlim prolly has all this in his guide (I've read his guide and lots of others too), but here goes anyways:

    Every time you fail (and you will, like eveyone else...), be it an untimely death, missed shot, failed trap, or anything else for that matter, think. THINK! What went wrong? I find it is usually my own fault when something went wrong. Sometimes it is also that the opposing part of the happenstance was part of the equation too, but mostly it is my own fault. I moved too eagerly over open terrain thinking my cloak will protect me from being spotted. I shot at an enemy who had just launched his rocket and moved to reload and thus missed his head. I stayed too long in the same spot sniping, hoping against all reason that no-one will notice me (snipe an experienced player from behind and he will see in his deathscreen the direction of the shot, and you can be pretty sure he will come for you after respawn or revive). I tried to engage the incoming angel of revenge with my sniper rifle and 12x optics at close quarters, failing miserably. Etc. Etc.

    Like said already in this thread, use supressors. I know many don't like to have suppressors on their rifles, but I do. It may shorten the OHK range, slow the velocity and increase the drop, but I still like to have it. It protects you a bit from the average Joe. As pointed out in first paragraph, it doesn't protect you from experienced players, but that's why I am sniping from long range. You might ask, why I am using suppressor then? Because every time I am sniping around, I could say roughly 1/4 - 1/3 of my kills are unsilenced enemy snipers whom I hear shooting. I do get killed by enemy snipers / stalkers sneaking up on me, but mostly its me killing them, because of the noises they make. Which brings me to...

    Noise discipline! Whether stalking or sniping or anything else, KEEP QUIET! Eveything you do, creates noises. Walking, reloading, switching weapons, shooting (even suppressed weapons do create noise, but to a much lesser degree), etc. Don't make unnecessary noises. Don't Q-spot, for heavens sake, unless you're absolutely safe. Even if you're sniping from distances, you can be pretty sure, there will be enemy snipers around, hearing you yell "Enemy heavy!" Edit: Oh, and the most obvious, your cloak noise. It is faction specific, so anyone in hearing range can hear whether it is enemy or friendly. And it is loud. I don't know the specific range where you can hear it (someone, please fill up!), but it is quite loud. 20m? 30m? I seem to hear it from quite a distance, and in addition to shots being fired, is your biggest queue of enemy infils around.

    When you move, your best bet is to treat movement as if you were uncloaked. Reading forumside and my own experience on my graphics settings (potatomode), it seems to be decently easy to spot cloaked infiltrators running around. Even when they're not in point blank ranges. Plan your movements so that you have the least possible amount of exposure in the open. Couple of other things to note about movement/placement: Stay away from "skylines". Don't stand on top of a hill. Try to place yourself against unregular surfaces, like bushes/rockes, etc. Your silouette will give you away easily (when uncloaking for a shot), if you're against skyline, wall or similar even surface. If you need to decloak in the open, crouch and stand still just before, unless you are close to enemies. You'd be surprised how well you stay "hidden" even in plain sight, if you keep still. It's the movement that catches the eye for long range targets. This doesn't of course apply, if someone happens to look right at you when you de-cloak or a sniper pans around scoped-in and happens to find you.

    Flank. Shooting at directly incoming targets might be easy but it also puts you in bigger risk, usually. Shooting at directly outgoing targets is as easy and presents much less risk.

    When sniping, my method is cloak-move a step sideways (to avoid countersniping)-acquire target-aim-decloak-fire-repeat from the beginning. And don't stay in the same spot for a long time. Move at least to the other side of the rock/whatever after a mag-or-so. Preferably a bit further away.

    If you have insane reflexes and aim, you can try CQC sniping (yeah, sounds contradictory) á la elusive, but if you're more like me ("twitch? wtf is that?", "barn wall? sure, I'll hit it easy - from the inside!"), keep your distance. Distance is your safety buffer for the unavoidable player who has had his share of head shots and comes after you. Either kill him while he is incoming or relocate.

    P.S. Sorry for the wall of text. :)
  10. Biddion


    1) Because I always give into peer pressure here you go:
    https://www.planetside2.com/players/#!/5428057349738868513
    If that link doesn't work, you can look me up yourself.
    2) I never claim to be all awe inspiring in game play. I just pointed out that you claim the two or three you know on this forum have good advice and the rest of us know jack else.

    If you notice I have focused on pistols the past year, having got my President.
  11. Jawarisin


    I don't know why but I feel nice right now. So this post will be nicer than I usually am I guess.
    I didn't look at your stats and I won't. The other person linked them and said they weren't the best. I took his word for it.

    Gratz on the President by the way, I've been working on pistols myself recently.

    Now, yes maybe you're one of the few rare people who, although they have bad stats, got a few good points. But the odds of that being true are like... 0.01%. The problem is that, everybody thinks they "know it". I myself sometime talk over my head. Just recently, I got corrected by Yehhh1g. He completely turned my opinion around about compensators on SMGs.

