Alera
07-05-2007, 12:00 AM
For too long I've seen people use this baby wrong so I thought I'd give some advice on its use in combat. Who am I? Well, probably a good question. I'm primarily a no-one. I played W:ET in Clanbase and a few other leagues. Mostly as an MG42 whore, sometimes branching into the Faust. I've also had experience in several versions of TF as a minigunner, which some how makes me qualified to give you advice! :D
So here it is. Alera's Guide to the Hyperblaster.
The Hyperblaster
Overview
The Hyperblaster is probably a Strogg Soldiers best friend. Capable of a staggeringly faster Rate of Fire and High Damage, it truely is one of the more powerful weapons in the game. It's got a tighter spread than the GDF GPMG, faster Rate of Fire than the GPMG and doesn't have to be reloaded like the GPMG. It has its downsides though. The Hyperblaster requiers just under a second to "spin up" and start firing, it overheats and it leaves "tracers" which enemies can gather your location from. Through out this guide, I'll be telling you how to counter some of these downfalls as well as how to exploit the good points to your advantage.
Basic Stats
http://4newbies.planetwolfenstein.gamespy.com/ETQW/hyperblaster.php
Movement
Non-Combat
The Hyperblaster, like most of the unique soldier weapons, is heavy. It makes you run far slower than you normally do. So the key thing to always remember when running to and from places, when there's no enemy contact, is to switch to your lightning pistol. This is probably the most obvious thing in the thread, but I've seen some people not doing it so...eh.
Combat: Doorways and Corners
This is where I see most people slip up. I'll be spectating someone and I'll watch them run round the corner they know an enemy is behind with their hyperblaster out and not spinning. The problem with this is that the Hyperblaster is a charge up gun, not instant fire like an Engineer, Medic or Covert Ops might have. So you've got to make up for that by doing one of two things:
1) Pre-Charging your Hyperblaster by tapping the fire button repeatedly really fast. Means when it finally does become time to shoot you have less charge to worry about.
2) Sprint Jumping. This one's a little more tricky. The basic idea is you start with your Lightning Pistol out, then you hold Sprint then jump round the corner or through the doorway and whilst in mid air, switch to your Hyperblaster and hold down fire. This usually confuses or disorientates the target, giving you a little extra time to charge the beast.
Combat: Close Quaters
Lets setup a scenario. You're running to your standard defence point (Lightning Pistol out) and as you turn a corner you notice a GDF Engineer standing there looking at you. If you were to just shoot him with your lightning pistol, you'd most likely die. Shotguns and Assualt Rifles do more damage than your Lightning Pistol. So what can you do? Well, here are a few things I'd do:
1) Do a sprint jump to the side and whip out my Hyperblaster, like in the above.
2) Run back round the corner and switch out your Hyperblaster (Leaves you at a disadvantage I find).
3) Sprint Jump AT the Enemy, Switch mid air and duck as you land. Stupid as this sounds, it does actually put people off guard and as we all know...A Hyperblaster is quite deadly point blank, providing you can aim.
What ever you do during combat, don't just stand still. Move! Jump! Duck! Frollic! It's all good, just make sure you're aiming at your target.
Shooting, Recoil and Defensive Positioning
"Charging"
As we all know, the Hyperblaster has a charge up time if you fire it from cold, how ever you can reduce this by repeatedly holding down the fire button and listening carefully for the point where it's about to fire, then release! Now what you'd do is tap the fire button repeatedly to keep it at that sort of level. This means, atleast from what I've deduced, that you can then shoot faster than if you were doing so from "cold". It takes some time to get down perfectly, but once you do it seems to help a lot.
Recoil
The Hyperblaster, being powerful and all, has a recoil. It's not a very big recoil, infact it's practically insignificant, but it should definately be noted. When firing the Hyperblaster for prolonged periods of time, remember to aim the crosshair slightly below where you want to hit (it seems to overshot my crosshair slightly for some reason) and to pull your mouse slowly down to counter-act the effects of the recoil.
Defensive Positioning
Out of all the things you could possible know about the Hyperblaster, this is the most important. Knowing how to position your self is quite possibly the most useful thing to you and your team. I often see people proning in the middle of hallways with a Hyperblaster or running around as if it were a Lacerator. The gun really isn't suited for that kind of play and the best thing you can do with it, is to sit back, find a good defensive position and let them come to you. Always remember to find a position that's difficult to hit with grenades and try and get a Techie to "group" with you (feed you ammo/health/spawnhosts), it makes the world of difference.
