[PvP Movie] Vanguard Assualt Specialist PvP - Huttball @ LVL 39

[blazerSERVE]

Hey there guys, I made a little pvp commentary video on Vanguard Assault Specialist Playstyle in Huttball. Made it to give insight on the class and my thoughts of how it's played. I know I need more experience, so let me know if you like it, and any advice is much appreciated.

 

Edited May 15, 2012 by blazerSERVE

[masterbason]

I like it...

 

I saw you use the stick granade a lot but not incendiary round... SS, HiB and hammer shot as a AS hit higher when you use it... and of couse it has a good elemental dmg effect... keep it up in your target...

[Philosomanic]

Great video!

 

However, there are a few things I'd like to point out.

 

• The only reason you should ever use Explosive Surge is to stop a cap (or occasionally to apply Static Field to 4+ people). Otherwise, it does too little damage for 3 ammo. Pulse Cannon would have been much, much better.
  
• That guardian had you guarded. That meant he added another 50% to your health, and you were almost full. That's at least 15k health on the ball-carrier, and you had -5% incoming damage. When you passed to him, you passed to a carrier with less than half that. In one pass, you dropped the carrier's health by more than 7k. It could have been okay to pass if he'd gotten ahead of a fire pit you were stuck at, but until then you should have held onto it.
  
• This would have been a great place to use Sonic Round.
  
• The guy you taunted was alone (none of your allies to target) and you'd just stunned him. That means 4s of the 6s taunt were wasted by CC, and the rest was wasted by him only having you to hit. Also, never use your AoE taunt on a single player.

 

Additionally, there were some issues with skill usage. First off is your ranged attacks. As someone else pointed out, Incendiary Round is incredibly powerful. It's a powerful DoT on it's own. Additionally, Hammer Shot and Full Auto do +9% damage against burning targets, so it will raise your damage from those skills as well. I saw you use Full Auto on several non-burning targets in that match.

 

I don't think I saw you using your single-target taunt. You should use that frequently. Any time you see any enemy attacking an ally, hit them with your taunt. It's free and off the GCD, and it will help your team and net you medals.

 

When you hit lvl 40, I'd strongly recommend changing your spec to something like this or this. I see you using Sticky Grenade as a ranged/burst tool frequently in that video. Assault Plastique fills that roll far, far better. Sticky Grenade should be saved for use as an AoE tool once you get Assault Plastique. Additionally, Reflexive Shield and Adrenaline Fueled (if you choose to go for it) give you a large defensive boost, which should be really helpful.

 

You may want to adjust your burst/CC tactics. I'd recommend saving your Cryo Grenade for targets that are prone to escaping (Assassins/DPS Ops), healing themselves up (Sorcs/Healing Ops), or using cooldowns (Marauders). Get these classes down to ~40% health, then use Assault Plastique -> Cryo Grenade -> HiB/Stockstrike/Ion Pulse. This will allow you to burst them down before they can heal themselves up. This is especially important against healing Operatives (who get a free, powerful, spammable self-heal when they're at 30%) and Marauders (who can sacrifice half of their health for -99% incoming damage for 5s). They can survive for a really long time at low health.

 

 

Hope all that helps a bit.

Edited May 15, 2012 by Philosomanic

[blazerSERVE]

Thanx for the advice, gonna implement what you guys said and make another video hopefully showing my improvement

[skidrows]

I use Explosive Surge when they go in to stealth, much faster then the stealth detect we have.

[Philosomanic]

I use Explosive Surge when they go in to stealth, much faster then the stealth detect we have.

 

Eh, true. But it's definitely not worth the ammo cost just to do damage to two players