    The problem is, there is nearly no way to filter everything people say to filer the good and the bad except one way... Stats. They might not say the whole story, but they are the next best thing. But it's not just about stats, for instance, as someone said, CuteBeaver doesn't have the best stats (except on mlg-pro knife skills) but I still named her because I know that in regards to stalking* (stalker cloak) she knows the most/best.

    It's so easy to be lured by players telling you bad things when you're a new player. I want to avoid that.

    For instance, if you've ever (in any game) played with players that are lower ranked (replace ranked by stats/experience etc) than you, and once you start talking, you realise that they really don't have a clue what they are talking about?
    Like, some people will invent themselves complicated things that don't actually exist. Personnaly, the most recent thing I heard was "manipulating terrain" in regards to climbing as infantry (which literally means nothing, but they invented something overly-complicated that doesn't exist). Now, some if not most of those players are still fun to play with. But if you want to give the best chances to a new player, you need to prevent those kind of things from reaching them, or at least, warn them.

    An example you might relate to better. In regards to sniping in planetside 2.
    One of the first advices you get is: Move after every shot.
    While this is true, you'll OFTEN see players (always with bad stats) say that they relocate completely on a different hill/cover after every shot. Which is honestly, completely stupid (moving 200m+ after every shot is dumb). Yes you want to move every shot, but moving a meter away is fine, or 10 meters on the side to another peaking hole is fine.
    Yes, maybe after a lot of shooting, you'd want to change your spot a bit. But that shouldn't be an issue until at least 20 shots in, and even then, it's usually useless unless you know they know where you are and that they are trying to get you.

    This is the kind of thing that gets told by a lot of players. And all of those saying that think they hold the absolute truth. So yes, maybe you got a parcel of it, maybe you got all of it. But the odds are so low, and the bad information that would get through would be so bad, that it's better to just filter it.

    Hopefully you understand now.
    • Up x 2
  12. MisterSlim

    Thanks for the mention, I try to know my stuff!

    In regards to Jawa's remarks, I can see where he wants to keep bad information from newbies. I can also see why he recommends only a few of us to listen to. Those few of us have been around the community and have committed lots of time and effort to learning our stuff and helping out newer players. And you can hardly blame someone for going with names they trust.

    However, I do agree that others do have valuable input. To be fair, however, those others that have input worth adhering to are frequent enough to be easily recognizable by almost everyone spare for first-timers. Names like _itg and MarkAntony, for example, are names that show up often enough to be quickly recognized by most people.

    Rather than saying "Only trust these names", he means moreso, "Be careful who you trust. These names are reliable, be wary otherwise".

    -Stay Fr0sty
  13. Leivve



    This contains everything you need to know.
  14. MisterSlim

    This guy tends to know his stuff too. But he's not a fan of the color lilac being used in guides, if I recall correctly.

    -Stay Fr0sty
  15. Leivve


    Only when it's a pain in the *** to read. So basically it comes down to if I was playing with HMRD or not the night before.
    • Up x 1
  16. Biddion

    Thanks for being nice. What I enjoy most of the class is its versatility. I hardly snipe, but players who are attracted to it can. I have returned to smg and rifles to finish off inf. directive. It's fun to relearn some tactics after a year of stalker. To return to the feeling of a new player, I recently made new characters (NC and VS) and tried stalker from lvl 1. It is tough not having all the perks unlocked already.

    P.S. As for my not so stellar performance, I also play from oversees and my ping is at best 180. Probably half the reason I am terrible at sniping.
  17. agentpuhpul


    Hey Khyza,

    I may not be mustarde or elusive, but I've been on this long journey to get better at playing infiltrator ever since I started last summer. I'm now pretty confident with the class, and I'm honored to be one of the top NC outfits on emerald...

    with that said (I haven't bothered to read thru everyone's post here, sorry!) I'd say the commie is one of the best sidearms (the repeater is nice too!) but it's only good if you can aim very well -which comes with lots of practice.

    I tried stalker cloaking for a time, and I think the blackhand may be good as well, but again, given if you can aim well and pick your targets. When I used to do stalker a lot, i'd do xbow/knife combo, which was pretty strong in those jungle fights. However, playing stalker is a patience game and it's a little too limiting, for me.

    If you're on the VS, i've found the artemis to be AMAZING. No bullet drop really helps that auto scout rifle. I've been on plenty of massive kill streaks with it, farming away at people in big fights. Stick to fighting mid range.

    Items to invest in: Your cloak (hunter, for me), at least x2 med kits, either ASC or Nanoweave (I like ASC), and try to max out that recon dart ASAP (motion spotter is pretty expensive...)

    Without sounding too self promoting, I've put together a good number of guides on youtube that I think can help you. I'll link one on sniping here, but check out the rest of my channel-I think you'll find a lot of it informative.

    • Up x 1
  18. Iridar51

    Can I get your reasoning behind EMP bandoleer for knife play? I've been playing a lot of stalker lately, and I find stalker to be somewhat better for getting actual knife kills than Smoke Ninja Light Assault. At least Stalker doesn't tempt me to go for carbine kills instead.