In the Sewers, you can denominate the best defensive position quite easily. The most commonly used entrance to get to the Sewer controls is the South Entrance. It's the closest to the GDF spawn and can be looked into from many different points (Catwalk, Platform and Water). This makes it GDF's prime choice when looking for an attack point. How ever, for these exact same reasons it's the best place to put a Hyperblaster. The gun is brilliant at mowing down people at medium -> medium long range, so just packing 4 - 5 people into that small tunnel makes it extremely easy to lock down.
My personal favourite:
http://source-dq.com/position.jpg
From that position alone I've managed to rack up 25+ frags in a match. You've got cover over the Balcony, The Platform and the Main tunnel. What's more, is you're actually quite difficult to spot since you're leaning. If you've got a Techie friend, get them to juice you up with the goods as often as possible, perhaps allow one or two GDF through with low HP so you can get a Spawn Host. Generally, just lock it down. An important thing to remember is that people are not completely stupid! They will eventually work out where you are and will attempt to counter that with Grenades, Rocket Launchers, Sniper Rifles, you name it.
Key Points:
1) Find positions with good cover, these are areas where you have a good view of what you're defending, but very little of your body is visible to the enemy.
2) Prone or Crouch when ever possible! It increases accuracy and "settling" time greatly.
3) Remember you can lean and shoot. This can reduce the amount of your body that is visible to the enemy, making you a harder target.
4) Scope up! It'll allow you to have a clearer view of what you're defending.
5) Get support from Techies. These guys will really help you out, specially considering the Hyperblaster chews through 12 rounds a second!
6) Watch out for Grenades! The biggest thing you'll be up against when defending a point is grenades, so you want to try and keep an eye out and avoid them when ever possible.
7) You've only got 70 rounds till you overheat, so use them wisely! Try to avoid prolonged spraying. You can easily monitor your Overheating status on the Crosshair stats element in the HUD. To enable this, go to game settings and set "Stats Opacity" to full.
Closing
The Hyperblaster is capable of doing what the Obliterator or any other gun the Strogg have is capable of doing. Locking down choke points against constant streams of infantry. Providing it's used well and the positioning is good, a competent soldier with a Hyperblaster can easily hold down one side of the grate alone, which is more than any other class could hope to achieve. :oppressor:
Really I wrote this out of bordem, but I hope this is somewhat useful to atleast the newbies. :)
P.S. The Dancing Stroggnana likes my music. :dance:
So here it is. Alera's Guide to the Hyperblaster.
The Hyperblaster
Overview
The Hyperblaster is probably a Strogg Soldiers best friend. Capable of a staggeringly faster Rate of Fire and High Damage, it truely is one of the more powerful weapons in the game. It's got a tighter spread than the GDF GPMG, faster Rate of Fire than the GPMG and doesn't have to be reloaded like the GPMG. It has its downsides though. The Hyperblaster requiers just under a second to "spin up" and start firing, it overheats and it leaves "tracers" which enemies can gather your location from. Through out this guide, I'll be telling you how to counter some of these downfalls as well as how to exploit the good points to your advantage.
Basic Stats
http://4newbies.planetwolfenstein.gamespy.com/ETQW/hyperblaster.php
Movement
Non-Combat
The Hyperblaster, like most of the unique soldier weapons, is heavy. It makes you run far slower than you normally do. So the key thing to always remember when running to and from places, when there's no enemy contact, is to switch to your lightning pistol. This is probably the most obvious thing in the thread, but I've seen some people not doing it so...eh.
Combat: Doorways and Corners
This is where I see most people slip up. I'll be spectating someone and I'll watch them run round the corner they know an enemy is behind with their hyperblaster out and not spinning. The problem with this is that the Hyperblaster is a charge up gun, not instant fire like an Engineer, Medic or Covert Ops might have. So you've got to make up for that by doing one of two things:
1) Pre-Charging your Hyperblaster by tapping the fire button repeatedly really fast. Means when it finally does become time to shoot you have less charge to worry about.
2) Sprint Jumping. This one's a little more tricky. The basic idea is you start with your Lightning Pistol out, then you hold Sprint then jump round the corner or through the doorway and whilst in mid air, switch to your Hyperblaster and hold down fire. This usually confuses or disorientates the target, giving you a little extra time to charge the beast.