    I tried using EMP Shield (Rank 3, I think) and EMP grenades to run into a bunch of infantry, throw a nade under myself and knife them all, but I've never gotten more than a couple of kills that way, and even through EMP shield this thing blinds myself, and I end up dead quite fast.

    From what I've gathered, Stalker doesn't really need a suit slot, so I've been using Adrenaline Pump to be able to cover more ground while cloaked and to get easier crossbow + knife combos. The one EMP nade comes useful when destroying deployables, especially through walls, but I find it kinda sucks for knife combat.

    There are two tiny delays, one after decloaking, and second before EMP actually affects people, and I find those delays are unforgivable.

    Even when I end up in among a bunch of enemies, simply weaving knife combos and cloaking seems to work better then EMPing myself.

    Am I missing something? Have I just not figured something out?
  19. CuteBeaver


    Hmm... Maybe It sounds like you need to work on disengaging? Or maybe your picking more enemies then is safe to handle in one go.

    I'll describe how I think about a very typical situation in an example:

    Main Tip: During the ambush, from the second you uncloak and begin your stabbing spree start counting to 3 in your head.

    From personal experience you need to bail by roughly by 3 or 4 seconds (this is a ballpark number based on the situation ) but what it should represent is how much time you have before the enemies can react to you in a meaningful way. Example you have 4 enemies , 3 of which are clustered and so it makes sense to blast those clumped up people first with an EMP. (Usually these small groups are medics or engineers helping others around them.) Before you make your move... you identify an escape route. In this case its simply turning the corner of a building and breaking LOS. There are boxes and different pathways beyond it which will be easy to loose someone chasing you. The one HA with his back turned to the happy trio of friendship means hes less of a threat, and most importantly he is not between you and your escape route. The EMP shield allows you to drop down right next to them and detonate, essentially it would be like crossbow bolting all 3 of them at once. (You can also do this w /o EMP shield, but you become weakened too, and I'd only recommend doing this without EMP shield implant once your timing is down pat because it makes phase #2 bailing, much much harder)

    So you drop down.... Decloak... EMP the happy trio. Immediately Bolt the first one down + stab the next (this takes less time) + and for the 3rd one who has the most warning you stab if you can (or bolt if he runs). Now the goal is to bail as fast as possible and try to get out in under 3 seconds. By the time HA #4 turns around you should be in the process of bailing and turning the corner.

    If he pursues you, then its your choice on how you want to deal with the situation. Drop a mine down, and wait for him to round the corner and finish him. Or you can try and loose him non violently.

    For more then 3-4 enemies, and / or when you feel the risks are too high and it would take more then 3 seconds to finish the job, you drop down with a mine in your hands decloak, drop the mine, EMP on the mine, turn around and bolt kill, knife kill, enemies on your way out towards the escape route.

    For me it really comes down to that critical window of time where the enemy is confused and trying to figure out what is happening. I find now I don't really need EMP shield (It was good for learning purposes) because as long as I can get out quickly enough, and as long as i picked a good escape route they shouldn't be able to return fire enough to take me down even without my shield.




    Opening clip Example:

    I can see two stationary targets (HA and Infil) as I approach. The map shows people moving around on point. My plan is to use the mines on the stationary (HA and Infil), and EMP blast radius should take care of the mobile targets. The clips speed up slightly, but all this goes down pretty quickly. I then use the capture point to break LOS from the enemy jumping over the wall and bail around the side of tower. Unfortunately we ended up losing the base.

    EMP + Bando just means you can do alot more damage very quickly to groups of people, and paired with mines its downright nasty. If your using the new active knives then EMP's are not required to do any of this however there is no "bolt the fleeing enemies down" option either. I prefer the older style knives with the crossbow because of quick knife being a cone against freaked out targets. This type of ambush isn't the typical sneak up behind someone and stab them situation so having the ability to slash away is useful to me.
    • Up x 1
  20. Iridar51

    Thanks! I think I get it. Basically, EMP is not so much about knifing, as more just about aggressive play at close radius, and good judgement must be used when and how to apply it.

    I'll try to consciously plan an escape route, with LA I too often just make it up as I go. LA functions a bit differently, so often it takes just one step back into cover to get in safety, and having only that 1 step in mind - "safety is right behind me" - is usually enough.

    I don't run mines, since I only need knife kills, even at the cost of being less useful to the team. So I'm gonna stick with adrenaline pump. For actual squad play I'd pick bandoleer and claymores.

    Really enjoying stalking, since at least that doesn't feel like I'm playing some sort of gimped Light Assault loadout. Previously I felt like Stalker was gimped too, but now that I've played it more, it feels really strong. Mostly because of that OHK combo, of course.

    The cloak updates really help. I'm really happy for you guys. Finally cloak isn't complete ****. I'm surprised how many people seem incapable of seeing even a sprinting stalker. And only once I've been noticed while crouchwalking, and that was literally in front of a guy's face.
    • Up x 1