Combat: Close Quaters
Lets setup a scenario. You're running to your standard defence point (Lightning Pistol out) and as you turn a corner you notice a GDF Engineer standing there looking at you. If you were to just shoot him with your lightning pistol, you'd most likely die. Shotguns and Assualt Rifles do more damage than your Lightning Pistol. So what can you do? Well, here are a few things I'd do:
1) Do a sprint jump to the side and whip out my Hyperblaster, like in the above.
2) Run back round the corner and switch out your Hyperblaster (Leaves you at a disadvantage I find).
3) Sprint Jump AT the Enemy, Switch mid air and duck as you land. Stupid as this sounds, it does actually put people off guard and as we all know...A Hyperblaster is quite deadly point blank, providing you can aim.
What ever you do during combat, don't just stand still. Move! Jump! Duck! Frollic! It's all good, just make sure you're aiming at your target.
Shooting, Recoil and Defensive Positioning
"Charging"
As we all know, the Hyperblaster has a charge up time if you fire it from cold, how ever you can reduce this by repeatedly holding down the fire button and listening carefully for the point where it's about to fire, then release! Now what you'd do is tap the fire button repeatedly to keep it at that sort of level. This means, atleast from what I've deduced, that you can then shoot faster than if you were doing so from "cold". It takes some time to get down perfectly, but once you do it seems to help a lot.
Recoil
The Hyperblaster, being powerful and all, has a recoil. It's not a very big recoil, infact it's practically insignificant, but it should definately be noted. When firing the Hyperblaster for prolonged periods of time, remember to aim the crosshair slightly below where you want to hit (it seems to overshot my crosshair slightly for some reason) and to pull your mouse slowly down to counter-act the effects of the recoil.
Defensive Positioning
Out of all the things you could possible know about the Hyperblaster, this is the most important. Knowing how to position your self is quite possibly the most useful thing to you and your team. I often see people proning in the middle of hallways with a Hyperblaster or running around as if it were a Lacerator. The gun really isn't suited for that kind of play and the best thing you can do with it, is to sit back, find a good defensive position and let them come to you. Always remember to find a position that's difficult to hit with grenades and try and get a Techie to "group" with you (feed you ammo/health/spawnhosts), it makes the world of difference.
In the Sewers, you can denominate the best defensive position quite easily. The most commonly used entrance to get to the Sewer controls is the South Entrance. It's the closest to the GDF spawn and can be looked into from many different points (Catwalk, Platform and Water). This makes it GDF's prime choice when looking for an attack point. How ever, for these exact same reasons it's the best place to put a Hyperblaster. The gun is brilliant at mowing down people at medium -> medium long range, so just packing 4 - 5 people into that small tunnel makes it extremely easy to lock down.
My personal favourite:
http://source-dq.com/position.jpg
From that position alone I've managed to rack up 25+ frags in a match. You've got cover over the Balcony, The Platform and the Main tunnel. What's more, is you're actually quite difficult to spot since you're leaning. If you've got a Techie friend, get them to juice you up with the goods as often as possible, perhaps allow one or two GDF through with low HP so you can get a Spawn Host. Generally, just lock it down. An important thing to remember is that people are not completely stupid! They will eventually work out where you are and will attempt to counter that with Grenades, Rocket Launchers, Sniper Rifles, you name it.
Key Points:
1) Find positions with good cover, these are areas where you have a good view of what you're defending, but very little of your body is visible to the enemy.
2) Prone or Crouch when ever possible! It increases accuracy and "settling" time greatly.
3) Remember you can lean and shoot. This can reduce the amount of your body that is visible to the enemy, making you a harder target.
4) Scope up! It'll allow you to have a clearer view of what you're defending.
5) Get support from Techies. These guys will really help you out, specially considering the Hyperblaster chews through 12 rounds a second!
6) Watch out for Grenades! The biggest thing you'll be up against when defending a point is grenades, so you want to try and keep an eye out and avoid them when ever possible.
7) You've only got 70 rounds till you overheat, so use them wisely! Try to avoid prolonged spraying. You can easily monitor your Overheating status on the Crosshair stats element in the HUD. To enable this, go to game settings and set "Stats Opacity" to full.
Closing
The Hyperblaster is capable of doing what the Obliterator or any other gun the Strogg have is capable of doing. Locking down choke points against constant streams of infantry. Providing it's used well and the positioning is good, a competent soldier with a Hyperblaster can easily hold down one side of the grate alone, which is more than any other class could hope to achieve. :oppressor:
Really I wrote this out of bordem, but I hope this is somewhat useful to atleast the newbies. :)
P.S. The Dancing Stroggnana likes my music. :dance: